by Tom Fox
“No choice now!” he shouted. “Go. I’ll fend them off as long as I can.”
Alexander grabbed the pontiff by the shoulders and pushed him toward the door. Gabriella pocketed the small gun and took the stranger by the arm, and they both moved swiftly to the exit. Alexander kicked it open and poked his head outside. No one in either direction.
“Move.” He nodded quickly to Raber, and before he could pull the Pope to safety, the head of the Swiss Guard reached down to a holster at his ankle, extracted another handgun, and tossed it to Alexander. A moment’s glance connected the two men, Raber’s face broadcasting a single command: Keep him safe. Then Alexander, ensuring that Gabriella and the stranger were behind him, led the group out before slamming the door closed again.
Inside, Raber aimed his weapon at the speedily disintegrating bookshelf. The gunfire stopped, and the commandant of the Swiss Guard used the brief silence to do what he had not done in a long time. He said a prayer.
God protect His Holiness, and deliver us from evil.
As the broken door to the corridor swung open, he began to fire.
74
8:03 p.m.
Oberst Christoph Raber was dead within seconds. The small library offered no tactical positions that could give one man’s skill, however refined, a chance against the kind of onslaught Caterina Amato’s men had brought. A single low-yield grenade was thrown into the room. The concussive force of its explosion knocked Raber off his feet. It was all that was needed. A second later two men stood above him, half their clips emptied into his chest and forehead.
“They’re in the corridor,” Caterina said, emerging from the passageway. “Get them.”
“Which way?” Alexander asked as they left the library behind and found themselves confronted with one of the vast hallways that led through the Apostolic Palace. High above, Renaissance cherubs hung from clouds and bearded saints peered down from the columns that lined the long corridor.
“To the right,” the Pope answered. “A dozen or so doors down is a stairway that leads to the ground floor. From there we can get to the gardens.”
The group was already in motion. Alexander took the lead, the Pope and the stranger behind him. Gabriella brought up the rear: the most dangerous position. Hopefully they would have time to get out of the straight line of attack before their pursuers came through the door behind them.
In the end, it didn’t happen the way she envisaged. Twenty meters ahead of them a door in the wall burst open. Two men moved out into the space. From their movements they seemed disorientated, their heads swiveling rapidly as they tried to get their bearings.
Alexander knew he couldn’t hesitate. He raised his handgun and fired. The first shot missed, ricocheting off ancient stonework. The second also missed its mark. Ahead, the two men realized they were under attack. The weapons slung at their shoulders came up, they began to turn—and Alexander fired again. This time his weapon found its mark, a round slamming into one of the attacker’s shoulders. It wasn’t enough to kill, but it threw him off his feet and he flew backward into his companion. Alexander fired again, and this time a bullet pierced the skull of the second man. He ran forward, sighted the gun between the eyes of the terrified first attacker, and pulled the trigger again.
Then explosions began to come from behind. Spinning around, he saw that the exit they’d taken from the library was now open and men were emerging there as well.
“Gabriella!” he shouted, giving warning, but she’d already spotted the danger. He ran in her direction, trying to put his body between the attackers and the pontiff, as Gabriella raised the weapon she’d received from Oberst Raber and started to fire.
She was more practiced and far more accurate than Alexander. She double-tapped two rounds that felled the first man out of the library, then stepped back to shove the stranger to the ground behind her, making him a less open target.
“Get the Pope to the floor!” she shouted to Alexander, who immediately complied. Gabriella was firing again, but the second man out of the door was expecting the attack and moved agilely to the opposite side of the corridor, where a large decorative vase sat on a waist-height solid stone pedestal. He took up cover behind the stone and began to fire back, his first shots narrowly missing Gabriella’s shoulder. She forced a deep breath, calmed her focus and fired back, shattering the vase. But the man had already ducked. The round careened off the wall behind him as he raised his weapon again and loosed another shot.
