Blood Symbols

by Izak Botha

  But Schreider had no time to muse about football. When Verretti joined him at a brisk pace and asked what had happened at the Penitentiary, he replied, ‘I’ll fill you in as we go.’ He first had to check the surveillance tapes.

  A Swiss Guard corporal sat in the monitor-filled surveillance room, his fingers rotating the joystick with extraordinary skill. Within seconds, he had called up recorded scenes from around the Penitentiary on two large-screen LEDs in the center of one wall.

  Flipping his curser from screen to screen, he described the different scenes: ‘At 07:50 this morning, His Eminence Santori arrived at the Penitentiary. Soon after, security personnel from the Belvedere Courtyard reacted to his calls. Entering here, they immediately made their way inside. Next, a priest exited through a rear door, here.’

  Verretti had something else on his mind. He did not appreciate the way the two cardinals had left him out of the loop. Now Schreider had done the same. Turning to face his counterpart, he asked, ‘So you’re closing the gates?’

  Schreider kept his eyes fixed on the monitors. ‘This thing’s got them spooked. They demanded a complete lockdown.’

  ‘Are they mad? It’s only a priest for God’s sake.’

  Schreider pointed to the exit at the back of the Penitentiary. ‘Where does this go, Corporal?’

  ‘The library offices, Oberst.’

  ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Our suspect.’

  ‘Do we know who he is?’

  ‘No, Oberst.’

  ‘What do you mean ‘no’?’

  ‘We’re unable to ID him, sir.’

  ‘Did you check our database?’

  ‘Absolutely, and there’s been no match so far.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Gone?!’

  ‘He hasn’t shown up on our library cams, Oberst.’

  A Helvetian hastened in and stood to attention, his hand lifted, tense in salute.

  ‘At ease, Halberdier. Was ist los?’

  ‘We have a situation in the library, Oberst. A female journalist has breached archive security. The staff have triggered the alarm.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘She entered the bunker, Oberst.’

  Schreider stepped closer to the library monitors. It depicted a female at the archives’ reception room. ‘Is that her?’

  ‘Have her arrested, Colonel,’ Verretti said. ‘Whoever she is, she could be an accomplice to the murderer.’

  Schreider studied her image on the screen. ‘Give me close-ups on both.’

  ‘We know who she is,’ the corporal said. ‘It’s the priest we can’t ID.’

  Schreider hardly thought the two incidents were linked, but he could not take any chances. His job required he investigate every security breach, however small. He turned to his guard. ‘Bring her in, Halberdier.’ Then, turning to the corporal: ‘Run them through Interpol.’

  ‘It will take a while, Oberst.’

  ‘Send it to my office when you’ve finished.’

  On his way to the surveillance desk, Schreider called his officers over for a briefing. ‘All off-duty personnel are to report on the parade grounds immediately. Double our guard at the gates, and make sure they’re armed. Also, be extra careful when people leave and send out more patrols. Extend the perimeter. They must search all the buildings around the Belvedere Courtyard. Concentrate on the library, the museums and all the exits. Look for a priest with a rucksack. We’ll have pictures in a moment.’

  Verretti joined Schreider. ‘I’ll send my men to bring her in.’

  Schreider’s second-in-command clicked in from radio control. Captain Franz Weber had been his deputy for four years. Like Schreider, the captain weighed in at 90-plus kilograms, stood over six feet tall and kept himself in prime athletic condition. He was unmarried, a dedicated Catholic and of good moral character. The main distinction between them was color. Schreider was pale in every sense; Weber had inherited some of the dark skin of his North African mother, which together with his rust-brown eyes had earned him the moniker ‘the panther’.

  ‘What’s the problem, Captain?’ Schreider asked.

  ‘Bomb threat at the Pietà, Oberst!’

  Schreider spun around. His captain’s propensity for stoicism was greater than most peoples’, and little fazed him. Such a terse message meant the threat was truly serious. ‘What’s going on this morning?’ he asked, his voice strained.

