“Yes sir,” he replied.
“I want you to memorize my phone number.” Kevin recited it to him and made Ali repeat it back to him. “Call me with any information you get, understand?”
Ali nodded.
“Now, give me your phone.”
Ali pulled a cell phone from his shirt pocket and handed it over. Kevin flipped it open, removed the SIM card, and handed the phone back to the young man. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out 200 euros. He handed the money to the boy, who hesitated, but then took the bills, putting them in his pocket.
“Take the money and don’t get into any more trouble. Next time it may not turn out so well.” Kevin led him to the door.
Ali stared at Kevin with big, questioning eyes. “I … thank you, sir.” He reached up and put his arms around Kevin, then broke away.
Kevin opened the door to his apartment and followed Ali down the corridor to the main entrance. He watched as the teenager scampered away, turning every few yards to look back at Kevin, until he disappeared down the path leading to St. Peter’s Square.
When Ali was out of sight, Kevin retrieved the SIM card he’d taken from the airport thugs and put it on the desk alongside the one from the boy. He placed the first card into his Italian cell phone and scrolled through the numbers. Only four calls on the thug’s card, three to the same number. Kevin recognized the country code as Spain and transcribed the numbers onto his laptop. Then he inserted the boy’s SIM card into the phone and found over a dozen numbers. Comparing the numbers on Ali’s phone to the ones he’d transcribed from the thug’s phone, bingo! A match. From Spain. Kevin determined it was time to impose again on his personal CIA mole and friend, Toby Beck. Listening in on cell phone lines may have been outside the wherewithal of the Vatican, but it certainly wasn’t of the CIA and NSA.
Kevin dialed. Toby picked up right away.
“Hey, buddy. How’s it going?” Kevin could be as facile and nonchalant as any of these CIA guys.
“Good. How’s it going for you?”
“Need your help again,” Kevin said. “I’ve got some phone numbers in Spain from two sets of bad guys. Can we get NSA to monitor for some of the usual suspect keywords?”
Kevin heard a slow whistle at the other end of the line.
“You’re escalating this about three notches, Kev.”
“I know. Sorry. Can you do it?”
A deep sigh. “What the fuck, send ’em over,” Toby said.
Chapter Eleven
Rome, Italy
The next morning, Kevin went for an early morning run. As busy as he was in Rome, he was keeping his physical routine. In Washington, it was easier: working out with the kids on the basketball court. At the Vatican, it was proving a challenge.
Returning home for breakfast, his phone rang. When he picked up, he nearly stopped breathing. It was Katie.
“Kevin, I’m back in D.C. I wanted to apologize for the way we left each other.”
“I understand, Katie. What’s that old cliché from the movies? Love means never having to say you’re sorry?”
“From that movie we saw together, Love Story,” Katie said flatly.
Kevin smiled. “Oh, yeah. Well, then, no apology needed, not this time, or ever, OK?”
“I don’t want to lose you as a friend.” Her voice was charged.
“You won’t, Katie. Like the sun at the break of dawn, I keep coming back, don’t I?”
Flustered, Katie mumbled something. “I just need you to stay my friend.”
“You won’t lose me. I’m praying for you, and all the best with your marriage. You deserve it.”
“I’m glad we cleared the air on this, Kevin, and I need your advice on something else.”
“Sure.”
“I think I told you about this major new client of mine. The one I went to Brussels for.
His name is Greg Maggio. I had dinner with him last night—”
Dinner? Kevin thought. Do you often have tête-à-tête dinners with your male clients?
“—and he asked me about some large money transfers, like how could I help him quietly transfer a large sum of money without getting the authorities suspicious.”
“So?”
“There are rules, and this comes close to the edge. He’s my biggest client and if he’s legit I don’t want him to just go poof! Some other law firm will grab him.”
“How can I help?”
“I know you still have connections within the intelligence community. If I give you the name of his company, can you get someone to discreetly check it out?”
Kevin hesitated. “Katie, my best source is Toby Beck, but I’ve been leaning on him a lot lately.”