This one caught its mark, and the bullet tore through Gabriella’s right shoulder. She emitted a pained cry as the impact spun her off balance.
“Gabriella!” Alexander shouted, horrified.
He tore his gaze away and aimed for the man who had shot her. He pulled three times on his trigger. The man’s head was ripped back as the third round caught him in the forehead, his body flying backward and slamming into the floor.
But Alexander’s moment of revenge had distracted him. Another man had emerged from the library, and by the time Alexander noticed him, the man was facing him full on. Alexander recognized the face at once: he’d seen it staring down at him from the window of his flat as he and Gabriella had fled down the fire escape. Now, as then, it was a face devoid of emotion. No hatred, no rage—only cold, hard dedication.
The man’s gun was leveled, and Alexander realized there was no way he could get his own firearm up in time. No way to defend himself from the shot that was to come. He who had believed, who had doubted, who had served, who had fallen—he was to die here, executed by a man with no heart, mere feet from the white robes of the chief shepherd of the church he had left.
The icy man fired. It was over.
But the bullet was not meant for Alexander. In a split second, he realized that this moment was to be far, far worse.
Gabriella was on her knees, facing him, as she worked to right herself from the gunshot to the shoulder that had dropped her. Her eyes met his, and they contained a resolve, a willingness to fight. Alexander knew his own contained nothing but sorrow.
The icy man’s gunshot hit her squarely in the back, its round piercing flesh and bone and organ and tearing its way out of her chest in a violent, grotesque spray of blood.
Her consciousness lasted only another second, but her eyes—those beautiful eyes—recognized what had happened. They pleaded with Alexander. I’m sorry. I’m afraid. I’m . . .
And then, in an instant, they were lifeless and pleaded nothing at all. She fell forward, her face slamming into the marble tiling that was already stained with her blood, her life gone.
Alexander’s rage and pain and grief consumed him. He lifted his handgun to the man behind her and fired until it would fire no more. The well-dressed figure of Gabriella’s executioner convulsed with the riddling of bullets, slammed back against the wall, and finally slid lifeless to the floor.
75
8:07 p.m.
Alexander Trecchio had never known grief like he felt at this moment. It was as if everything in him were being torn apart. Gabriella was gone. All at once, he realized she was more than a friend, more than a flirtation or a memory. She was his: not a possession, but something, someone, he had truly treasured in his heart. He hadn’t fully realized it before. He’d been attracted, he’d been afraid; but he’d never known that something of himself was bound up in her. That he needed her, that . . .
That it couldn’t possibly matter anymore. She was gone, and Alexander had the horrifying, soul-crushing sensation that he would never be whole again.
“I’m so very sorry about that.” A voice suddenly cut through his grief. Alexander looked up, his eyes red and watering. Caterina Amato had emerged from the library, the last member of her group still standing. Her shoulder-length hair was ruffled, its streaks of gray standing out in the strange light as she wiped the strands from her face. In her other hand, her pistol was aimed squarely at him. “I realize it’s hard to see a partner die.”
Alexander could barely form his words.
“She wasn’t just a partne—”
Caterina waved off his comment. “Please, Mr. Trecchio, I really don’t care. I was just being polite. I couldn’t give a fuck that she’s gone. She was going to die today in any case. Just like you, and just like them.” She pointed her gun toward the Pope and the stranger before bringing it back to Alexander. He was the only one of the three that had a weapon, and he still had it in his grasp.
Alexander bore within himself only fury, and had nothing left to lose. He drew the gun toward Caterina’s face and pulled the trigger over and over again, a bestial yell emerging from somewhere deep inside him. Every cry he’d ever wanted to let loose, every pain that had been stored up inside him, every decibel of a soul tortured and wild and lost—they emerged from his lips in a singular peal of agony and rage.
But each time he pulled the trigger, only an impotent click came in response. Eventually his guttural cry ceased and Caterina was still standing, smiling.
