by Tom Fox
All these new faces! What Molinaro needed was to spot someone he’d seen before. Anyone. He could use a familiar figure to give him his bearings in the expanding crowd, and perhaps remember where he’d seen the man they sought.
He scanned body after body, looking toward the taped-off section nearest where he’d walked before.
A familiar face, God give me a familiar face …
Then, all at once, his old heart fluttered.
At last!
He spotted a figure he’d seen before. A man in a long overcoat, dressed for business. There was a briefcase at his side, but he remembered it being held over the man’s head earlier, keeping the rain off his coiffed hair. He’d been there as Molinaro made his way out of the museum. In the same vicinity as the man with the too-wide eyes.
We’re close.
He scanned the people standing nearest the businessman. A few steps to his side, yes—the young man still in his pajamas, his hair disheveled, now soaked to the skin.
And near him, if Molinaro remembered correctly, just to his left … if he hadn’t moved on …
He willed the man to be there. Willed it with everything within him.
Then the thumping of his heart was joined by a tingling in his skin as he caught sight of what he’d been seeking. It’s him. It must be him. A man just shy of six feet stood with his back angled toward them, facing the museum. His hands were clutched around the yellow tape, as if its flimsy substance somehow fixed him in place. Molinaro could only see his back, but he had the strangest certainty it was the man they were looking for.
He nudged Bruno.
“That man, just there. I think that’s the one.”
Bruno stared at the figure. He could see no more of the man from his angle than Molinaro could from his. He screwed up his features.
“You think? I’d be a damned sight happier with certainty, Carlo.”
Molinaro couldn’t offer it. The figure was where the man had been standing before, and from behind he looked of a similar profile. But that still didn’t amount to certainty. Yet something within him … He knew he was right.
Without warning, the man at the tape spun round, passing his eyes over the crowd around him, behind him, seeming to soak up the buzz of the atmosphere like an actor reveling in the applause of a standing ovation, or a maestro turning from his orchestra to behold the rapturous delight of his audience.
His eyes. Wide. Wild.
And slightly too far apart.
“I’m absolutely certain,” Molinaro announced. “Take him. Take him right now.”
Bruno Nencini was already in motion.
Chapter Thirty-Two
7:38 a.m.
The timer on the bomb read an ominous 00:21:54. Less than twenty-two minutes before it hit zero and the two blocks of attached C4 transformed the device, and everything around it, into mere fragments of what it had been before.
“City bomb squad just radioed through,” one of the officers in the room announced to Remo Deubel. “They’re nearly here, but …” His voice trailed off.
“But what?”
He hesitated. “Their van’s stuck in morning traffic.”
“Traffic! We’ve got twenty fucking minutes here!”
“They’d get out and run, but they need their kit to do their work. They’ve sent one man ahead on foot.”
“Fucking Roman traffic,” Deubel fumed. He turned to Alexander.
“I’m going to implore you once again. Whatever it is you want, we can talk, but stop this before it goes any further.”
Alexander could only shake his head. There was absolutely nothing he could offer, nothing he could do. His heart was filled with its own fears. He would give anything in the world to be away from this place, this moment, and back with Gabriella. Before him was a bomb, but in his mind were the soft sheets of his bed, and her restful body, lying there peacefully as he’d left her during the morning’s dark hours. He should have roused her. Kissed her. Talked to her. Anything, anything other than leaving her silently without a touch or a word.
“We’re evacuating the nearby buildings,” Deubel continued, “but lives are still at stake, Mr. Trecchio. Lives that don’t deserve to be threatened.”
Alexander gazed downward—at the bomb, at Beatrice Pinard’s lifeless body, at the massive feet of the statue. He could protest that there was someone else behind all this; that they were almost certainly related to the fraternity that the world thought was a thing of the past. He’d already tried. But Commandant Deubel was not interested in stories of foiled plots or others at fault. He’d made it clear that his only interest was in what could be done now, here, to stop this from happening. And Alexander was the only one who seemed to hold that potential.
Even if, in reality, he didn’t.
Gabriella’s face was again in his mind. He couldn’t make it disappear.
Deubel jolted him by the shoulder, his face red.
“Tell me how you did this!”
“He didn’t!” cried a voice from behind them. Alexander and Deubel both spun toward the sound, only to be confronted by the haggard, drenched figure of Carlo Molinaro.
“He didn’t do this,” Molinaro repeated. He was soaking wet and out of breath, grabbing at a nearby officer for support and balance.
“Mr. Molinaro, I know that Alexander Trecchio is an acquaintance, but—”
“He didn’t do this,” Molinaro repeated, more forcefully.
“How can you know that?”
“Because this man did.”
Molinaro moved aside, and a large museum security officer stepped into the room. With him was a man in a set of handcuffs, his eyes wild and slightly too far apart, his face filled with rage.
Chapter Thirty-Three
7:44 a.m.
Alexander’s world seemed to freeze. The man who stood in the entrance to the great statuary apse was an incomprehensible mixture of unknown and known, someone he vaguely thought he’d never met, yet who looked strangely familiar. Worryingly familiar. He stared directly into Alexander’s eyes, his own filled with a hatred that appeared to cancel out every other emotion.
