Diggs knew he got the Asian. He was counting on shooting off his kneecap. The sound of sirens filtered down into the passageway. Diggs couldn't be sure if that was just the traffic or someone called the police on the premises.
The two men exchanged more shots. Each time, they both chewed concrete from behind their hiding place. When the Asian suddenly stopped shooting, Diggs knew the man was out. But he was too.
Then the Asian did something strange.
He stepped out of his hiding spot and he stood in the open.
"Why don't you fight me, man to man," he said.
"I'm not a man," Diggs growled. "I am the fight!"
He came out with his gun dangling from both his hands. He flung his guns at the Asian, the one in his left hand first, then the right hand.
The first one caught the Asian by surprise. It struck him in the right shoulder. The force of the impact numbed the muscle there so that when Diggs squared with him, Lin could hardly raise that hand.
Diggs punched the Asian in the jaw, the neck, but the next punch, which was aimed at Lin's solar plexus, got deflected. Lin was recovering fast from his surprise. Extremely proficient in the art of Wing Chun and having spent countless hours with a mok jong, Lin rained blows and palm deflections into Diggs’ body. He kicked the American's knees out, and Diggs fell forward. As he did, his jaw connected with Lin's left fist and his right elbow.
Diggs was bleeding from a deep cut on his left eye. But the former CIA agent was well-conditioned, too. He knew he could not go toe-to-toe with Lin's martial arts, so he rammed his sinewy shoulder into the Asian’s solar plexus, lifting them both off the ground. They both rolled on the floor.
Diggs locked his hands around the Asian's neck. He proceeded to choke Lin. The Asian clawed at Diggs' face. With one free hand, Diggs reached for a pocketknife strapped to his ankle. He stabbed the Asian in his side, just missing the man's kidney by inches.
Just then, heavy footsteps started down the passageway towards them.
Both men froze as blood seeped from Lin's body.
Diggs pulled his knife out of the Asian's side and ran down the passageway without looking back.
—
The passage came to an end. Heart beating fast, Olivia turned around. Someone was coming.
Father Andre was unnaturally calm.
The two men pointed their guns at Father Andre as they came into view. They wore black masks; the cleric looked both men over. He smiled and took off his hat. He looked like a vulture without it.
"Where is the Holy Grail?" one of the men asked.
The other one covered Olivia with his own gun. Olivia backed into the opposite wall, her feet faltered, and she stumbled, letting out a small yell. The one pointing his gun at the cleric got distracted. That was what Andre waited for.
With lightning speed, Father Andre grabbed the assassin's hand and twisted the gun away. He stuck his finger in the trigger and pulled. It went off with a cough, and the other assassin fell forward.
Father Andre pushed the assassin back and hit him in the throat, then he flew up a flight of steps.
Olivia had regained her composure. She followed the cleric as the injured assassin choked. The man found his gun and staggered after the duo.
They came out from below and found themselves in a broad street. Dusk was gathering, and the sound of police sirens filled Olivia's head.
Father Andre dashed across the street and into a restaurant. Olivia didn’t have the time to see what street they were on. She ran after the cleric. The restaurant was a small one, and people turned around at their tables as the two people came in through the door.
Olivia looked through the glass at the street; she saw the assassin coming out of the step in the ground.
Time seemed to slow down then.
She hit a table in front of her as she spun around. The cup of coffee spilled black liquid. The couple at the table raised their voices and their hands in protest. Olivia saw Father Andre stand in the middle of the restaurant; he was looking up at a TV set up on the wall.
She saw through the glass windows people gathering. The police were coming down the street too. The masked face of the assassin bore on her. His gun was coming up from his waist.
People scuttling to escape hit her on their way out. Olivia's butt pushed against a table. The table itself scraped on the floor as it moved backward.
Yet, the cleric stared at the TV. Two police cars pulled in front of the restaurant. The assassin leaned against a hydrant; he waved his gun everywhere and stumbled. Policemen hunkered behind the hoods of their cars. Behind car doors, their mouths moved wordlessly from a distance.
When Olivia turned around again, Father Andre was looking from her to the TV and back again. His face was white with shock.
Olivia frowned because she recognized the face on the TV. The high forehead and slanting smile belonged to Peter Williams. The screen switched to another familiar one, the University of Florida campus.
It was the network news, CNN. It was finally on the news, the sudden disappearance of Professor Williams Peter; there had also been a photo of Olivia Newton. There were also the caved-in remains of the secret lab in the Antarctic. It dawned on Olivia at that moment that Rob Cohen had finally let Olivia's story go on air.
Father Andre was moving away from her, heading for a door nearby.
"Is that your boyfriend?" The cleric pointed at the TV.
Olivia shook her head. "He's not my boy—"
Then the cleric was opening that door and was going through it. Olivia started towards him too. But she froze when she heard the shot, and the cleric was thrown against the door he was opening, a surprised look on his face.
Olivia screamed.
She looked back to see the assassin leveling his gun at her. Then the man started jerking, like a funny dance. His weapon hung from his thumb as police bullets riddled him. Olivia recovered from the shock of what she was seeing. She looked around wildly. Still, the cleric was not on the floor anymore.
