Jibril took a long drag on his Marlboro and crushed it with his sneaker, in the attitude of a funeral attendee throwing dirt on the grave of a loved one. “You haven’t heard the really bad news yet.”
Abayd turned his head and spat on the ground. He could feel it now, the familiar tightening in his forehead. He massaged his temples, rubbing the muscles with his powerful fingers, but he knew there were some pains for which there was no cure.
“One week ago, someone activated a sub-program.”
“Why didn’t they just have it running from the beginning?”
“Too risky. The sub-program is vast, hundreds of thousands of lines of code. To run a program of this size in a cell phone is dicey; the processor just isn’t that powerful. So they waited to activate it. I’m guessing they were frustrated with the yield from the phone call recordings and decided to chance it.”
“What does it do?”
“The sub-program activates the microphone, leaving it on at all times, even when the phone is off.”
Abayd reached into his pocket for the foil of Tylenol that was always there, waiting for a headache to start. Tearing it open, he swallowed the tablets without water, throwing the waste over the edge of the cliff, where it fluttered out of sight.
“You’re telling me this thing is a listening device?”
Jibril nodded. “And it’s always listening, unless the battery is removed.”
“KiKi carries that damn thing with him all the time, Jibril.”
Abayd had never been an anxious person, always confident in his ability to deal with whatever was thrown at him. But for the first time, the cold hand of anxiety touched him, wrapping its icy fingers around his throat, rubbing his chest with its frigid palm.
They were out there; he could feel it. Having studied covert tactics, he suspected they were close, probably even in line of sight. He stepped closer to the precipice and looked down. There were a dozen or so homes on the lower slopes below the cliff upon which the Haus Adler was perched. Several of them were vacation rentals, available to large groups of people—such as a CIA hit squad.
“What do you think they are planning, Abayd?”
“They are going to swarm over us like a hive of hornets and kill every last one of us.”
Jibril’s small eyes grew wide. Fear was written all over his shrew-like face. He lit another Marlboro and took a massive drag as if it might be his last. “What are you planning to do about it?”
Abayd grabbed his cousin’s cigarette and threw it over the cliff. They watched it as it fluttered in the early-morning breeze.
“We’re going to kill them all first.”
Eighteen
Vincenzo Lucci climbed up the last flight of steps, cresting the summit of the Janiculum Hill, which the locals called the eighth hill of Rome. Morning had not yet given way to afternoon and its oppressive heat, and Gianicolo Park always had a nice breeze, which currently whistled through the umbrella-shaped penumbras of the stone pines for which the area was famous. Lucci found a bench under the shade of a trio of three such pines, gazing down at the Altare della Patria, the huge monument built in honor of Victor Emmanuel, the first king of a unified Italy. Ten minutes later, he heard Foster approaching, huffing and puffing as if he had climbed Mount Etna.
“For Christ’s sake, why don’t we meet on the Matterhorn next time?”
Foster sat down heavily for such a small man, cursing under his breath until his breathing resumed its normal pace.
“This had better be good.”
Lucci laughed. A dark humor had overcome him ever since the failed assassination attempt.
“Maybe you should walk a bit more and drink whiskey and smoke cigars a bit less.”
“Now you’re my doctor? It’s bad enough that I have to listen to my wife nagging me …”
As a peace offering, Lucci handed him one of the two bottles of water he had bought from the concession stand adjacent to the Acqua Paola fountain. Foster drank half of it in one swig and wiped his sweat-beaded brow with a handkerchief he produced from the pocket of his gray suit, which was the only thing Lucci had ever seen him wear.
“All right, I’ll quit bitching. How’d the meeting go with Mr. Blair?”
Lucci looked around to make sure that they were out of earshot—they were; Gianicolo was almost always quiet, which was why he loved it—and filled Foster in on his meeting with the CIA agent.
“Honestly, that’s about as good a deal as you’re going to get with that guy. He’s as slippery as they come.”