After a brief moment of silence, Katie said, “I understand. Forget I asked.”
“No, leave it with me. I’ll work something out. What’s the company name?”
“Consolidated Investors United. A pure bullshit name he dreamt up for an LLC we registered for him. Thanks, Kevin.”
Seeing another call coming in, Kevin interrupted her. Area code 703. Northern Virginia. “I’m sorry, Katie. I’ve got to take this call.”
“OK. Talk soon.”
Without small talk, Toby got to the point right away. “I got to tell you, buddy, I don’t know exactly what you’re doing over there, but you might be in over your head.”
“How’s that?”
Toby continued, “We intercepted a couple of calls. The numbers you gave me are registered to a cleric named ‘Carlos Alameda’, goes by the name ‘Columbo.’ NSA approved my request to listen in. Man, this stuff gets messy. I’m looking at the transcripts now.”
“Send them to me?” Kevin asked.
“I can’t. My sweet ass is in enough trouble as it is. I don’t want to push the boundaries here.” Toby went silent for a spell. Kevin wondered if the connection had been lost. Then Toby went on. “Are you alone in your unit?”
“Yes, of course. Why?”
“Go to your laptop and dial in this URL.” Kevin did as his friend asked and powered up the Dell. As Toby read off the address, Kevin typed it in.
When he’d finished typing, a blue screen appeared. A series of numbers dotted the screen at a rapid pace, then abruptly stopped. A white box formed.
“Type this code in the box,” Toby continued. “Once you do that, I’ll be able to control your screen.” Toby read off the code.
“What?” Kevin responded, typing it in as he spoke.
What was on the screen faded, replaced by an overhead image of an outdoor café in filtered sunlight, tables with patrons sipping drinks, palm trees, white jacketed waiters, and a nearby pool with frolicking bathers. Kevin gazed at the image, puzzled. “Am I supposed to know what this is?”
“Since you already gave us some useful intelligence, and you might be able to tell us more, I got permission to share it with you. It’s the pool area of the St. Georges Hotel in Beirut. It’s a satellite shot.”
Kevin continued to study the screen, not connecting the dots in his head. What is this? Then the screen’s image zoomed in on two men at one of the café tables.
Toby went on. “The hunky fellow on the left with a cigarette in his mouth is Dov Leibotski, Israel’s deputy intelligence director. We can’t ID the other guy; his face is blocked by a fedora, probably on purpose. Take a closer look.”
The image zoomed in to reveal a grainy picture of a dark-skinned face, partially obscured by the brim of his hat. “Who’s that?” Toby asked.
Kevin kept looking and shook his head. “Sorry, Toby. No idea.”
“Well, Israel won’t tell us anything, which spells trouble. We think it’s Carlos Alameda. We traced one of the phone numbers you sent me to him. He was talking to someone with a heavily encrypted phone number. We couldn’t figure it out. We know he called the Vatican, but we don’t know who in the Vatican.”
“How do you know he called somebody? I don’t see a phone,” Kevin said.
“The phone’s in his pock
et.”
“You can track a phone in his pocket?”
“Don’t ask. Keep your eyes on the screen.”
A Google Maps app with an image of a blue earth now appeared and zoomed in rapidly on another city: Teheran, Iran. A close-up of a street became visible, then changed to sand colored buildings in what seemed the outskirt of Teheran, busy streets and minarets dotting the landscape. As the picture zoomed in, an image of a man wearing a coat and hat, entering a tall building, formed. “That’s the same guy from Beirut,” Toby said. “We have this guy who talks to the Vatican, then meets with an Israeli Intelligence official, then he trots over to Tehran to chat with one of leaders of the Supreme Security Council of Iran. That building is where the Council’s office is located.”
“Toby, I met with Cardinal Porter in the Vatican. There’s a fringe group wanting to start a nuclear war. To fulfill some Biblical prophecy,” Kevin said.
