“We needed your help back then, and despite everything, you agreed to help us,” the cardinal told him. “What I need to know is, how do you feel now? Has anything changed? Are you still willing to fight for us?”
Reilly sensed an opening. It didn’t change his answer. “My job is to make sure guys like him don’t get a chance to hurt others ever again. Innocent people, like the people who died outside these walls today. I don’t really care what’s in those trunks, Your Eminence. I just want to lock this guy up or put him six feet underground if that’s his preference.”
Brugnone held his gaze for a moment, then his internal deliberations seemed to reach a verdict as he nodded to himself, slowly. “Well then, Agent Reilly … I think we need to let you get on with it, don’t we?”
After everything that had happened, and with his emotions still frayed, Reilly wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “What are you saying? I thought I was under arrest.”
Brugnone brushed his comment away. “What happened this morning started here, inside Vatican City. How we deal with it is our business … and as you know, we also have some influence in what happens beyond these walls.”
“Does your influence extend as far as Federal Plaza? Cause I think they want my badge back.”
Brugnone gave him a knowing, confident smile. “In this matter, I don’t think there are many areas that are outside our sphere of influence.” His tone turned firm. “I want you to be part of this investigation, Agent Reilly. I want you to find this man and put an end to his savagery. But I also need to know that you’ll be looking out for our interests, that if you were to find whatever it is he’s after, you’ll bring it to me first, regardless of all other considerations … or influences.” His last word had an edge to it.
Reilly felt its jab. “What do you mean?”
“Some of your associates—or friends—may have other ideas, in terms of what to do with a find of historic proportions.” Again, one word—friends—came out more pointedly.
Reilly thought he understood. “You’re worried about Tess?”
Brugnone shrugged. “Anyone would be a concern in a situation like this. That’s why I need to know that you’ll have the Church’s interests at heart, above all others. Do I have your word on this, Agent Reilly?”
Reilly pondered the cardinal’s words. On the one hand, he felt like he was being blackmailed. On the other, it wasn’t like he was being asked to do something he wouldn’t have done anyway. And besides, right now, his priority was taking down the man who’d caused the carnage. Whatever was in those trunks was of secondary importance. A distant second.
“You have my word.”
Brugnone acknowledged him with a slight nod of his head. “Then you need to get to work. I’ll talk to Delpiero and to the officials at the Polizia. And to your superiors. You can take it from there.”
“Thank you.” Reilly extended his hand graciously, unsure if a handshake was the appropriate move here.
Brugnone cupped it firmly in both of his. “Find him. And stop him.”
“It won’t be easy. He got what he came for … and with that Registry, he’s got a head start on us. If it’s got any information in it about what happened to this Conrad, then that’s where we’ll find our bomber. But he’s got it and we don’t.”
Brugnone cracked a ghost of a smile. “I wouldn’t go that far.” He let the words hang teasingly, then said, “You see, it’s been clear to us for quite a while that the archive was becoming far too large to administer using traditional methods. We have over eighty-five linear kilometers of shelves, all of them just heaving with material. So, about eight years ago, we initiated a electronic archiving project. We’re almost halfway through scanning the entire collection.”
Reilly’s face brightened slightly. He already knew what Brugnone would answer, but he said, “I’m hoping you’re not doing it alphabetically.”
“We’re doing it according to perceived relevance,” the cardinal replied with a knowing smile. “And the Templars—especially after what happened three years ago—well, they’re hardly irrelevant, now, are they?”
Chapter 15
The rest of the afternoon was a chaotic and noisy blur. Reilly and Tess spent it in the offices of the Gendarmeria, where a temporary command post had been set up in a large conference room. The frenzy of activity around them didn’t abate for a second as Tess gave a full, detailed statement of everything that had happened to her, and Reilly made sure the local cops weren’t missing a trick in trying to find her kidnapper.
Much to Reilly’s relief, they seemed to be on the ball. A high-priority BOLO—short for “be on the lookout”—was issued to the country’s various law enforcement authorities, and alerts were flashed to all of the country’s main ports of entry. Interpol was making sure the request was properly relayed across neighboring countries. The information on it was, however, limited. The bomber, who was assumed to be an Iranian using a forged passport of some other country, had managed to avoid looking directly at any CCTV cameras within the Vatican. The only images they’d been able to pull up of him so far were partly shielded and grainy. Forensic teams had been dispatched to try to recover any fingerprints of his from the archive, the BMW, and the battered Popemobile, in the hope that those would help lead to his identification, while their colleagues at the antiterrorist brigade’s labs were examining the defused bomb for anything that would help track its provenance.
They also added Simmons to the alert, given the possibility that, like Tess and Sharafi, he’d also been somehow brought to Rome. An urgent request for his passport info was flashed to the embassy; in the meantime, Tess helped the detectives dig up some photos of him off the Internet.
Reilly liaised with the Bureau’s legal attache in Istanbul, briefing him about the need to locate Sharafi’s wife and daughter and inform them of what had happened. He also asked the legat to get the local cops to track down Sharafi’s snitch of a research assistant, although he wasn’t holding his breath on that one.
