Comes a Horseman

by Robert Liparulo

  “There may be some ties to other crimes,” Brady said.

  “What agency did you say you’re with?”

  “We’re not here in an official capacity. The priest at the burglarized church is a friend.”

  The priest nodded, as if this information put everything into perfect sense. He turned to the screen and keyboard on his desk.

  “The father’s name again?”

  He hesitated. He didn’t want to get Father McAfee in trouble.

  The priest looked up. “Who is the man you wish to see?”

  “Oh. Father Randall. Adalberto Randall.”

  He typed the name on the keyboard and watched the screen. Brady thought he saw a flash of concern tighten the priest’s face, then it was gone. Brady leaned forward casually to get a peek at the screen. The young man pushed a key, and Brady had time to see the words disappear. After a second of gray, a photograph of St. Peter’s filled the screen. Just as well. He couldn’t read Italian.

  The priest opened a drawer and withdrew a yellow form the size of an index card. Across the top, in a large scrawl, he wrote the date. More writing under that, smaller, sloppier. He retrieved a small key from his pants pocket, unlocked the center drawer of his desk, and pulled out an embosser. Placing the form in the jaws of the embosser, the young man squeezed tightly. After the drawer was locked again and the key back in his pocket, he held the form out to Brady.

  “This pass will get you to the secretary of the Archives. He can help you further.”

  “Can’t we go directly to Father Randall?”

  The priest whipped a colorful map onto the counter and pointed at it with a pen. “Let me show you. Go past the Leonine walls, here, and through the Gate of Saint Anne. You will see an arched road. Take it past the Osservatore Romano building to the Court of the Belvedere. On your left, you will see a stairway. Take it to the top.” He tapped the tip of his pen against the map and pushed it across the desk. “And so.”

  “And so,” Brady repeated. “Thank you.”

  Before they reached the door, the priest called to them.

  “You will have to show the pass to several guards on your way. Do not deviate from the route and you will be fine. God bless you both.”

  Outside, Alicia turned to Brady. “What happens if we deviate?”

  “We won’t be fine, I guess.”

  60

  Brady had been to Las Vegas three times on Bureau business. Each time, he had marveled at the scale of the hotels. They were, as Zach would say, gi-normous. One could walk for five minutes through a single game room without stopping or moving circuitously. They housed Olympic-sized pools, Broadway-sized theaters, Disney-sized rides. The gold lion in front of the MGM Grand gave Brady a kinked neck. He could never decide whether the town was a monument to greed and gaudiness or the result of men remembering what it was like to build sand castles and Lego structures.

  Walking through Vatican City, he realized the vision of the Vegas architects was too small. And too austere. He felt dwarfed by the statues, columns, fountains. The buildings cast a false twilight, as the mountains did in Vail. Every building he saw boasted museum-quality ornamentation: statuary, relievos of great moments in history, stained glass, and towers. It gave him a headache just imagining the treasures stored behind their walls.

  Three pairs of Swiss Guards stopped them on their way to the Secret Archives. After the last pair had inspected their pass and let them continue, Brady said, “If I had a fifth of the masterpieces they have here, I’d have SWAT teams protecting it, not rent-a-cops.”

  “Don’t let the dandy uniforms fool you,” Alicia said. “I know a guy on the Bureau’s Hostage Rescue Team.”

  He nodded. “Best SWAT team in the country.”

  “They are. Anyway, this guy says a few of them are heading to Switzerland to train with the Swiss Guard. And I say, ‘What made the Swiss ask for help?’ thinking some major hostage crisis opened their eyes to the need for better training, you know? He says, no, the Bureau guys were going to be trained by them. Apparently, they’re the best in the world, every one of them. Mossad and SEALs and . . . Samurais all rolled into one.”

  Brady looked back at one of the guards, dressed in the traditional uniform of bright orange and blue bloomers, matching shirt with puffy arms, and a blue beret. He gave her a half smile. “Tell me you’re joking.”