“And they’re well underway. They might succeed. Let me give you some background,” Toby continued. “It’s no secret that Israel has nuclear weapons. The French built their nuclear facility at Dimona back in the sixties. Today the threat is Iran. Remember that message your guys intercepted that had the word ‘trigger’ in it?”
“Sure. You figured out that it also said something like ‘satellites in position’.”
“Right,” Toby said. “Putting this all together, the ‘trigger’ must be a reference to a nuclear trigger, a special device that sets off a nuclear explosion. There are only a few countries with these triggers, including the U.S. and Israel. Iran needs them to activate nuclear warheads.”
“Geez. Scary stuff,” Kevin said.
“It gets better. One scenario is that the Iranians have lassoed a source for getting these triggers.”
“Well, so far as I know, the Vatican doesn’t have nuclear triggers. What source, Toby?”
“My best guess: Pakistan. Pakistan has got enough nukes to obliterate half the world. Pakistan could always use some cold, hard cash. Look at your screen again.”
Kevin watched as a map of Iran appeared.
“The three blinking lights are the suspected nuclear sites, Kevin.” An arrow swirled around the screen and stopped. “This is Natanz, a small village; another one is over here; and the third is the Fordo facility, near the Holy City of Qum.” As Toby identified the locales, the blinking arrow darted like a firefly around the screen. “We think the reason the Israelis are mum is they’re planning a preemptive attack on a nuclear assembly facility in Iran. Only one of these facilities houses the triggers, but the Israelis don’t know which one.”
“Where does the Vatican fit in all this?”
“That coded message that your cardinal buddy gave you had the first clue. It mentioned a trigger and a date. Our guys think this Alameda character knows where the triggers are going. He’s trying to sell that information to the Israelis.”
“So why did he visit Tehran? That doesn’t make sense.”
Toby sighed. “Yeah, we haven’t figured that out either. Working on it. Right now, the big worry is that the Israelis would bomb the shit out of the trigger site so the Iranians can’t build a nuclear bomb. That’s why the Israelis aren’t talking to us. If Israel were to attack Iran, we wouldn’t have known about it in advance, which gives us Washington’s favorite state of affairs: plausible deniability.”
“Great! I should have stayed home. The parish priest life is starting to look just fine.”
“Well, it seems that you’ve been called on to do a lot more than an average parish priest.”
“What’s your take, Toby?”
“Have you considered that your higher-ups may be playing you?”
Kevin thought about that for a few seconds. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got. “Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know. But I suspect they’re not telling you everything.”
If that’s even remotely true, Kevin thought, I’m outta here. His next thought was even more chilling. What if I’m being framed, set up as a scapegoat for something?
“I’ll look into it,” Kevin finally said.
“I’m sure you will, pal, but I’ve got another problem. Given what we uncovered here, I can’t sit on it. I have no choice but to send this stuff to Defense and the White House, especially since June 3rd, the date on the encrypted note you sent me, is only a couple of days away. Since the lead came from you, your name will be smeared all over this.”
Kevin shook his head. Damn! “Do what you have to, Toby.”
Kevin hung up, hoping the pause and quiet would calm him. It didn’t. Cardinal Porter had mentioned the Israel-Iran war which Opus Mundi might use to justify fulfilling a prophecy and taking over the Vatican. But could the Vatican, or Opus Mundi, for that matter, be involved in this, in starting the war? If so, had they told him everything? And what was his role in it?
Toby’s questions about his role in this rang loud and clear. Was he being played? How could the whole thing possibly have eluded him? His temper was now ready to burst, and he knew how dangerous that could be. There was only one way to get some answers: Cardinal Porter.
While he was still fuming, his blood pressure rising, Kevin’s mind quickly turned to Katie’s dilemma. He couldn’t ask Toby for anything else right now, so he decided to do some research himself. He googled Greg Maggio. Precious little came up. He was a member of the Sons of Italy organization and had been involved in various import/export businesses that mostly traded with Italy. A couple of awards, a wife, then a divorce. Nothing else. Consolidated Investors United produced precisely nothing.
