Chase Baker and the Spear of Destiny

by Vincent Zandri

  “We can’t all have six-foot legs, Cal,” I say. “And I’m only middle-aged.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” he says. “Old man shorty.”

  Chapter 38

  I’m not kidding.

  We run from my apartment to the end of Via Guelfa where it connects with Via Faenza. Then, we hit the cross street that leads directly to the train station some one hundred fifty meters in the distance. By the time we come to the white marble 1930s era art deco building, the train has already arrived and the boarding has begun.

  As usual, the station is packed with travelers of all ages. It’s organized confusion. That’s a good thing for two men who wish to remain as anonymous as possible. Heading to our designated track, we go to our car located in the middle of the long train. Once inside, we find our seats and immediately occupy them.

  That’s when Cal turns to me, smiles.

  “You’re faster than I give you credit, Baker,” Cal says, his brogue more prominent when he’s being sarcastic.

  “Maybe you’re just slower than you think,” I say. “You long-legged, barrel chested bastard.”

  He smiles. “Good point. I gotta start hitting the gym again.”

  The train lurches, and suddenly we’re pulling out of the station.

  Cal checks his watch.

  “That beer tasted mighty good back at the apartment,” he says. “I’m going to head to the café car, secure me another. You interested?”

  “I’m good,” I say. “Be quick and keep the eyes on the back of your head open. We’ve been lucky thus far, but it doesn’t mean we’re still not being followed.”

  “Roger that, lad,” he says, getting up, heading out of the car in the direction of the café car.

  That leaves me alone to gaze out the window onto the outskirts of Florence and the green hills in the distance. I see a young family walking together along the road. Father, mother, and a little girl. The father is holding the little girl’s hand as she skips along happily, not a care in the world, oblivious to Nazis, blind to a kidnapped Pope, innocent of the fact that the world contains men and women filled with hate. For her, the world is a beautiful place, secure in the arms of her mom and dad.

  I can’t help but think about my own daughter and estranged wife back in New York. Do I really have to live my life the way I do? Is it really necessary to involve myself in an impossible task like saving the Pope, saving the Spear of Destiny? Why must I always be riding a train or a plane? Why can’t I just stay home like a good father, raise my daughter to be a happy and healthy little girl just like the one skipping along the road outside this train? Why can’t I just let the world figure out its problems on its own while I live my life?

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  The voice startles me out of my trance.

  I turn, look up at the man. He’s a gray-haired, late middle-aged dude wearing round, horn-rimmed eyeglasses. His brown flannel jacket is old but neatly cleaned and pressed. He sits himself down before I have the chance to tell him it’s already occupied.

  He quickly reaches into his jacket, pulls something out, sticks it against my ribs. It’s a pistol barrel. Maybe a .22 semi-automatic with a sound suppressor screwed onto it. Something deadly at close range but easily concealable. For an old guy, he moves fast. He’s a professional, I’m guessing.

  “Don’t make a move or say a word, Mr. Baker,” he says with a smile on his face. “All I want right now is for you to hand over the spear and I will be on my way.”

  “We’re on a moving train that doesn’t stop until Rome, pal,” I say. “Where the fuck are you gonna go?”

  I feel my grip on the case. I don’t think I’ve loosened it since we boarded the train back in Florence. My eyes shift to the couple sitting across the fold-out table from me. They are elderly. A man dressed in a suit and a woman dressed all in black. Both of them are asleep, their lower jaws hanging open like they’re trying to catch flies. A big part of me wants to kick them awake. I’d do it too if it wouldn’t get me shot in the process.

  “Who sent you?” I say. “Rickman? You realize he’s dead, right? Maybe that makes you the last of the filthy Nazis.”

  The way his eyes blink rapidly gives away his surprise. Maybe he thinks I’m bluffing.

  “Who I work for, does not matter,” he says. “You know what I want.”

  “You’ve been perfectly transparent about that,” I say.