“And the information he gave me—you have no reason to doubt it?”
“None at all. Don’t get me wrong, Blair would lie straight to his mother’s face if it benefited him, but it doesn’t benefit him to lie in this circumstance. As long as it suits him to tell the truth, that’s what you’ll get, which is why you always have to understand his motivation, capeesh?”
Lucci nodded. He was well familiar with this tactic from his frequent dealings with the Roman Curia, whose cardinals generally employed the same strategy.
“I tried to get him to do the job for me.”
“Let me guess: he told you the CIA can’t move on el-Rayad because he has several senators on the Intelligence Oversight Committee in his pocket?”
Lucci nodded. “Is that not true?”
Foster just shrugged and drank from his water bottle. Lucci stood up abruptly, wiping the pine needles from his black cassock. “Come on, I want to show you something.”
“What? I just got here.”
But Lucci wasn’t listening, already heading up the cobbled road. Foster caught up with him on the Passeggiata del Gianicolo as it let out onto the Piazza Garibaldi. Lucci pointed to the massive statue of the Father of the Fatherland sitting on his horse.
“Do you know who this is?”
“I don’t really give a shit.”
“His name is Giuseppe Garibaldi; he is one of the most famous generals of all time. Certainly he is the most famous Italian general.”
“So what?”
“Garibaldi was intensely anti-Catholic and vehemently opposed to the papacy; in 1862, he gathered an army of thousands to march on Rome, shouting ‘Rome or Death!’”
“What happened to him?”
“He got neither; he ended up in prison in La Spezia, a stone’s throw from where Marco lives in Monterosso al Mare.”
A tour bus crawled past their position, belching black smoke, coming to a stop on the other side of the circular area around the statue. The front door opened, discharging a phalanx of Japanese tourists armed with cameras.
“I assume there is a reason you brought me up here?”
“A very good one. I needed a break from the Vatican, and the café across the way serves the best espresso in Rome.”
Lucci started across the square, and Foster reluctantly followed, dodging between a pair of the inevitable Vespas, their motors whining in fury. At Bar Stuzzichi, they settled into a standing table on the terrace underneath a massive cork oak, sipping espressos and watching the rubberneckers gather for the firing of the Cannone del Gianicolo, which had detonated every day at noon since 1847, when Pope Pius IX ordered it to be set off at this time to synchronize the ringing of all the bells in Rome.
“There is a famous story about the Garibaldi statue. Do you know it?”
“No. Do tell.”
Lucci laughed at Foster’s sarcastic tone and finished his espresso.
“When the Lateran Treaty was signed in 1929, establishing Vatican City as a sovereign nation, the statue was turned around so that the horse’s backside faced the Vatican. Romans who don’t like the Catholic Church—and there are plenty of those, I’m afraid—love to say that Garibaldi’s horse is farting on the pope.”
They left the café and started down the hill in the direction of Trastevere, walking beneath a canopy of plane trees and towering beeches.
“I have the plans Blair formulated three years ago for the assassination of Prince el-Rayad
and the extraction of Dr. al-Sharim, the Americans’ source inside Rayad’s camp.”
Lucci gave Foster a brief summary of the plans developed by Blair’s team.
“They seem to be in order. All I need are some soldiers to carry them out.”
He stopped next to a massive beech trunk scarred by generations of initial-carvers.
“This is where you tell me that you have changed your mind about the CIA doing the job for us.”
Foster chortled his reply. Lucci wasn’t sure if he was laughing or choking on his saliva, but he was sure of one thing. The answer was still no.
“I thought as much. Fortunately, I have something else in mind.”
“Oh yeah, want to enlighten me?”
“Have you heard of the Corsican Guard?”
Foster rolled his small gray eyes.
“I’ll take that as a no.”
They continued their descent down the east side of Janiculum Hill, stopping at a bench overlooking the Japanese Botanical Gardens. Azalea bushes and red maples dotted the hillside around them; the sour stench of rotting gingko leaves hung faintly in the air.