  Verretti was equally perplexed. ‘Why didn’t my men arrest him?’

  ‘It’s impossible, Inspector,’ Weber replied. ‘He has a bomb strapped to his waist.’

  ‘Fanculo!’ Verretti snapped. ‘A Muslim radical?’

  Weber shook his head. ‘Caucasian. He speaks English with a New Zealand or Australian accent—I can’t tell the difference.’

  Schreider was pensive. Three incidents had occurred in succession. How very strange. Though the cardinals had insisted he apprehend the escaping priest first, their demands no longer seemed to command precedence. The new threat to the Holy Pontiff’s safety at the Apostolic Palace itself, left him no choice. He turned to Verretti. ‘I’ll take the bomber. You get the priest and journalist.’

  ‘I’ll need some of your men,’ Verretti said.

  Schreider pointed to one of his officers. ‘Lieutenant, you help. The others should be on the parade grounds already.’ The colonel did not have time to quibble with Verretti and called Weber to join him. He began disrobing and reached his office wearing only his boxers and socks. The rest of his uniform lay sprawled across the floor. ‘What type of bomb is it, Captain?’

  ‘Plastic explosives, Oberst. ... Three, maybe four kilos.’

  Schreider’s neck muscles stiffened. He would have to deal with the bomb threat himself. He would let his captain take over at the command center. The man’s cool head would be suitable under such circumstances. Should anything happen to Schreider, Weber would be just the man to take over.

  The colonel’s vertebrae clicked as he stretched his neck from side to side. ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s ordered everyone to move away from the sculpture,’ said Weber.

  ‘What a strange request for a man threatening destruction,’ Schreider thought. With no time to waste, though, he leaned over his desk and pressed down on the Command intercom’s talk switch: ‘Alarmbereitschaft Drei, jetzt. And get me three snipers ASAP!’

  Chapter 13

  When cameras tracked Jennifer from the bunker back to the Sisto V reading room, she knew she had gone too far. She may have managed to see one of Christianity’s most priceless relics but, in so doing, had landed herself in far more trouble than she had anticipated. Still, she could not understand why looking at an old parchment would spark such hostility.

  Back at the Sisto V reading room, she asked if she could pick up her notes, but as she started towards the meeting room, Cardoni stopped her, ordering two clergymen to guard her. Determined to have her removed from the premises, he had Romano call security. He waited until the priest had finished speaking with Command before walking down the passage to Santori’s office.

  No sooner had Cardoni disappeared than a disturbance sounding like a Pamplona bull stampede resounded from the Belvedere Courtyard below. Eager to discover the cause for the hubbub some of the library officials moved to the windows. Ten gendarmes and six Swiss guards were storming through the archway by the fire station. At the fountain, they paired off, some headed for the library entrance, others were running towards the archway leading to the gardens on the western edge of the city. Meanwhile, four gendarmes hurried up the ramp leading to the Leonine index room. The officers’ arrival up the steps, saw the priests at the windows scurrying back to their stations.

  Jennifer saw only two of the gendarmes as they reached the Sisto V lobby. To her surprise, Romano seemed unperturbed. Unlike the rest of the clergy who had gathered at the windows, he had remained at the reception desk. From his demeanor, one would swear nothing w
as happening.

  ‘That’s not good,’ she thought. ‘He obviously knows something the rest didn’t.’

  The gendarmes approaching Romano distracted the priests guarding Jennifer briefly, and she began searching for a way out. Battalions of simultaneously firing neurons were grid-locking the synapses in her brain. And yet, only two thoughts registered: two aggressive gendarmes looking for someone, and the security cameras focusing on her.

  It was time to get the hell out of there.

