They were still several hundred feet from the trapdoors when the first platoon of protesters spotted them. He heard them before he saw them, twisting and flailing to fight through the crowd, shouting in Arabic and brandishing stolen batons, chair legs, and fistfuls of stones and broken bricks.
But the defenders had protected popes for over five hundred years, against far more formidable foes than these. Two of the lead guardsmen broke ranks and ran straight at the attackers, ignoring the hail of rocks being hurled in their direction. The bulk of the stone-throwers fell back, all but the pair up front. These two waved their batons with fierce determination and rushed straight at the men guarding their target.
Their attack was in vain. The guardsmen swung their halberds sideways, felling the attackers easily. Both dropped to the ground, hemorrhaging blood from chest wounds. One attempted to get up; he received a severe kick to the ribs for his efforts and didn’t move again. But the commotion did not go unnoticed, attracting the attention of a larger group of protesters, including several of the agitators who had led the attack on the Gendarmerie. Bruckentaler screamed into his microphone, begging for reinforcements, as he watched the horde advance pell-mell toward them.
Marco sat in the passenger seat and waited for his hour to come. His mouth was dry and his skin damp from sweat. He turned up the AC, which was already almost maxed. The heat was appalling, even at this hour. He offered a silent prayer, not even exactly sure for whom he was praying. He just wanted to pray; it helped him endure the wait.
He thought about his former life. He remembered the small stone church overlooking the ocean, felt the salty breeze on his face, and smelled the aroma of frying anchovies. Why was it, he wondered, that he had always taken these simple pleasures for granted, as if they weren’t the divine blessings he now saw them to be?
The door of the guard hut opened, and two men stepped out, advancing upon the van in a purposeful fashion. They were wearing dark blue uniforms with the white badge of the Security Office in plain view. He reached underneath the seat to collect his gun, hoping to God he was right about them being impostors.
“Let them get in the van.”
The lead officer circled around to the passenger side, leaving his subordinate in position on the driver’s side. Elena punched a button on the console, and the back door opened on hydraulic power. The security officer got into the rear of the van, reaching inside his coat as he sat down. Marco realized he was going for his gun and twisted in his seat, whipping his own gun around. The barrel raked across the man’s face, spattering blood on the windows. The man’s head snapped back against the seat, but his gun hand continued to swivel in Marco’s direction.
Marco saw it coming, in a rapid series of still frames, microseconds apart. He tried to knock the gun away with his own weapon, but his arm was on the wrong side of the man’s body. It was the end, he thought, still seeing the sequential snapshots of the gun barrel, aperture pointing almost straight at him. And then he heard two blasts from behind him, followed by the thud of the man’s head against the window. Two holes had opened up in his chest, belching blood like Vesuvius, and the handgun tumbled uselessly to the floor.
Elena’s gun went off twice more, blowing out the driver’s window, and Marco screwed his eyes shut against the showering fragments. When he opened them again, the second officer was no longer standing next to the van. He swiveled around, looking out the rear of the van, to where the Gendarmerie had been holding station, but he didn’t see them. From the cacophony of wailing sirens, screams, and bullhorns audible through the blown-out window, he was pretty sure he knew why they had left their post.
He grabbed his shield and exited the van, grabbing a radio from the fallen officer, who was lying on the cobblestones with his face missing. Elena came up behind him and they ran into the square. The mob had broken through the line, and was surging forward like the tide. Here and there a remnant of the defense inserted itself in front of it, but the throng was too large and too angry to be stopped. It crashed over the defenders like a wave, breaking them with its relentless force and sucking them beneath the undertow.
St. Peter’s Square was gone, replaced by a roiling ocean of humanity. People were everywhere; waves of them flooded the empty spaces, running in any direction but toward the onrushing protesters. Eddies formed where large groups of fleeing mass-goers ran into one another, causing swirling currents of terrified people. There were simply too many of them trying to get away at once, and the result was pandemonium, a churning, panic-stricken bedlam.
