By the time the training session ended, Marco had qualified as a marksman on the pistol range, passed the hand-to-hand combat test, and aced the rifle accuracy examination. But he had yet to master the moving silhouette targets; time simply ran out. They collected their gear and vacated the premises of the shooting club, which was situated on a rare patch of flat ground in between two rugged hills northeast of Poli, an hour’s drive from Rome. They wound their way back down to the city in Pietro’s car, a tan Renault sedan that, like Pietro himself, had many miles under its belt despite its relative youth.
Marco tried to make small talk, but Pietro was a man of few words. ‘Where are you from?’ was answered by ‘Italy.’ To ‘Who do you work for?’ Pietro replied, ‘The Vatican,’ and the query ‘What do you like to do on your days off?’ netted no response other than a rush of air through Pietro’s window.
“How many people have you killed?”
The question startled Marco, who had been watching the sun sink below the low hills to the west, leaving a crimson stain on the white clouds above.
“I’m sorry?”
“You heard me the first time.”
“Why do you ask?”
“You excel at target shooting, but as soon as you aim at a silhouette, you hesitate. It’s as if there is a debate going on in your head.”
“I wouldn’t say debate. It’s more like an old motion picture, except in color, accompanied by a soundtrack of gunshots and screams.”
“It doesn’t matter what it is. It’s going to get you killed. And that might get me killed.”
“You? How?”
“I’ll be leading the assault on Haus Adler. If it’s going to be successful—and it is going to be successful—I need someone on top of that hill who isn’t going to hesitate.”
They rounded a corner and descended a steep hill. Olive groves glistened like silver in the fading light, stretching away as far as Marco could see.
“Any suggestions?”
“Slow your breathing, stay in the moment.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
Pietro thought about this as Marco rolled his own window down, letting in the hot air that smelled faintly of sulfur vapors from the nearby springs.
“I once knew a great trauma surgeon. I met him in the Hindu Kush when I was fighting in Afghanistan with the 4th Alpini Paratroopers. We were clearing a valley of Taliban fighters and thought we had driven them all out. One day, they ambushed my patrol; three of my men were seriously wounded. We got them down to the battalion aid station barely alive. This surgeon from the U.S. Army saved all three of them. Never have I seen someone so calm in the face of so much chaos. Men screaming in pain, blood spurting from wounds, nurses shouting out orders.”
He drifted into silence for a minute at the recollection. The only sounds were the low purr of the motor as the car descended the hill and the rush of air through Marco’s window.
“I went back to see him a few weeks later to ask him how he stayed so calm in such a stressful situation.”
“What did he say?”
“All bleeding stops.”
“All bleeding stops?”
“One way or the other.”
“Why does that help?”
The car slowed as it went through a small village, a cluster of red-roofed adobe buildings stacked on top of a rocky bluff overlooking a valley of orange trees.
“Because focusing on the outcome of the process heightens nervousness and worsens the results. Understanding that all bleeding stops one way or the other helped him focus on the process, rather than the outcome, which in turn made the outcome better.”
They turned a corner, and the village was lost to sight, but the fragrant smell of oranges lingered.
“Focus on the moment, on what you are doing … ignore what might happen and what has happened. See only what you are doing in the present moment.”
Pietro lifted his gaze from the road for a moment, fixing Marco with his watchful brown eyes.
“All bleeding stops.”
Twenty-Five
Lucci paused in front of the door to the papal apartments and took a moment to compose himself. If there was one thing he hated, it was being summoned to a meeting when he had many other things to do. To make things worse, it was summer, and John Paul III was at Castel Gandolfo, a half-hour drive through the snarled streets of Rome. But Lucci hadn’t risen to his current position without the ability to navigate through the treacherous waters of the Vatican’s hierarchy; regardless of their differences, John Paul III was still the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, and Lucci would pay him his due.
He knocked twice and pushed the door open; there was no one in the apartment. He walked past the bookshelves and desk crowded with texts, magazines, and manuscripts, making his way toward the porch overlooking Lake Albano. The pope was an organizational nightmare, he thought, as he took a detour around a five-hundred-year-old table weighed down by a sloppy pile of ancient books, but there was no denying his brilliance. Lucci had made the mistake of underestimating the pontiff on one occasion, and he would never do it again.
John Paul III was sitting on a wicker chair on the porch. There was a second chair on the other side of a small table, and the pope waved for him to sit down. A small pitcher of white wine sweated in the heat, and Lucci could see his glass was already filled. He could tell it was going to be more than just a quick conversation, and his thoughts strayed to the mountain of paperwork on his desk.
“Holiness.”
“Good evening, Eminence. Thanks for joining me.”
Lucci sipped his wine, and his spirits perked up. At least the pope had had the good sense to serve a decent vintage for a change—a white from the steep slopes of Mount Etna in Lucci’s home island. “Did I have a choice?”
The pope laughed. “You always have a choice. Remember that when I am gone. You always have a choice, even when you are certain you don’t.”
“Are you going somewhere?”