  Jennifer’s self-defense training from living in an American city came back in an instant. With recent terrorist attacks imprinted on her memory, she thought it prudent not to wait and see if the gendarmes were after her. She studied the hall for an escape route. The only exit near her was the lobby she had just come from. Off limits or not, she had no choice. She retreated slowly, hoping the hounds surrounding her would not notice. Their preoccupation with the gendarmes had drawn their attention to the reception. She managed to slip from view and took off like a spooked mouse scurrying from the pounce of a tomcat. Using the rows of filing cabinets as cover, she again headed for the Staff Only exit. Just as she thought she had made it, though, she saw Cardoni approaching from the other end of the passage. Appearing deep in thought, he was speeding straight towards her. She ducked to the right, concealing herself behind a cabinet. She leaned up against the shelves and prayed he would not see her.

  At last God listened because the cardinal galloped past her on his way to the reception hall. She exhaled, but her relief was short-lived, as another security camera zoomed in on her. How the hell would she escape with those ever-present eyes tracking her every move?

  ‘Where is she?’ barked a gendarme at the reception desk. ‘We have to take her in for questioning.’

  Jennifer glanced at the nearest exit; did she have a clear path?

  The gendarme had his two-way pressed to his lips. ‘Did you say five-foot-nine, brown hair, black outfit?’

  No time to think. Two belligerent gendarmes with machine guns were searching for someone of her description. The party was over. Jennifer ran.

  ‘I see her on the monitor,’ echoed the voice over the two-way. ‘She’s heading for an exit twenty meters up ahead.’

  Jennifer refused to grow eyes in the back of her head. She was out of gone.

  Chapter 14

  Weber removed Schreider’s ear-mounted headset from its charger and unwrapped the wiring for the com set. ‘You’ll need this for the snipers,’ he said.

  Schreider pressed the talk switch on his intercom. ‘Evacuate Saint Peter’s. Nobody is to approach this guy. He absolutely must not feel threatened.’

  ‘I’ve already evacuated the Basilica,’ Weber said.

  Schreider could not have wished for a better second-in-command. His captain always stayed two steps ahead of the rest. He turned towards his steel locker and plucked a charcoal, pinstriped suit from its hanger.

  ‘I’m going as a civilian,’ he said, diving back in to pull out a pair of shoes. ‘Did he say why he’s doing this?’

  ‘He says the statue is a lie.’

  ‘A lie?’ Schreider hesitated. Something must have triggered the bomber. He needed to figure out what it was. ‘Why would our Holy Mother holding Christ’s dying body be a lie?’

  Schreider could not think of a single reason that statue might constitute a lie, except, perhaps, for its proportions—Mary would tower over twelve feet if she stood up and she resembled a woman in her twenties, rather than her fifties. But Schreider’s intuition told him the nut making suicide-bomb threats was not the world’s most passionate art critic. As the colonel lifted his arms for his captain to tape the com set to his chest and clip the mic to his shirt collar, his mind drifted. He had often stood in front of the Pietà. Commissioned as Cardinal Jean de Billheres’ funeral monument, the late-fifteenth-century marble statue now stood in Saint Peter’s Basilica. Michelangelo had carved the masterpiece while still in his early twenties. Apart from being the famed sculptor’s most polished work, it was also the only piece Buonarroti ever signed.

  When Weber had finished, Schreider hugged him, then stood back. ‘Do we have a negotiator?’

  ‘Not on duty.’

  ‘Pray for me.’

  Not waiting for a response, Schreider sprinted for the exit.

  Weber saluted. The colonel’s relentless obsession with drills and inspections had made him unpopular with the troops. They had long felt their commander was unnecessarily strict. But not a single soldier in the entire guard would hesitate to give his life for the Oberst. The man led from the front.

  Weber shouted after his commander: ‘God bless you,’ Oberst.’

  Chapter 15

  Jennifer bolted for the Staff Only exit. The instant that she had seen Father Romano standing around as if nothing was happening, she had known they were after her.

  Shouting from the reception desk, Cardoni threw his hands up in exasperation: ‘You can’t go in there!’