“La Guardia Corsica was formed by Pope Julius II, mostly as a way to get a large number of Corsican immigrants off the streets of Rome, where they were notorious for getting into fights and stealing. Their tenacious nature made them excellent soldiers, and their numbers and influence grew quickly, especially given that the Swiss Guard had not yet been created.”
“Why have I never heard of them?”
“Do they not have history books where you come from?”
“You may find this hard to believe, but the rest of the world could give two shits about what happened in Rome two hundred years ago.”
“It was five hundred years ago, and here we are now, discussing it. That implies relevance, does it not?”
“Pretend I have a short attention span, Eminence.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult.”
Lucci waited as a pug led an elderly couple in their direction. When it finished marking a small bamboo plant with its urine, it trotted off, dragging the couple behind it.
“The Corsican Guard was disbanded in 1664, when Pope Alexander VII signed the Treaty of Pisa, in reaction to a fight between the guardsmen and French troops stationed in Rome. However, there is a little-known clause in the treaty”—Lucci permitted himself a satisfied grin—“that allows the Secretary of State of the Vatican to reinstate the Guard in the event of imminent danger to the pope. I should think impending nuclear annihilation is imminent danger enough, wouldn’t you?”
“Where are you going to get the bodies? You can’t round up a bunch of saps just off the boat from Corsica and hand them spears.”
“Leave that to me, my friend. There is something I wanted to ask you about, though.”
Foster regarded Lucci from the other end of the bench. His small face was scrunched up, making him look like the pug that had just peed on the bamboo.
“I had an inspiration.”
“Oh God …”
“You don’t like inspirations, Agent Foster?”
“Anything that starts with an inspiration ends badly. Period.”
“Is this CIA doctrine?”
“No, Foster’s hard-earned rules of engagement.”
The American buried his face in his hands, rubbing his forehead with short fingers that hadn’t seen a manicure this century. His stubby fingernails were cracked, pitted, and in general need of attention.
“Okay, spit it out.”
“I want Father Venetti to be a part of the team that goes to Austria.”
“I was actually going to suggest something like that myself.”
“Something like that?”
“Yes. Don’t include him with the main team. Use him as part of a second team, positioned above the target with a sniper to provide covering fire.”
“That’s interesting, because the American plans call for exactly the same thing.”
“Great minds think alike.”
“Or perhaps Mr. Blair may have mentioned the plans to you?”
Foster shrugged and lapsed into silence as a group of schoolchildren and their chaperone walked past on their way to the entrance of the gardens.
“He might have.”
“Is there anything else he might have mentioned?”
“Not that I can think of.”
Lucci looked askance at him, but let the issue drop.
“As it turns out, I had the same thing in mind. But I need a sniper. Any ideas about where I can find one on such short notice?”
“Fortunately for you, Eminence, I do.”
“Oh?”
“Her name is Sarah Messier. She’s American, actually. Ex-CIA.”
“Ex-CIA?”
“She left the agency when Obama made it almost impossible for the CIA to kill anyone.” Foster splayed his hands, regarding Lucci with an imploring look. “What’s the use of a sniper if you can’t kill people?”
“What’s she been doing in the meantime?”
“Freelancing.” He paused. “Off the record …”
“All our conversations are off the record, Mr. Foster.”
“… the CIA has used her a time or two.”
“You’re sure she’s available?”
Foster nodded. “She’s got an independent streak a mile wide, which didn’t sit well with her last employer. It’s going to be a while before her phone rings again.”
Now it was Lucci’s turn to massage his temples, which he did with enough force to leave red marks on his patrician forehead.
“Independent streak? Would you care to elaborate on that?”
“She bailed out on her last job a few hours before the hit.”
“Bailed out?”
“It was a suicide mission dressed up as just another day of work. She figured it out a few hours before the mark arrived and headed for the exit.”
