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

by Hogenkamp, Peter

  Abayd and Ibrahim reached the knoll overlooking Haus Adler after a ten-minute climb up the slope; they would have made it in five, but Abayd had to stop and vomit on two occasions. Abayd knelt over Hanza’s dead body and saw blood still oozing from the wound in his neck. He put his hand on his friend’s arm and noted that the flesh was still warm. It did not take a medical examiner to realize Hanza hadn’t been dead for long. He pulled out a detailed map of the area and used his penlight to locate his position on the leeward slope of the small peak that overlooked Haus Adler and trace out the possible escape routes.

  The most obvious was a hiking trail that descended from the summit, ending at a trailhead on the Römerstrasse. He had already considered this possibility and dispatched Yasser—who had finally returned from dumping the bodies—to investigate. Yasser had found an empty Volvo sedan parked in the lot and had remained in hiding near the car, but Abayd thought it was unlikely the sniper would return that way. They would have to make for the hiking trail—the topography was such that there was no other way to go—but he guessed they would hike in the opposite direction, toward the summit. There was a confluence of paths there that led in every direction.

  He stuffed the map back in his jacket and grabbed his phone, dialing Haddad, the pilot of the prince’s helicopter.

  “Where are you?” he barked.

  “At the airport.”

  “Is the chopper ready?”

  “Yes, on standby.”

  “Meet me at the top of the Untersberg.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “It’s restricted air space.”

  “I don’t care. Get going now.”

  “It will take me thirty minutes to get airborne.”

  “Make it twenty.”

  It was close to dawn by the time they reached the Weitwanderweg and turned toward the summit, and the darkness was slowly surrendering to the light, a reality with which Abayd was both delighted and unhappy: delighted that the dawn would make his enemies easier to locate, but unhappy that it would bring a host of interlopers to the sunlit slopes.

  Abayd didn’t like interlopers on any day, and he was in an especially murderous mood today. His arms were sore where his knife had sliced them open, and his head throbbed. He was nauseated and wanted nothing more than to stop and vomit, but there wasn’t time for such leisurely pursuits, and he jogged onward with a seasick belly. His legs were weak, and his breath stuck in his throat, but embarrassment and an intense hatred drove him on.

  He had never particularly looked forward to killing. In his mind, it was simply part of the job, one that he neither relished nor detested. But now he thirsted for blood with an anticipation that almost frightened him. His whole life had been destroyed. He had failed to protect the prince, the raison d’être of his existence, and he would either be sent to jail or buried in a dark hole in the ground; at this moment, he had no preference.

  Spurred by hatred, he turned up the hill and redoubled his pace.

  Forty-Seven

  Austria 107 wound down the steep slope, hugging the bank of the rushing river on its right-hand side. A road sign claimed they had just passed the village of Unter Lassach, but Elena would have to take its word for it; in the dim light of early morning, all she had seen was a small grouping of houses between the road and the mountains, which lifted steep and rocky into the shreds of the dawn mist. The road continued down the steep valley, twisting and turning in synchrony with the green waters of whatever river ran next to it, bringing them to their next turning point, which, according to the navigation system, was only twenty minutes away, a left onto Austria 100 just past the town at the bottom of the valley.

  Elena realized she had drifted too close to the side of the road—and the ten-meter drop into the river. She yanked the wheel, causing the tires to screech against the rutted pavement; the van swerved back onto the carriageway.

  “You want me to drive?”

  She glared at al-Sharim.

  “Keep your eyes on the road, then.”

  His perfect Arabic reminded Elena of her father, who would be getting up about now, laying down his sajjāda in the proper orientation—toward Mecca—and saying his morning prayers. She hoped some of them were for her.

  “Almost to our next turn, Elena. Just another twenty minutes.”

  She braked as a car—the first vehicle they had seen for a long time—turned onto the road from an overlook on the other side. Her hand shot toward the horn reflexively, but stopped short, arrested by some sort of deeper instinct. She cursed instead, loudly and in Arabic, bringing a smile to al-Sharim’s face.

