The Seventh Commandment

by Tom Fox

  Whether in conformation or solace, Ben squeezed her hand back.

  ‘Indeed,’ Heinrich confirmed. ‘We caught that bit on video. Ironically, in a way it was your choosing to leave our custody and getting yourselves shot at a second time that helped us determine these men’s identities and forge links back to Durré.’ He permitted a moment of silence.

  ‘There are others,’ he eventually continued. A finger hit the keyboard and a new face appeared on the monitor. ‘Bartolomeo Scarsi, a man with a background in civic engineering who went into civic thievery instead.’ Another finger press, and another headshot. ‘Yiannis Nikolaidis. We just managed to get his identity secured a few minutes ago. No details yet, but I’m quite sure it will fit within the general profile of all these men with whom Emil Durré has been surrounding himself.’

  ‘This is amazing work,’ Ben said, his eyes still fixed on the screen and his hand still encapsulating Angelina’s. ‘You’ve found all these men so quickly.’

  ‘Except we haven’t actually found them,’ Heinrich answered. ‘Any of them. All we’ve been able to do is link them together. The homes of each have been checked out by the Polizia di Stato, but all of them have been empty. Look like they haven’t been lived in for months.’ Heinrich stood a centimetre taller. ‘It appears for all the world like the whole lot of them have gone underground. Getting ready for something.’

  Suddenly Angelina felt the temperature of Ben’s hand drop. In an instant it was cold and clammy.

  ‘CE 937 LK.’ Ben spouted out the numbers and letters robotically.

  Major Heinrich peered into his suddenly distant eyes. ‘Excuse me, Dr Verdyx?’

  ‘CE 937 LK,’ Ben repeated again, then, after squeezing Angelina’s hand, let it go. He leaned over Heinrich’s desk and grabbed a pen, jotting the number down on to the edge of a piece of paper next to the computer. ‘This may help you to find them. It’s the number plate of the car that two of these men,’ he pointed to the monitor, ‘were sitting in when St John’s burst into flame. We spotted them there, and saw them drive away.’

  Heinrich picked up the page on which Ben had written the number, looked it over, then passed it silently to a nearby officer who was close enough to have been in earshot and clearly knew what to do with it.

  ‘We’ll check it out,’ Heinrich said as the other Guardsman walked away, ‘but they’ll surely have ditched the car by now. What’s most important is that we figure out exactly what it is they’re planning to do next. This all may not have started as terrorism, but they’ve just set fire to four of the most magnificent structures in Rome. We don’t know yet if anyone was inside, but we’ve escalated from dyeing a river to shooting at citizens and burning down cathedrals. Whatever’s next, wherever it takes place, could be a lot worse.’

  Angelina took a step closer to his desk. ‘We may not know the what,’ she said boldly, ‘but we definitely know the where. And what’s more, we know the when.’

  Heinrich stiffened, his eyes an urgent question mark.

  Angelina turned to Thomás. The folded page containing the full text of the prophecy was still in his pocket.

  ‘Show him.’

  PART EIGHT

  Dawn

  75

  St Peter’s Square

  Ninety minutes before daybreak

  The circular piazza of St Peter was, for the second time in as many days, closed. The vast public space Bernini had designed to represent the two arms of Mother Church reaching out to embrace all who would draw near, was broadcasting a different message in these hours before dawn broke. Stay away.

  The whole square had been cordoned off by the Swiss Guard after Major Hans Heinrich had spent most of the night with Angelina, Ben and their companion, discussing all they had to offer on the situation facing them. Far more unanswered questions remained than Heinrich could ever feel comfortable with, but he was suitably convinced that the piazza was to be the locus of whatever the fifth plague turned out to be. He’d ordered the whole space to be made inaccessible, reallocating the Guard’s operational teams to vastly increase their presence on the square, and employing movable metal fencing to block off the interconnecting open spaces that normally made St Peter’s so freely accessible to all who wished to enter.