“What the hell is going on?” Deubel demanded, angered by the strange interruption at the eleventh hour. His face conveyed his impatience at knowing that the timer on the bomb was still ticking down.
“We caught this man on camera in the corridors of the Apostolic Palace, recorded last night,” answered the museum guard.
“He was carrying Alexander’s body out of Cardinal Trecchio’s rooms,” Molinaro added. “His unconscious body.” He allowed the implications of the statement to resonate through the room.
Deubel screwed up his face in confusion, glancing back and forth between Molinaro, the newcomer and Alexander. But Alexander was no longer paying attention to the guardsman. He was interested only in trying to make sense of Molinaro’s words.
“I … I don’t understand. I wasn’t unconscious.”
“You were, Alexander. Completely so. This man took you from your uncle’s office; I watched him carry you, entirely limp. It’s all on tape. He was lugging you toward an exit. I can only presume it was to take you out of the palace.”
“I have no memory of any of that, Carlo.”
“We think he brought you home last night,” Molinaro said, nodding toward the handcuffed man.
“Took me home?” Alexander shook his head. This was all incomprehensible.
“You told me that you’d worked late. You have a habit of going over to your uncle’s office after your paper closes. You did that last night, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. I mean, probably. I’m not sure … ”
“Then you woke up in bed after your dream without remembering when you got home, right?” Molinaro’s face showed that he already knew the answer to his question. But his next words bore an unmistakable urgency. “Do you remember how you got home?”
Alexander was shaking his head before an answer could form on his lips. The fact that he’d woken
still fully clothed suddenly returned to his mind. But it was impossible to think that what Molinaro was suggesting could have taken place without his remembering.
“It can’t be.” He shook his head more vigorously. “I wouldn’t have forgott—”
“I think you were drugged.” Molinaro cut him off abruptly. Alexander’s eyes went wide. “You were limp as a rag, and there are no signs you were beaten into that state. But if you were drugged … I think that’s why you can’t remember.”
“Drugged?”
But Molinaro was already on to his next point. “My only question is how my getting hold of you fits into the picture. You’re only here now because I rang you, and I only had you in mind because your postcard was still on my kitchen table.”
Even through his confusion, Alexander halted at these words. It was the second time Molinaro had mentioned receiving a postcard.
“Carlo, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The old man’s face screwed up in confusion.
“I know it’s a lot to take in, Alex, but—”
“No.” Now it was Alexander’s turn to interrupt. “The postcard, Carlo. I never sent you a postcard.”
Molinaro’s features widened. “It was in my letter box when I returned home yesterday. A brief note from your weekend in Assisi.”
“I’ve never been to Assisi.”
Molinaro blanched. “Then … the only explanation …” Suddenly resolution returned. “Someone wanted me to call you. A little note to bring you to my memory, then all this. I ring and find you at home, recovering from whatever drugs had been put into your system. It’s all been staged. Right from the start.”
Alexander shook his head. “You’re making some leaps, Carlo. I can’t imagine I was drugged. I have no memory of anyth—”
“Alexander.” The older man cut him off. “It may be presumption, but it’s not a guess. About this, I’d go so far as to say I’m certain.”
The word keyed in a disorientating response somewhere deep in Alexander’s stomach.
“Certain?”
“I have no doubt whatsoever,” Molinaro answered. And his next words broke Alexander’s fragile existence apart. “I’m certain, because of Gabriella.”
The world halted. Suddenly there was no bomb. There was no blood on the walls, no severed hand. Even Ceres disappeared from Alexander’s consciousness, her colossal form dissolving out of his awareness. There was only one woman, one person, one reality that mattered.
“Gabriella?” The word left his mouth half a question, half a plea. “What’s happened to her? Is she okay?”
“She’s okay, Alexander,” Molinaro answered. “A colleague from her section of the Polizia di Stato just rang back from your flat.”
Alexander’s features betrayed his panicked confusion. He looked imploringly at his old family friend.
“I had them check on her there once I saw the recording of you being taken away by this man.” Molinaro motioned toward the cuffed prisoner. “She’s not been harmed, Alex, but she’s been drugged. Heavily.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“I don’t know. Something that’s had her out cold. They’re bringing her to now.”
Suddenly Gabriella’s still form as Alexander had jostled himself out of his nightmare made sense. She hadn’t awoken, and now he understood why.
“This man,” Molinaro continued, “I can only assume he did the same to you. Maybe in your tea, like with your uncle. Maybe you had a confrontation—you might not remember it, not if drugs were involved. But however he did it, this is the person responsible for everything that has happened here, and you must have seen him. Witnessed his actions. That’s where your visions are coming from. You were there, and you must have been conscious at the time. It’s how you know the things you know, Alex. They’re not dreams. They’re memories.”
Alexander’s head was pounding. The anxiety he felt for Gabriella overwhelmed him. He had never cared for another person the way he cared for her. And he’d already almost lost her once.
He rubbed one hand against his temple, the other at his sore shoulder.