  The sweep of headlights came up behind them. Elena glanced into the mirror, seeing two vans in the reflection. She gripped the wheel tighter for a second, but relaxed as they settled a safe distance away, swelling the now slow-moving procession weaving down the valley. Reaching for the coffee they had bought at a gas station in Zell am See, she gulped the last of it, letting its sharp flavor linger on her tongue for a moment before swallowing it down.

  “Have you been to Marco’s parents’ place before?” al-Sharim asked.

  “No, but from what he’s told me, it’s very nice.”

  The doctor digested this with the last of his coffee, tossing the cup into the back of the van, where it deflected off the stack of boxes and settled next to the lead-lined containers housing the nuclear weapons.

  “Marco’s father is a retired captain in the Italian navy; they have money.”

  Elena had started to tell al-Sharim about Marco’s family—the mother he was very close to, the father he rarely talked about—when she noticed that the van behind her was accelerating and moving into the other lane.

  “This idiot is trying to pass me.”

  The whine of the van’s big engine drowned out the hum of their tires on the road. It came level with them, but then stopped accelerating, trapping them between it and the edge of the road, which fell straight down into the river at this point.

  “Elena!”

  Al-Sharim was pointing to a sedan in front of them, which was braking hard.

  “I see it.”

  She braked sharply too, to avoid ramming the car, and twisted the wheel, trying to win the narrow gap between the car ahead and the van to her left. But the van accelerated at the last second, getting to the space she wanted before her, and they collided, metal rending in a banshee wail. Tires screamed and then exploded; glass smashed and erupted into the air; both airbags deployed with a loud bang.

  The last image that played in her head was that of her daughter, sleeping peacefully in her bed.

  Anatoly Gerashchenko sat in the backseat of the second of the two vans that had been waiting for him in Lienz. Following the progress of al-Sharim’s cell phone, he had concluded that whoever had stolen the weapons was heading south—likely into Italy—and he had assembled a team of six men and two vans to be ready for him just north of the Italian border. It hadn’t been easy, but he had managed, screaming orders into his cell phone as he pushed the motorcycle to its limit on the steep and winding roads. As always, working with good people—people who knew how to follow succinct orders—paid off; as he drove into Lienz, the team had been waiting for him at a pull-off on the outskirts of town, and they had caught up with their target as it negotiated a narrow road that followed a river down a steep valley.

  Gerashchenko braced himself as the lead van accelerated into the other lane, trapping the vehicle with the weapons. It slammed on the brakes, causing a cacophony of shrieking tires as all the vans skidded to a halt. Lifting the Vektor out of its chest holster, he waited until his vehicle had stopped completely, then yanked open the door and hopped out, the other men in the van following him. He reached the front of the UPS van and peered inside. The driver, a woman in her thirties, was unconscious; her head sagged against the inflated airbag, and a stream of blood flowed out of her mouth. The passenger airbag had also deployed; in this case, the unconscious form belonged to Dr. al-
Sharim.

  Gerashchenko ran forward; the sedan was extracting itself from the site of the collision. He inspected the car briefly; the rear left panel was dented, but the tires were intact. He gesticulated in the other direction, and the driver nodded, already heading away with a squeal of rubber. The lead van had sustained more damage, but its tires too were untouched. He leaned in to the open passenger window, locking eyes with the driver.

  “Go!”

  The van went, belching black diesel smoke. He returned to the UPS van; the occupants were still unconscious. He leveled the Vektor at the driver’s head, but didn’t pull the trigger as another thought leapt into his head. There was no guard rail on the side of the road; with a little nudge from his van, he could send them into the river, avoiding the unwanted attention a shooting would create.

  He jumped into the driver’s seat of his own van, waited for his men to get in after loading the weapons, and twisted the wheel sharply. Maneuvering the vehicle to the other side of the UPS van, he inched forward until his front bumper came into contact with the driver’s side and stomped on the gas.

