In the dim light, he studied the packages of C-4, the same material terrorists used when they attacked the U.S.S. Cole in October 2000 and killed seventeen sailors. In his other pocket, he carried the materials for the detonator that would set off the bomb. Expanding plasma from a small explosion of foil would drive a metal piece called a "slapper" across a gap and a shock would be detonated, exploding the C-4 with a bang about the size of Mount Vesuvius. From what he had learned, it should all go off like clockwork when the next subway coach rolled by in about three hours during the early morning commute.
Lights along the station platform flashed off, plunging the entire area into blackness except for his flashlight. It shouldn't take him long to set the C-4 on the tracks. His hands began to shake, and sweat poured down his face. The detonator mechanism wasn't fragile, but his unsteady hands were a liability. Leaning over the bars of plastic explosive, he took a deep breath and unwrapped the first paper package.
A single, piercing light suddenly appeared on the platform in the darkness, sending a beam down the tunnel. Probably a night watchman, maybe a polizia, making a final check for the evening. The stout man clicked off his flashlight and hugged the wall. His glimmer of light might have been spotted from the terminal platform. If so, he was in trouble. Pulling the Glock from his pocket, he dropped to one knee and aimed at the entrance to the tunnel. If whoever had the flashlight entered, one shot in the man's chest would end the threat, but it might also ruin his plans. He caught his breath and waited. The light bobbed his way, and then it stopped.
"Anybody down there?" a man yelled.
He released the safety, ready to kill.
"Anyone in the tunnel?" the voice called again.
A trickle of sweat ran down the side of the terrorist's corpulent face. Yelling down the tunnel was beyond stupid. The guy must be an idiot. If he had to kill a cop, then he would leave the body in the tunnel and hope the stiff went unnoticed until the bomb went off in a few hours. No one would find him in the debris. If the guy walked into the tunnel, he had signed his death warrant.
The flashlight stopped searching the walls of the tunnel and turned back in the other direction. The bomber started to breathe again.
After the light disappeared, he hurried out on the tracks and quickly assembled his bomb next to the rails. Once the detonators were positioned, he hurried out of the tunnel and climbed back on the arrival platform. His calculations suggested that the explosion might collapse the subway entrance and shut down the entire connection at this terminal. If not, the blast would certainly block the tunnel when it destroyed the front portion of the train. Either way, the blast would make a statement that Rome would never forget.
It wasn't that he hated Rome itself; it was the American presence and their constant interference in European commerce that had to stop. Uncle Sam's long, skinny fingers kept dipping into his business, messing up the ice market, fouling his imports, and screwing up Italian politics. The politico big boys wouldn't listen to someone like him, but a few of these explosions around the city, and they wouldn't need a hearing aid to tune him in. He wanted to sting them so badly that they would think twice before doing any more business with the Yanks. Uncle Sam had already gotten away with way, way too much. Now it was time for the Italians to wake up or go down the toilet in one giant flush.
Grabbing his flashlight and a can of white spray paint from his trench coat pocket, he rushed toward the subway wall. Since this was only a first sting, he'd leave a mark to let the police know they were messing with a poisonous snake that would return and bite again. He made a large sweeping arch on the brick wall with the paint. Quick, bold movements designed a wasp's stinger. Standing back with his flashlight, he assessed his artistic creation waiting in the midst of imminent destruction. This design would be his signature for future projects as well.
Once finished, he jumped back down to the tracks and started walking into the opposite tunnel, which would enable him to exit through a manhole cover several miles away. It should cover his tracks. After all, he had all night to reach his destination.
2
September 3, 2008
The glaring headlines of Il Messaggero sent Dr. Jack Townsend diving into the newspaper story. The bombing in the subway terminal had disrupted the metro system that brought commuters in underground to avoid Rome's congested streets. Terrorists had set off a bomb just outside the termini in Piazza dei Cinquecento, blowing the subway train off the tracks and killing a dozen people while injuring countless others. Because Rome had not been the victim of attacks as London had, the city erupted in an uproar with citizens demanding immediate action.