While all this was going on, over at the archives, Bescondi instructed as many scholars as he could muster to go through the scans of the Registry in search of any reference to a Templar knight by the name of Conrad.
Reilly did his best to ignore the obvious irritation of Delpiero and the Polizia detectives concerning his continued presence. Brugnone’s intercession on his behalf hadn’t exactly gone down well. The local cops didn’t make any effort to disguise the fact that they thought he ought to be languishing behind bars instead of working alongside them. Reilly faced a couple of tense flare-ups with them, but he restrained himself and avoided making a difficult situation even harder. He also tried to be in their faces as little as possible by spending most of the afternoon burning up the phone lines, getting blasted by his boss for his going solo, before filling in various section chiefs at Federal Plaza, Langley, and Fort Meade in advance of a coordinated conference call once everyone was up to speed.
By sundown, there was little more they could do. Alerts were in place, investigators were scrutinizing immigration records and CCTV footage, lab technicians were plugging away at their high-tech stations, and scholars were poring over medieval writings. The waiting game was on.
TILDEN DROOOED REILLY AND TESS at the Sofitel, a discreet mid-sized hotel the embassy frequently used for visitors. They were registered under false names and given two connecting rooms on the top floor. Two plainclothes cops were stationed outside the hotel in an unmarked Lancia on the Via Lombardia. It was a quiet, one-way street, which made their babysitting task a bit easier.
The rooms were spacious and had a great outlook over the lush gardens of the Villa Borghese and the domes of the Church of San Carlo al Corso and, farther to the west, of St. Peter’s Basilica. It was a glorious view on any day, and even more so with the sky all aglow from the setting sun, but Tess only managed to enjoy it for all of three seconds before stepping away from the window and collapsing into the comfort of the king-sized bed. To her ravaged mu
scles and drained mind, it felt like heaven.
She stretched her arms out and let her head sink back deeper into the soft down pillows. “What hotel is it that’s always rambling on about how amazing their beds are?”
Reilly appeared in the doorway that connected the two rooms, drying his face with a towel. “Westin.”
“Yeah, well … they ain’t got nothing on this baby.” She sank back even more, her arms outstretched toward the edges of the bed, her eyes shut with delight.
Reilly crossed over to the minibar and peeked inside. “You want something to drink?”
Tess didn’t look up. “Sure.”
“What would you like?”
“Surprise me.”
She heard the pleasing sound of a cap being popped off a bottle—twist-off tops, for some reason, weren’t yet a staple in Europe—then another. Then the mattress sagged slightly to her left as Reilly sat down on the edge of the bed.
She pushed herself up against the propped up pillows, and he handed her a cold bottle of Peroni beer.
“Welcome to Rome,” he said, a tired and wry expression on his face as they clinked bottles.
“Welcome to Rome,” she repeated, her face cloudy with confusion. She still wasn’t quite sure how that had happened. Even though they’d been over it all back at the Gendarmeria offices, it still felt surreal to be here. In Rome. In a hotel room. With Reilly by her side.
She took a long, satisfying sip, the cold brew tickling her throat before setting off a nice tingle in her belly, and contemplated his face. He had a couple of small bruises, one on his left cheek, the other more pronounced and scabbed, just above his right eyebrow. She remembered how he’d gotten a lot of those back when they’d first met. But after that, once they’d gotten back to the U.S., once they’d started seeing each other and, soon after, he’d moved into her house, the bruises had disappeared—only to be replaced, she knew, by another kind of hurt. She caught herself thinking that she’d missed seeing him in this guise, all life-saving super-agent with the bruises and the intensity and the urgency, and felt awkward about the thought.
“So here we are again, huh?” she asked.
“Yep.” His eyes had a distant, weary tinge to them, like his being there still hadn’t settled in with him either.
“Miss me?” she couldn’t resist asking, the edges of her mouth curled up in a mischievous smirk.
She watched his eyes roam all over her face—God, she’d missed that look—then he let out a small, playfully derisive chortle before taking another long chug.
“What?” she pressed.
“Hey, I wasn’t the one who ran off halfway around the world.”
Much to her relief, the way he said it didn’t sound resentful at all. “Doesn’t mean you can’t miss me,” she goaded him.
He laughed and shook his head with disbelief. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”
“So is that a yes?” Her beaming grin was in full tractor-beam mode. She knew his shields wouldn’t stand a chance.
He held her gaze for a long moment, then said, “Of course I missed you.”
She raised her eyebrows with mock surprise. “Well then how about you stop looking at me like that and—”
She didn’t get a chance to finish it. He was already all over her, scooping her head up in his hands and kissing her with an urgent, primeval hunger. The half-empty bottles tumbled off the bed and onto the carpeted floor with muffled thuds as their bodies twisted around each other, frantic hands diving under clothes and seeking out familiar flesh.
“I’m filthy,” Tess whispered to him as he yanked her shirt off and devoured his way down to her belly.
He didn’t stop. “I know. I like that about you,” he said, in between big, wet mouthfuls of her skin.
