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

by Hogenkamp, Peter

  In stark contrast, he was likely to remember the man sitting across from him for all eternity. He was tall and lean, with neatly combed dark hair. His navy suit was tailored to perfection, and a red-striped tie was knotted neatly around his long neck. When he shook Lucci’s hand, it was with the correct amount of firmness, and his words were chosen precisely, as if he’d had many hours to prepare his remarks.

  “So, Eminence, we have a few things to discuss.”

  “We do, Mr. Blair. Or is it Director Blair? Agent Blair, perhaps? You didn’t mention your title.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You have me at a disadvantage then.”

  “Yes, I do.” Blair poured coffee into a pair of well-used mugs. “Our mutual friend, Mr. Foster, spoke with you already?”

  Lucci nodded.

  “Good. Then let us proceed to the crux of the matter. We share a powerful enemy. Prince Kamal el-Rayad believes it is his legacy to be the man who destroys Vatican City.”

  “That is what Mr. Foster has said, Mr. Blair, but the question is why. Why does the prince believe this to be his legacy?”

  Blair breached the distance between them and handed Lucci one of the mugs before retreating to his previous position across the room.

  “I guessed that you would want to know this, so I took the liberty of doing some research.” Blair consulted the sleek watch adorning his wrist. “You are familiar with the Battle of Ostia?”

  Lucci nodded. In 849, a Christian armada commissioned by Pope Leo IV defeated the Saracens who had attacked Rome and destroyed St. Peter’s Basilica. “Raphael’s painting of the battle hangs in the Apostolic Palace where I live, a constant reminder of the Church’s embattled history.”

  “Good, then I will get right to the point. Prince el-Rayad traces his lineage back to Asad ibn al-Furat, the Saracen commander who was defeated in Ostia. Asad tried three times to sack Vatican City and was unsuccessful each time. El-Rayad has vowed to finish the job for him.

  “That is where we come in, Eminence. As Mr. Foster made you aware, we have developed a source inside el-Rayad’s camp. This source contacted us recently with some disturbing news. I am sorry to tell you the prince plans to strike again—soon. And when he does, it will be with a violence neither of us dares comprehend.”

  “If you are trying to get my attention, you had me at ‘destroys Vatican City.’”

  “We would very much like to help you avoid such a fate. To this end, we have critical information to share with you.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Blair grinned with slight embarrassment, as if he were a salesman forced into explaining a hidden charge of great magnitude.

  “I wish that it were so easy, but things don’t quite work that way.”

  “You want something from us in return?”

  Another smile, but this time the embarrassment was gone, replaced by the expression of a teacher hearing his student grasp a difficult concept for the first time.

  “You have been very critical of several Latin American leaders.”

  “If you are referring to the presidents of Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, you are using the word ‘leader’ rather loosely, don’t you think?”

  “You see, this is what I am talking about. The Vatican has great influence in that part of the world. This type of rhetoric coming from the Holy See has been very detrimental to these men.”

  “These men are butchers.”

  Blair winced at Lucci’s word choice. “We have been wanting to discuss this subject with you for some time, but we have been waiting for the right moment.” He permitted himself a slight smile. “But in tragedy, opportunity looms.”

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “There is an election coming up in Brazil. The left-wing candidate you support must not win the presidency. He is as close to a communist as they come; his election would destabilize South America.”

  “If you are asking me to denounce him, you’re wasting your breath.”

  “We are not asking you to do anything that drastic.”

  “What are you asking me to do, then?”

  Blair extracted an envelope from the breast pocket of his suit and handed it to Lucci, who opened it, took out the contents, and began reading. When he was finished, he folded the single piece of paper, returned it to the envelope, and gave the envelope back to Blair.

  “I can’t sign that.”

  “It’s not a condemnation; it’s just a statement of neutrality.”

  “I know what it is, Mr. Blair. I may not speak seven languages fluently like the Holy Father, but my English is excellent. Yes, I understand it’s a statement of neutrality … The thing is, I’m not neutral.”

  “Perhaps if you better understood the threats you face …”

  Lucci almost choked on a sip of coffee, but not because it tasted like a mixture of sewage and battery acid. He had said almost the exact same thing to the pope three days ago.

  Perhaps if you better understood the threats we face …

  “I did not want to come to you so soon,” Blair said. “It would have been much better for you to come to us. But after I spoke to my source, I did not feel it could wait.”

  “What did your source tell you?”

  “I will tell you what he said; I will tell you a great many things that you should know … no, not should know … that you need to know for your nation’s continued existence in this troubled world.”

  Blair smiled; Lucci imagined a crocodile luring a thirsty antelope into the waterhole where it lurked.

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes, we have a deal.”

  Lucci crossed the room, his loafers slapping against the pine floor, and shook hands with Blair.

  “Your source, who is it?”