  His ears ached with the noise of howling tires and grating metal. The acrid smell of burning rubber filled the interior of the van. It didn’t move at first, but he kept his foot down and rocked the wheel back and forth to find the best angle. Gaining some traction, it lurched forward, slowly at first, but gaining speed as its big engine screamed in full thrust.

  He kept his foot down on the accelerator as long as he dared, lifting it at the last moment to smash down on the brake as the UPS van toppled over the edge. His own vehicle skidded to a halt only a meter from the abyss, but he didn’t waste time getting out to confirm the kill. It was almost 6 a.m. by now, and the light was growing; they had been lucky so far, but he wasn’t one to press his luck. Shifting into reverse, he backed away from the edge, swinging the van around in the direction of the village at the base of the hill, and set off, nice and slow, like a tourist on a sightseeing trip or a worker getting paid by the hour. The river surged to his right, filling the morning with the placid tones of its coursing down the valley.

  It was the water—cold and pure from the melting glacier two thousand meters above them—that snapped Elena out of the fog in which she had been enveloped. Awareness came slowly, creeping into her brain like the slowly dawning day. By the time she was fully conscious, the van was nearly fully flooded; only her head remained above water. She groped around with her right hand, looking for the knife al-Sharim had stolen from the prince’s bodyguard. It found her, slicing into her probing finger.

  Ignoring the pain from the wound, she grabbed the hilt, using the blade to slice through the seat belts, then stabbing the airbag. The pressure released with a loud hiss, and the level of water in the van sank a little as space opened up. She leaned over, repeating the same process for al-Sharim, who remained knocked out.

  She tried the door on her side, but it was hopelessly jammed from the impact of the other van. Taking a deep breath from the now small layer of air remaining inside the vehicle, she wriggled over to the other seat, a maneuver that allowed her to see into the back of the van. The weapons for which she and the others had risked their lives were gone, but there was no time to lament their loss; there was little enough air remaining. Twisting the latch, she pushed the door wide—or tried to, but it stuck early in its swing, giving her only a few centimeters of clearance. She pummeled it with her fists, but her efforts produced nothing more than a few high-pitched creaks, which she felt more than heard, rippling through her chest with a palpable wave.

  The air was almost gone when her head hit the ceiling of the van. She gathered what she could in loud whoops, then somersaulted around and kicked at the door with all her strength. The first kick achieved nothing, but the second and third widened the gap some, and she kept at it, desperation lending a feral power to her legs. Her chest tightened, but she didn’t stop hammering the door until it was open wide enough for her to slip through.

  She rose to the top for more air, but there was none. Flipping around again, she thrust down with short strokes of her arms and squirmed through the opening, tearing a few buttons from her blouse. Safely through, she turned around, grabbed the comatose doctor, and started pulling him out, her lungs screaming at her. He was halfway through when his belly stuck—a consequence of too many heavy Austrian meals—and her arms went numb with the strain. Her lungs suggested she leave him—at least for a breath of air—but she doubted she’d be able to swim back against the current.

  With all the energy remaining in her, she tugged one last time, succeeding in freeing him from the van. Now that they were no longer anchored to the heavy vehicle, the surge of water grabbed them, carrying them away in a tumble. They broke the surface downstream; Elena gasped for air, coughing up part of the river as she did so. When her lungs no longer burned from the want of oxygen, she started for the opposite shore, stroking with one arm as she dragged al-Sharim with the other.

  The far bank of the river was rocky and steep; she scrambled up, slipping on the slick stones. Gaining a decent purchase, she yanked the doctor out of the water, leaving him supine on the rocks. His dark skin was pale, his lungs didn’t heave, and his eyes remained shuttered behind his heavy lids. She pried his mouth open to breathe some air into his starved lungs, wishing she’d listened more carefully the last time she had taken basic life support. Cupping her hands together, she pressed down on his chest, causing a small spurt of water to spill out of his mouth. She continued the compressions as the wail of sirens lifted from the valley below her.

