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

by Hogenkamp, Peter

  Someone entered the wheelhouse and began conversing with Elena in Arabic. A few other people boarded, and Marco committed their voices to memory. There was a high-pitched, almost effeminate voice, two guttural snarls, and a murmur with sepulchral undertones—this would be the one to watch. Marco had listened to enough disembodied voices to guess the whisperer had killed before, perhaps many times, and would relish doing so again.

  It was the suffocating heat, the smell of diesel fumes, and the shouts of the men on board that broke open the vault in which he had buried the memory of the day, many years ago, when he had killed three men, Somali pirates all, but still children of the same God they all worshiped in one way or another. There had been eight altogether, six riding shotgun on either side of a skiff that had materialized on the starboard side of the Anteo, and two others on a second skiff on the lee side—a skiff he hadn’t seen emerge out of the early dawn.

  He had been on watch that morning, walking the length of the salvage vessel more to stay awake than for any other reason. Trying to scare them off, he fired two rounds over their heads as the first skiff came alongside, succeeding only in engendering a murderous round of return fire from the pirates, all armed with a variety of assault weapons, mostly AK-47s and AKMs. But he had chosen his firing position well, tucked behind the boom of the crane that lifted the submersible, and the bullets had only clanked off the sturdy metal. And he would have continued to avoid deadly force if it hadn’t been for the RPG-7 one of the pirates had attempted to bring to bear against the Anteo. A trio of bullets in the man’s chest had put a stop to the grenade attack; another man fell to a head shot before the skiff sped away, disappearing into the murk from which it had come.

  It was over as quickly as that, or so he had thought, not realizing that a second skiff had pulled up alongships on the lee side. One pirate had already boarded by the time Marco had crossed the vessel with some vague premonition that all was not well. He wouldn’t be alive to relive the moment again and again, during a thousand restless nights, if the man’s AK-47 hadn’t snagged on a hanging piece of pipe, giving Marco the chance to take him down to the deck with a head-first dive. The pirate was a small man and wiry thin, but Marco would remember to this day his feral strength, the raw power in his frame that wasn’t extinguished until he had buried the hilt of his diving knife in the man’s chest.

  The engines throttled up, dispelling the unwanted memory. The screws thrashed, rattling the floorboards. The Bel Amica started a wide swing to starboard, making for home. Marco checked the luminous dial of his diving watch and made some rough calculations. They were three hours from shore; Elena was still safe. He guessed the men wouldn’t kill the captain yet, needing safe passage through unfamiliar waters. No, the danger zone was close to shore, possibly within sight of the drop-off area.

  He spent the next two hours listening to the enemy, gauging their position and strength. After a time, he could identify the men by the slap of their boots on the deck and the sound of their voices. The high-pitched one belonged to a small man named Amad. The snarlers were large, heavy men called Asim and Tariq, and the menacing voice belonged to Karim. There was no doubt Karim was in charge. Marco could tell by the way the others addressed him and the fear in Elena’s voice when she spoke to the man.

  With time, the men’s voices moved off to other parts of the boat, leaving Marco and Elena alone in the wheelhouse. The minutes passed, marked by the creaking of the deck and the pit in his stomach that deepened with their inexorable advance toward shore.

  At last a door swung open, and Tariq trod into the wheelhouse, barking a command at Elena. Elena said nothing. He repeated his command, which launched her into a tirade of Arabic that Marco was pretty sure hadn’t been taken from the Koran. He squeezed the grip of the gun, knowing the hour was at hand. There was a loud crash, and the boat veered to port. He heard grunts of pain from the wheelhouse and the sounds of bodies rolling on the deck. He sprang up and thrust through the door.

  In the dim light of the cabin, he saw Tariq kneeling over Elena, attempting to drive a knife into her chest. The man looked up in surprise as a new foe appeared out of nowhere and grabbed for the sidearm holstered on his waist. Marco raised the speargun and shot Tariq in the neck, keeping his streak with the Holy Ghost intact. Blood gushed from the jagged wound, staining the planking red.