  Beyond the barricades and posted Guardsmen, however, a crowd was already growing. Throngs of people, in a city with more than an average sprinkling of religious consciousness, had also interpreted ‘the resting place of the Rock’ as meaning the resting place of St Peter – the apostle whom Jesus Christ had called ‘the rock on which I will build my church’, just as Ben Verdyx had reminded Heinrich during their discussions. These throngs were drawn, even in the pre-morning darkness and despite the terror that had now well and truly seized the city, towards the massive structure built atop Peter’s tomb. The Guard stood firm, holding them at bay, but the size of the crowd was swelling. They breathed out anxiety to see what was next in store for their city, for them, and for those who were religious, perhaps for their faith.

  What was next in store . . .

  That was the question Heinrich still couldn’t answer. As far as he could see it, there were two realistic possibilities. Either the next ‘plague’ was going to bring danger, or desecration. The pattern thus far had followed those patterns. The river had been a desecration of the memory of Old Testament history, which billions held as sacred. The darkness had followed the same course. But with the fog that had emerged from the manipulated sewer system, the pattern had shifted from desecration to danger. There was no history of fog as a miracle or plague that Heinrich could think of. It appeared to have been designed to cause disarray and fear, which it had successfully done. And then the burning of the four structures – that act had endangered many. Destruction, fully embraced.

  As for what was to come here at St Peter’s, Heinrich could only assume it would be worse.

  The thought was sufficient to cause a shudder even in the Major’s sturdy frame. St John Lateran and the other buildings that had gone up in flames at sundown were treasures, and contained further treasures within, but nothing compared to the wealth of history and sanctity nestled within a half-kilometre radius of the obelisk at the centre of St Peter’s Square. There was the basilica itself, one of the greatest architectural works of all time, filled with relics of the saints and the capital monument of a faith that had spanned the globe for the whole of modern history. The Sistine Chapel was mere metres away, containing some of the most recognisable art in the world. Then there were the cavernous museums with their manuscripts, sculptures and treasures that amounted to one of the most important collections on earth, alongside libraries, archives, and . . .

  The list was too long, and the thought of an act of destruction here almost incomprehensible. It could not be allowed.

  And all that, without even mentioning that Vatican City was home to the Supreme Pontiff himself. Of course, Heinrich had already liaised with the Pope’s personal detail, and the Pontiff himself had been secreted away from Vatican City hours ago, placed in a helicopter and flown to Castel Gandolfo – a more isolated site, where security had nevertheless been doubled.

  Now, Heinrich was left in a position to do what he loathed more than almost anything else: wait. He did not know what to expect. Only that it was coming, soon, and that his men needed to be at the ready for anything.

  76

  At the edge of St Peter’s Square

  Angelina, Ben and Thomás had spent the darkest hours of the night with Heinrich and his team. They’d gone through the prophecy till they could go through it no more, dissecting every potential meaning they could discern. There was certainly more there, they could feel it; but they had reached their limits. Exhausted minds were not clear minds, and what they hadn’t determined yet would have to wait.

  Now, as morning drew near, they had become more a hindrance to Heinrich than a help. It was time for him to put teams in motion, to order men to new locations, and prepare for the eventualities ahead. T
he theories were going to come to life and response was necessary, and there was nothing Angelina or Ben could do to assist with that.

  Heinrich had given them a radio as he’d beckoned a junior Guardsman to see them out. ‘Keep it with you, out there.’ He’d surmised, correctly, that they had no intention of going farther from the piazza than the barriers his men had erected. ‘And keep your eyes open. If you see anything suspicious, anything at all, radio it through. That broadcasts straight to me.’ He’d given all three of them an intent, still look before they’d left – silent thanks for their assistance from a man who was still coming to grips with the weight of just what might lie ahead.