Kevin closed his laptop and went back to stewing about why he was here in Rome.
Chapter Twelve
Rome, Italy
Kevin always had to have the last word.
“I quit,” he said as he walked into Cardinal Porter’s office. Without being invited, he’d barged in and flung himself in the chair facing Porter’s desk. He took note of the ornate, gaudy trappings, a gold and white Vatican flag, a Louis XVI desk, an assortment of gaudy baubles and gewgaws, high ceilings, and a communications array on the desk that’d make a general proud. Kevin thought he was perfect in his new role. It was good to be a prince of the Church.
“What’s going on, Kevin?” Porter asked, sitting down at the desk. The cardinal was dressed in a simple black cassock, a ribbon of red buttons signaling his lofty post in the hierarchy. His gray hair was combed immaculately, and was a cloud obscuring his blue eyes.
“I don’t have all the details, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. I want out. I can’t do an assignment like this half-assed, and that’s how it’s turning out.” Kevin felt his anger festering at a dangerously high level. He was fighting to keep it in check.
“Calm down. Please.” Porter inhaled deeply. “What specifically is bothering you?”
“I’ll tell you, cardinal. I think I was brought here as some kind of scapegoat or distraction … I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ve been played like a puppet. I need the truth!”
“And what truth would that be?”
“For one, who are the bad guys? So far, I’ve been told that a gaggle of clerics in Spain are waiting for a war—which they’ll use as a cover to take over the Church. Well, there’s more to it than that, and you know it. Now, thanks to Father Kevin Thrall, the White House is involved and my friends in high places think I’m being played. So I need you to come clean. The entire story. Or I’m out of here.”
Pursing his lips Porter started tapping his fingers on the desk. Finally, he spoke slowly and deliberately. “You are not being played. You were being tested, son. What you have uncovered in such a short time was your first test. Yes, we knew about the threat from Seville. But we don’t know who’s giving the orders in the Curia. We would have told Washington in due course, but there is no assurance that anyone, at this point, can stop the Israelis.”
“Where does the Church fit in all this?”
“As I told you
the last time we met, Opus Mundi wants Israel to attack Iran to start a nuclear holocaust. In their twisted psycho-drama reasoning, this will trigger the apocalypse when Jesus, or someone posing as Jesus, will return to earth. They believe God is upset at the Church for becoming so liberal. To them, the Church has strayed from where it began and God will punish the liberal leaders unless corrective action is taken—by them. Their solution and strategy is to replace the leadership, by force if necessary, to steer us back on the righteous path—as they see it.”
Kevin stared in disbelief. “Let me get this straight, Opus Mundi is prepared to start a nuclear war over liberalism in the Church?”
“The Church is a constituency of over a billion people. The vast majority will need to be convinced their new leadership is the right one. They’ll prove it by pointing at the false prophets and the corruption in the Catholic Church. The war is a necessary, integral part of the prophecy—remember Matthew 24.”
“‘For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,’” Kevin recited from memory. For a few seconds he closed his eyes before speaking again. “Are we talking about a direct attack on the pope?”
“We don’t know. But this is the group who masterminded the 1981 assassination attempt of John Paul II. You can take it from there.” Again, Porter started drumming his fingers on the desktop. Clearly he was agitated.
“Why was I was being tested? Why was I kept in the dark?”
“We hadn’t planned on telling you so soon.” Porter leaned back and took a deep breath. “Kevin, there’s a deeper and more sinister mystery lurking. It’s highly secret, and it’s the reason we wanted you here. We needed to test your skills in action first, before exposing you to the big one. You passed with flying colors.”
Gee, isn’t that great. It all felt ridiculously juvenile—this being tested. Kevin still couldn’t grasp the real reason he’d been brought to Rome. If his only friends in the Church, including the man he respected more than anyone, were playing games with him, who could he trust? Kevin’s confidence in the Church was slipping into a dark abyss.
“Anything else to tell me, Eminence?” Kevin asked.
The Secret of Fatima Page 8