  Feet pounded on the stairwell leading up from the cabin beneath: Karim coming to his comrade’s aid. Marco grabbed the handgun from Tariq and shot Karim three times as soon as he cleared the bulkhead. His rifle clattered to the floor, and he fell against the stairs and slid out of sight.

  Elena pushed Tariq’s lifeless body to the side and muttered something to Marco, but her words were drowned out by the angry shouts coming from outside the wheelhouse and the rush of more feet toward them. Marco would have been cut down if not for Elena. She dove at him, and they tumbled to the floor, falling down the stairs beneath a murderous hail of bullets. He landed against Karim and fired a volley into the wheelhouse, stopping the enemy’s advance for the time being.

  Elena thrust Karim’s rifle into his hands. “Keep shooting.”

  Marco jammed the stock against his shoulder and squeezed the trigger, raking the cabin with a short burst as Elena struggled with a panel in the rear wall. She wrestled it free with a thump, revealing a crawl space into the bowels of the boat, and slithered inside head-first, with her arms pressed against her sides. He fired another salvo as she disappeared, not aiming at anything in particular, just trying to keep the men in the wheelhouse pinned down. Elena had something in mind, some gambit, and he needed to give her enough time to play it.

  The clip was empty, and he discarded the rifle in favor of Tariq’s handgun, firing every time he heard a movement. In between salvos, he rolled Karim over and searched him, but Elena had taken his sidearm; the only thing he was carrying was a folded piece of paper in the breast pocket of his shirt, which Marco slid into the waterproof compartment sewn onto the thigh of his wetsuit.

  The murmuring above him increased, and he fired another shot, only to hear the hollow click of the firing pin. The men in the wheelhouse heard the noise as well, and Marco soon heard the slap of feet on the deck. He pulled his diving knife from its sheath, glad he’d had the forethought to sharpen it, and pushed against the wall abutting the stair, ready to ambush the pair as they stepped over Karim.

  Two shots exploded above him, and then two more, followed by the thud of bodies against the floor. He let go of the wall and ascended into the wheelhouse. Elena was at the wheel; if there hadn’t been enough dead bodies on the floor to fill a small morgue, he might have been able to convince himself the whole thing had never happened.

  “Hello, Marco.”

  “Hello, Elena.”

  He moved forward to stand close to her. She didn’t move away when his arm brushed against hers. Darkness filled the windshield, save for the stray wash of moonlight reflecting off a breaker. The smell of diesel fumes and blood stained the air.

  “Where are we going, Elena?”

  “Riomaggiore. Mohammed and another man are holding Gianna and Francesca in my house there.”

  “You moved to Riomaggiore?”

  Riomaggiore nestled into the slopes above a rocky cove at the southernmost end of the Cinque Terre, less than ten miles away, but over an hour’s drive, due to the twisting and precipitous roads, from Marco’s rectory in Monterosso.

  “Where did you think I went?”

  Marco didn’t say, which didn’t mean he hadn’t given it plenty of thought. At times, Elena’s whereabouts had been the only thing to occupy his mind—that and the unmistakable feel of her, soft and warm, a feel that still tingled in his fingers more than he cared to admit.

  “Where were you taking these men?”

  “Castello di Giordano. Do you remember our time together there?”

  He would never forget Castello di Giordano. It was a large medieval castle built on a rugged island off the coast near Fegina.
He had gone there on retreat every year during the week after Easter, walking the paths in solitude, until the diocese had leased it out three years ago to cover costs.

  “Of course I do.”

  His last week there had been a memorable one. The other participants had canceled at the last minute, leaving him alone on the island—until Elena had shown up midweek on the pretense that she needed to deliver supplies to the dock below the servants’ quarters.

  The servants’ quarters were perched on top of a rocky bluff on the backside of the island. Marco had been assigned to them since he was a novitiate. On that starry April night four years ago, lying on the four-poster bed that dominated the bedroom overlooking the Ligurian Sea, he had glimpsed the fires of Gehenna—and had no desire to go back.