  Now, they wandered the periphery of the square, milling amongst a crowd that multiplied in size with the passing minutes. It was already enormous, the crush multiplied by the fact that St Peter’s Square was designed to hold rallies of people inside it, not outside. Space there was more limited, and people were already flooding over streets and pavements.

  Angelina walked at the front of their trio, Ben and Thomás a few paces behind. They’d been talking for so many hours, it felt good to all of them to have the opportunity not to speak – just to observe the crowd, to ‘keep their eyes open’ as Heinrich had instructed, and to gather their own thoughts.

  Angelina kept them close to the pillars of the colonnades. Gooseflesh momentarily re-emerged when she took notice of the view through them, into the square, and remembered that the last time she’d seen this view she was running at full bore from two men with guns, a fresh bullet wound in her leg, wondering if she would make it out of the piazza alive. The bandaged wound beneath her borrowed jeans throbbed anew, joining in the memory.

  She forced her thoughts away from that encounter, lest emotion and fear come back to inhibit her. There are more important things to worry about in the present.

  She swept her gaze across the scene as a whole. The Guard, as Major Heinrich had indicated, was out in full force. In fact, it was more force than Angelina had ever seen before, even for major papal addresses. Even, if her memory served her well, for the election of the current Pontiff, at which she’d been present ‘for reasons of historical and cultural interest’. Today the Guardsmen were there in their blue-and-yellow billows, halberds in hand, at every pillar and post. Then there were rows in fatigues, armed with far more modern weapons, and she knew that many of the suit-clad men milling about in the square were Guardsmen in plainclothes, and that others would be out amongst the crowd behind her. It was as large a team as Angelina imagined the Swiss Guard could assemble. She didn’t know how many men actually served in the papal force, but this had to be close to the majority of them. Heinrich was clearly taking no chances.

  Not that Angelina could fault him. The unknown was the worst kind of opponent, and what they’d witnessed over the past two days gave no reason for confidence or calm.

  She turned to face the crowd. A sea of bodies, arriving when they should be fleeing. Yet amongst them Angelina saw nothing out of the ordinary. No one looked fiendish or conspiratorial, as if she would be able to spot such things on sight. Nothing sent her into alert mode.

  Which meant she was left to dwell on the one question that ate at her. What are we all here for?

  They’d worked out the place, the time. The flow of the ‘plagues’ had led them to what she was confident was the right spot and moment. But the what . . . she couldn’t find an answer.

  What could possibly block out the sun and stop the dawn from coming?

  77

  Balcony of the Hotel Palazzo Cardinal Cesi

  Across the street from St Peter’s Square

  Emil had hired the shockingly overpriced hotel room in the Palazzo Cardinal Cesi for the solitary reason that the establishment’s ‘Luxury King Suites’ had small balconies that offered one thing almost no others in the world could: balcony viewing of St Peter’s Square, from as close to ‘across the street’ as the urban geography allowed. The view was, exactly as the reception manager had said it would be, ‘breath-taking’. Emil drew back two heavy burgundy curtains and pulled open the double doors, immediately inundated with the sounds of crowds and traffic, and overwhelmed by the vast, illuminated dome that appeared to rise out of the earth so close in front of him that he felt he could reach out and touch it.

  Three storeys below, between the hotel and the dome, was the Piazza San Pietro, its colonnades framing it with perfect symmetry. He could make out the crest of the obelisk at its centre.

  And the fact that it was empty.

  Emil smiled and looked more directly down. The crowd outside the perimeter of the square was massive, gathered all around its edges in expectation, illuminated by morning street lamps and the headlights of passing cars. God, he would love to be down there, to take in their mystified chatter and the fearful, tense atmosphere. He was as excited as they were – more so, because he, alone among the thousands crushed shoulder to shoulder below, knew what was coming next.

  But of course he couldn’t join them. He couldn’t take the chance that his identity might have become known through the events of the past two days. Calla and Verdyx had evaded killing and capture, and had managed to off Laurence in the process. Emil felt bad at the old man’s departure. That wasn’t a noble way to go. But Laurence had served his purpose, as far as Emil’s work was concerned, and at the end of it all his death meant one less claim on what they would take.