  “Dead serious,” she said. “As you said, think of the priceless masterpieces they have here. And the pope. What a target he is.” A few dozen steps farther, she said, “’Course you can give them a hard time, see what happens. Don’t take my word for it.”

  They were heading across a cobblestone court toward an intersection of pathways, where a sole Swiss Guard stood with a halberd. Brady imagined the damage a weapon like that could wreak in proficient hands.

  “I’ve always appreciated the tranquillity of sleeping dogs,” he said.

  “Exactly.” She slapped his arm with the back of her hand and pointed. “I think that’s it.”

  On their left, a wide flight of stone steps rose past an oversized marble statue to a second-floor landing and heavy wood doors. Alicia charged up the stairs, but Brady paused long enough to learn that the statue was of a guy named Hippolytus. The rest of the inscription was in Italian or Latin or Shelta, for all he knew. He wondered if Hippolytus was as wise as he looked here, gazing into the distance, a book in one hand.

  Brady caught up with Alicia just inside the doors, where yet another Swiss ninja had stopped her. Brady presented the pass, and he let them by. They were in an anteroom. Above another set of double doors, a marble sign spelled out Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in relieved letters. A single door on a different wall bore a wood sign: L’Archivio Segreto Vaticano.

  Even Brady understood that. He held the door open for Alicia, saying, “It says ‘secret’ on the door. How secret is that?”

  They moved down a corridor toward a man sitting at a desk. The corridor was wide, arched, and constructed entirely of stone, except for large windows in one wall, overlooking the courtyard they had crossed to get to the library stairway.

  Alicia leaned toward Brady. In a hushed tone she said, “For a thousand years, all the records stored here were off-limits to anyone except the pope and a handful of scholars, researchers, and archivists, all in the employ of the pope. It wasn’t until 1881 that Pope Leo XIII opened about half of them to a limited number of serious scholars and theologians. Even today there’s what’s called the ‘Hundred Year Rule,’ which mandates that most new documents may not be examined by outsiders for a century.” She showed him her teeth. “You need to read more, Brady.”

  They stopped at the desk. It was roughly the size of a car. Its baroque flourishes could have been carved by Michelangelo. Even so, it was a chunk of cut wood compared to the room that opened behind it. The ceiling and every wall was painted by the hand of some Late Renaissance master Brady had probably never heard of. But the style was unmistakable: rich colors, forced perspectives, fat naked or near-naked people so lifelike you expected them to start sweating. The ceiling was high and arched. The floor was paved in marble squares, too large to be called tiles. On both sides of a central aisle, heavy wooden cabinets, like armoires, stood like statuary three feet from the side walls and from each other. At the far end of the long room, open double doors revealed a similar room beyond, and then another and another, as far as Brady could see.

  “Sì?”

  Like the kid in the business office, the man behind the desk wore a cleric’s collar, but he was old enough to be the other’s grandfather. He was pudgy, with jowly cheeks and bulbous eyes. Balding. Brady thought he’d make a good Friar Tuck in a Robin Hood movie. They went through similar greetings and explanations. This time, however, Father Randall’s name brought no reaction at all.

  “May I see identification, please?” the man asked. His accent was much heavier than the younger priest’s. Brady had the thought that English was—as foreigners charged, particularly the F
rench and Latinos—becoming a universal language, at the expense of indigenous tongues. New generations were learning it earlier, and eventually they would speak it before their traditional language. He felt a vague shame for being part of the world’s linguistic bully.

  He fished his wallet out of his pants pocket. “Personal IDs or credentials?” he asked.

  “The two, please.”

  He handed over his driver’s license and FBI identification card. Alicia did the same.

  The priest picked up the phone, punched in a three-digit number, and hung up. A moment later, the door they had used at the end of the corridor opened. The Swiss Guard who had checked their pass marched toward them. Their IDs in hand, the priest stood. He muttered, “Momento,” and walked away, through the beautiful room, out the far door, and off to the right. The guard stopped at the entrance to the room, turned his back to the wall, and solidified into a mannequin-thing. He wasn’t armed, as far as Brady could tell.

