by Tom Fox
Alexander’s pulse raced, the words that passed between the officers fading in and out of his awareness.
“It was the only alarm the intruder, or intruders, didn’t get,” the first officer continued in a pronounced northern coastal accent. “Disarmed the perimeter and all the hallways from the entry to here. And the CCTV. Every last feed, blank on the recorders. But he missed the alarm on this one panel. That’s the one brought us in.”
Alexander couldn’t remove his gaze from the hand on top of the table. It looked so morbid, yet so alive.
“Any ID on the victim?” a voice asked behind him.
“None yet. They’ll have to take … fingerprints.”
The officers’ exchange halted at the implication of their own words. Prints, clearly, were something they could easily get.
Alexander could feel the pressure within him mounting. Hearing the other men speak about the scene verified a truth he didn’t want to admit. This is real. Other people, police officers, were seeing it. It wasn’t a hallucination.
It wasn’t a dream.
Even if it had been before.
Suddenly his mouth was moving.
“You need to open the hand,” he said firmly to everyone in the chapel. “There’s something inside it.”
Chapter Eight
5 hours 19 minutes ago
He never let the other man’s neck out of his sight once the moment of attack came. The surroundings were powerful, distracting, but the attacker had his target and nothing was going to stop him reaching it.
He lunged forward. Something inside him wanted to yell out, to shriek a proud cry of attack as he ran. His mind had words: “This is for a cause you could not destroy! This is for a truth greater than any you’ve known, one that will outlive us both!” But his belly desired something more guttural, more feral—a bursting forth of unrestrained sound and emotion as he surged to victory.
Yet stealth was the safer path. He pushed forward without a sound, raising his right arm high and extending his left at chest height in a hook, just as he’d planned and rehearsed in his mind a hundred times. He reached out and grabbed the betrayer from behind as the man walked the dark, ancient corridor, lost in some memory or thought. The man with the slender fingers clutched his left arm tight, drawing his victim to himself, then planted the syringe deeply into his neck.
The betrayer jolted, taken completely by surprise, but his attacker clung on, holding the man’s arms down as best he could, forcing the full quantity of the drug into his suddenly bulging artery.
“What the hell is—”
The betrayer tried to speak, but the man with the slender fingers shoved him forward with a forceful push from behind. He stepped back, watching his victim struggle to keep his balance, the empty syringe dangling from his neck.
“Who are y—”
The betrayer tried again, turning toward his attacker, but his words were already growing soft in his mouth. The drug was having its effect. He reached to his neck, felt the plastic and pulled. A second later, he held the syringe before his face, his expression an uncomprehending question.
“You’re getting what you deserve!” The attacker finally found his voice, taunting his victim with a confident smile that came from the ten feet of distance between them, marked out by the checkered pattern of ancient stone tiles, and the sure knowledge that the drug would never allow him to cross that gap.
“I … I don’t know wha—”
The syringe fell, and the weakening man stared at his empty hand, openly mystified that it was no longer obeying his commands. His eyes widened, suddenly panicked, and he looked up at his attacker, whose mouth was moving again.
“This is for my brothers. My brothers that were, whose hope you have taken away.”
The betrayer could not answer. His balance started to falter, and without being able to scream or even grunt a protest, he convulsed and fell forward, collapsing on to the floor.
A second later, he was motionless.
His attacker stared at his fallen form a while, silently. Then he added a final thought, speaking words he knew his victim could no longer hear.
“And for a new path, through a new ocean, finally to arrive at the Promised Land.”
Chapter Nine
5:31 a.m.
A slight sucking noise accompanied the latex-gloved forensics officer lifting the hand from the surface of the Sistine Chapel altar. The blood from the wrist had congealed together with that smeared across the stone surface, binding them together with a sickening glisten that shone dark garnet red in the now bright police lighting.
As gently as possible, the officer held the hand so that her photographer could capture it at various angles. She rotated it along the wrist line, the clutched fingers of the fist folded loosely, wrapped in the thumb.
“There are fingerprints there, in the blood,” she noted, pointing toward smudges on the underside of the hand. The photographer stepped closer and took a series of macro-focus shots of each, and Alexander could see the forensics officer starting to manipulate the hand with added caution, taking care not to disrupt the smudges.
But he could not focus on the fingerprints.
“Alexander, what makes you think there’s something in that … hand?” Molinaro asked, swallowing the final word. He’d moved to stand next to his all-but-grandson, his mumbling having quickly ceased at Alexander’s unexpected pronouncement. His face was a pale question, the look of a man who’d turned to another for help and was discovering something else entirely. He’d approached Alexander as a voice of reference. Now the younger man was demonstrating a knowledge of whatever had taken place here that it was clear Molinaro couldn’t fathom.
Alexander shook his head. He couldn’t possibly tell Carlo that he’d seen all this in a dream last night—that he’d walked through these halls in the midst of his sleep, discovered the hand, seen the paper clutched in its grasp. God, he could use Gabriella’s calming influence now. Her stability seemed so rock-solid in every circumstance. For a moment he was furious with himself for not having woken her up before he left the flat. Alone, he felt helpless and utterly confused.