With close-cropped brown hair and a Matt Damon boyish face, Dr. Jack Townsend didn't fit the usual expectations for an academician. Looking far more like an athlete, the forty-year-old scholar disliked violence of any sort, but particularly feared his wife's reaction to the news. During the time Jack and Michelle finished their PhD studies in biblical research in Tübingen, Germany, he had seen fear in her eyes more than once when terrorists attacked American embassies. He and Michelle had come to Rome to pursue a project that could grab the entire world's attention, but her apprehension about terrorist attacks could derail their work.
When she was five, Michelle's parents had been on a vacation on the coast of Bari, Italy. After a weekend of fun and sun on the beach, the family started back to Rome. They had turned at Cerignola toward Naples and were winding over the mountains when a semitrailer truck bore down the highway out of control and crossed the centerline. Michelle's family ended up in the ditch upside down when the car rolled. The truck exploded in a blast of fire. Since that afternoon collision, she had struggled with an extreme fear of explosions.
Jack read the newspaper story a second time. No one seemed to know who set off the blast, but a group the police dubbed as "The Scorpion" had etched a design on the subway wall that looked like the stinger on one of the dreaded creatures. Reporters had invented the label and as best the journalists could tell, there didn't seem to be any obvious links with international terrorist groups. Local discontents were thought to be behind the attack.
"More coffee?" The bushy haired waiter sailed by holding a large silver pot aloft. The intensely inviting aroma curled around the patrons.
Jack shook his head. "No, Luichi. Thank you. Hard to say no, but I've had enough."
The waiter bowed graciously and hurried off with his white apron flying and the silver coffeepot held high. Luichi fascinated Jack with his artistic flourishes. Jack liked the Dar Poeta sidewalk café partly because of the unpredictable waiters and mostly because of the artichoke dishes like the alla giudia cooked in a Roman-Jewish style. The restaurant was not far from the Tiber River and the Amadeo bridge that led into Borgo Santo Spirito street leading him back to the Piazza San Pietro of the Vatican where he often worked in the library.
People fascinated Jack Townsend. Curiosity had always been one of his strongest traits, and that's what fueled his passion for researching the Greek Scriptures. But watching the unusual forms bouncing down the street totally hooked his interest. Fat ones. Skinny ones. Voluptuous. Ugly. Gorgeous. They were all out there, and he loved watching them go by. Jack folded the paper and put it under his arm. Leaving a tip on the white tablecloth, he walked out onto the sidewalk.
"Ah, amico!" a familiar voice called out. "Wait!"
Jack turned to discover Tony Mattei waving at him. The heavyset Italian could turn up in the strangest places, and Vicolo del Bologna street was certainly one of them.
"Tony, good morning! What are you doing on this side of Rome?"
"I simply happened to be walking down the street when I saw you. I was concerned you might have been hurt in that awful explosion."
Jack studied the jewelry merchant and diamond broker. Always a flashy dresser with two or three sparkling rings on each hand, Mattei's thick, black hair hung across his forehead like a schoolboy coming in from recess, but this was no naive child. Tony Mattei's eyes con
stantly shifted back and forth taking in everything in sight. Jack noticed that Mattei's broad smile and his hard probing eyes didn't quite fit together.
"In this city of a billion people you should run into me on the street?" Jack said. "Surprising."
"I am a blessed man." Tony beamed a broad smile. "The gods have smiled on this humble Italian. But my question is about the bombing. Did it frighten you?"
Jack nodded his head. "Sure. I'm appalled. No one wants to be in a city when some terrorist starts killing innocent people."
"But fortunately, not hurt?" Tony turned his head sideways and narrowed his eyes. "I see no signs of injury."
"No. We're all right. Why would you think we were hurt?"
"No reason. No reason. Ah! That is good. Well, my friend, keep your eyes open. We are living in dangerous times."
