The Vatican Conspiracy: A completely gripping action thriller (A Marco Venetti Thriller Book 1)

by Hogenkamp, Peter

  THE VATICAN CONSPIRACY

  A COMPLETELY GRIPPING ACTION THRILLER

  PETER HOGENKAMP

  Books by Peter Hogenkamp

  MARCO VENETTI THRILLER SERIES

  The Vatican Conspiracy

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Hear More from Peter

  Books by Peter Hogenkamp

  A Letter from Peter

  Acknowledgments

  Blood alone moves the wheels of history.

  BENITO MUSSOLINI

  War begets war, violence begets violence.

  POPE FRANCIS

  One

  Father Marco Venetti dabbed the sweat from his beard and fanned the air with his rescinded invitation to the papal mass in St. Peter’s Square. It was stifling inside the confessional, and the faithful weren’t in a penitent mood this week, giving him nothing to think about other than the appalling heat and his canceled trip to Vatican City. Not that he minded a reprieve from the usual slate of sins—I have taken His name in vain, I missed mass last week without an excuse—but it was especially warm this afternoon, and the prevailing breeze had taken an untimely midsummer break.

  He heard the shuffle of feet coming from outside his door and sat up in his chair. The door opened, and the kneeler creaked as the penitent—a woman, he guessed, about one hundred and thirty pounds from the groan of the ancient cypress—readied herself to make confession behind the screen. “Bless me, Father …”

  Her voice was sultry and familiar, and he still heard it echoing inside his skull late at night when the sea was calm and the waves licked the shore beneath the rectory.

  “… for I have sinned. It has been one year since my last confession.”

  For a second, he couldn’t believe it was really her, but her scent was unmistakable, an intoxicating mixture of lavender and Sciacchetrà, the local wine made from aged grapes.

  “May the Lord be in your heart to make a good confession.”

  “I have done something terrible, Marco … I didn’t mean to. You must believe me.”

  He could see only the outline of her head through the opaque shield between them, but his memory painted in the flowing curls of dark hair and the rose color of her full lips—the way she had looked when she had moved away from Monterosso al Mare four years ago, never to return.

  “I tried to make a go of fishing. But the Japanese have stolen all the tuna.”

  He could imagine the splay of her soft hands and the pleading in her brown eyes.

  “I need to feed my family. You must understand this.”

  “What happened, Elena?”

  Her breath rushed out, the kneeler scraped against the warped wooden flooring, and she moved out from behind the screen and sat in the chair less than a meter in front of him—nothing between them now other than the warm air and the sacred vows he had sworn. Despite the dim and unflattering light in the confessional, her black hair had lost none of its luster, and her eyes shone as brightly as ever.

  “You remember that man I told you about?”

  “Antonio?”

  “Yes, him.”

  Antonio was a member of the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian crime syndicate that had expanded its reach throughout Liguria and the north of Italy. Marco had done his best to keep Elena away from him; the mobster had been far too interested in her, more, he feared, for the sleek contours of her figure than for the want of her boat. He had envied Antonio, and any other man who could stare at her olive skin, burnt to perfection by the Mediterranean sun, without the constriction of a collar.

  “I thought I told you to steer clear of him.”

  “You did, but I didn’t listen. I thought you were just jealous.”

  “I was jealous.” A breeze sparked up, carrying with it the odor of salt air and incense. “Isn’t jealousy what comes from unrequited love?”

  “Your love wasn’t unrequited. I loved you just as much as you loved me, perhaps more.”

  His eyes strayed from her high cheekbones down to the strong line of her jaw, and then even further, to the plunging neckline of her black blouse.

  “Then why did you leave?”

  “Because you were always going to love God more than you loved me. And I grew tired of sharing you with Him.”

  A flutter of wings came from above; the pigeon nesting underneath the church eaves had returned to her nest, setting off a chorus of chirping from her squabs.

  “I thought things would change, that you just needed more time to see how happy we could be together. But the weeks became months, and the months turned into years, and still you chose God over me.”

  “What was I supposed to do?”

  The chirping of the squabs reached a crescendo, filling the confessional with a shrill warbling.

  “You were supposed to leave the priesthood. Choose me over God.”

  “I couldn’t do that, Elena.”

  “No, damn you, you couldn’t.”

  She leaned in closer, and the neckline of her blouse plunged even further.

  “And that’s why you still sleep alone every night. You always told me how much you hated the long, lonely nights.”

  She slid the chair forward, and her foot brushed up against his. The smell of lavender thickened, and a familiar tightness gripped his chest.

  “I am a vengeful woman. I had to leave before my resentment could turn into bitterness and hatred.”

  “Resentment for whom? Me, or God?”