“Marco, they are evacuating the pope.”
Elena pointed in the direction of the basilica. A huge altar had been erected at that end of the square, on which the pope had been co-celebrating mass with the Nigerian bishops. But all attempts at saying mass had been abandoned, and the holy men were streaming from the podium like ants from a burning hill. Marco could see the pope, surrounded by his phalanx of Swiss Guards, literally being dragged through the fleeing congregation.
The radio crackled to life as the Swiss Guard officer commanding the platoon of guardsmen around the pope screamed for any and all listeners to help. But it was clear that the Gendarmerie and the Prima riot-control officers—the legitimate ones who had showed up—were still trying to hold the line in front of the Piazza Pius XI in an effort to prevent the rest of the protesters from entering the Piazza San Pietro, while the other Swiss Guard platoons, though fighting furiously to get to the pope, were on the wrong side of the massive altar.
“Elena, let’s go.”
With that, Marco secured his shield on his arm and jumped into the fray, not bothering to look behind him to see if she was following.
Sowsan bin Nawwaf watched the chaos swirling around him in every direction. He stood over the trapdoor leading down to the catacombs; four portable wooden barriers formed a square around him, and a second set of barriers formed another square around those. Between the barriers and his Heckler & Koch MP5 sub-machine gun, none of the fleeing congregation had sought refuge next to him. According to the official plan, he was supposed to keep this space clear until the pope was in close range, at which point he would move one of the barriers and raise the trapdoor, keeping it raised until the pope and his accompanying guardsmen had passed below. Once they were safely inside, he would close the door and not allow anyone else to follow.
But the plan set out by Mohammed Sadir was completely different, and Sowsan had no intention of allowing the pope to slink away to safety. The minute he was in range, he would shoot any of the guardsmen in his way and kill the pope before throwing down his weapon, shedding his uniform, and disappearing into the crowd.
Ten
Bruckentaler barked orders into his microphone, directing four of the guardsmen to stay to protect their flank. They broke off immediately, forming a line to hold the perimeter against over a hundred angry protesters. The remaining four pressed on, the screams of the oncoming mob lending haste to their endeavors. They were close; Bruckentaler could smell the finish line. The destination loomed ahead, a small cordoned-off area in a churning sea of bodies. He had instructed the man from the Vatican Security Office to unlock the doors but leave them closed, lest the panicked crowd try to find refuge in the tunnel.
They plowed through the last wave of people, and they were there: a twenty-five-square-meter rectangle of open space created by heavy wooden barriers. Inside the outer barrier, a second set of barriers was set up around the trapdoors; inside the inner square, a very serious-looking man brandishing a Heckler & Koch MP5 stood at the ready. Bruckentaler radioed to him to open the door and push aside one of the barriers, but the officer ignored him. Bruckentaler spoke a short command into his microphone, and the lead guardsman moved one of the outer barriers and strode forward with purpose.
He didn’t get far. The security officer leveled his weapon and fired a burst into the guardsman’s torso, throwing him back out of the way. The guardsman next in line reacted quickly, hurling his halberd like a spea
r. But the assassin dodged the missile easily and felled the man with a well-placed shot. The third guardsman rushed forward, holding his halberd like a lance in front of him. The gunman fired on him, but his Kevlar absorbed the bullets, and on he went, though slower than before, getting within five feet of the gunman before a second burst knocked him down.
Bruckentaler saw the third guardsman fall and knew what it meant. He was the only thing between the gunman and his mark. The thought had barely entered his brain when the assassin’s Heckler & Koch swiveled and fired. Bruckentaler’s chest exploded with pain, even with the Kevlar armor on, and he began to list. He tried to keep on his feet, but his legs wouldn’t obey the command to stand, and he toppled over, leaving nothing between the gun and the pope but twenty feet of air.