  “You have two choices, Mr. Baker,” he says. “Kindly hand over the spear and no one will get hurt. Or I will shoot you in the ribs, and the bullet will travel through your heart. But what’s worse is that you will never see your daughter again.”

  I turn quickly, my face so tight with anger I feel like the skin might split down the center.

  “You ever mention my daughter again,” I say, “I will rip your head off and shove it down your neck.”

  “Not if I shoot you first, Mr. Baker.”

  He’s got a point.

  The car’s automatic sliding door opens.

  It’s Cal. He’s arrived back here without a beer in his hand, telling me he drank it while standing at the bar. I’m glad he’s had a chance to relax. Chase, the cynical and Chase, the thoroughly pissed off.

  My eyes wide open, I shoot Cal a look that tells him to act naturally, even though the man sitting beside me wants to kill me. Cal is a former special ops pro for Her Majesty’s British Empire. He picks up on facial signals better than most people.

  He casually walks past, but then suddenly stops and turns to me.

  “Say, aren’t you Chase Baker, the famous adventurer and novelist?” he says. “My mum loves your books, sir. May I get an autograph if it’s not too much trouble?”

  My eyes light up.

  “Why sure,” I say. “Let me find a pen.”

  Gun Man is clearly shaken at the intrusion. He’s pressing the gun barrel even harder into my ribs as if to say Say a single word about the gun, and you’ve had it.

  “Excuse me, sir,” I say to him. “Do you have a pen I can borrow?”

  “Give me the spear, Mr. Baker,” he repeats, his voice a screaming whisper.

  Cal finds a pen sitting on the foldable table across the aisle. A table that accesses two single unoccupied seats.

  “Here we go, Mr. Baker,” he says. “A pen.”

  He leans his big torso over Gun Man as if to hand me the pen. I feel a quick shove and then an audible but muffled snap. The pressure of the pistol barrel against my ribs is suddenly gone. I turn and see that, although Gun Man’s eyes are still wide open, he is clearly no longer among the living.

  Cal broke his neck . . .

  Quickly, I reach around, steal his gun, slip it into my bush jacket pocket. I also reach into his jacket pocket, find his wallet, and put that in my pocket.

  “How about a beer in the café car?” I say to Cal, heart beating in my throat. “I can sign all the autographs you want in there?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Cal offers. “Besides, it looks like the man seated beside you wants to sleep for a while. Looks like he needs his quiet time.”

  Case in hand, I rise and slip on out past Gun Man.

  Looking at him from where I’m standing in the aisle, he appears to be another well dressed, late middle-aged man heading to Rome, just like the old people seated across from him. First, I scan the car to make sure no one is looking. Then I speedily reach out, run my fingers over his eyelids, closing them.

  Cal and I head for the door.

  “Where’d you learn to break somebody’s neck like that?” I whisper. “Not a soul picked up on it.”

  “You can learn a lot of neat tricks in the Special Forces, Chase, lad,” he says. “Some of those tricks can save your life. It’s just a matter of being quick and silent.”

  “And deadly,” I say. “Remind me never to mess with you, Cal.”

  “You can mess with me,” he says, opening the sliding door. “But just don’t mess with me when I’m playing cards.”

  Cha
pter 39

  Seated at a table in the café car, Cal and I drink lager from two pilsner glasses. I pull out Gun Man’s wallet, search for his ID. I pull out some Euros and a couple of credit cards. His driver’s license is stuffed inside a piece of translucent plastic. But that’s not what catches my attention initially.

  “What is it?” Cal says, referring to the pale shroud that now surely covers my face. “What’s the bastard’s name?”

  “His name is Carlos Vinti,” I say. “Sixty-eight, from Rome.”

  “You’re not blinking your eyes, Baker. Must be something’s not right about the dude, aside from his obvious disdain for you.”

  I slap down the ID.

  “You’re right, Cal,” I say, “something is definitely not right with Mr. Vinti. Or was not right. His life belongs to the past tense now.”

  He drinks some beer, stares into my eyes while the green and brown hills speed by outside the café car windows.