  “For both of you.”

  The pigeon flew away, and the chirping subsided. All Marco could hear was the quick rhythm of Elena’s breathing and the mad drumming of his own heart.

  “Antonio came to see me a few weeks ago, to ask if I wanted to pick up some refugees. He told me they were looking for work. I didn’t want to, Marco, but it was either that or lose my boat.”

  She paused, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t reply.

  “I met them at night, in the Ligurian Sea, just north of Corsica. There were sixteen of them, and I knew straight off they weren’t refugees. I tried to get out
of the deal, right then and there, but he threatened me.”

  “Who threatened you? Antonio?”

  “No, one of the men I picked up. His name was Mohammed. He told me he would kill Francesca and Gianna if I didn’t do as they said.”

  Gianna was Elena’s daughter, a lanky girl with her mother’s dark complexion. Francesca was Elena’s younger sister.

  “How did he know their names?”

  “Two of them had already come over. They had been following me around for days. When we got to the drop-off, Gianna and Francesca were waiting for us … Gianna was bound and gagged, and Francesca had been beaten.”

  Elena stopped speaking for a second and sobbed quietly into her folded hands. Marco was possessed by a powerful impulse to wrap his arms around her.

  “When was this?”

  “A week ago. I have to get the rest tonight.”

  “You must go to the police immediately.”

  “I can’t. They are holding my daughter and my sister captive. Two of the men have been staying in my house for the last week. Mohammed told me he would kill my family and me if I tell anyone.”

  “Go to the police now, Elena.”

  There was no reply, only the creaking of the chair.

  “They are following me. My family would be dead before I reached the police station.”

  “Listen to me. I want to forgive you. I will forgive you. I know you are sorry. But these men are dangerous.”

  “I know they are dangerous; he cut Francesca with his knife to scare me.”

  Marco could see her shaking, and shame overcame him. Elena had come here for absolution, not an inquisition. But there were lives at stake, and it was his duty to convince her to get help.

  “You must go to the police.”

  “You must forgive me, Marco.”

  The waves slapped against the rocky footings of the church, and the sound of distant laughter floated in through the open windows.

  “I will forgive you, but you must go straight to the police.”

  “He will kill my daughter. Gianna is innocent.”

  “Elena …”

  “I won’t do it, Marco.”

  The quiet conviction in her voice reminded him of her inner strength, the fierce will she had harnessed to raise her daughter by herself, to be a female fishing boat captain in an industry dominated by men. How he had been drawn to that strength, how he had borrowed from it when they were together, absorbing it like a sponge absorbed water.

  “Lord Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

  Marco nodded, exhaling slowly.

  “For these and all the sins of my past life, I am truly sorry. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you, and I detest all my sins because of Your just punishments …”

  Elena finished the Act of Contrition as the chirping of the pigeon squabs resumed in earnest. Marco raised his right hand, wrapped with the ivory rosary beads his mother had given him on the day he had graduated from the Collegium Canisianum, the Jesuit seminary in Innsbruck, Austria. He had inherited his faith from his mother—his faith, his lean face, and his light blue eyes.

  “God the Father of Mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son … and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

  Marco exited the church through the side door, crossed the narrow courtyard overgrown with bougainvillea and potted tomatoes, and entered the rectory. Signora Grecci, his elderly housekeeper, had left a casserole of stuffed peppers warming on the stovetop. A pitcher of iced sangria sweated on the kitchen table. He descended into the cellar on ancient stone steps. Three cardboard boxes were shoved into a damp corner, and he carried the largest of these upstairs.

  He retreated to his spartan office overlooking the Ligurian Sea and set the box containing his spearfishing equipment on the wooden desk. A worn wetsuit lay on the top, still soggy from his last dive. He picked it up, folded it, and laid it down on the edge of the desk. The next item was a pair of flippers—a gift from his diving instructor in the navy—and he placed these next to the suit. At the bottom of the box, next to the snorkel mask, were his diving knife and underwater torch. He fitted the torch into a loop on the suit and whetted the edges of the knife against a sharpening stone before slipping it into its sheath on the suit’s right leg.

  Crossing the tiny office to the closet tucked into the corner near Signora Grecci’s room, Marco unlocked the door and examined the rack of spearguns fixed to the wall. There were three in total—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. He selected the Holy Ghost because he could never recall missing a shot with it, and fitted a titanium spear to it. It wasn’t the Beretta 9mm he had used in his naval career—the gun that had saved his life and those of his salvage unit in Somalia on that fateful day—but he was going to need a weapon if he wanted to save Elena’s life.

  He closed the box and returned it to the cellar. On the way back to his office, he detoured through the kitchen to pour a glass of sangria, then reclined in his chair with his rosary beads wrapped around his hands, beseeching the Savior for courage.

