Exodus

by Tom Fox

  “You’ve had your run. Now tell me where the other bomb is.”

  Spittle from the officer’s lips sprayed on to Alexander’s face, and the heat of his breath flowed into his nostrils. At such proximity, the man’s eyes were like great, white discs—

  The eyes. The white eyes.

  A pounding thumped in Alexander’s head. All at once, a different set of eyes stared back at him. White and vacant and stony, set in a face of stoic elegance. The face of history bored into him, impassive and unyielding.

  He blinked, and this vision too was gone.

  But a certainty remained.

  “Downstairs,” he announced. “We have to go back downstairs. We have to see … her.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  6:34 a.m.

  Carlo Molinaro could not claim to know Alexander Trecchio profoundly well, not in a practical sense. His familiarity, grounded in familial intimacy more than real knowledge, had come from long years of close friendship with Alexander’s uncle. He’d certainly watched Alexander grow up—mostly from afar, but occasionally through dinners or other family activities hosted by Cardinal Rinaldo Trecchio.

  Rinaldo … It was the cardinal’s death that linked Alexander to the Vatican. It was the reason Carlo had phoned Alexander and brought him here. Because trauma knows trauma, and a space knows its own secrets, and maybe Alexander’s experiences two months ago would lend him some insight. The fact that a postcard had arrived from Alexander only the evening before seemed timed by the Fates: a jotting from a weekend trip had brought the younger man already into Molinaro’s mind, ready for him to be plucked to the forefront of his attention when this crisis broke. In Alexander, perhaps there was the hope of a little bit of reason to make sense of—

  Carlo halted the track of his thoughts. In this instant, reality was more important than hope, and the reality was that Carlo might not know Alexander fully, but he knew him well enough. The way a grandfather knew a grandson or an uncle a nephew. And what he knew mattered. He knew of Alexander’s youthful desire to serve in the Church. He knew of his time in college and seminary, his fervent study. He remembered how Cardinal Rinaldo Trecchio had urged his favorite nephew along. And he also knew of the struggles of faith that had plagued Alexander after his ordination to the priesthood. Of the trials of those years that followed, which had ultimately led to struggle becoming crisis, and then loss. He’d been told of Alexander giving up the collar, leaving the priesthood. And he knew how it had pained his uncle, torn at him—but that Rinaldo had never faltered in his love for the young man.

  Molinaro knew that Alexander had a keen mind, when he chose to use it—another of the reasons the nudge from the postcard had urged him to call him, in the midst of his own panic and horror. He was a gifted communicator. He had a way with words and a love of history, which explained his frequent visits to the museums and the occasional opportunities Carlo had had to visit with him, during those visits, over the past years. He had seen much. Been through much. Knew much.

  But given all this, and despite the raving oddity of everything the younger man had said and done since he’d arrived at the museum, one thing Molinaro felt confident Alexander Trecchio did not know about was electrical wiring. And he damned well didn’t know about dual-redundancy linear circuitry.

  This was not just an assumption on Carlo’s part. It was knowledge gained from firsthand experience. Several years ago, at a dinner in Cardinal Rinaldo’s Vatican quarters, the lead to an old lamp had burned out its fuse and Alexander had proven singularly incapable of repairing the meager fault. It had been Molinaro himself who had taken the screwdriver in his old hands, righted the fuse and rewired the lead. Alexander had simply stared on with dismissive ignorance as the schoolboy-level repair had been effected by a man who could have been his grandfather.

  They had laughed at the incongruity of the scene, the three of them. But Carlo Molinaro wasn’t laughing now. At this moment, the memory meant only one thing.

  There was no way Alexander could understand the circuitry and bomb-fabrication details he had just heard him describe—much less construct such a device himself. For a man who couldn’t wire a ground lead or fix a lamp plug to know about redundant circuitry and wire types … it was simply absurd.

  Despite Remo Deubel’s suspicions, and despite Alexander’s bizarre and altogether inexplicable behavior, he was not responsible for this explosion. He wasn’t responsible for any of this.

