“Excuse me, Your Eminence.”
The Pope turned to him, bestowing a brief smile and with it a flash of understanding. The holy man’s face expressed volumes in the blink of acknowledgment. A wash of emotion went through Joe as he engaged the earbuds. Energy surged with a renewed sense of mission and he turned to the window and the crowds of people. Their closeness heightened the sense of vulnerability so that he reminded himself of the limo’s state-of-the-art bulletproofing.
He knew that having the latest technology in bulletproof vehicles would have been a contingency prior to agreeing to any appearance. That was one of Ariana’s nonstarters. She was a world-class negotiator mainly due to her world-class willfulness. Others might have called her stubborn. Joe admired her endless well of resolve. Most of the time.
The noise of the crowds alleviated the quiet of the car’s interior when they arrived in Government Center and circled around Tremont Street, then took a left turn, normally the wrong way on a one-way street, to circle behind the monolithic Boston City Hall building. In design and spirit, it seemed to be the antithesis of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross from where they’d come.
When the limo took a left turn onto Cambridge Street onto another closed street filled with thousands of cheering people, Joe’s adrenaline kicked in. The garage entrance under the building was within one hundred feet. They were closing in on the dangerous part of this outing.
If His Holiness anticipated any danger, Joe couldn’t tell. The Pope relentlessly shared his benevolence with the people on the street. There couldn’t possibly be this many Catholics in the Boston area. And there weren’t, but this pope had a universal appeal that went beyond Catholicism, beyond celebrity, and verged on needy fanaticism. People needed his beacon of fearless kindness and courageous generosity, his politics-defying honesty, as if they were parched for a drink from his inexhaustible spiritual well.
Joe knew this, not only from those who surrounded him, including Ariana, but he knew it from his personal experience. He’d been a blessedly lucky man to be included in the orbit of the most truly holy man on the planet in decades.
“Are you ready?” The gentleness of her words spoken to Pope Luke struck Joe.
He knew that voice from a different context, knew the depth behind the words. He took a deep breath as the limo passed inside the garage door that rumbled open to a gaping dark cavern ahead.
The Pope nodded, aiming a personalized version of his holy smile at her.
She smiled back. “This is where you’re supposed to say you were born ready,” she said.
The Pope chuckled. “I know it must be true, but I still have difficulty understanding the nature of this readiness.” He turned to Joe and said, “If you knew me as a young man, you would know what I mean. Ariana has an inkling. She knows my history as a rule-breaker.”
“No wonder you like me,” Joe said. He smiled at Pope Luke Paul, mindful that the garage door thundered closed behind them as the limo descended to a stop in line with the unadorned gunmetal steel elevator doors of City Hall’s underbelly.
“How could I resist such a young man as you, Joe? You bring holy devotion to your calling as though you are a priest of protection.”
Joe put his hand on the door latch. The Swiss Guard detail assembled outside in the small space between the limo door and the elevator, waiting. But he waited, sensing and needing for the Pope to be ready to ascend.
Pope Luke Paul turned to the silent and eternally serious Ariana. She was composed and passionate at the same time, filled with her own devotion. She humbled Joe every time he witnessed it.
“I’m nothing compared to Ariana,” he said.
She flicked her eyes to his, surprised. And not surprised. Maybe surprised that he admitted it now. His Holiness took her hand in his.
“My Ari. We are blessed to share her presence, are we not, Joe?”
If he hadn’t witnessed the palest pink blush in the dim light, he wouldn’t have guessed it possible. A tiny fissure in her composure.
“Are you sure, Father, that you must go through with this?” She whispered the familiarity with reverence. Joe had only heard her refer to Pope Luke Paul as ‘Father,’ as she had as a child, once before. And that was the long-ago time he struggled to forget.
“My child.” He put his hand to her face, the heavy papal ring prominent and weighty, and caressed her cheek. “We both know I must. Be glad with me.”