  “He a Nazi?” Cal asks, contempt in his tone.

  “No,” I say, “he was from the Vatican.”

  Chapter 40

  “So, that explains it,” Cal says after a long beat.

  “Explains what?” I say drinking some of the cold beer.

  “Why Andrea and Father O’Brien double crossed us. They worked for the Vatican too.”

  I nod.

  “I’ve already thought of that,” I say. “The Vatican connection. But what I didn’t figure on is a conspiracy that goes deeper. Far deeper. It’s World War Two all over again.”

  “How’s that?” Cal says.

  “Pope Pius the Twelfth. He was said to have sympathized with the Nazis, perhaps even assisted them in the rounding up of Jews.”

  Cal leans forward, elbows planted on the tabletop.

  “Hold the phone,” he says. “I thought the Vatican hid some of the persecuted Jews in the Vatican. At least, that’s what I’ve been told since I was a boy running through the green highland fields of dear old Scotland.”

  “And could be they did,” I go on. “Pius played both sides of the street, which he had no choice in doing since the Nazis could have blown the entire Vatican off the map with a simple pull of the trigger. But in this case, Pius had both his flock to consider and something equally important.”

  Cal, drinking more beer. Setting the glass back down onto a coaster that contains an illustration of a man in a Fedora drinking a foamy beer from an ice-cold mug, the name Moretti printed above him in big black lettering.

  I add, “The Nazi’s were not only obsessed with rounding up Jews and even gay priests for shipment to their concentration camps in Poland and Germany, they wanted to get their hands on the sacred relics that were housed down in the Vatican archives. Pius had no choice but to keep the Nazi officers close so that he could manipulate them. Placate them. Keep them at bay.”

  “Not an easy job.”

  I drink more beer and try to calm the storm of thoughts that are circling my brain. Once more I think of my dream. Longinus and I standing in front of the crucified Christ. I recall his words about Saint Angelo, the protector of the Pope. A wave of realization washes over me then.

  “During World War Two the Germans bombed Rome a bunch of times, narrowly missing the Vatican. But each time the bombs rained down, the Vatican Swiss Guard would secretly transfer the Pope to the Castel Sant’Angelo for safe keeping. The Nazis knew of this but never said a word about it publicly, nor did they attempt to bomb the castle. They wanted to keep the Pope alive to use him to get at the relics.”

  I drink the last of my beer, set down the empty glass.

  “Castel Sant’Angelo,” Cal repeats. “Hadrian’s castle.”

  “Now I’m more convinced than ever that that’s where we’ll find the Pope, Cal,” I say. “In the basement chambers of the fortress. It makes perfect sense.”

  The train bucks, the breaks squeal. My empty beer glass tips over.

  “Hell’s going on?” Cal says, standing.

  I push out my chair, stand.

  “They found him,” I say. “They found Vinti, the dead Vatican man.”

  Chapter 41

  The spear case safely in hand, we make our way out of the café car, then enter and exit two more cars, until we come upon a train conductor. She’s an attractive young woman, dressed in a blue ItaliaRail uniform, including a matching military style hat, her brunette hair pinned up behind it.

  “What seems to be the problem?” I say in English since many of the rail workers speak the language. “Why have we stopped?”

  She looks into my eyes, and for a tense moment, I’m convinced she’s about to scream out for an alarm. But then she smiles, even if it’s not a happy smile.

  “A man has died in his seat I’m afraid,” she informs. “Two cars ahead of us.”

  “How terrible,” I say, playing up my shock and dismay. “Was it a heart attack?”

  “It was murder, I’m told,” she says, her tone as cold as her facial expression.

  My stomach cramps up.

  “That’s rather alarming,” I say.

  “Does that mean there’s a killer on the train?” Cal says with his poker face. He too is putting on an act.

  The train lurches forward, quickly takes on speed again.

