by Glenn Meade
Nidal jerked his pistol. “Ultimately your life if you don’t tell me the truth, Mr. Cane. Now move, you’re both coming with us.”
“Where?” Jack asked.
“To meet someone who’s going to decide if you live or die.”
83
JACK FOLLOWED NIDAL and Yasmin back through the passageway. The Serb covered them with the machine pistol and carried Jack’s lamp.
As they mounted the steps from the rotunda into the ruined underground street, Nidal said, “It may not be safe going back the way we came. You’ve excavated in Rome, Cane. You have knowledge of these passageways. Find us another way out of here.”
“You know a lot.”
“Where’s the nearest way out—or do I have to hurt the woman to force you to tell me?”
Jack studied the ruined street, trying to get his bearings. He pointed to a jumble of huge stone blocks. Another archway lay beyond, smothered in darkness. “There ought to be an exit somewhere that way.”
“You had better be right, Cane.”
“It ought to eventually lead us to a metal stairway. It leads up to street level on the Via Famagosta. Except the exit door is probably locked.”
The Arab’s partner waved his gun. “I’ll take care of that. Get going.”
“Wait,” Nidal said, and traded his weapon with his partner. “Give me the MAC-10 and take my pistol.”
The Serb took the Beretta and Nidal cocked the machine pistol. He aimed it at Jack and gestured for him to move. “If you’re lying or attempt to escape I’m going to cut you down like a dog.”
As Jack stepped forward to lead the way, a firm voice commanded in English, “Throw down your weapons. Nobody move or we’ll shoot.”
The order was immediately repeated in Arabic as Lela and her companion stepped out of the shadows and aimed their pistols.
Jack locked eyes with Lela a second before she told the Arab and his partner, “Obey the order. Throw your weapons down now!”
In an instant Nidal brought up the MAC-10 and fired. A burst of gunfire stitched across the chamber walls, gouging plaster and sending Lela and Ari diving for cover as Jack crouched for shelter behind a shattered stone column.
The Serb dragged Yasmin toward the jumble of stone blocks and disappeared under the archway. Nidal followed them, firing another burst back into the chamber.
The gunfire died but the echo seemed to go on forever as Jack moved from behind his cover. He saw that Lela’s companion was already on his feet. The man raced toward the archway and fired a volley of shots into the passageway, the ricocheting rounds sparking off the walls.
A cry of pain erupted from somewhere in the darkness, then a ferocious burst of fire answered from Nidal’s machine pistol, gouging the plaster walls and forcing Ari to throw himself to the ground for cover.
The instant the gunfire died Jack sprinted toward the archway. He heard another pained cry from deep in the shadows. Has Yasmin been hit?
As he went to plunge into the passageway he felt hard metal prod against the back of his neck. Lela appeared behind him. “Stop, Jack. Stay where you are.”
“I’ve got to go after them, Lela. Yasmin’s been abducted.”
“I told you to stay—”
“Shoot me if you want, but I’m still going.” Jack surged past her, darting blindly into the pitch-black archway.
“Jack!” Lela went to move after him just as Ari struggled to his feet, gripping his wounded arm, his face ashen.
“I think I shot one of the creeps. Why didn’t you stop Cane? You let him get away.”
“Let’s hope you didn’t hit the woman, Ari. Jack claimed she’d been abducted. And I couldn’t just shoot him. We don’t know the full story here.”
“Just do your job and catch him, Lela.” Ari was enraged but as he staggered over to the archway in pursuit he came to a sudden halt, clutching his wound, his face twisted with agony.
Lela said. “What’s wrong?”
“My wound’s opened.”
“Let me see.” Lela held up the lamp. Blood streamed from Ari’s arm. “It’s gotten worse. You’re losing more blood.”
Lela tightened the tie on the wound, then checked the pulse on Ari’s other wrist. “I think that might stem the flow. But your pulse is weak and you’ll need proper medical help. Sit down or you’ll bleed to death.”