  So, no going down to taste the air of anticipation in the crowd. But the view from the balcony was an excellent second choice option. Emil could see them perfectly, and found himself equally disgusted and thrilled by the sight. The people were behaving just as he’d known they would behave: like sheep, flocking, bleating.

  Blind, and fools, the lot of them.

  Gathered to behold what could never happen, fervently believing in the impossibility Emil had so creatively sold them. If the fact that they were here wasn’t proof of humanity’s fallibility and idiocy, he didn’t know what else possibly could be. It had taken him some significant work, yes, but he had managed to convince masses of a modern populace to abandon their morning plans, leave their homes and postpone their travels to work, to assemble in a spot he’d chosen, to gape expectantly after something that the rational among them couldn’t possibly believe would actually happen. And yet, they were here.

  Sheep.

  And around the sheep, holding them at bay, security. So much security! As Emil had hoped, the number of Guardsmen shifted from their usual posts to supplement control of the square was significant. They stood in their new positions, armed, and so very focused.

  Though, in reality, what they all really were was distracted.

  It was absolutely, gloriously perfect. Emil sighed a breath of relief mingled with anticipation, then walked back through the double doors into the opulent suite he’d occupied for all of fifteen minutes.

  As he approached its exit, he retrieved his mobile from his breast pocket. The line connected after only two rings.

  ‘It’s time,’ he said calmly. ‘Move.’

  78

  Eighteen hours earlier

  The island of Pantelleria

  305 nautical miles south of Rome

  It came as a rumbling that disturbed the quiet of afternoon. A vibration in floors throughout the village, and then throughout the island as a whole. Cups rattled in cupboards and a few plates fell from lintels and shattered on wooden floors.

  A lull followed, and the people collectively breathed their relief. This happened, now and then. Always a touch nerve-racking, but part of life on the island. The fragments of shattered dishes began to be swept up, life moved again towards normal.

  Moments later, the world exploded.

  For the first time in more than 150 years, Montagna Grande, the dormant volcano at the island’s heart, blew apart at its seams. Impossible depths of topsoil, stone and ancient rock burst away from the mountain’s peak and flew into the sky with a force far greater than most nuclear blasts. The
orange lava that propelled it came like a geyser from the heart of the earth and rose like a pillar to heaven. As the column spread, streams of molten, fiery rock arced away from its core and began to fall back to the ground with the speed of rain and the weight of stone.

  The mountain lashed its tongue of fire into the sky without cessation, molten lava pouring down its slopes as great belches of gas and ash were blasted upwards at well over a hundred and eighty kilometres per hour. The small island itself was transformed from green pastures to a great red, flowing mass that consumed livestock, homes, villages. Even the small airport disappeared under the deadly flow of new rock.

  And the geyser of fire and ash came. And it came. And it came.

  79

  Beneath the Piazza Mastai, Rome

  3.1 kilometres south-east of Vatican City

  Underground, roughly centred beneath the picturesque three-tiered fountain that stood at the centre of the small piazza two storeys above, Emil’s men received their order.

  ‘Positions,’ the foreman said softly to another member of his crew, who went and whispered the same to others gathered in the dark subterranean space.

  The foreman turned to the two men behind him.

  ‘The call just came in,’ he said to Ridolfo. The ugly man nodded, then swivelled to face André. They had one job left to do, and it had to be done now.

  And it had to be done right. For an instant Ridolfo was worried whether his friend might cause them to fail again, but he shook away the worry.

  Even André wouldn’t be able to miss a man at point-blank range.

  Once Ridolfo and André had scuttled through the side tunnel his men had dug over the past months, connected to the legitimate access corridor that led to the surface, the foreman turned back to his men. They were, one by one, moving to the positions determined beforehand for each of them.