He made a dismissive gesture, nervous, keeping his eyes on the forensic officer’s work.
The tip of a biro was placed gently beneath the pad of the thumb, and with a look of intense focus on her face, the officer pried the digit away from the grasp.
“The joints are becoming stiff. Not full rigor yet. Suggests a time of dismemberment somewhere between three and eight hours ago.” The woman reinserted the biro beneath the pointer finger and pushed it gently but firmly outward.
It was then that the edge of a scrap of paper, rolled up and clutched in the severed hand’s grasp, became visible.
“He’s right,” the officer said, starting in on the pinky finger and nodding her head toward Alexander. “There’s something in here.”
A tall and imposing man in a crisp civilian suit turned directly into Alexander’s face. He wore no badge or identification, but Alexander recognized him at once. He was a member of the Swiss Guard, high-ranking. He couldn’t recall the man’s name, but he remembered him from his illicit entry into Vatican City two months before. He’d been the officer heading the squad that had apprehended Alexander and Gabriella as they’d snuck through the ancient walls when the plot against the Church was at its peak. The officer who had led Alexander to his uncle’s room in the Apostolic Palace, only to discover the cardinal’s body, dead. Those experiences hadn’t made them fast friends. But it was this officer, too, who had taken Alexander and Gabriella to the Pope and witnessed all that had come after, the good as well as the bad.
He was one of the few who had survived.
Alexander didn’t know whether seeing him here set his mind at ease or added to his discomfort.
“Do you want to tell me how you knew that would be there, sir?” the well-starched officer asked.
The question in Alexander’s mind was immediately gone. The guardsman clear
ly knew his name: “sir” was all the indication required that this was not to be a friendly discussion, and the officer made no attempt at concealing the accusing tone of his question.
“I … I really don’t know,” Alexander answered. “I just … had a feeling.”
The officer’s look telegraphed his dissatisfaction, but he followed Alexander and turned his attention back toward the forensic agent’s work.
The final finger—the middle—was being pushed back, at last revealing fully the open palm. The rolled-up strip of paper lay at its center, touches of blood at its edges.
The flash of a camera sparkled the scene. The forensics officer set aside her pen and moved her gloved fingers directly toward the paper.
“Wait.” Alexander interrupted her silent motion. “There’s something beneath it. Look.”
All eyes re-examined the sight.
“He’s right again,” the woman said a moment later. “Something drawn on the palm, in blood.”
The contours of a shape beneath the paper were visible around its edges. The blood there had been smeared intentionally.
“I’ll need to lift the paper away to get a decent look at it.”
The forensics officer held the tiny scroll gently by its edges, lifting it and passing it to an officer at her right, who took it deftly in his own gloved hands.
Alexander gasped. What was drawn on the palm of the hand was a letter.
R.
There was muttering among the officers. A letter itself meant nothing, and that meant it could mean anything. A puzzle.
“There’s writing.”
The sudden announcement interrupted the reflections. It came from the male officer holding the rolled-up scrap of paper. Attention immediately shifted from the letter painted on the hand to what had formerly been in its grip.
The man slowly unrolled the scroll, taking care to keep his fingers away from the flat surface.
“It’s in Italian,” he said, seeing the full text a fraction of a second before the others.
The camera began to flash again, recording the revelation.
“Just one word,” the officer announced.
Alexander stared at the paper. The single word turned his own blood cold.
Rivincita.
Revenge.
Chapter Ten
5:44 a.m.
“I’m afraid I have no choice but to ask you some questions about this.”
The imposing officer of the Swiss Guard turned again to face Alexander, standing between him and the continuing work on the new evidence.
“I don’t know how you possess whatever knowledge you do, son, but I’m going to tell you that I’m uncomfortable with how much you appear to know about this scene.”
The guardsman, at a little over six feet, was only fractionally taller than Alexander, and both men had sandy hair with the first smatterings of gray, indicating ages that were as similar as their heights. The officer’s use of the word “son” was designed to let Alexander know the position he was now being held in.
He was a suspect.
“You arrive here from the outside,” the officer continued, “as, I might add, you have done before.” His reference to the events in the Vatican months before was delivered with bitterness and a hint of anger. “And you arrive knowing there will be something concealed in a severed hand on top of the altar in this chapel. Then, when we open the hand, you appear to know there is something written on the palm, beneath that note.” He didn’t have to say “That’s damned suspicious” for his point to be made.
“I don’t know how I knew,” Alexander answered honestly, “or even if I really did know. I just had a feeling.”
“A feeling?”
“I had a … dream. Last night.” It was time to admit reality.
The officer looked from Alexander to Molinaro, his face incredulous.
“He had a dream! A fucking dream!” His gaze spun back to Alexander. “Am I meant to believe that the media is now in the habit of hiring psychics and clairvoyants to research its religion columns?”