  Marco said evening mass with a fervor he hadn’t had since his ordination and nibbled on the stuffed peppers in the rectory’s small kitchen afterward. Peperoni imbottiti was his favorite dish, but there was enough garlic in it to awaken the dead, and his appetite was poor. Returning to his office after dinner, he killed time by working his rosary, but even the smoothness of the worn beads couldn’t put an end to the disquiet in his soul. He walked over to the window and watched the water darken as the light died. He had stood there many times, mesmerized by the splashes of bright color in the harbor—the pink and orange buildings squeezed against the gray sandstone, and the blue and yellow rowboats littered along the winding path to the water—letting the words to a sermon drop into his head.

  Elena had loved the view from the window as well, from her first meeting with Marco to register Gianna for catechism classes until that sunny afternoon with the sea breeze buffeting her hair when she had told him she was leaving. Many times, he had watched her standing in front of that window overlooking the bay, staring at the contrast of her shapely silhouette against the azure sky.

  He returned to the desk, wrapped the rosary beads around his hands again—as his mother had taught him—and prayed for strength.

  As soon as it was dark, Marco crossed himself and descended to the rocky beach below the rectory. A small boat with an outboard engine was tied there. He got in and motored out to sea. He ran quiet and blind, keeping his small searchlight switched off. It wasn’t as if he needed to see anyway; he had made the trip hundreds of times before, and he could trim the rudder by the slap of the waves against the keel.

  He cut the engine and used the oars to guide the craft into a small cove, well hidden from the Sentiero Azzurro, the clifftop walkway that connected the five villages of the Cinque Terre. He had been here many times before, casting his net for anchovies and listening to the arguing of the gulls. He secured the boat, stripped down to his wetsuit, and stuffed his clothes and speargun into a waterproof satchel. Looping the bag over his shoulders, he slipped his fins on and dove in, swimming away from the shore with powerful strokes. The currents in this cove were dangerous, and he knew no one else would be using this area to escape the heat.

  He reached deeper waters and turned to the south, swimming parallel to the shoreline. Taking advantage of his long frame and a lifetime in the sea, he reached his destination in a half-hour and circled the boat, trying to determine if there was anyone on board. When he was satisfied there wasn’t, he hoisted himself over the gunwales using the anchor chain and looked around.

  The Bel Amica was just as he remembered it: a small diesel-powered fishing trawler in a horrific state of disrepair. There were countless such boats in these parts, probing the dying Mediterranean for the fruits of the sea. He grabbed his torch, adjusted the beam to a soft glow, and did a quick circuit of the boat. He found the storag
e closet right away, in the back corner of the wheelhouse. It should have contained cleaning supplies and equipment, but he had guessed it would be empty. He pushed aside an old mop, the sole occupant, and sat on the floor. Then he closed the door, which was warped from decades of exposure, and settled in to wait. The closet was cramped and warm and smelled of rat urine, but it was home for the time being.

  He reached into his satchel, groping instinctively for his rosary beads before remembering that he had left them in his desk, where they wouldn’t be a party to what was coming. His fingers closed over the plastic handle of the speargun. He placed it on his lap and closed his eyes, listening to the sounds of the sea: the scraping of the anchor chain, the popping of the hull as it bobbed in the swell, and the whine of the wind against the superstructure. The briny smell made him think of his father, who had been the captain of a destroyer in the Italian navy. That Marco might have chosen a different path had been out of the question, ever since his father had given him a radio-controlled boat when he was five; both he and his older brother Claudio had entered the navy directly after graduating from secondary school in Trieste.

  The dull thud of oars against boat announced that he had company. He rested his palm against his weapon, but there was no need; there was no mistaking Elena’s voice, uttering curses in low tones as she went around the boat in preparation for setting sail.

  The engines rumbled, and the anchor chain clanked. It was a calm night close to shore, and the Bel Amica rocked gently with the swell, guided by Elena’s practiced hand. Farther out to sea, the northerly gusts of the tramontana picked up, and Marco felt the laboring of the twin diesels beneath him as they tried to maintain speed against the headwind. Despite the lateness of the hour, he had no interest in sleep, and so he passed the time trying to imagine the men they were picking up—the men he planned to kill to save Elena’s life.

  Two

  Corsica neared, announcing itself by blunting the tramontana and filling the air with the unmistakable scent of the Corsican maquis, the dense underbrush that smelled like rosemary and thyme. The fishing boat slowed to a crawl, and Elena thrust the port screw into reverse to maintain course in the chop. The thud of a gangplank signaled the arrival of passengers, and Marco sat up straight and put his hand on his speargun, listening to the shouts.