The pope refilled his wine glass, nodding. “I leave in two days’ time.”
“Where?”
“Nigeria.”
In the current times, a papal visit to a foreign country required a monumental effort; everything from the obvious security issues to subtle political concerns had to be weighed and balanced. It was impossible for an undertaking of this magnitude not to have come to Lucci’s attention, yet he had heard nothing.
“I wasn’t aware.”
“I asked Oberst Jaecks to keep the arrangements quiet. This is not an official visit.”
“Vacation?”
The pope shrugged. “Let’s call it that. I had already scheduled several weeks off; I am simply changing the venue.”
“I didn’t realize Nigeria was a vacation destination.”
“We both know it isn’t.”
Lucci considered this with a mouthful of wine, which overflowed with the minerals spewed from the earth with the frequent eruptions of Mount Etna. “If you’re looking for the root cause of the attempted assassination, you should be flying to Riyadh, Holiness.”
“I have decided to leave the Saudi problem to you. You are the Secretary of State, after all.”
A wise decision, Lucci thought. “Then why are you going to Nigeria?”
The pope didn’t reply, but Lucci knew the answer anyway.
“The Nigerians weren’t the problem. The Saudis were just using them to get at you.”
“So you say. But the fact remains that antipathy for me grows like a weed in the northern half of the country. If I don’t get my hands dirty in the soil in which the weeds grow, they will choke the life out of my homeland.”
“You will remember that I warned you against coming out so strongly against sharia law.”
“You did at that. But sometimes silence is not an option.”
“I didn’t say you had to be silent. I counseled you not to make an issue of it. There is a difference.”
“Muttering to myself
about women being stoned to death for committing adultery doesn’t solve anything.”
“Whereas issuing a papal decree condemning it very nearly got you killed.”
The pope laughed and took a sip of his wine.
“Go to Nigeria, Holiness. I will hold down the fort in your absence.”
In point of fact, Lucci thought the trip was a complete waste of time and resources, but it wasn’t his place to say. Moreover, it would leave him free to deal with the Saudis as he saw fit, without any interference whatsoever. By the time the pope returned from Nigeria, Father Venetti would be returned from Austria with the prince’s death certificate in his hand, and no one would be any the wiser.
“I plan to take Father Venetti with me.”
A cold chill overcame Lucci, as if a dark cloud had just settled in front of the sun.
“Out of the question. He’s still recovering from his concussion.”
“Exactly, that’s why I already cleared it with his physician.”
“There are other considerations as well.”
The pope raised a dark bushy eyebrow. “Such as?”
“I have given Father Venetti an assignment.”
The pope regarded him curiously. “Of what nature?”
“You told me you would leave the Saudis to me. This is a significant undertaking, for which my office is not sufficiently staffed. Father Venetti is a capable man, and I fear he is growing a little bored. Asking him to help me with this issue solved two problems at the same time.”
The pope said nothing at first, and Lucci thought the moment had passed.
“Very clever of you, Vincenzo. Just make sure your solution doesn’t create any new problems.”
A dozen replies buzzed through Lucci’s head, but he thought the best course was to remain silent.
“Father Venetti is a talented man, Eminence; on that, we agree. But his wounds run a lot deeper than the scratch on his shoulder.”
For a moment, Lucci was sure the pope had read between his carefully selected words and interpreted his intent correctly, but then he shook himself, embarrassed about his flight of insecurity. There was something about John Paul III that did peculiar things to him, which was one of the reasons he avoided him whenever possible.
“I will bear that in mind, Holiness.”
“Do you know where Father Venetti is? I haven’t seen him all day.”
Lucci responded that he hadn’t seen the priest either. No small wonder, he thought, since he was off in Umbria getting a crash course in fieldwork from Pietro. Since getting his nephew out of prison less than a week ago, Lucci had been putting him to work, which was a good thing, because it had cost him dearly to do it. Despite what he had told his brother-in-law, the prison governor had wanted far more than just Lucci’s request, and he had likewise had to pay off the medical examiner as well.
“Do you know if he will be here tomorrow?”
Lucci shrugged. “Can I relay a message?”
“Tell him I will be back in two weeks, and until then he is welcome to stay here.”
Lucci nodded and waited for the pope to make another comment. When none was offered, he bowed slightly at the waist and started his escape.
“Eminence.”
“Yes?”
“I’m not making a mistake leaving Father Venetti in your care, am I?”
“I certainly hope not.”
Lucci reached the door and passed through before the pope could say anything more, then paused for a minute on the other side.
I certainly hope not.
Twenty-Six
The soft, almost intimate knock came at 8 p.m., exactly when he had been told it would come. Marco pushed himself off the sofa and shuffled across the dingy hotel room to let her in. He peered through the spyhole before he opened the door—more out of curiosity than anything else—and saw her standing there in the drab third-floor hallway of the Hotel EuroStar. Her image was distorted by the layers of grime caked on the glass, but he could still see it was the woman whose photograph Lucci had shown him.