  “Do you ever think about what happened, Marco?”

  There were times—mostly late at night, as sleep eluded him—when he thought of nothing else. He would never be able to purge from his brain the sight of her naked form silhouetted against the starlight filtering down from the heavens. The warmth of her bare skin against his never strayed far from his mind, and the sweet scent of lavender tortured him to this day. He had broken his vow of celibacy that night, and even though it had never happened again—much to Elena’s ire—it remained broken, shattered in a thousand pieces on the floor like an expensive vase fallen from a table.

  “I think about it all the time.”

  The diesels coughed, and the hull creaked as the Bel Amica plowed through another medium-sized roller.

  “Did you really think you could have us both? Did it ever occur to you that I might have wanted more than the barren future you promised?”

  “Yes, it occurred to me.”

  “And yet you steered me away from any man who so much as looked in my direction, so that you could have me all to yourself.”

  “I was trying to keep you safe.”

  “Safe from what? A real relationship? Intimacy? Happiness?”

  In the dark watches of a hundred sleepless nights, Marco had asked this same question of himself. The answer had always been the same. He had been trying to save Elena from herself, from her penchant for bad choices and self-destruction. Or perhaps he just told himself that, in a meager effort to justify behavior unbecoming of a priest.

  “I was being selfish. I’m sorry, Elena.”

  She acknowledged his apology by shoving the throttles forward; the engine responded with a throaty roar. La Spezia glowed on the horizon, a smudge of light on the starboard side of the windshield, and she adjusted course, spinning the wheel to port with the deft touch of a thousand prior journeys.

  “You’re damn right you were being selfish. You’re the one who swore the vows, not me.”

  He scooped up the Holy Ghost from the floor, then crossed to where Tariq was lying prone on the deck and yanked out the spear. The tip was covered with clots of blood and clumps of fat. He wiped it on Tariq’s fatigues, then pulled the man’s eyelids shut as he said a prayer. He repeated the process for each of the slain men.

  The boat crashed through another wave as he rejoined Elena at the wheel. “I just wanted someone to share my life with, Marco. Was that too much to ask?”

  “It was too much to ask of me.”

  He knelt down and examined the men Elena had killed. Ignoring their wounds—she had shot both of them in the back, opening two holes in each man’s chest—he scavenged a pair of silenced pistols.

  “Who are these men?”

  “I don’t know. I swear to you, I have no idea.”

  He handed Elena one of the pistols. “Since when have you been so good with a gun?”

  “Since Mohammed put a knife to Gianna’s throat and threatened to kill her. That’s when.”

  The Bel Amica plowed through another roller, and the coastline stared at them with weak yellow eyes. Elena throttled the engines back and swung the wheel hard to port. “We’re south of La Spezia now. Riomaggiore is just northwest of here.”

  Marco nodded. Being the son of a naval captain, he had spent a good deal of his time at sea, and he knew navigation as well as the Psalms—maybe better.

  Closer to Riomaggiore, Elena throttled the engines back and flipped off all the lights. The cirrus clouds had thickened considerably, and the meager light from the crescent moon was heavily filtered. It was a small miracle she could pilot the boat in such circumstances. They sliced through another roller, throwing a sparkling curtain of spray high into the air.

  “I want you to know I am sorry too, Marco.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “About the way things turned out. I was a single mother with no prospect of a job or anything else. I needed someone. You were there for me, without judgment or condescension, and I repaid your kindness by walking out the door and never returning.”

  “Why did you come back?”

  “I didn’t know what to do … I had made such a mess of things.”

  She stopped speaking and switched on the wipers to clear the wind-driven spray from the screen.

  “I couldn’t just let them kill Gianna. I knew you would know what to do. You always did.”

  She had always placed too much trust in him. What if he had washed his hands of her this time? He couldn’t bear to think of her alone or dead. That had always been his problem.

  “You knew I was on board, didn’t you?”