“Only so many rounds one of those will hold,” she said. Her grin was wide, satisfied. “I’m afraid you’ve done all you can. A gun that still has rounds inside sounds like this.” She raised her weapon and without a second’s hesitation pulled the trigger. The aim was so close to Alexander’s position he was sure the shot would end him, but it flew left of his body and on into the corridor. A warning. A sadistic act of pre-execution torture.
What came next happened so quickly, and was so unexpected, that Caterina was caught off guard.
As Gabriella had fallen, her Beretta had slipped from her lifeless fingers and slid across the floor. There it had lain until it was picked up by a man who had never in his life held one before. A man whose whole body was clad in white.
The Pope sat upright, the gun clasped in his hand and his arm surprisingly steady.
Caterina stared at him, incredulous. “This is rich! A pastor of peace with a gun in his hand! But we both know you won’t do it. You’re the fucking Pope! Turn the other cheek was tattooed somewhere on your consciousness at birth.”
The Pope’s breath was heavy, but he did not lower his arm.
Caterina glowered at him spitefully. “Give it up. We both know you’re not going to kill me.”
“That’s right,” Gregory said calmly. “I’m not going to kill you.”
He pulled the trigger only once. Caterina’s expression widened in utter disbelief, but the pontiff kept his word. The single round slammed into her left knee, shattering bone and tearing cartilage. Caterina wailed in pain, falling backward. Her gun flew out of her grasp. Before she’d even hit the floor, Alexander had charged her, knocking her fully on to the marble tiles and grabbing the gun that only seconds ago she’d aimed at him.
Caterina’s body quivered, shock and terror combining. Alexander knelt beside her, cocked the weapon and held it to her temple.
“As you’ve already proved,” he said coolly, “this one still has a few rounds left in it.” Then his voice grew colder still. “But I’m only going to need one.”
Caterina closed her eyes. There was nothing left to do—no resistance, no fighting. Her fiefdom was over, her empire fallen. She had lost.
Alexander tightened his finger around the trigger, began to pull.
“Stop,” a voice suddenly commanded. He froze, then slowly turned to look behind him. Pope Gregory was standing, his white garments covered in the blood of his guards, of Amato’s men, of Gabriella. “You cannot do this, Alexander.”
“She deserves it!” he cried, his voice a newly tormented plea. “Of anyone in all the world, she deserves it!” His hand shook around the gun.
The Pope’s eyes were soft. Alexander stared into them. In the midst of everything, they were two gems, peaceful and tranquil.
“There is more to life, to your life, than this,” Gregory said softly.
Alexander was weeping, the first time he could remember doing so in years. “What?” he asked helplessly. “What could there possibly be?”
The Pope smiled softly. His answer was a single word. “Hope.”
Alexander wasn’t sure if he believed the Pope’s message. He wasn’t sure if hope could ever exist for him again. But in the pontiff’s peaceful surety, he knew this had to end. He breathed deeply. He exhaled until his lungs were completely deflated.
Then he let the gun in his grasp drop gently to his side.
76
8:26 p.m.
Pope Gregory himself walked into the library, to the fallen body of his faithful head of the Swiss Guard, and extracted a pair of handcuffs from the man’s belt. He made the sign of the cross over Christoph Raber, uttered a silent prayer for his soul. There would be many funerals in the days ahead, many prayers offered. Raber’s would be one of the hardest. The man had done what he had sworn to do the day he’d stood beneath the brocaded banners and kissed the papal ring in the San Domaso courtyard, repeating the ancient oath: I swear I will faithfully, loyally and honorably serve the Supreme Pontiff and dedicate myself to him with all my strength, sacrificing if necessary also my life to defend him. This I swear! May God and my holy patrons assist me!
Assist him they had. The Pope was safe, though it had cost Raber his own life to accomplish it.