“Please tell me why I should be hiring a sniper who doesn’t complete the job?”
“For the best reason there is. You don’t have a whole lot of choice.”
Nineteen
When Cardinal Lucci arrived, Marco was sitting in his room, trying to pray and succeeding only in staring into space. The cardinal was dressed in a long black cassock with a scarlet sash and wore a matching silk skullcap atop his thick head of black hair. Marco went to stand, but Lucci waved him off and sat down next to him.
Marco could see there was something on his mind; the perpetual furrows on his forehead were a little deeper, and his eyes were lit pale blue like the morning sky over the castle.
“Can we talk?”
Marco nodded. He had grown fond of Lucci over the past ten days. He was a man of paradoxes, a human oxymoron. He was a thoughtful, pensive man, but quick to make judgments. He was generally considerate, but given to occasional bouts of rudeness for which he was unapologetic. His outlook was mostly positive, except for the stray flurry of pessimism. And he was right-to-the-point, but vague when it suited his purposes.
“What’s on your mind, Eminence?”
“You, Marco.”
“Me?”
“Your future, I mean.”
So here it comes, Marco thought. He had been waiting for this, the killers-aren’t-fit-to-be-priests talk. He doubted Lucci had one canned and ready to go, but he was a clever man, savvy enough to make one up on the fly.
“I assumed I would be returning to my parish.”
“Is that what you want?”
Marco wasn’t sure what he wanted. He loved it here, on the hill overlooking Lake Albano. Glancing across the fields and small villages below was like visiting the Louvre to view an Impressionist watercolor. The soft breeze always carried the scent of lavender, and the chapel next to the papal apartments where he celebrated mass every morning infused him with a peace and tranquility he’d thought he would never find again. But he knew he couldn’t stay here forever: Monterosso beckoned, especially at night, when he longed for the slap of th
e waves against the rocky shore.
“Yes, Eminence.”
“Then I will make a deal with you, Father Venetti. I need someone for a special assignment for a couple of weeks. When the job is complete, you may return to your parish.”
“What’s the job?”
“It has to do with the assassination attempt on the Holy Father.”
“A pontifical commission?”
“No, nothing like that. Something out of the box, actually.”
The hollow feeling returned to Marco’s guts. “How far out of the box?”
“Way, way out.”
Lucci pulled an envelope from the depths of his cassock. “Inside you will find a summary of everything I have learned about the origin of the terrorist attack. I wrote it myself; no one else has seen it.”
Marco extracted two sheets of paper from the unsealed envelope and began reading. When he was finished, he returned the pages to the envelope and handed it back to Lucci.
“Where did you get all this information?”
“The CIA contacted me through back channels.”
“What’s their interest in the Vatican?”
“They don’t have one; in exchange for their help in this matter, I need to convince the Latin American bishops to remain neutral in the upcoming Brazilian presidential election.”
Lucci walked over to the window, pulling the drapes open. Sunlight streamed in; dust floated in the diagonals of light. Marco suspected the guest room in which he was staying had been vacant for a good long time. As further evidence of this, several cobwebs dangled from the ceiling, out of range of the nun, wizened and bent, who came in every day to tidy up.
“I’ll need to bribe them, but I should be able to manage.”
“Bribe them? How?”
“I’ll promise them that the next cardinal the pope names will come from Latin America. It’s something they want badly. For that price, they’ll go along with it.”
“But will the pope agree?”
Lucci nodded, a slight grin cracking his narrow face. “It’s his idea, actually. And there’s an opening in the Curia; I have been trying to get him to choose an Italian bishop to fill it, but he won’t hear of it. The only reason he hasn’t already named a Latin American bishop is because of my staunch opposition. If I relent on the matter, it will be a done deal. And that is well and good, because I don’t plan to sit on my hands and wait for Prince el-Rayad to incinerate Vatican City.”
The Vatican Conspiracy: A completely gripping action thriller (A Marco Venetti Thriller Book 1) Page 12