  The image of her dangling from a dungeon contraption while torturers extracted false confessions from her mangled body, propelled Jennifer onwards through the exit and into the passage outside. She needed to get to the Porta Sant’ Anna fast. From there she could make a break for her hotel. She searched for a way to the ground floor. When a priest passed in front of her, disappearing down a stairway, she ran after him. Then, with only a few yards before reaching the stairway herself, a gendarme stepped onto the landing in front of her.

  Planting both feet to slow her momentum, she prepared to turn back, but her leather soles slipped on the polished marble, sending her skidding towards the approaching officer. Slowing a little, she reached for the stuccoed wall to her right. She managed to hook her fingers on the corner of a decoration and, using it as support, pulled herself back. Her instinct told her to head back to the library, but she had just fled from there. She barely changed direction when the two gendarmes from reception stormed through the exit in front of her. With nowhere else to go, she scrambled for the only doorway to her left. She had no idea where it led, but with a gendarme now on her tail and another two approaching from the front, who cared. She thought she had made it when an arm from behind curled around her waist, lifting her off her feet. She tensed her muscles in resistance, but the gendarme tightened his grip. Then, in one continuous motion, he swung her around and led her towards the stairway he had come from.

  ‘What are you doing?!’ she demanded.

  ‘Just move!’

  The gendarme pulled her down the first flight of steps. She caught the rail, but his strength broke her hold. The man must be a triathlete! Each time she tried to break free he overpowered her.

  ‘Let go of me!’

  ‘Stop attracting attention.’

  She kicked at him, but he pulled her into his body. She thrust an elbow backwards and, missing his jaw by half an inch, found herself immobilized in his arms.

  ‘I have an appointment with Cardinal Cardoni,’ she cried.

  ‘He’s the last person you want to see right now.’

  The gendarme hustled her to the floor below. Implacable, and as a ruckus of footsteps closed in behind them, he hefted her down a passage.

  ‘I won’t go there—you have no right!’

  ‘If you value your life, you’ll do as I say.’

  Jennifer knew from her research that they were now below the Tower of the Wind. Her best bet for an escape was still the Porta Sant’ Anna, but it meant she would have to pass through the Pio XI reading room and cut across the Belvedere Courtyard. Her other option was through the Pigna Courtyard or up the Pio IV wing. Both routes ended at the Viale Vaticano, near the city’s north wall. She was still considering her options, when the gendarme dragged her into an alley. Ducking into a dark corner, he drew her up against his body and clapped his hand over her mouth. She tried to scream, but he squeezed her lips together.

  ‘Quiet. Not a word.’

  As the other gendarmes raced past, she stopped fighting. She
had no idea why. Then, she sensed the man holding her might also be running from the police. The two gendarmes chasing them must have realized they had lost their quarry because they had stopped only a few feet from where she and this man—whoever he was—had taken cover. She held her breath. One of the gendarmes lifted his two-way to his mouth and reported the suspects’ escape. Command replied that the pair had not exited the building and must be nearby. The gendarmes split. She heard their footsteps fade as they dashed off in opposite directions. One went towards the Pio XI reading room, while the other returned up the steps they had just descended. When Jennifer’s captor removed his hand from her mouth she nearly screamed, but thought better of it.

  ‘Who are you?’ she whispered.

  The stranger shushed her but said no more. Looking around the corner to make sure they were alone, he took off again, pulling her through the Pio XI reading room. The reading room was now filled with visitors and staff. Some froze when they saw a gendarme escorting a fugitive. Others just stared. Jennifer could not remember ever having been more embarrassed. She felt like pulling free, but that would attract even more attention, jeopardizing any chance of their escape. Besides, the stranger was too damn strong. She would have to come up with a better plan.

  Escorting her now through the Leone index room, down the steps and out through the main exit, the stranger kept close to the Belvedere Courtyard’s west wall. He briskly pulled her into an archway leading to the Vatican Gardens. At the Stradone del Giardini T-junction he stopped and peered around corner. With one hand clamped around her waist and the other still holding her wrist, he pulled her between a pair of parked cars.