Marco ran across the cobbled piazza, Elena behind him, using the riot shield to batter his way through the swirling throng. He shoved another trio of spectators out of his way and forged on, a growing feeling of hopelessness in his belly. It was just too far, and the going too slow. He let his angst fuel his tired legs as he angled across the growing swell of refugees toward the Bronze Doors. He reached the lee of the massive altar structure, and his pace quickened, as the crush of fleeing guests was much thinner behind it. He traversed the fifty-meter width of the altar quickly, and for the first time his hopes rose that they might actually reach the pope. As to what would transpire when they got there, he had no idea; he was taking one step at a time.
But his hopes were dashed as he waded back into the heavy swell on the far side of the altar. He and Elena were trying to go north; the traffic flowed west toward the relative safety of the basilica. It was like swimming against the tide; they had to struggle just to keep their position, much less make any progress toward their destination.
They got a break when several of the rioters happened past, parting the crowd like the Red Sea. The two of them streaked across the empty space, making up seconds of priceless time, only to come face to face with more of the rabble. There were five of them, and for some reason—he forgot for a minute how they were dressed—the angry youngsters appeared to have it in for them. As soon as they saw Elena, they made straight for her. Marco would have loved to avoid a confrontation, but he didn’t have time to run around in circles trying to dodge his pursuers.
He was still considering his options when Elena yanked her pistol out of her belt and shot the first one in the thigh. The wounded boy screamed bloody murder, and his comrades parted to the four winds, opening up another lane in the crowd. Marco took advantage and ran another thirty meters unimpeded, until the next wave of fleeing guests brought him to a standstill. He was pushed to the ground by the surge and barely avoided being trampled to death. When he got to his feet, he had lost his bearings, and a pit opened up in his stomach.
Suddenly he heard a burst of weapons fire, close, over to his right. He looked around for Elena, but she was lost in the churning horde, and he crashed straight into the surge of people fleeing from the gunshots, hammering people out of the way with his shield. He vaulted over a downed spectator and saw the gunman, ahead and to his right, his gun pointed at the pope. It was point-blank range, but there was still a lone guardsman standing in front of the Holy Father. Marco raised his own weapon, but there were people in the way, and he couldn’t get a clear shot.
The gunman fired, and the pope’s defender tottered. Marco took another long stride and jumped, extending his arms in front of him. The guardsman fell, and the gunman fired again, the report deafening. But the bullets clanged against Marco’s shield, whining away into the distance. The force of the shots slammed the shield against him and dislodged his helmet, which tumbled lazily to the ground. His momentum carried him past the pope, and his head smacked against the cobbles, clouding his vision. He skittered into one of the fallen guardsmen, coming to rest.
The last thing he heard before the darkness swallowed him was the sound of Elena’s pistol—boom, boom, boom—and the thud of a body hitting the stony ground.
Eleven
Marco opened his eyes, and a thin gauze of consciousness ebbed in. Or perhaps it wasn’t consciousness; maybe he’d died and was in purgatory awaiting his final judgment. Or was this hell? He had a feeling he’d met the admission criteria, but the cool breeze wafting over his head told him otherwise; hell couldn’t have a breeze like this. His pupils dilated, and the meager light fell upon his retinas. He was lying on a large bed in a spacious room. Starlight filtered in from floor-to-ceiling windows in the opposite wall. Purple velvet curtains fluttered in the wind swirling in from the night.
He pulled off the sheets and sat up in bed. He was wearing a pair of dark cotton pajamas, long enough in the leg but much too wide in the waist. His shoulder ached slightly where a ricochet had grazed him, and his forehead felt tight, as if gripped by an overly zealous headband, but otherwise he felt fine. There was a pitcher of water sweating on the table, and he filled a glass and took a swallow, trying to moisten his arid mouth.
He heard a noise to his left and turned to watch the door open from the outside. A man walked in and shut it, then sat down in an oversized leather armchair. He was a large man, tall and broad-shouldered, with a chest that reminded Marco of the barrels his grandfather used to age grappa. His skin was the color of the night sky, and he had brown eyes that sparkled even in the dim light. He was wearing a black robe with a purple scarf that would have looked ridiculous on most men, but Pope John Paul III pulled it off quite easily.