Ari slumped onto one of the limestone blocks. Lela fumbled in his pockets. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Trying to find your cell phone.”
“It’s in my right pocket. Why?”
Lela found Ari’s cell, examined the screen, and handed the phone back. “You’ve still got a reasonable signal strength. Call Cohen. Tell him where you are.”
“How can I? I don’t know where the heck I am.”
“I heard Jack say we were somewhere near the Via Famagosta.” Lela fumbled again in Ari’s pocket and relit the remaining lamp with his lighter. Then she checked her magazine for rounds and slammed it home. “Have Cohen find the nearest underground entrance and come and get you. Tell him to bring a doctor. You ought to be okay until help comes. But if you start to feel worse, call me on my cell.”
Lela readied her Sig in the two-hand position. She clutched the lamp’s wire holder in her fingers and moved to the mouth of the darkened arch.
Ari’s furious voice boomed around the chamber walls. “Just where do you think you’re going, Lela?”
But she had already disappeared into the passageway.
84
JACK MOVED DEEPER into the passageway, feeling his way along the coal-black walls. Seconds later he banged his head and staggered back, pain jolting through his skull.
A rush of dizziness overcame him. He put a hand to his brow and his skull hurt like mad. He reached out his palm and touched something round and hard—a pillar, he guessed—thicker in girth than an oak tree.
Without light, he felt totally lost.
“Jack. Wait, please. I’m not going to harm you.”
From behind him came the sound of someone stumbling over rocks. He looked back and saw a flash of light. Twenty yards away Lela was clambering over the rubble, clutching a lamp in one hand, her pistol in the other.
Jack froze. He could thrash on in darkness and get himself lost or hurt or both. Lela had a lamp. She also had a weapon. He needed her.
She reached him and caught her breath. “Are you crazy, going on alone?”
“No arguments, Lela, not now. I’ve got to find Yasmin and I’m losing time. If you want to stop me, you’re going to have to use that gun.” Jack peered ahead but the light from Nidal’s lamp had disappeared.
Lela put away her Sig, brushed her hand across Jack’s forehead, and showed him her crimson-stained fingers. “Do you know you’ve got a gash on your scalp? If you keep rushing ahead unarmed, all you’ll do is earn yourself a slab in the mortuary.”
They locked eyes and Jack said, “What would you suggest? That I borrow your lamp and gun?”
“Very smart. You’ve probably never used a firearm.”
“Who are you kidding? That’s a Sig nine-mil you’re carrying. I was plinking cans with a twenty-two on my grandfather’s farm when I was twelve. But I’m confused. How does an Israeli police officer go armed in a foreign country? Isn’t that against the law?”
Lela reached for her Sig again as she stepped past him and moved ahead, swinging the light. “Explanations later. Be careful where you walk, this ground’s treacherous. If anything happens that causes me to drop my pistol, find it fast and use it if you have to, okay?”
“Now you’re talking.”
85
SIXTY FEET ON, Lela pointed to a trail of crimson splashes on the rubble. She knelt, touched one of the splashes, and withdrew her fingertip, red and wet. “It seems Ari hit someone.”
“Your cop friend?” Jack’s mouth tightened with fury. “What if it’s Yasmin?”
“Don’t blame me. And he’s not a cop, he’s Mossad.”
“Mo
ssad?”
“Like I said, explanations later. Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Lela cocked an ear. “It sounded like rumbling. From somewhere up ahead.”
They came to a winding metal staircase. The blood trail curved up the steps. Lela kept her gun aimed upward as she climbed the creaking metal, Jack behind her. At the top they found themselves in another passageway. This time the ground was smooth, no rubble in sight. Splashes of blood spotted the way every few feet.
“They went this way.” Lela pressed on and stayed in front. “I need to know what happened to the scroll, Jack.”
“Why does everyone assume I know where it is?”
“Who’s everyone?”
“You. The two guys who abducted Yasmin.”
“Who are they?”
“I don’t know that either. But I have a feeling they may be connected to a very unpleasant Syrian I met recently.”