  Something here was very wrong.

  Chapter Twenty

  5 hours 9 minutes ago

  “Do you know who this is? Do you recognize her?”

  The deliverer held up the woman’s face so that the betrayer could see it clearly. She’d been here longer than he, though the fog in the captive man’s eyes was matched by that in the woman’s. The same drug for both victims, though her fate was to be very different from his.

  “Look closely.” He watched the betrayer’s expression as recognition began to show through the grog of his semiconsciousness.

  “Good, good. You know who you’re looking at.” He held her face in his line of vision. Her eyes, behind the clouds, were blue. She had a spattering of freckles on her cheeks, and her auburn hair was neatly styled in an elegant, not-too-modern look. A few wrinkles might just have been forming at her brow, but they were expertly concealed with make-up that nonetheless remained subtle. She looked as she always looked. Kind.

  “You know her. You spoke with her. You conspired with her.” He knew that the betrayer didn’t know the woman well, but that his interactions with her had been important. He would recognize her.

  The man writhed a little in his bonds. He didn’t take his eyes off the woman.

  “Her part in what you did to us was minimal, perhaps,” the deliverer with the slender fingers continued. “I don’t really know the details. It wasn’t as significant as yours, at any rate. She provided you with aid, but it was you who took us down. Who destroyed all that we had worked for. All that we were set to become. That I was set to become.”

  He breathed deeply, striving to control himself. The memories were fierce and painful, and his voice rose with each word. He forced it down, back to a constrained quiet.

  I was set to become the prophet. The king. The leader. A new Moses for a new era. It was hard to subdue the pain of such loss. But perhaps, like Moses, I was simply not meant to go all the way into the new world.

  He turned his attention back to his male captive.

  “You must learn that there is a cost to your actions. A cost the innocent must sometimes pay. Some lambs are sacrificial, just like in the good old days, and each has its price.”

  The betrayer’s head lolled. It was clear his consciousness was waning. But whatever the force of the drug, what was coming next would not escape his notice.

  “Watch this closely,” the attacker instructed. Releasing the unconscious woman’s head so that it fell forward, he extracted a serrated hunting knife from a sheath at his hip. Then he grabbed the woman’s right wrist and held it up before the other man’s gaze.

  “This,” he said, laying the knife against her pale, pearly flesh, “is only the beginning of that price.”

  When he saw that the betrayer’s eyes were again focused, he pulled down the sharp blade until it met with bone, and set to work.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  6:42 a.m.

  That the Vatican Museums, dedicated in their splendor to the Christian God, housed one of the world’s greatest statues of the goddess of fertility came as a surprise to most visitors. Nevertheless, Ceres, who to the ancient Romans had been the female deity governing not only fertility but agriculture and families, had her home in an alcove of the museums, in one of her most extraordinary manifestations.

  The Greeks’ Demeter in Roman form, Ceres was a goddess of power and strength who oversaw those elements of life so central to the ongoing existence of mankind. In Vatican City, where memories extended back well beyond the advent of Christ, she held pri
de of place in the form of a colossal statue that towered over visitors to the museums. Sculpted of pentelic marble, holding corn in her right hand and a scepter in her left, she rose two stories in height, dwarfing everything around her.

  Alexander led Deubel and Molinaro toward the apse that held the colossal statue. He walked with purpose and surety.

  “It’s over here,” he said as they crossed through a display hall. The image of the stony visage wouldn’t leave his mind. He had dreamt it, even as he had seen it countless times before.

  The face of the goddess.

  Around them, the ornate paintings and gilded ceilings gave way to plainly painted brick-red walls. High above, a half-dome was a simple affair of flowing lines in radiant gold.

  The statue took pride of place. Alexander had visited it often, always struck by its potency in such an otherwise anti-pagan environment. Ceres stood with an air of authority, elegant and forceful, as if she really did govern the very rhythms of life and birth.