Alexander shook his head, but he couldn’t fault the man his incredulity. Inwardly, he himself was struggling with the same questions. He wished he could remember this guardsman’s name.
“I’m not a psychic, and there’s nothing clairvoyant about me. You know that. You know me. You remember what we went through. But I had a dream last night, just before Carlo phoned to bring me here.”
“And in this dream?”
“I saw … this.” Alexander motioned to the scene. “The blood on the altar, the smearings on the wall. The hand. And,” he added, “a scrap of paper in its grip.”
The officer stared directly into Alexander’s green eyes for a long time, as if he sought something in them that went beyond his words. Alexander could feel the power of substantial experience. The man’s demeanor, his pose, his expression, they all were crafted, focused, and made Alexander surprisingly anxious to open up and pour out his soul in a relieved, honest confession. Except that he had nothing to confess, and he’d already spoken the truth.
“So you saw this,” the officer said eventually, the words derisive, almost sticky on his tongue. “All from the comfort of your bed. Let me ask, did you also see the rain storm, the lightning and thunder?” Accusation was replaced with sarcasm, anger with wry humor. A tactic to throw off a liar.
But Alexander was not thrown off. Instead, the pounding in his head returned forcefully, and he raised both hands to his temples. Such pain …
I am staring at the altar, at the hand and the paper. The memory of his dream burst into his consciousness like one of the lightning flashes from the windows high above. The rain is pelting down. Claps of thunder shake the roof. There is a sea of blood. And then the whole world suddenly—
He pulled his hands away from his face, his eyes wide, and stared straight back at the officer.
“There’s more.”
“More?” the man answered quizzically.
“Something is about to happen.”
“Son, what are you say—”
“Get down!” Alexander shouted, a second before an explosion shook the Vatican Museums to their foundations.
Chapter Eleven
Sleep
A strange face emerges from the darkness. The woman’s features are white, shimmering, her eyes a bold blank stare at their core, hovering high above. She is decorated in elegance and power, like a warrior queen or goddess. She gazes down, accusing, her hand clutching her signs of power.
I gape back, but I cannot speak. I cannot comprehend the woman’s strange, frozen accusation. There is color all around, solid and terrifying. Her garments ripple, so free and yet so frozen. She is colossus. She overwhelms.
My vision jolts. I see grain. A scepter. A sandal. Divinity.
The heavens above us burst in anger. They are thrashing and fiery. The firmament is losing its temper, and I am faced with this woman as the thunder stomps its tempest in the sky.
Her white form comes closer. She shimmers, regal and eternal, like a living, accusing frozen jewel.
And now I am at her feet, bowed in obeisance, and I see the might of her reign. I see her power over life and death. It is right before me, clear and threatening and powerful. I know where such power leads. I know how such reigns conclude.
And the heavens are thundering angrily again.
Chapter Twelve
5 hours 41 minutes ago
The betrayer was bound, feet as well as hands, to one of the chairs the man with the slender fingers had set deliberately in position. He had not yet come out of the pure blackness that the drug provoked as a first response in its subjects. This had allowed the time necessary to drag his limp body from the corridor to the required room, lift it into the chair and tie it in such a manner that escape would be impossible when consciousness returned.
Not that he would try. Whatever strength the betrayer had—and having dealt with his body now, his attacker knew it was not insubstantial�
��he would wake with almost no control over it. The drug allowed consciousness to return only at the periphery of function, making everything seen an almost translucent para-reality, everything heard a voice completely unknown.
The attacker knew the effect well. He had tried the drug on himself twice to be sure of its impact and potency. When the betrayer came to, it would be in a world he could not possibly understand, his mind wrapped in the wet blanket of an agent over which he had no control.
Which was just as the man wanted it.
He wheeled a cart to a position directly in front of his bound captive. He had prepared it precisely and wanted his victim to see what lay upon it. He nudged it slightly, making sure it was perfectly aligned.
A moment later, he brought an open palm against the side of the betrayer’s sagging face. The sound and the jolt brought his eyes open, and the man’s lungs drew in their first deep breath since he had fallen.
“I’m, I’m …”
His words slurred together, his head lolling slightly to one side and then the other as he tried to keep it balanced. He blinked his eyes constantly, striving for a clarity of vision that the man with the slender fingers knew would not come.
“Don’t speak. Just look,” he commanded. He reached out and placed his hands gently on the sides of the bound man’s head, directing his vision toward the cart. “Look closely. See what you have brought us to.”
The head in his hands stayed motionless, and he allowed his victim time to study the objects that would destroy him.
“Examine them. Don’t try to understand what you’re seeing. Just let the details sink in.”
He knew from his own experiments that the drug kept the mind from any rational processes. Thought, focus, comprehension were wholly out of reach. But the images the eyes took in were swallowed by the unconscious mind all the same. It was what made the drug so perfect.
“Look at the construction.” He pushed the betrayer’s head closer, aiming his eyes at the components his slender fingers had earlier so deftly crafted and prepared. “Look at the timer. The canisters. Behold the power.”