She smiled. It was that infinitely sad smile that threatened to tear a hole in his chest even as he was aware of the time ticking and the need to move, to leave their protective cocoon, to go out into the dark underground garage and ascend on the elevator to the main floor where Pope Luke Paul would emerge to the open plaza, exposed and vulnerable to all the world.
Joe pulled on the door handle, unlatched it, and shouldered the substantial door open. The waft of air ambushed them, toxic with motor vehicle exhaust and mottled with the musty dampness of the subterranean atmosphere. Joe stepped from the car and turned to help Pope Luke Paul. The older man was nimbler than he looked, or perhaps he was energized with anticipation of his meeting with the people. He truly loved his people.
4
Ariana held onto Pope Luke Paul’s right arm, guiding him through the pressing crowd. Joe flanked his left, close but not holding his arm back. The Pope lifted that arm to wave to the people and bless them. They passed through the guarded masses along the two-hundred-yard walk from the City Hall Building out onto the plaza to where the platform had been erected for maximum impact, maximum viewing for his people.
Maximum vulnerability. The noise rose with the people’s awareness of the emergence of His Holiness. They knew he was among them even if they couldn’t yet see him.
The crowd density grew, their path tightened, and their job got tougher. This was the part where he and Ariana would earn their stripes, hoping their honor and commitment would not be tested, as much as their nerves were being tested under the pressure, physically, emotionally, and spiritually speaking. The press of the people, the noise, clashed with their need to move forward and up the stairs.
Joe’s eyes darted around, identifying members of the Swiss Guard, alert and stout and ready. Ariana’s gliding slowed to lurching movements interrupted by space and the Pope himself stopping to reach out and touch as many of his beloved people as he could.
It was a dance of wills between Ariana Day, consummate and fierce protector, and Pope Luke Paul, man of the people, an accommodation of deep and long understanding between them that made it work. They approached the bottom of the metal and wood steps rising to the towering twenty-by-forty-foot temporary platform—and the ultimate vulnerability.
The flash of full comprehension blinded Joe for an instant. He absorbed the reason Pope Luke Paul had insisted on Ariana for his personal protection. The Pope had compelled the Swiss Guard to allow it, not because he could control his Ari, as some had accused, but because he trusted her more completely than he could anyone else. He’d helped groom her along with her father, for the vocation. And she trusted him. There was no one other than Ariana who could allow his latitude and protect him at once so seamlessly, so assuredly and competently, so without question from either side.
The com device buzzed in his ear with chattering, competing with the crowd noise, but Joe’s focus remained on Ariana. She took the first step with His Holiness at her side, both looking up at the fifteen steps undaunted. They’d done it all before. There wasn’t room for Joe to flank the Pope’s side here, but he followed close and kept a hand on the holy man’s back as he kept an eye on their right, left, and rear. Swiss Guards followed him. There were two of the guard at the top of the stairs waiting, watching. The pitch of the crowd rose as if they could feel His Holiness climb the steps.
The Pope had stepped onto the third rung when Joe felt the push from behind. He spun around, taking his eyes and focus off Ariana to see a young man thrust his hand forward, breaching the gap between the two Swiss Guards. Joe spot
ted the black-and-silver object in the man’s hand, reacting before his mind registered what it was as quickly as the intruding hand darted forward and reached between the two guards. Joe reacted reflexively. The Pope stopped and was turning as the two guards grabbed the man’s shoulders and Joe lashed his arm up and out, grabbing hold of the object in the man’s hand and yanking it upwards and back with such force that one guard toppled back with the man off the stairs and onto the ground.
“Move it, Ari.” Joe pushed her and Pope Luke Paul up and away as he turned his body, protecting them from whatever he held in his hand. He hadn’t yet determined what the object was, except that it was not a gun. At least not one he recognized. He ignored the commotion around him, mostly drowned out from crowd noise and hidden from view on the stairs. Swiss Guards closed rank around the stairs as two men in suits dragged the man out of sight under the tarp-enclosed platform.