  “Perhaps there is a killer on board,” the conductor says. “But we do not want to cause a panic. Now please go back to your seats. We will be stopping in five minutes at Roma Tiburtina where the police will be making a thorough inspection.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  Turning, I grab Cal by the arm and together, we head back toward the café car.

  “Does that mean there’s a killer on the train?” I repeat. “Jeeze, Cal, what are you thinking?”

  He shoots me a grin.

  “I was just trying to add realism to the situation, lad,” he says. “You know, bluffing.”

  “All it will take is one person to point the finger at you as the killer, and we’re both screwed.”

  We make our way through a sliding glass door and onto the brightly lit space between cars.

  “Stay here,” I say. “If the police are coming aboard, chances are they will want to detain every passenger for questioning. We can’t risk that. We need to slip them right away.”

  The landscape outside the car window makes the transition from idyllic Italian countryside to dirty urban. The green is quickly overtaken by featureless concrete apartment buildings, tin graffiti covered barriers, metal scaffolding covered in wires and electrical conduits, depressing metal and concrete block supermarkets, and smoke billowing factories.

  The engineer taps the brakes, and I nearly lose my balance. Grabbing hold of the metal bar mounted to the car wall with my free hand, I prevent myself from going over. The brakes squeal and hiss while a concrete platform appears outside the doors. There’s a metal sign mounted to the platform that reads, ROMA (Tiburtina), the main, northern suburban district of Rome.

  Suddenly the car door behind us opens, and two conductors appear. One of them is the young woman I spoke with a few minutes earlier. They are accompanying the two elderly people who were originally seated across from Cal and me. They had been asleep the entire time, so they can’t possibly recognize us. Which means they can’t possibly connect us to the man who pulled a gun on me after Cal left for the café car . . . the man who Cal killed before the bastard could kill me.

  Averting my gaze from them, I turn to stare at the wall. I grip the handle on the attaché case and feel the cold sweat drip from my palms. The two old people stop. Rather, the old man stops, along with his wife.

  “What’s wrong signor e signora?” Female Conductor says when she realizes the elderly people have stopped moving forward.

  I can’t see the old man since I have my back turned to him, but I feel his gaze. Glancing over my shoulder, I can see that Cal is also looking away from the old man and his wife, avoiding all possible eye contact.

  “It’s them,” the old man says, in his heavy Italian accen
t. “Those are the two men who were sitting across from us.”

  The train lurches and bucks, the brakes screech until it comes to a complete stop, the air brakes hiss and whistle.

  I feel my body turn to ice.

  A hand reaches out for me.

  “You,” the old man says, tugging at my arm. “You were seated across from me. You know who killed that man.”

  I turn to him.

  “You are very mistaken,” I say.

  My line of sight drifts to Female Conductor. She’s grabbing hold of her radio, bringing it to her mouth, her thumb on the transmit trigger.

  “And you,” the old man says, taking another step forward. “You with the red hair and the beard. You killed that man. You snapped his neck.”

  “Hey, old lad,” Cal says. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, you hear?”

  The doors to the cars automatically open. Now is our one and only chance to get the hell out of Dodge, or else face the police and a sure prison sentence.

  “Cal,” I utter out the corner of my mouth. “On three.”

  Female Conductor barks into her radio, “We need the police right away! Car eleven.”

  “Right behind you, buddy,” Cal says, under his breath.

  “You two stay right here,” Female Conductor insists while raising her right hand, going for the wall-mounted device that will close the door. “You must stay with me. I am ordering you to remain right where you are.”

  “Three, Cal!” I shout.

  I barrel into Female Conductor. She tumbles down the two steps and spills out the open door onto the platform. From down on her side, she screams, “Stop them!” in Italian.

  To my left, a squad of six or seven uniformed police about-face and spot the conductor on the ground. They spot Cal and me. Me, with the aluminum case held in my left hand.

  One of the cops blows his whistle while the others draw their sidearms.

  “Chase, what the hell do we do?” Cal pleads.

  “The only thing we can do, Cal,” I bark. “Run. Run like hell.”