The news on the TV had gone to an airline commercial.
Olivia dropped onto the cold floor, dazed. Someone was waving in her face. She made out the face of Diggs, his icy eyes. Then he was pulling her off her feet, half dragging her through the door that Father Andre had vanished through.
"Are you hit?" Diggs asked.
"I don't know," she mumbled to herself.
—
Rome was quiet that night.
They laid low that night in the hotel. Frank Miller had thrown his billionaire weight around with the Vatican and the Roman Polizei. He had gotten Anabia and Liam out of detention. But the team was now on slippery ground with immigration. If they went anywhere near the Vatican City, the supposed place Father Andre was holing up, they could lose their travel documents or worse.
The team would be flying back to Florida the next day. That was after they had made sure the cleric was alright, that was.
"But how would we know he's not dead?" Anabia Nassif asked.
"He will call Miss Olivia," Miller said thoughtfully.
They all glanced at Olivia on the couch, where she sat staring at her hands. She looked at Lawrence Diggs. The mercenary looked at the others with his cold eyes.
"He will, right?" Liam Murphy asked.
"She had to lose her cell phone, the Templars were tracking her with it," Diggs clarified.
"So, he can't reach her, and she can't call him." Liam shuffled across the room. "Great, what now?"
Lost in her own thoughts, rubbing her palms together in a circular motion, Olivia ran the events in the restaurant on in her head. The cleric had been shocked by the image of Peter on the TV. And it hadn't been just because the cleric thought Peter was her boyfriend.
"It was something else," she mumbled.
Frank Miller pushed his glasses up. He had been reading a bi-monthly edition of a local newspaper published in English.
"What is it, Miss Newton?"
"Father Andre knew Peter."
/>
"Yes, he's been on the news for a day and a half," Miller said. "It had to be done. He's a professor at the university, you don't expect they'd keep it quiet for long. The Miami police department is on it."
Of course, Tom Garcia had been on it. But Olivia had been carried away in the heat of finding the Grail. Seeing his photo on the TV had shocked her too.
A thought occurred to her suddenly, and she jumped.
"He sent me an email," she said, eyes settling on Lawrence Diggs. "That's how he contacted me the first time, through my email."
Miller dropped his paper on the floor. "Come on, let's get her a computer," he said to Diggs.
There were emails from Tom Garcia to tell her that Betty was out of the hospital, one from Cohen about getting her story to print. There were a couple of miscellaneous emails and one from Floyd, her colleague. He wanted to know how it was working out for her in Rome. Floyd thought Olivia had moved to the city to start all over.
There was none from the cleric.
Diggs didn't think she should try to contact him either.
"Why?" Liam queried. "I mean, that's why we are here. If he isn't gonna give us the damn Grail, he should say why."
"He doesn't owe us an explanation," said Diggs.
"Well, the Templars don't think so."
"Maybe Liam is right," Anabia said. "The cleric made us come to Rome so
he—"
"He didn't make us come!" Olivia snapped.
"The Templars did when they took Peter," said Olivia.
Anabia frowned at her. "And you said the image of Peter Williams on the TV bummed the priest out, didn't you?"
Olivia bowed her head in thought again. She nodded her head slowly.
Miller sighed. "Why don't we all calm down. We are putting her under pressure. He's gonna call, I'm sure of it. We are past the deadline already, if you ask me."
"And there's no way the Templars can reach her too," Liam said. "It's all worth no fuck at all now, all of it is just a waste of time."
Olivia forced back the tear that threatened to come. Exhaustion crept up the muscles in her back. When she looked at the men, she saw the weariness in their eyes too. They were all here because of her.
She rose up and went to the window. She thought Rome was a beautiful city, and she would enjoy it as a tourist, not as an adventurer.
"Let's all go home," she said to the windowpane.
Liam Murphy concurred. "Yeah, I've had enough adventure. I gotta see my kid."
Yeah, they all agreed.
—
15
Embassy of Nigeria, Rome Via Orazio.
The black security guard thought it appeared odd that some homeless folk would sleep with their back against the fence of the embassy. It was both unlikely and far-fetched.
It was still a little early in the morning, 7:20 am, and employees were just coming in. Nigerian Nationals didn't visit the embassy much. Except on Fridays when most of them usually got off their jobs early to begin to make inquiries.
So, the young man, recently employed from his home country in Africa, and entirely unfamiliar yet with local customs and language, went to the figure lying against the wall.
"Hello, sir," he said in English, but when that did not elicit an answer, he tried his tongue on Italian. "Salve…signore?"
Still, the figure did not move. The guard looked closer at the face hidden under a broad-brimmed hat. The tousled hair underneath it was stained with what must be vomit. His clothing was not so decent, but not bad enough that he was a vagrant.
His shoes were black leather, good ones, he thought.
He removed his baton and poked the hands. There was no response, but his head lolled, and that was when the guard saw the caked blood on the neck. He jumped.
"Bloody hell!"