  She nodded without taking her eyes off the windshield.

  “How did you know?”

  “Look at the bottom of the closet door.”

  Marco bent down and switched on his flashlight. Elena had taped a strand of her hair—now broken into two pieces—across the gap between the door and the frame.

  “I used you, Marco, but there was no other way to save Gianna.”

  “We haven’t saved her yet.”

  “At least she has a chance. She is an innocent girl. She shouldn’t have to die for the sins of her mother.”

  The silhouette of the coastline, dark and menacing, appeared in the windshield. He knew it was time to confess his own sins, before time washed his desperation away, and he carried them to his grave. “I want you to know something, Elena. When you came into my life, I was struggling with everything: my priesthood, my happiness, even my faith. You changed all that for me. Maybe that’s not how it’s supposed to be for a priest, but that’s how it was for me. You may not have realized it, but I needed you as much as you needed me.”

  Elena cut the engines to a throaty murmur, and the Bel Amica slowed. “I wanted to hear that four years ago. Why are you telling me now?”

  She spun the wheel to starboard and increased the engines just enough to afford steerage in the rough seas. The specter of Riomaggiore, gauzy and vague, appeared in the windshield.

  “I should have told you a long time ago, but for whatever reason, I didn’t. I just wanted you to know.”

  She reached out and pulled him close, and they stood in the darkened wheelhouse, pressed together in a tight embrace. For a minute, Marco forgot about the dead men at his feet and enjoyed the warmth of her body and the brush of her hair on his neck.

  It would all come back soon enough—the smell of gunpowder, the gush of blood, the sound of men struggling to take their last breaths—but for now, he just held her close and prayed for time to stand still, a prayer he knew could never be answered.

  Three

  It was nearing 3 a.m. when they approached the harbor. Elena cut the engine, and the Bel Amica slowed, drifting into the small inlet set off by stony piers on either side. She floated past a motley collection of blue-and-white rowboats and a pair of sleek skiffs powered by huge outboard motors, coming to rest twenty feet from the shore.

  Marco dropped the anchor, and Elena jumped out of the boat, splashing to shore with her gun held above her head. She scurried down the quay as Marco doubled his pace to catch up with her, and they entered the old harbor square, still empty at this hour. Making their way past the café where Marco had once had a latte with Padre
DiPietro, an older priest from La Spezia who had been chosen to be his mentor, they started up the hill at the top of the square, skirting around the ice cream stand, which was famous for its gelato limone.

  They ran up the cobbled street, footfalls echoing in the darkness. At the top, Elena turned left onto the Via Gasperti, and they continued on, their progress only slightly slowed by the steep gradient. There were fewer houses this far up the slope, just the occasional dwelling, bigger than the ones below, though with the same rectangular shape, adobe construction, and bright colors. At the top of the cobbles, a small side street sliced into the steep hill, a narrow gravel road lined with large garbage cans that spilled over with fetid contents, fouling the air with the stink of rotting vegetables, curdled cream, and used coffee grounds. As soon as they were past the parade of garbage, Elena stopped to catch her breath, sinking to her knees to draw whoops of air into her lungs.

  Once their breathing had quieted, they made their way along the street, keeping close to the wall that ran along the right-hand side. There were no street lamps, and a layer of thin cirrus cloud covered the half-moon, which radiated a meager light. Elena stopped behind an old Fiat parked on the side of the road, kneeling down in its shadow. She pointed straight ahead, toward the hazy silhouette of a small house built into the steep hillside. A single light burned on the ground floor; the rest of the house was dark, not surprising considering the price of electricity in the Cinque Terre.

  “That’s Francesca’s room, with the light on.”

  Marco nodded as a now familiar tightness gripped his chest.

  “I’m going to go up and around, and enter the house from the third floor.” Elena indicated a narrow flight of steps that cut through the high wall to their right. “This path leads to the next street above, which circles behind my house. I can get in from there. Give me five minutes, and then come in through the front door.”