Joe lifted the object to take a close look at it as he was pushed off the stairs. Then he grabbed a rail.
“Stop.” He shouted at the owners of the hands that tried pulling him away from his charges. Identifying the Captain of the Swiss Guard on site, he pulled him aside and showed him.
The object that had scared them, that caused near panic, was a cell phone. It had been in camera mode. Joe pulled it apart quickly and checked it. Nothing but the battery and SIM card. The young and menacing-looking man had merely been taking pictures. Joe handed the pieces over to the guards.
“We’ll inspect it. Make sure it’s what it appears to be.”
Joe nodded and the man let go of his arm, then disappeared behind the tarp where they’d taken the would-be perpetrator. In spite of a blip of trepidation for the young man, Joe spun around and stamped up the stairs, catching up with Ari and Pope Luke Paul as they reached the top and nudging aside the young guardsman who’d usurped his place.
Ari and the Pope both eyed Joe, stopping still and alert. He knew they both had questions and he knew they would be different questions.
“False alarm. It was a cell phone.” He said to Ari. Then he met the Pope’s eyes. “He was only trying to take pictures.”
“See to it that he is unharmed, Joe.” The Pope, for the first time since Joe had joined him and Ari, was not smiling. His Holiness knew the ruthlessness of his Swiss Guard.
Joe nodded. Ariana gave him a last look. He tried reassuring her without speaking, because it was nearly impossible to hear anything now that the crowd had spotted Pope Luke Paul on the platform.
She compressed her lips, resolved to trust him, he hoped. Then she visibly squared her shoulders and led Pope Luke Paul forward, ahead of her. Joe took up his position a quarter step behind and to his right, keeping a touch on His Holiness while trying to stay out of sight.
Once Pope Luke Paul reached the low podium, front and center of the platform, ringed with bulletproof Plexiglas, Joe needn’t have worried that anyone might notice him. All eyes, all attention, and all focus was on the holy man. Except Joe’s and Ari’s and those protecting his life. They watched their surroundings, every flash of light, every glint of metal, every rooftop, every sudden or fast-moving object or person.
Sweat pricked through every pore of his skin as Joe surveyed the vast open space filled with more than a hundred thousand people by his best estimate. This was more danger than the Pope should be exposed to. He concentrated on his mission, managing to keep Ariana in his periphery and within touching distance throughout the Pope’s message.
It was hard not to listen, not to feel the chill when the crowd roared in response, but Joe focused on his assignment like he always did, moving aside his personal angst to allow his training to take hold.
They stood atop the platform while the Pope spoke forever, like a moment caught in an infinite loop of time. But when it was over it seemed to have passed in an infinitesimal flash. Joe knew from his experience that he wouldn’t remember a single word that the Pope said. And that was a shame but Joe couldn’t regret that, wouldn’t trade hearing the speech for the moments spent in private and the Pope’s personal wisdom shared.
Aside from the tense false alarm with the man and his camera, Ariana and Joe manage to get the Pope back to the limo without incident. The car had been waiting for them along Court Street. They would return to the Archbishop of Boston’s residence in Braintree.
Joe and Ariana sat with the Pope in the back seat of the cardinal’s limo flying the papal flag. It was in a cavalcade of vehicles including motorcycles and security alongside for the drive to Braintree. Normally a twenty-minute drive, it would likely take an hour as they traveled five miles an hour through crowded Boston Streets toward the highway.
The sudden silence as he closed the door behind them made him realize how loud the crowd had been and some of Joe’s tension drained. Pope Luke Paul’s elation from speaking to his people hadn’t faded.
Ariana looked satisfied, if not elated. Joe had had no idea now to feel as the adrenaline left his system, except exhausted and grateful.
“Joe,” the Pope addressed him in the middle of his fond recollection of events. “Tell me about what happened on the stairs. What came of the young man who was detained?”
“I’m not sure. He tried to get too close to take a picture. We stopped him. We couldn’t tell it was a phone at first.”