“Where?”
“At a monastery.”
“You mean in Maloula?”
Jack stared at her, incredulous “How did you know …?”
“Later,” Lela answered simply.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”
“All in good time. Go on.”
“That’s all I can tell you. I don’t even know why you’re in Rome, except maybe to arrest me for something I didn’t do. I keep asking myself how the heck I got mixed up in this nightmare. Maybe I should have picked a less dangerous career. Like land-mine disposal.”
Lela put a hand on his arm, her brown eyes searching his face. “Are you telling me the truth about the scroll, Jack? You didn’t steal it from Green?”
“No, I sure didn’t.” Jack met her stare and felt the spark of attraction again.
Lela seemed conscious of it too but a second later she peered ahead and broke the spell. “The blood trail’s gone.”
Jack knelt and scanned the ground. The crimson spatters had disappeared. Lela said, “Whoever’s been hit, I guess their wounds have been bandaged to stop the bleeding, so chances are they’re still alive. If it’s Yasmin the men won’t harm her, not after going to the trouble of abducting her. At least until they get whatever it is they want.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Gut instinct. I’m guessing they’ll want to use her to get to you.”
A distant rumbling noise sounded. Jack said, “You hear that?”
“It’s like the noise I heard earlier.”
“We’ve got to be near street level.”
“It seems to be getting a lot louder. It’s probably traffic.” Lela swung the lamp. Ten yards away the wash of the light revealed a half-open metal gate set in the middle of an archway.
Jack said, ‘’What’s your plan now? Slap me in cuffs and drag me off to face a court in Israel?”
“Who said anything about dragging you anywhere? Except maybe to somewhere we can both clean ourselves up. First, I need you to help me find the scroll, Jack.”
“And then?”
“Then I may arrest you.”
They approached the gate. Jack pulled at the metal bars and they creaked open.
Lela went to step through first, her pistol readied, but the second she did so a thunderous roar exploded and a powerful blast of air almost knocked her off her feet.
Jack pulled her back as a thunderbolt of light streaked past. The earth shook beneath them, a metallic roar detonating in their ears as a train screamed past, its lights blazing. Jack felt the ground shake for at least ten seconds until the train roared away into darkness.
Lela was startled. “What was that? It felt like an earthquake.”
“I ought to have remembered that some of the tunnels intersect near Rome’s rail system.” Jack moved cautiously past the gate and pulled a dazed Lela after him. A hundred yards to their left the lights of an underground station blazed. A few passengers stood around on the platform, near a pair of escalators. “They probably took Yasmin out through the station. We’ve lost her, they’ve got away, Lela.”
She put a hand on his arm. “Maybe it’s time I told you what I can, and why I followed you. There’s something else you need to know, Jack.”
“What?”
“It’s about your friend, Yasmin.”
PART SEVEN
86
JOHN BECKET KNELT on the cold tile floor of his monastery cell.
He stared up at the crucifix on the wall, his forehead drenched in perspiration. The cell was simply furnished with a metal bed, a nightstand, and a plain wooden locker.
As Becket knelt in front of the crucifix, his sinewy hands were locked together in prayer. He knelt there for a long time, unaware of time passing, or of the pains in his knees from the hard floor. His lips moved in whispered prayer until finally he blessed himself and rose to his feet with a faint groan.
He rubbed his knees vigorously, then took a small hand towel from the nightstand and dabbed the sweat from his face.
Sometimes his praying became so intense that he lost all sense of time and place. Just like now. When he looked at his watch he saw that over an hour had passed. He rinsed the towel under a stream of hot water from the sink, then folded it neatly and placed it on the rail to dry.
As he sat on the edge of the bed, from somewhere far off came the echo of the monks’ musical voices as they chanted their hymns. The sound of their voices always brought him back to those dark days after the desert of Qumran, to the remote monastery high in the mountains of northern Italy where he had chosen to atone for his sin. He prayed there earnestly for months on end for forgiveness. It was all many years ago now, but sometimes he felt that his sin had forever stained his soul.