“There, just there!” Molinaro exclaimed, rushing forward. He removed Alexander’s hand from his shoulder and examined it closely. “Look, here’s a mark in your neck. If you were drugged like her”—he seemed almost presciently to know what thoughts were in Alexander’s head—“this could be where he injected you!”
The cuffed man with the wild eyes laughed angrily, as if he were bemused by Molinaro’s developing understanding.
Alexander couldn’t remember an injection. He remembered only completing his work, sometime in the night. Walking down a corridor. Then darkness. Then his dreams.
“Why have you done this?” Molinaro demanded, spinning toward their captive. “And why have you implicated Alexander?”
The man stared back at him vacantly.
“There’s no point in pretending that you weren’t involved,” the older man continued, his voice raised in attack. “We have you on tape, in the building, carrying his body. I’m certain that the Swiss Guard will be able to find forensics that back up what’s on the tape. And as for that”—he lifted an arm accusingly at the bomb, his eyes descending to the man’s hands—“I can only assume your fingerprints are somewhere on it. You did this!” He swung his arm back at the captive, spitting out his words. “Though I have absolutely no idea why!”
The man held his silence for a lingering moment, his eyes fixed on Molinaro’s, but when he finally spoke, his words were meant for Alexander alone.
“Because he deserved it. Because he is the one who betrayed us.”
And in an instant, Alexander knew it was him. That voice. The voice from my dream. The voice that spoke in the darkness. “I want you to remember … ”
“It was you.” The shocked words tumbled out of his throat.
“Alas, the dreamer thinks he knows something.” The man’s response came with a sneer and the condescension of a bully mocking a child.
“You, in my head. Your voice.”
“Maybe you at last heard a voice of truth. If you’d had a conscience, if you’d listened to it two months ago, maybe you wouldn’t be in the state you’re in today.”
Alexander couldn’t breathe. Two months ago. He hadn’t been wrong. Revenge. Images of the Fraternity’s dying moments returned to him, of its leader’s body punctured by bullets and lying on the floor of a study in the Apostolic Palace. The end—but not the end.
This man, here … The Fraternity had not died.
“You did all this just to get back at me?” he finally blurted out, his words agonized.
“Don’t be so fucking pompous,” the man shot back. “Our brotherhood has never done anything just for one man. That’s precisely the kind of selfish worldliness we always stood against.”
“Then why?”
The cuffed man simply sneered. Then he closed his eyes, speaking words aimed at no one but himself. “So that the Red Sea might part again, and lead us out of the land of troubles.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” asked the guard, casting his glance around the room in frustration. “This guy’s mumbled shit like this since we found him outside.”
“The rhetoric of a clearly disturbed priest,” Molinaro noted. “There was a collar in the recording.”
“He’s not just a priest,” came a solid, slow answer. Acting Commandant Remo Deubel took a step forward. He’d been silent since first questioning Molinaro and the guard as they’d burst into the room with their captive, but now there was recognition in his features and his brow was hard. “This is Monsignor Taylor Abbate. He’s a member of the Roman curia.”
“I’m more than that, and you know it,” the priest spat back, clanking the cuffs at his wrists.
Alexander’s mind was awash with confusion, but the pieces were finally coming together. A priest of the curia. A surviving member of the Fraternity would have fitted nicely into those ranks, once.
>
“You’re what’s left of them,” he muttered. “You’re one of the Fraternitas Christi Salvatoris.”
Taylor Abbate spat disgustedly. “Ah, so you haven’t forgotten about us. Step on an ancient tradition, obliterate us from the halls we helped support for decades, but you don’t forget about us entirely.”
The visions from Alexander’s dream were floating, disconnected, in his mind.
“We took you down. The members of your group were apprehended. Caught.”
“Not everyone, you bastard. There’s always a remnant, in the fall of any great group. A chosen people, protected from the plagues and assaults of the enemy.”
The man’s religious rhetoric was woven seamlessly into his words. The others in the room said nothing. The exchange between the two cuffed men held them spellbound.
But Alexander heard more than just generic religious references. He’d been a priest once himself. He knew the scriptures.
“You’re comparing yourself and that godforsaken fraternity you were a part of to the Chosen People?” He let his disgust manifest itself in his tone. “And just who the hell are you supposed to be, some kind of Moses?”
But even as he said it, another piece of the puzzle shifted into place.
“Oh God, that’s what you believe … You’ve made yourself out as the leader of whatever remains of your group.”
The man snickered in response. “What, you think I’m the only one left? The only one who wasn’t stupid enough to get caught or cowardly enough to disappear into the woodwork? I’m disappointed you underestimate us so gravely.”
“You can’t possibly think your fraternity could ever be resurrected! Not after the exposure you had.”
“Resurrection is from a different testament,” replied Abbate. “I’ll settle just for moving on. A little exodus into a new territory never hurt anyone.”
The word locked in Alexander’s mind. Exodus. Moses. The Chosen People. And the plagues, and Pharaoh, and—
“You’re a sick man.” The accusation was abrupt. “You really think you’re … You wanted me to watch. To see.”