"You're right about that." Jack waved. "Got to get back to the office." He started walking away. "Take care."
"I will." Tony Mattei waved. "Be careful, my friend."
Jack hurried down the street toward the Amadeo bridge. Strange. Tony Mattei had always been one of those characters who had a way of showing up out of nowhere. When he made one of his appearances at a café, the man drank enough black coffee to float a boat down the Tiber River. He was rumored to drink an equal amount of wine on other occasions. Tony Mattei remained one of those local institutions that made the ancient city of Rome always seem unique and quaint.
He glanced at his watch. Michelle would probably be irritated at him for squandering his time drinking coffee.
"Taxi!" Jack held his hand high in the air. "Taxi!"
The cab driver pulled up in front of Santa Maria della Concezione Church on Via Vittorio Veneto. Jack paused for a long look at the majestic structure of the old church. Somewhat diminished by the construction of Via Veneto, the sixteenth century edifice had originally been part of a Capuchin convent. The relationship to the Capuchin order gave the church an unusual twist. Having walked through the building a hundred times, he couldn't resist another look. The draconian features of the large church captivated his attention.
Capuchins monks had broken from the Franciscan Order in Naples in 1525 in a desire to fulfill St. Francis's original vision of helping the poor and helpless. Taking on a lifestyle of extreme simplicity, the new order set out to minister to the outcasts of society. In time Cardinal Barberini, originally a Capuchin monk, built the structure that also became the cemetery for the order. Jack Townsend opened the heavy front door and started down the dark hall.
A smell of incense and candle wax hung in the air along the narrow corridors that led to rooms with human bones nailed to the walls in patterns of floral designs, arches, triangles, and circles. Even after months of working in a house directly behind the old church, the sights still intrigued him. Jack stopped at the end of the second corridor and glanced up at the large clock composed of vertebrae and foot bones from some long dead monk. Here and there a finger bone filled in a small vacant spot. Only a single hour hand moved on endlessly with no minute hand, signifying that time had no beginning or end. The singular hour hand had turned around thousands of times through the centuries while monks were laid to rest only later to have their bones dug up and used for decoration on the walls.
Far away in the dim, candlelit front of the old church, Jack glanced at the tomb of Cardinal Barberini buried in front of the main altar. 'Hic jacet pulvis, cinis et nihil' had been chiseled in stone long ago. The entire edifice seemed to sing the same song over and over, 'Here lie dust, ash, and nothing more,' in a myriad of stanzas.
Farther down in the dim crypt, Jack stared at the shadow of a reclining skeleton draped in a brown monk's robe and propped up against a wall lined with femur and arm bones. Not far ahead an indenture in the wall was piled high with boney-white skulls stacked on top of one another and reaching to the ceiling. Jaw bones hung ajar with teeth missing. If the Capuchins intended to say that life was short and all that was left when one's days were over was a stack of skeletons and bones, they'd done a good job getting the message out.
Dr. Townsend sauntered on, thinking how today and the preceding centuries were light years apart and yet so close. Death had been a constant threat from time immemorial through to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the Capuchins started piling bones, but time didn't stop moving forward. Modern medicine appeared with the age of antibiotics and chemotherapy changing the world. But the advent of terrorism had plunged the thoroughly modern era backward into the time of the monks hammering their brothers' bones to church walls. Like the bombing in the subway terminal, death once more rode supreme through the streets.
"My son, can I help you?" an elderly voice said.
Jack turned around to find Father Raffello standing behind him in the shadows. "Oh! I didn't hear you."
"Jack, I didn't know it was you," the old priest said. "You seemed to be deep in thought."
"I suppose I am. This church always touches a sensitive spot with me." He pointed to the recessed graves in the wall. "I am reminded of how short life is. On the streets I see all kinds of shapes and sizes walk by, but here I am vividly reminded of our common destiny. We don't have much of such retrospection in today's world."
Father Raffello nodded. "So true, but the past remains with us in this church as a constant symbol of the truth that our lives pass away quickly."