  The second wave of compressions achieved the desired effect. She had just finished a particularly stout push, accompanied by a sharp cracking sound, when his eyes opened, and he started coughing up a lungful of water. Rolling him over onto his side, she waited as he sucked in air with gasps loud enough to drown out the roar of the river and the ever louder scream of approaching rescue vehicles.

  She helped him to a sitting position, propping him up against a moss-covered rock. It would have been sensible to give him a minute, but she could see the vehicles advancing on them and did not want to be here when they arrived.

  “Let’s go.”

  He nodded, but his legs were too weak to stand. She tried to hoist him up, but he was heavy, and her strength was mostly spent. There was only one way out of their predicament, and it was back in the river. She waded in, waist deep at the shoreline, and pulled him with her. He flopped in with a splash of water that cascaded over the rocks.

  They eased out into the stream, locked together with outstretched arms. The river was flatter and slower here for a short way, but not for long. As the vehicles screamed past them, hidden by the high bank, the current picked up speed. Strokes were no longer needed, nor possible for that matter, their free limbs being required for fending off boulders and partially submerged trees.

  Down they went, propelled by the spate, to the accompaniment of the splash of the river over the many cascades, the pounding of the water against the banks, and the frolic of the stream as it bounced off the rocks. The journey wasn’t long—although it seemed an eternity to the exhausted Elena—and they neared the bottom of the course as daylight came in earnest. Having no wish to wash up in the nearby village, she steered them toward the opposite shore and helped al-Sharim onto the bank.

  They rested for as long as they dared and helped each other to stand. A thick grove of evergreens beckoned; they made their way toward it, walking arm in arm to masquerade as lovers, until they reached the welcome cover and collapsed onto the ground.

  Forty-Eight

  It was 6 a.m. when Marco and Sarah finally reached the clubhouse of the Alpenverein, and the darkness was stained with the first tinges of light. The clubhouse was a modest but well-kept affair, constructed, like everything else in these parts, of rough-cut pine boards and white stucco. Marco helped Sarah to a seat on a bench that overlooked Salzburg, which twinkled in the early-morning gloom, and walked around to th
e rear of the building to the shed where the hang-gliders were stored. He removed the padlock with a well-placed shot from his Beretta and swung the doors open. In typical Austrian style, the aircraft were stored away in an organized fashion, with labels identifying the owner and type of each individual glider. He found the training model after a short search and dragged it out onto the grass, then switched on the outdoor lamps.

  He hadn’t assembled a hang-glider since he’d entered the seminary, but he assumed it was similar to riding a bicycle after a long lay-off. As Sarah elevated her broken ankle on the bench and watched over his shoulder, mouthing the occasional recommendation, he pulled the folded wings out of the canvas bag, extended them, and fixed the battens. He lifted the keel underneath the sail and secured it into position, then found the rigging stored in a zippered pouch and started stringing it up. The tandem model was slightly different from the one he had used before, but with a few tries, he managed to get it right—or at least he hoped he had. As a final step, he attached the flight canopies and double-checked all the joints and wiring.

  As the light continued to build, he carried the aircraft the short distance to the top of the runway, then went back to get Sarah before returning to the storage shed. He found what he was looking for right away.

  She pointed to his armload of gear. “What’s that?”

  “Helmets and emergency parachutes.”

  “Brimming with confidence, I see.”

  “You’re welcome to walk.”

  The second thoughts didn’t commence until Marco had wriggled into the flight canopy underneath Sarah and started the pre-flight checklist. Although it was true he had been a competent pilot, he had never approached the level of expertise required to fly a tandem aircraft, even at the peak of his career. Worse yet, the director of the seminary had turned down his request to continue his hobby when he was a novitiate, citing “unreasonable danger and expense,” which meant that he hadn’t flown a hang-glider in almost fifteen years.