  “His name is Khalid al-Sharim. He is el-Rayad’s personal physician, a job he has held since the mid-nineties. Several years ago, suspecting that his patient wasn’t the benevolent person he claimed to be, al-Sharim tried to quietly tender his resignation, but el-Rayad sent several of his bodyguards over to his house to persuade him otherwise. Realizing that he would never be allowed to leave the prince’s employ—alive, that is—he spent the next six months gathering information about el-Rayad’s activities before approaching us for a trade: everything he knew about the prince in exchange for extracting him and giving him a new identity and a new home.”

  “And ten million dollars, I suppose?”

  Blair shook his head. “No, he was clear about that. He wasn’t after money.”

  “That’s refreshing.”

  Blair smiled again, this time the socially awkward smile of a man forced to admit something embarrassing.

  “Actually, it isn’t. We have always preferred to pay our informers. It gives us a certain amount of leverage.”

  He waited for Lucci to interject, which he did not, and so he went on.

  “The extraction was supposed to have taken place at Haus Adler, el-Rayad’s residence outside Salzburg, where he vacations every year in August. In light of the detailed information that al-Sharim had given us about the location, we decided to turn the extraction into an assassination and extraction. Or at least we wanted to; President Shanahan refused to sanction the assassination.”

  “Why?”

  Blair smiled again, this time a polite smile; combined with the half-lidded look past Lucci’s shoulder and the dismissive wave of his well-manicured hand, Lucci got the message that it was none of his business.

  “What about the extraction?”

  “I could lie to you …” Blair licked his lips unconsciously. “But I will not. We have been postponing the extraction to keep the information coming, and it’s a very good thing for you that we did.”

  He paused to remove a gray MacBook from his attaché case and turned it so Lucci could see it. The screen was filled with a picture of two men standing on the deck of a large yacht. Blue-green waters shimmered in the background. “This picture was taken by MI6 two months
ago. Do you recognize either of these men?”

  Lucci shook his head.

  Blair pointed to one of them. He was tall and lean and possessed the wiry musculature of a tennis player. He had dark hair and a matching beard, trimmed to perfection. His eyes were large and black and penetrating. “El-Rayad.”

  “The other man?”

  “Is Rodovan Pavlović. There is a long and sordid story behind him.”

  “I would like to hear it.”

  “Perhaps another time, but suffice it to say that he is a Serbian arms dealer of some notoriety.”

  “His notoriety … it’s well earned?”

  Blair nodded, just a slight drop of his head and a brief flutter of his eyelids. “Very well, I should say. We believe that he is the only arms dealer to have ever acquired nuclear weapons.”

  Lucci gulped his coffee down in an effort to ease the dryness in his mouth, which had taken on the arid condition of Death Valley, a place he had seen last year on a visit with a brother who lived in California.

  “It all started in northwest China, in one of the most remote places on earth. The Chinese military has a large facility there, including a biological research laboratory and a nuclear weapons storage complex, in a mountainous region north of Urumqi. In 2015, a fire ravaged the facility, releasing a lethal virus.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “An NSA satellite discovered it during a routine pass shortly afterward. Every man, woman, and child within two hundred kilometers was dead. Livestock lay bloated in the fields. The lifeless bodies of dogs and cats fouled the landscape. When the People’s Army finally got back in, they found that two DH-10 nuclear warheads were missing.”

  Lucci took a second look at the man on the screen. He was short and squat, with the powerful build of a weightlifter and the bulbous nose and ruddy complexion of a man who drank vodka as if it were the only thing able to quench his thirst.

  “Are we sure that Pavlović has the weapons?”

  “No, we are not. But some associates of mine ran a sting operation last year, creating a fictional African warlord who was shopping the international black market for nuclear weapons. A person believed to be Pavlović responded, and we almost nabbed him, but he smelled a rat late in the game and bailed.”

  The rapid beating of his own heart filled Lucci’s ears. He tried to tell himself it was just the coffee, but it was a lie; he was afraid. He could smell the fear, acrid and bitter, rising in his nostrils.

  “Please don’t tell me that Pavlović plans to sell the nuclear weapons to el-Rayad.”

  “I am afraid I must, Eminence. Al-Sharim confirmed it this morning.”

  His heart accelerated; the pulse of his blood pounded in his ears. He forced himself to take a deep breath, exhaling the air slowly through his nose.

  “The DH-10 is a small weapon, in the range of one kiloton, but enough, I should think.”

  “Enough?”

  “Enough to wipe Vatican City off the face of the earth.”

  The blare of a car horn and the whine of a motor scooter floated up from the street below.

  “Pavlović plans to deliver the weapons to el-Rayad’s mountain chalet outside Salzburg sometime in August. Do you know what will happen if el-Rayad takes possession of those warheads on Austrian soil?”

  Lucci knew. Since border stations had been eliminated to enhance trade across the continent, all that lay between Salzburg and Rome was six hundred kilometers of highway without so much as a sobriety checkpoint.

  “El-Rayad has to be stopped before he obtains the weapons. Otherwise, Eminence, Vatican City will be nothing more than a burn mark on the canvas of history.”

  Lucci crossed to the window and peered behind the curtains. A faceless tenement building stared back. The smell of rotten fish permeated the panes; the Tiber couldn’t be far away.