Jack nodded. "Afraid so."
"I trust all is well back in your offices?"
"Thank you, Father. We are doing fine."
"Good. Good." The priest started walking away. "Let me know if anything is needed."
"I will. We appreciate having the office space." Jack continued on his way.
Once he reached the side door, Jack exited the church and walked along a narrow cement path leading to the back. Fresh air washed away the scent of candle wax and stale air. The small house at the end of the walkway had once been used by a caretaker before being turned into their offices. Michelle would be waiting for him and she would want to know where he'd been for so long. Telling her that he was sitting outside in front of Dar Poeta drinking coffee and watching the multitudes walk by wouldn't set well. Perhaps, he should come up with some story of doing research on skeletons of long ago departed monks. Nope. That wouldn't fit either. The best he could come up with was that he'd been thinking about this difficult problem they were trying to solve in their search for the conclusion to Mark's Gospel. He could say he was looking for new approaches. Thinking.
Would that work as an answer? No, but it was probably as good of an answer as any he'd come up with.
3
Jack tried to shut the office's front door without making a sound. Instantly, he caught Michelle's eye, but her surprise was quickly replaced by a hint of scolding for his tardiness. "Ah, Jack!" Michelle Townsend said in a professional tone. "We have someone here who's been waiting to meet you."
Sitting across the desk from her, a small middle-aged man held a notebook in hand and gazed at him with anticipation in his eyes. The man's eager smile suggested that he'd been waiting for some time.
"A . . . a . . . yes," Jack mumbled. "Sorry for being late."
At the back of the office, a tanned young man sat poring over a large manuscript. Dov Sharon glanced up from his desk, nodded, and then went back to the codex he had been studying. It took a bomb about the size of what hit the subway to stop the Jewish student when he was deciphering a manuscript.
Jack nodded and smiled. "Be with you in just a moment. "His Italian wife with her sparkling black hair pulled back in a pony tail and flashing brown eyes had a flair for creating the right impression that he sometimes messed up. Behind Michelle's heart-shaped face and alluring mouth, a magnificent mind never stopped working. Contoured in an artistic arch, her dark eyebrows framed eyes that always carried magnetism. The flush of pink in her cheeks gave her dark skin a striking contrast but didn't mellow the warmth Jack always noticed. "Need to put several items in order."
Because Michelle
's grandfather had been a scholar at Viterbo's Museo Archeologico Nazionale before her parents immigrated to America, she had grown up speaking Italian like a native which also gave her a natural facility for languages. Entering the graduate school at Tübingen, Germany, with four years of completed Greek study pushed her to the top of the class in graduate studies in ancient manuscripts. Mostly, though, Jack simply thought she was the most beautiful woman he would ever see in his entire life.
"I want you to meet Mario Corsini, a reporter for Il Messaggero," Michelle said. "I told him that you often read his newspaper." She looked at Jack with that penetrating stare that meant 'play this one straight or else.' "Signor Corsini speaks excellent English and arrived unexpectedly some time ago. I was expecting you earlier."
"I got delayed down the street and—"
"Let's not even go there," Michelle said with a flatness that meant business.
"Unfortunately, Rome is in turmoil this morning," Jack said. "I read the story in your newspaper today, Signor Corsini."
"Yes, I was telling your wife the details just as you arrived," the reporter said.
Jack glanced at his wife's face and saw her jaw tighten. In any case, she already knew, but the sudden distant glaze over her eyes meant she wasn't any less frightened.
"As you Americans have a way of saying," Corsini said, "this story really sucks."
Jack studied the man sitting before him in a wrinkled blue shirt with no tie. Corsini's coat appeared to have been worn night and day for a number of years and his black hair looked as rumpled as his blue jeans. A pair of reading glasses sat halfway down his nose, and yet, Corsini's black eyes radiated intelligence. Jack could see he was not a dull man.
Shrouded In Silence Page 2