“How are you feeling, Father Venetti?”
“Well, Your Holiness.”
Marco had seen the pope before, in a small audience shortly after his election. It had been a landmark moment in his life, but it hadn’t prepared him for the experience of sitting alone with the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. Or perhaps his uneasiness stemmed from the fact that John Paul III was the 217th successor to St. Peter, while he himself was a priest with enough blood on his hands to fill a large baptismal font.
He got up from the bed and crossed to the window, trying to walk away from his disquiet. Several lights burned in the distance, easily several hundred meters below his position.
“This isn’t Vatican City. Where are we, Holiness?”
“Castel Gandolfo.”
The Palazzo Apostolico di Castel Gandolfo had been the summer residence and vacation retreat of popes since the 1929 signing of the Lateran Treaty, which relinquished the former estate of the Emperor Domitian to the Holy See. Marco had heard a rumor that Pope John Paul III was especially fond of the pastoral setting that Gandolfo afforded him and had to be dragged back to “that other place in Rome” when his visits were over.
“What are we doing here?”
“Enjoying the beautiful breeze. It’s fearfully hot in Rome.”
The pontiff spoke Italian fluently—not bad for someone who’d grown up in the watery slums of Makoko—with only a trace of an accent. Marco wanted to pin it down, but couldn’t; it was the mellifluous accent of a man who spoke many languages and dialects.
“Cardinal Lucci also thought it wise to get you out of Vatican City. The Polizia di Stato were buzzing around like angry hornets. This seemed like a more proper place to recover.”
“How did I get here?”
“The Swiss Guard wanted me to leave the Vatican immediately after the assassination attempt. I insisted we go together.”
“Thank you, Holiness.”
The pope smiled, displaying teeth that dazzled brightly against his dark brown skin. “You saved my life. It seemed like the least I could do.”
And then it came back to him: the sound of gunfire and the screams of the crowd; the frenzied swirling of the throng and the grim visage of the man trying to kill the pope; the smell of fear hanging in the air like a fog; the taste of vomit, acidic and bilious, lapping into his throat.
Prior to this morning, he had been the pastor of an eight-hundred-year-old parish overlooking the Ligurian Sea. His worst offenses were the curses he u
ttered whenever AC Milan was scored against—which had been quite frequent of late. Now his conscience was so overloaded he’d be saying the Our Father until the end of time.
“What happened to Elena?”
“She’s fine. A remarkable woman. Neither the shooting nor the six-hour inquisition at the hands of the Vatican Security Office seemed to faze her.”
“Shooting?”
“Elena killed the man who tried to assassinate me.”
Marco vaguely remembered hearing the report of her pistol before he lost consciousness. “Where is she?”
“Still at the Vatican.”
“What about her sister and her daughter?”
“They were flown down to join her. They are all together now.”
“And the terrorists on Castello di Giordano?”
“They attempted to flee the island on Elena’s boat and ran out of fuel in the Ligurian Sea. A fishing vessel spotted them, and the Guardia Costiera dispatched a frigate to investigate.”
The pope stopped speaking and came to join Marco at the window overlooking Lake Albano, whose waters shimmered like a mirror in the moonlight.
“The terrorists opened fire on the frigate, and the captain had no choice but to return fire, sinking the Bel Amica and killing all the men on board.”
More death and destruction, Marco thought. Was there no end to it?
“How are you feeling?”
It was a difficult question. Empty was the only word he could think of, but it seemed to match the hollow feeling in his innards, the vacuum in his chest.
“I’m fine.”
“Oberst Jaecks, the commandant of the Swiss Guard, is very keen on speaking to you, but I will tell him you’re not up to it yet.”
In truth, Marco wasn’t up to it yet; he wasn’t sure he was ever going to be. But if it needed to be done, he might as well get it over with. “Perhaps after a meal?”
The Vatican Conspiracy: A completely gripping action thriller (A Marco Venetti Thriller Book 1) Page 7