  “Perhaps you would consider a more active role, Mr. Blair?”

  Blair lifted an eyebrow. “A more active role? How do you mean?”

  “Resurrect the operation that was canceled a few years ago. Extract Dr. al-Sharim and assassinate el-Rayad.”

  Yet another smile appeared on Blair’s polished face. This one conveyed apology and regret. “There is nothing I would like to do more. But I am afraid that would be impossible.”

  “Impossible? Why?”

  Blair set the computer down on a small table, creating space by stacking the ashtrays covering the marred wooden surface.

  “Because el-Rayad is a very rich man, and he has wisely chosen to be extremely generous to a number of United States senators who happen to sit on the Intelligence Committee that provides oversight of my agency.”

  He started pacing back and forth across the room, three steps in one direction, a neat pivot on the heel of his custom-made wingtips that produced just the slightest squeak, and then three steps in the other.

  “But in the event of you declaring your neutrality in the Brazilian election—and emphasizing this with the Latin American Bishops Council when you meet next month—I can extend you a token of our appreciation.”

  The oldest of thirteen children born to a prominent Sicilian banker and his wife, who was a direct descendant of Prince Alberto of Sicily, Lucci had spent a lifetime granting favors as opposed to begging for them, and his election as Archbishop of Palermo had done nothing to lessen his distaste for asking for help. But Vatican City had never before been threatened with a nuclear holocaust—at least that he was aware of—and desperate times called for desperate measures.

  “We would be greatly indebted to you for any additional assistance you can provide.”

  Blair extracted a sealed manila envelope from his attaché case. “These are the plans for the mission that was scrubbed three years ago. There is no point in reinventing the wheel, and time is of the essence.”

  He walked over to Lucci’s position by the window, holding the envelope against his chest. “It goes against every fiber of my being to share these plans with you, but I am equally opposed to a communist overthrow of Brazil.”

  He handed Lucci the plans as if he were surrendering the deed to lands that had been in his family for generations.

  “Haus Adler is a secure fortress guarded by a private army of mercenaries, all former Saudi Royal Army Green Berets. But it does have a weakness.”

  He fetched his computer, clicked a few buttons, and a massive mountain chalet appeared, perched on the end of a peninsula of rock that jutted out from the face of a cliff.

  “This is Haus Adler. It was originally built by the Habsburgs as a mountain getaway. Due to the number of enemies the Habsburgs had engendered, Haus Adler was situated on this bluff so that it could be approached from only one direction: from the east, along this narrow corridor flanked by a two-hundred-meter drop on either side.”

  He closed the computer and set it back on the table, knocking off one of the ashtrays in the process, which clanged against the floor and spilled its ashy residue over the pine boards.

  “Several members of our team were world-class free climbers. By the time the operation was aborted, they had already scaled the cliff face. Unfortunately, they removed all the pitons when they evacuated, but their approach is documented in the information I gave you.

  “All the security cameras and guard patrols are on the other side of the grounds. Once your assault team reaches the top of the cliff, killing the prince should be no more difficult than shooting fish in a barrel.”

  Seventeen

  It was far too early in the morning when a soft knock at his door woke Abayd from a restless sleep. He got out of bed and opened the door, and Jibril walked into the room, reeking of cigarettes. He started to open his mouth excitedly, but Abayd clamped a large palm over it before he could speak.

  “Not here.”

  He got dressed and led Jibril back outside. This time, they stopped on the edge of the precipice, where they had an excellent view of the sheer drop. Dawn had broken, but it was still cool and damp; their footsteps were
plainly visible in the dew-covered grass.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “I told you it was going to take time.”

  “Four days?”

  Jibril shrugged and reached for his cigarettes.

  “The news is good?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “I am in no mood for games, Jibril. Just give it to me.”

  Jibril’s narrow face grew even more pinched. “Okay, cousin, have it your way. The good news is, I was finally able to decrypt that program.”

  “What’s the bad news?”

  “There’s a lot of bad news. First off, you were right about its origin: no question it’s NSA.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The stars and stripes insignia—they put it on everything.”

  Abayd didn’t like levity of any kind, much less at his expense, but he let it go.

  “What does the program do?”

  Jibril lit a cigarette. “Its primary mission is to copy every document, file, and program on the hard drive, compress them, and send them out piggybacked on top of a phone call.”

  “Why does it go to all that trouble?”

  “Because that way, the outgoing transmission never shows up on the calls summary.”

  “Clever.”

  “You haven’t heard anything yet. In a similar vein, it poaches emails, text messages, and phone calls.”

  “Phone calls?”

  “Every call KiKi has made since this program was inserted into his phone has been recorded, compressed, and sent. I hope he hasn’t made any off-color jokes.”

  He had made many, Abayd guessed, given his penchant for all things perverse and pornographic, but that was the least of their worries. Although the prince was very careful about saying anything incriminating on his cell phone, the Americans now knew many of the players in his network. It was an excellent starting point, of which Abayd was certain they were taking full advantage.