She laughed, a dreamy, wicked laugh, in between moans of delight. “No, I mean, I’m really filthy—as in, dirty.”
He kept going. “Like I said, part of the appeal.”
She cupped his head in her hands and closed her eyes and arched her back, her head disappearing between two pillows. “I mean I need a shower, doofus.”
“We both do,” he mumbled without letting up. “Later.”
Chapter 16
Later took a couple of hours to come around. They hadn’t seen each other in four months. In fact, they hadn’t known when they’d see each other again, if at all, since they hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms. And although a couple of hours of disappearing into each other and shutting the world out wasn’t going to make up for the four months of pent-up desire as well as the near-death experiences they’d just been through, it was a good start.
After an extended stint together in the marble-lined shower stall, they were on the bed again, in thick toweling robes this time, digging into a room service dinner of risotto parmigiano and scaloppine al limone.
Reilly watched Tess as she ate. Despite the insanity of the last twenty-four hours, it felt so natural to be with her. Again. Being with her brought it all bursting back to life, everything that he missed about her. The peridot green eyes that glinted with intellect as well as with mischief. The exquisitely shaped lips and perfect teeth, co-conspirators behind her luminous smile. The wild, blond curls that framed it all and added to the untamed vibe she radiated. The laugh. The humor. The drive and the energy. The magic that entranced any room she walked into. Watching her now, as she wolfed down her food with the wholehearted delight of someone who ate life up in big, greedy mouthfuls, he couldn’t believe he’d actually let her walk out of his life. And yet he had, although the reasons for their split now seemed, well, if not trivial, then certainly mishandled. Which was something that was always easily said in hindsight.
He should have said something back then, he thought. Put a stop to the slow erosion, to the frustrations and the feelings of inadequacy, to the hurt. But there had been no easy solution. They’d leapt into starting a life together. She already had a kid, Kim, a daughter from her ex-husband, a sexual-harassment-lawsuit-in-waiting of a news anchor who’d moved to the West Coast. Reilly, on the other hand, had never been married or fathered a child. Which became a problem when the capriciousness of human reproduction came into play. Reilly wanted to be not just a step-father to Kim, but also a dad himself, and, as it was with more and more women in their thirties, it hadn’t proven to be that simple. The gift of life was proving to be frustratingly elusive. Tests had shown that his body wasn’t the one at fault. Years of Tess taking the pill were a probable culprit. And so an undercurrent of melancholy took root as Reilly’s primal longing became hers too. The IVF treatments added to the malaise, chipping away at the bond between them. Each failed attempt felt like going through a divorce. By the end of it, Tess needed to get away. The heartache and the feeling of failing him were too profound to face. And he didn’t try hard enough to stop her, although at the time, he’d felt as drained and hollow as she had.
Yeah, he should have said something, he thought, as he held her firmly in his sights. He told himself he’d never let her walk out of his life again—but in the same breath, he reminded himself that it wasn’t just up to him.
She must have sensed his stare, as she slid a sideways glance at him. “You gonna finish that?” she mumbled between chews, pointing her knife at his plate.
He chuckled and passed her his plate. She scooped up the last piece of veal and gobbled it down. After a pause, he asked, “What just happened here?”
“What?”
He tried to order his thoughts. “This. Us. Here. Dealing with whackjobs and Templars again.”
“Maybe it’s our lot in life,” Tess grinned between mouthfuls.
“I’m serious.”
Tess shrugged, then gave him a slightly pointed look. “There’s still a lot we don’t know about them. Why do you think I went out to see Jed? It’s what I tried to explain to you … before I left. They deserve to be taken seriously. For decades, they’ve been this academic no-go zone, just fodder for fantasists and conspiracy t
heorists. But we know better, don’t we? Everything we thought was just myth and nonsense … it all turned out to be true.”
“Maybe,” Reilly argued. “We never got a chance to see if the documents from the Falcon Temple were real, or just forgeries.”
“Still … they were there, weren’t they?”
That part was true, he had to agree—and it supported her view of the Order. “So now that your work and your books are all about them,” he asked, “does that mean you’re going to be in the line of fire every time some crackpot thinks he’s got a lead on one of their secrets?”
“This guy didn’t come after me,” Tess reminded him. “He came after Jed. I just happened to be there.”
“This time,” he pointed out.
“Well,” she crept closer to him and gave him a wet, messy kiss, “if it happens again, just promise you’ll be there to rescue me?”
He drank it in quietly, then pulled away, a pensive look on his face. “Just so I understand things correctly—if you’re grabbed by some murderous psychopath, and only then, your request that I give you some ‘space’ “—he did some air quotes—”and keep away from you to give you some time to ‘figure things out’”—more air quotes—”no longer applies.” He paused, mock-thinking it over, then nodded sardonically. “Okay. Works for me.”
Her expression clouded at his words, as if an uncomfortable reality were coming back into focus. “Can we … can we just enjoy this moment and not talk about us for now?”
“Is there an ‘us’?” He kept his tone light and playful, even though deep down, the question was anything but that.
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