Becket looked up again at the crucifix on the wall as if again to ask forgiveness. The simple cross of two pieces of wood symbolized so much. Once a brutal emblem of Roman injustice and savagery, it had been transformed into a blessed, enduring symbol—of hope and devotion, of justice, comfort, and peace. Proof, if proof were needed, that love and truth were greater than all the shadows.
He thought of the hard task ahead of him and sighed in despair, running a hand over his face. There was so much he needed to do, so many truths he needed to tell that had been kept secret. So many wrongs he wanted to make right, including his own grave sin. But in so doing, he knew he risked destroying both himself and the church.
The distant chanting that washed over him was suddenly interrupted by the jarring noise of his cell phone vibrating on the nightstand. It beeped twice, then twice again. Becket picked up the phone and saw he’d received a text message. When he read it, his face drained.
He had been waiting for this moment, and without hesitation he plucked a compact black leather bag from under his bed. Exiting his cell, he strode down the hall to the open door of the abbot’s office.
The abbot was leafing through some papers, his reading glasses perched on his nose, and he jumped to his feet, his eyes darting to the black leather bag clutched in the pope’s hand. “Holy Father. Is everything okay? You look pale. You’re sweating.”
“Fabrio, I need to borrow your car to make an important trip. The red Fiat 500 I’ve seen you driving will do. Is it available?”
The abbot looked horrified. “Well, yes … but surely the Holy Father will have need of a driver and his bodyguards?”
The pope firmly raised a palm. “No driver, no bodyguards. The car, right away if you please, Fabrio. It’s extremely urgent. Give me the keys.”
“But Holy Father, I was instructed to watch over you—”
“And now I’m instructing you, Fabrio. Please, it’s a matter of life and death. I haven’t a moment to lose. The keys.” The pope held out his hand.
The abbot opened a desk drawer and plucked out a set of car keys. “The Holy Father can’t be serious about driving alone in Rome? The traffic’s homicidal.”
The pope grabbed the keys from his hand. “Sorry, Fabrio, this is no time for argument.” He noticed a spare brown
habit tossed on the back of a chair and threw the gown over his arm. “I’ll need to borrow this habit. Not a word to anyone that I’ve gone, and that’s a papal order.”
“If—if you insist.”
“I do. Now, have the guards open up the front gates, as fast as you can. Tell them you’ll be driving out in a hurry, that you have an urgent appointment to keep and can’t be delayed …”
“That I’ll be driving out? You want me to lie to the guards, Holy Father?”
Something seemed to snap in John Becket just then, a strained look on his face as if he was under enormous pressure. “I’ve been living a lie most of my life, Fabrio. One more won’t make much difference.”
The abbot frowned, puzzled by the reply. “I don’t understand what you mean, Holy Father. And where exactly are you going?”
“The less you know, the better.”
The young man with the mustache was confused. Wearing jeans, dark glasses, a faded Levi’s T-shirt, his corduroy jacket tossed on the passenger seat, he sat in the dark blue Lancia, parked across the street from the monastery.
He saw the guards open the electric gates and the tiny red Fiat erupt from out of the driveway. The tall figure of the monk who was cramped behind the wheel wore a brown habit, his face covered by the hood. He tore off down the road in the red Fiat, the car chugging a little at first, as if the driver was having difficulty shifting gear.
The young man frowned. What monk wears a hood while driving? It seemed a bit odd. He scratched his head and then picked up a notebook and pen from the seat next to him and jotted down the Fiat’s registration plate. Next, he reached for his cell phone, punched in the number, and a voice answered on the second ring. “Ryan.”
“It’s Angelo Butoni, Monsignor.”
“Good man, Angelo. What’s the story?”
Butoni was a seasoned Vatican security officer and kept his eyes on the red Fiat as it drove away down the long avenue leading from the monastery. “You told me to call you if I saw Uncle leave the monastery. Well, I didn’t, but I noticed something a little strange.”