Gregory rose and exited the room, his back straight and his resolve firm. Raber’s work had to be finished. He walked over to Caterina Amato’s fallen position and cuffed one of her hands to the heating pipe that ran along the wall. It wasn’t the world’s most secure binding, but she was disarmed and severely injured. In this setting, the defeated woman simply looked old and worn out.
The Pope pondered their position a moment longer, then stepped back into the library and took the radio from Raber’s shoulder. It was a simple device and he called in for support without trouble. Every remaining member of the Guard would be at their location in moments.
But there was nothing to be done for the tragedy that tore at the pontiff’s heart. It was one thing to grieve over the loss of a man who every day had been willing to give his life in an act such as this, but what faced Pope Gregory at this moment was . . .
Lying face down on the floor, Alexander Trecchio now again at her side, was the body of Gabriella Fierro. The Pope had been told she was a pious Catholic, that in her youth she’d considered being a nun. Today she’d died trying to save him. And more than him: the Church, her friend, and a man she didn’t even know. God would grant her rest in the abode of the righteous, of that the pontiff felt absolutely certain. The stranger was already crouched beside her, drawn up close on the floor. He, more than Gregory, could offer words of comfort.
But the grief emanating from Alexander Trecchio was overwhelming. He’d been a priest, Gregory knew. He was the nephew of Cardinal Rinaldo, one of the Pope’s dearest friends—another loss he’d hardly had time to absorb, that he would mourn in the days ahead. And Alexander had supposedly lost his faith, struggled to retain in his adulthood what had sustained him in his youth. What would this do to him now? What fragments of faith could survive such tragedy and sorrow?
For the first time in his life, staring at this broken man and hearing his agonized cries echo down the long, ancient corridors of the Apostolic Palace, the Pope felt truly helpless.
Alexander crouched over Gabriella’s body. Carefully he reached out and turned her over. He knew it would expose the repellent wound in her chest, but he had to see her face. He had to look into her eyes.
He laid her as gently as he could on her back. Her eyes were still open. He couldn’t bring himself to close them. He couldn’t bear to think she had seen her last sights, that this woman of such strength and hope was now . . .
Alexander’s quiet sobs choked in his throat. He was a man utterly unprepared for the emotions he was feeling.
And then, without his noticing its arrival, he felt a presence at his side. His closed eyes were holding back tears and he did not open them, but somehow he knew that kneeling beside him was the stranger whose arrival had sparked all of this.
“Do you know,” the m
an softly asked, his voice like a sea of calm, though more hesitant than it had been before, “what her favorite verse was? The single line she uttered over and over again, that sustained her through her life?”
Alexander couldn’t answer. He didn’t know. Gabriella had never shared it with him. They hadn’t had the time.
“It was from a moment in history a long, long time ago,” the stranger’s voice continued. It was raspy, its phrases shorter, but it spoke with the same serenity as always. “A man had a son who was possessed by a demon. The creature tormented him; the boy foamed at the mouth, raged, did himself constant harm and could not speak. Nothing could be done for him. He was a lost cause.”
Alexander wished the man would be silent. He did not need stories now. He did not want them. But when he finally opened his eyes and looked up, what he saw caught him unprepared. The stranger was there beside him, but he was not kneeling in a pious posture of compassion. He was propped up next to Gabriella’s body, his own shirt dripping with blood. Alexander noticed a rosette of red on the left side of the stranger’s chest. A much larger gash of crimson covered his right side, dripping dark, thick blood down on to the man’s jeans.
Every muscle in Alexander’s body tensed. The first shot, the warning Caterina had fired so close to him as an act of extra terror before execution—in an instant Alexander understood that it hadn’t been a warning shot at all. Her bullet had struck the stranger, though the man had reacted without a sound. And now, blood pouring from his side in quantities that made it clear his wound was fatal, he’d brought himself to Gabriella’s side and was trying to speak words of comfort.
Alexander made to let go of Gabriella and reach for the stranger, but the man held up a hand and gave a subtle shake of his head.
He was not seeking to be eased of his suffering. He wished only to continue his story.