  As Alexander approached the familiar statue, Deubel grabbed him and held him back. Alexander’s hands were still cuffed before him at his waist.

  “I’ll go first, if you don’t mind.” Another mild statement concealing an absolute command. The guardsman obviously wanted to approach the bomb Alexander had announced was hidden here before the man he believed had planted it was allowed to get anywhere close.

  “Watch him,” Deubel instructed one of the officers, who took up position next to Alexander and placed a firm hand on his arm. Molinaro glanced at him. He seemed to be pondering standing by his young friend’s side, but Alexander nodded for him to move past and examine the scene with the other officers.

  Deubel led them forward. It was only a few paces to the pedestal on which the massive statue rested, though from his present angle Alexander couldn’t see it clearly.

  “What the fuck is this!” one of the officers suddenly blurted out. A millisecond later, his hand went to his mouth, as if he feared he might vomit.

  “Oh God, oh my God,” Molinaro moaned as his eyes took in whatever was there. His hands rose too, but clutched at the sides of his face in an expression of horror and overwhelming sorrow.

  “I have to see.” Alexander squirmed in the officer’s grip, insistent. “You have to let me see!”

  Remo Deubel looked across at him from the pedestal. His features were angry, disgusted, yet still somehow professional.

  “Let him get a look,” he instructed Alexander’s new guard, “but don’t let him out of your grip.”

  “Oh God,” Molinaro moaned again.

  As Alexander stepped forward to the display, the old man looked into his face.

  “Alexander, it’s Beatrice.”

  The words stunned him for a fraction of a second, but he was already turning to look at the site before them.

  And then he saw precisely what Molinaro meant.

  At the feet of the colossal Ceres, another woman’s body had been positioned, made to kneel at the oversized feet of the ancient goddess. It was, as Molinaro had sorrowfully announced, the body of Beatrice Pinard, a Frenchwoman who had come to work in Vatican City as the public liaison for the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, better known as the Vatican Bank. A woman who’d gained a reputation for her kindness—a kindness Alexander had himself experienced.

  She was no longer among the living. Blood was in evidence around three stab wounds in her back. Her frame was motionless, her arms outstretched in obeisance before the towering figure of the goddess of fertility. Her right hand was missing, its arm extending to a ragged cut at the wrist that still sparkled with congealing blood.

  Beneath her left hand was a bomb.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The day before

  Beatrice Pinard had worked in the ringed confines of Vatican City for nearly five years. A woman of neatly kept appearance, of polyester skirts and professionally conservative hairstyles, she was one of those figures loved by everyone who knew her. Which wasn’t an everyday occurrence for an employee of the Vatican Bank, which was almost universally held in suspicion, if not outright despised. She’d risen to the ranks of its public liaison, essentially its spokeswoman, without being hated. Pinard was something of a marvel.

  In a world of competing power struggles and aggressive territorialism, Beatrice had always comported herself with grace. Because she never seemed to seek recognition, she somehow gained it. She never sought to ascend the ranks of power—indeed, within the male-dominated world of the Vatican, she knew there was no expectation that she could. Yet she had climbed high all the same. Her post at the bank was permanent, confirmed by the Pope himself.

  She befriended everyone she met.

  And so it was no surprise that she greeted the strange man in her office with a smile. She hadn’t expected a visitor, especially so late in the day, though the bank’s lobby was open to the public and the door bore a WELCOME sign printed in four languages. But when Beatrice wasn’t reading financial reports or audit reviews, she read Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Gentle Spirit’s Guide to Creating a Loving World. She knew the adage “a stranger is just a friend you haven’t met” to be as absolute and true as the financial algorithms that determined the market flows she so routinely analyzed.

  Her face beamed its usual warmth.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, signora, I think so.” The youngish man had a vaguely familiar look about him. The look of a man you might have met before but couldn’t quite place. And yet he wasn’t the ordinary sort she expected in the Vatican Bank’s quarters. Visitors here were usually businessmen with a certain air about them. This man wore the right attire, yes, but he was somewhat … disheveled. Unusual. Yet he smiled pleasantly.