The Pope nodded. “Can you find out where he is? I don’t want this young man punished for his eagerness. I would like to make sure he is not inconvenienced any longer by the authorities.” He smiled. “Sometimes the authorities are guilty of being overeager too.”
Joe took out his phone. He pressed in the private number of the Boston Police Commissioner. It took the commissioner a few calls and some time on hold before he told Joe that they had taken the man to FBI offices across from City Hall Plaza where they’d just been.
Joe put a hand over the phone.
“They’re still holding him for questioning.”
“Ask the driver to turn back,” Pope Luke Paul said without urgency, but with determination. “I want to visit him. I will see if I can persuade the FBI to release him.”
“Holiness,” Ariana spoke up then. “I am willing to wager that you would be as persuasive on the phone as in person. We have many people who will be waiting for us, including our host, Cardinal O’Mara.”
“Say what you mean, Ari. You fear for my life amidst the FBI special agents.”
She laughed. “What I mean is that it’s been a long day and I’m protecting you from your own eager behavior.”
The Pope chuckled and waved a hand at Joe to give him the phone.
Ariana was proved right.
“You should have placed that bet, Ari,” Joe said when the Pope relaxed his face and handed his phone back with satisfaction that all would be well. Ariana had been right, Pope Luke Paul had been wound up.
Ariana thanked Joe with her eyes as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. Joe wished she could thank him with all of her. Then immediately felt guilty, as if he were committing a sacrilege. But he knew she was no virgin nun. Not even close. She was a passionate, whole woman. He wondered for a brief tortured moment if she’d seen other men since they’d been together.
Then he banished all thought about his relationship with Ariana from his mind, fearing Pope Luke Paul could very well be reading every one of his less-than-holy thoughts. The man was uncanny.
No kidding. This tenant of the holy see seemed to see everything.
The ride to Braintree with the protective cavalcade took over an hour as predicted. Joe had no sense of what the traffic should have been. All norms of comings and goings in the Boston area were out the window on this day.
The Pope told him stories of Ariana’s young life and his early acquaintance with her and her father when he was a mere priest serving at the Vatican.
“I was the undersecretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education in the Roman Curia when I got to know Ariana’s father, then a Major in the Swiss Guard.”
“Our
family lived in one of the small apartments for the married Swiss Guard officers. I still live there now.”
“It has been one of my tasks to see that more housing is provided for the guard. I am told the lack of housing is the main reason for not allowing women in the guard.” The lift of one brow told Joe that the Pope doubted the verity of the housing shortage as the issue. “It will be interesting to test this assertion.”
Ariana held her commentary on the subject.
“As I was saying, I enjoyed the comradery of the guard and would often watch their sport—their games of football—or to you as an American the sport would be called soccer.”
“My father was a star of the team until he was old, then he coached and I was always there watching,” Ariana said. “I was enthusiastic. Maybe a little out of control. Then Father DePrisi delighted in my antics. But at the same time, he calmed me, he channeled my energy so when I might be inclined to yell at the referees—or anyone who touched my father—I learned to …tolerate.”
“You impressed me with your ability to learn so quickly. You were always smart, always a delight. Always so full of vitality and passion.” The Pope studied Ariana. She stayed silent under his gaze until she looked away.
“Joe doesn’t want to hear about me.”
That made Pope Luke Paul laugh until he coughed and she became alarmed. It seemed Joe didn’t need to set him straight on the point.
Joe wanted to hear about her, but more than that he craved private time with her. His Holiness seemed to grow in bulk between them, increasing his agitation to talk with her, reconnect with her, touch her. With each minute his sense of need forced an urgency in him that needed quenching as if he’d been away from the planet on an interstellar journey for years and he now approached the atmosphere with only a thin layer of clouds separating him from returning home. A seemingly impenetrable layer at the moment.
It was that frame of mind that caused Joe to leap from the car almost before it stopped under a portico at the guest entrance of 66 Brooks Drive.
The Omega Team: Knight & Day (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Black Knight Security Book 1) Page 3