He opened the door, and she walked in, toting brown paper shopping bags in both hands and pecking him on the cheek as she brushed past. He shut the door and followed her across the worn burgundy carpet. She set her shopping bags down on the chest of drawers and stuck out her hand. He shook it automatically, without taking his eyes off her face. She had large green eyes, high rounded cheekbones, and a wide mouth bordered by full lips painted the color of a cardinal’s sash.
“Hello. My name is Sarah.”
Her accent reminded him of Magdalena, the American woman he’d dated during his time in the navy. Her cream-colored sundress did as well, although Magdalena hadn’t had the same deep bronze skin or the lean, muscular arms that swung in step with her shapely legs.
“I’m Marco.”
She moved over to the small table—Marco watched her walk and forgot about Elena for a moment—and sat down on a plastic chair. “Come, sit.”
He grabbed a couple of Peronis from the refrigerator and joined her. They made small talk for a little while as the TV blared in the corner, unwatched. Marco got up to turn it off—the Azzurri were losing anyway—but Sarah asked him to leave it on.
“Are you a football fan?”
She laughed easily, denying it. “I just like the noise. It makes it hard to eavesdrop.”
And then Marco remembered who she was and why she was there. It had all been pushed out of his head by the flash of her teeth as she smiled and the scent of jasmine that followed her wherever she went. But it came tumbling back with this realization, never to leave again. She was an American sniper. He was traveling with her to Austria to observe the assassination of a Saudi prince before he could acquire two nuclear warheads.
“You don’t look like an assassin.”
“The good ones never do.”
Her laugh made him want to say more clever things. “More like a lawyer or a doctor.”
She excused herself into the washroom, and he phoned for room service. They ate spaghetti bolognese at the small table, washing it down with a bottle of red wine. They conversed easily as they ate, speaking in English.
“You sound like an American,” she said.
“I dated a girl from Maryland.”
“What happened to her?”
“We broke up years ago … lost touch. I got a Christmas card from her a few years ago. She was living in Boston … some sort of biotech engineer.”
“What other languages do you speak?”
“German, with a distinct Tyrolean accent, and Italian, obviously.”
“Obviously.” She removed any offense with a prize-winning smile that caused his stomach to turn over.
“And Latin, of course.”
She gave him a curious look, and Marco remembered she didn’t know he was a priest. “Latin?”
“My Greek isn’t bad either.”
She smiled the kind of smile a beautiful woman always smiles when men brag about themselves in order to impress her. Marco, slightly embarrassed by the departure from his modest nature, cleared the table and brought the dishes into the hall. When he returned, Sarah had retreated to the bathroom; most likely, he thought, to avoid hearing him drone on about his abilities as a linguist. He sat down and picked up the remote, trying to distract his disquieted mind.
The door opened, and she appeared, dressed in a pair of black Spandex pants and a white cotton shirt. She moved over to the bed and pulled up the covers on the right-hand side.
“Mind if I take this side?”
“Take the whole bed, Sarah. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“Better sleep in the bed with me.” She patted an anemic-looking pillow. “We’re supposed to be married; wouldn’t look good if we have separate beds.”
Marco had no idea who was going to notice, but he didn’t argue; she had the look of a woman who lost few arguments. She got into bed and sat with her legs extended, a pillow covering her lap.
“Tell me about yours
elf.”
Marco rarely felt comfortable talking about himself, but it was easier to talk about the other Marco, the Marco that Lucci had invented, the faithful servant of the Vatican who traveled the world in pursuit of security for the Holy See. Her interest in the narrative only increased his enthusiasm for telling it, forcing him to cut himself off by retrieving another pair of Peronis from the mini fridge.
“What about you?” he asked.
“What do you know about me already?”
“You’re American. That’s about it.”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
He opened the beers and extended his arm to pass her one while remaining sitting on the couch.
“Where are you from?”
“You’ve never heard of it.”
“I’ve been to the States twice. Try me.”
“Rochester, Vermont.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s a small town in the mountains. Nothing ever happens there.”
“Sounds perfect.”
And it did, to the thirty-six-year-old priest from Monterosso, another place where time blurred, one day of azure sky and aquamarine ocean indistinguishable from the day that preceded it and the day that followed.
“Not when you’re eighteen. I got out of there as quickly as I could, joined the service.”
Marco had, of course, done the same thing at the same age, if for a completely different reason, which in his case was the absolute expectation that he would follow his older brother, his father, and every other male relative in his father’s family into the navy.
“Which service?”
“The U.S. Air Force. I wanted to be a sniper; they wanted me to be an electrician. When they saw my scores on the rifle range, they sent me to sniper school.”
“Where did you learn to shoot so well?”
“In my backyard, when I was five.”
“Five years of age?”
She nodded. “My mother decided she wasn’t keen on child-rearing when I was two and hit the road. My father figured he could raise me any way he wanted, since there wasn’t anyone else around to tell him otherwise. And so I had a gun in my hand before I went to kindergarten.”
The Vatican Conspiracy: A completely gripping action thriller (A Marco Venetti Thriller Book 1) Page 16