  “You’re Signora Beatrice Pinard?” he asked. His American accent, already marring his spoken Italian, utterly disfigured her French surname, and she grimaced politely.

  “Last time I checked.”

  Another smile from the man, gentle and friendly. “I have something I was hoping you could take a look at. Something that’s been confusing my research.”

  It was the magic word. Mention of research was Beatrice’s catnip. She spent so much time on dry reports, the idea of a little fact-hunting or real analysis sparked her to life. She immediately sat up straight in her chair, setting her elbows on her desk.

  “I’ve got a few minutes. Why not?” She beckoned the visitor to come forward. “What sort of material is it you’re looking into?”

  The man stepped fully into her office. Closing the door behind him seemed only a natural, polite gesture.

  “Something you just don’t see every day,” he answered. He moved toward her. A satchel hung at his waist and he opened the flap, reaching inside.

  By the time he extracted his hands, he was at her desk, his hip flush against the wood. She leaned forward eagerly.

  He laid a single photograph before her. In it, a man and a woman were sitting talking at a table. The photograph had been taken at an odd angle, as if from a distance, covertly.

  “You know these people, do you not?” he asked. But Beatrice Pinard’s initial curiosity was giving way to an involuntary suspicion. She hadn’t expected that this foreigner’s research would involve her personally.

  Of course she knew the two people in the photograph. But why was this man asking her about them?

  And why, she suddenly thought to ask herself, had he closed the door?

  “I’m not sure whether I do or not,” she answered, sitting upright. Despite the desk between them, the man was uncomfortably close.

  “Oh, I think you are sure, signora,” he answered. His smile did not waver, but his voice had turned to ice. “I believe you know exactly who they are.”

  “I think you should leave my office—”

  “I believe you know who they are, and that you helped them when they came to you two months ago. That you provided them with information.”

  “Sir, I am prepared to call security if you do
not leave at—”

  The strange man slammed a fist down on her desk.

  “You helped them! And they destroyed what my brethren had worked for for years.” He glared directly into her frightened eyes. There was spittle on his lips. “That, signora, you should not have done.”

  One of his hands had gone back into his bag while he spoke, and as Beatrice Pinard began to lean toward her telephone, she barely noticed it emerge, clutching something quite different from a photo. The syringe swung toward her with fierce speed, its needle piercing her neck. She could feel whatever drug it contained blasting into her bloodstream.

  Its effect on her was instantaneous. She couldn’t even scream.

  She could only notice, as the man took a step backward and watched her slip into darkness, that the smile had still not left his face. He brought his hands together as she felt herself sink back into her chair, her body growing heavy and wooden. Slipping out of her control.

  And in the instant before her vision went black, as she saw him draw close and start to maneuver her, as if he was going to take her somewhere, she noticed something else. Even in that moment, it struck her as an odd observation.

  The man had such slender, delicate fingers.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  6:51 a.m.

  “Alexander, you have to tell me what is going on.”

  Carlo Molinaro drew near to his beleaguered family friend, his face ashen, tears lingering in his eyes.

  “How do you know these things? How are you involved in all this?” He kept his tone low, suggesting that this conversation was for him and Alexander alone, not for Deubel or the other officers in the room. Alexander interpreted this as a good sign. It meant there was still trust between them, despite the scene and despite his own behavior.

  “Carlo,” he answered at barely more than a whisper, tugging at his cuffed hands and leaning toward Beatrice’s dead body, “I have to ask you to believe me. I didn’t do this.” His face looked tormented. He and Gabriella had met Beatrice Pinard during their investigations into the Vatican Bank two months ago—the same investigations that had disclosed a dramatic play for power within the ranks of the Church. The woman had treated them with kindness. She had welcomed them into a world that had been foreign to them. But apart from this, she hadn’t been involved. Had she paid such a price for Alexander’s own actions?