—
The guard had seen corpses back in his country, but none that were light-skinned and certainly not on his job. So, he was a bit shook by his discovery. He would notify the embassy officials. They, in turn, would call the precinct nearby, and the body would be taken away.
The business day would begin in the embassy, and the guard would go back to his ordinary life as an embassy guard.
He would only be reminded of the body he found again when he saw it on the TV that night, just like everyone else.
And the Vatican would have a word on the identity of the man.
—
The identity of the man that was found dead in front of the Nigerian embassy in Rome, the reporter on the radio announced, was Andre Coriolano. And he was a priest who served in the Vatican.
"The Holy See mourns his death," the reporter concluded.
The conversation stopped when the report came on the radio. The team had been in a better mood, the men ribbed each other good-naturedly. They laughed—Liam and Anabia Nassif mostly. Miller drove the Jeep himself; he joined the conversation when necessary but kept his attention on the slow traffic ahead.
Diggs kept to himself by the window. His hard grey eyes focused on the street side as it whizzed by.
"Oh well, what a way to go out," Liam mumbled.
He turned to Olivia at the back. He gave her a weak smile. Olivia returned it with a raise of her brows.
"You know, the Catholics are one of the luckiest people on Earth," Anabia said.
Liam asked him how that was so.
"Because they gotta die, do a test run of the life in purgatory."
There was silence again as the mention of the religious doctrine brought back the memory of one they all wanted to forget.
At the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport, they boarded one of Frank Miller's private jets. He would not be coming with them, he said.
He looked shook hands with the men, embraced Olivia, and patted Lawrence Diggs on the back.
Diggs struck off across the airfield.
"Where's he going?" Olivia asked Miller.
The billionaire squinted in the sun. "Yeah, that one is a troubled bird. He goes off to the next job."
Olivia watched the former agent until he entered a helicopter.
Miller looked at her. "Miss Newton, you take care now."
Olivia said she would.
Ten minutes later, the jet was in the air.
—
PART 4
1
Corsica, Terni Italy
Old Paloma got a new farmhand. Since the young man came, he had become a favorite of the people of the province even though he kept to himself most of the time. He spent most of his time on the farm too.
When dusk waded in, he went back home to his bed in the outhouse above the hay for the cattle. Such was the triangle of Antonio’s life in Corsica.
Apparently, women weren’t his thing, for he hardly noticed the pretty lady who brought milk to the house. Even though her olive skin and large Etruscan eyes. It became apparent after some time that the girl fancied him.
No one knew what he did before coming down the hill one afternoon six months ago. He never talked about family, friends, or whether there was a wife he went to town to meet on Thursdays.
Sometimes when he was in a bad mood, he became even worse and was mute all day.
But he was a good man.
He had bad dreams on some nights. He dreamt about a woman who wanted his help. He never told anyone about the woman. Neither had he ever said to them that, in a former life, he was a Catholic priest.
Tourists had been coming to Corsica more often. He avoided the Americans, mainly. But once, the milk delivery girl was at old Paloma's doorstep with milk when a bus brought shrieking tourists down the hill to the tomato farm. Antonio’s dream had been worse the previous night, so he was staying in.
Among the tourists had been a stunning young woman. She had looked very much like the woman Antonio met not long ago. Antonio had stared at her so long that the milk delivery girl, Maria, had asked Antonio if he knew the woman.
The American woman was talking with one of the workers on the farm and laug
hing.
“What is she saying?” Maria asked in Italian.
Antonio had answered without thinking. “She wants to know how long it takes for the crops to mature.”
Maria had been impressed. She had smiled at Antonio. She had even touched his arm, slightly. Antonio had flinched, and it was an involuntary reaction. Maria didn’t notice it.
Antonio had decided then, on the spot, that he would ride with Maria to town in her small car, a red antique Pontiac.
He said nothing to Maria all the time. They rode past meadows and fields to town, even though the girl kept glancing at his face.
When Maria dropped him off at the provincial Torre San Severo, he waved Maria goodbye. He went to the only grocery store in the area with a TV. But it was not the TV that he needed to use.
It was almost noon. The news would soon come on.
The owner of the store, Nicolo, hawk-faced but accommodating, welcomed him once again to use his small radio transmitter.
Antonio took the radio to a corner of the store where the owner had set aside to do his bookkeeping. There was a small table there and a chair. There was only one book for accounting on it because it was a small store. Antonio carefully pushed the rough-backed book aside and settled on his business.
He tuned in the radio and caught the BBC news. He heard a little about America on it. After this, he tuned it in again and got the Voice of America, VOA, too. And he listened to a lot about that country also. The elections were in a week. He heard the names of the likely president and Antonio’s blood chilled in his veins. He sat straighter to understand his own omission and inaction, his fear, and his terror.
He had left his mission unattended a long time ago, back when he was Andre. He turned the radio off and returned Nicolo's account book to its place; he gave the owner his radio back and purchased some red apples.
I know what I must do, he reasoned as he walked back home. I know what I must do.
That night when the fields were empty, and the box homes had gone to sleep, Antonio took down an old TV from old man Paloma’s attic. With the aid of a satellite dish, he caught CNN just in time for a review of the elections.
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