  “What’s going to happen now?” Brady whispered.

  “There’s a very real possibility that they’ll check with the Bureau.” Alicia stopped. Her eyes scanned the fabulous room as she thought.

  “And?” He realized she had never been in a situation like this before either, but she had a mind not for the way things were supposed to work but for the way they really worked, in the real world.

  “And if the Bureau wants to, it could probably convince either the Vatican or the Rome police to detain us until they can come get us.”

  He glanced at the phone on the desk, then at the Swiss Guard.

  “We should have gotten fake IDs.”

  “Place like this wouldn’t give nobodies the time of day,” she said matter-of-factly. “The bogus people on fake IDs are nobodies. They were designed to be. Maybe they won’t check. And maybe there are no red flags on us yet.”

  “And maybe whoever’s behind the Pelletier killings and our attacks self-combusted at breakfast this morning, along with that Viking freak and his dogs.”

  “Now, now.” She stepped close to him, gripped his forearm. “It’s a risk we had to take. Otherwise, we should have stayed home.”

  They stood at the desk a long time. Nothing on its surface interested Brady: a keyboard, an LCD monitor displaying the same St. Peter’s screen saver, a few loose pens, a notepad with nothing written on the top page, and a newspaper, La Repubblica. What appeared to be the sports section was unfolded in front of the chair.

  Occasionally a figure moved past the doorway in a far-off room. The place was preternaturally silent, as though it had learned to be noiseless over the long years of its existence. There were chairs along the corridor wall opposite the guard, but both Brady and Alicia were too anxious to sit.

  Alicia leaned close to Brady.

  “I’d like to get on that computer,” she said quietly.

  “Good luck.”

  “I wonder what would pop up if I typed in Randall’s name.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “You never know.”

  He looked at the guard. His eyes were on them.

  “Think you can distract him?” she asked.

  He gazed at her, eyes flat.

  “Really,” she said. “Just run though the room and keep going. Bet he’ll tear off after you.”

  “You’d sacrifice our chance of talking to the person we came here to see for a peek at a computer screen that’s in a language you don’t understand?”

  He turned away, strolled to a corridor window. A few minutes later, he heard the guard bark sharply.

  “Ma’am!”

  He turned to see Alicia on the other side of the desk. Her hand darted out and touched the keyboard.

  The guard came away from the wall, his hand going behind his back for something.

  She held up her hands. “Whoa!” she said and came around the desk.

  The guard stopped.

  “I’m sorry,” she said demurely. “Bored, you know? Can you . . .” She gestured over her shoulder. “Can you find out what’s taking the father so long?”

  “No,” he said. He backed into his position by the wall. His hand appeared, wrapped around a walkie-talkie. The guard raised it to his lips, depressed a button, and spoke softly in a foreign language.

  “Hey, what?” Alicia said. “There’s no need for that.”

  She glanced at Brady. He shook his head.

  The guard finished his communication, made the walkie-talkie disappear behind his back, and settled into mannequin mode. Brady walked back to Alicia at the front of the desk. The door at the end of the corridor opened, and another Swiss Guard stepped through.

  “Uh-oh,” she whispered.

  He marched toward them, halted, and took a back-tothe-wall stance beside his brother-in-arms.

  Brady heard Alicia let out a breath.

  “What’d you see?” he asked.

  “A log-in dialogue box. User name and password fields empty. I couldn’t get on if they let me try for an hour, not without my hacker tools.”

  “So we wait,” he said.

  She made an impatient clicking sound with her tongue. She dug in her purse, pulled out a pack of Camels, and tapped one out.

  “Ma’am?”

  It was the first guard. He was shaking his head at her.

  She turned to Brady. “I’m going outside for a smoke.”

  The guard spoke up again. “No smoking on Vatican grounds.”

  “Anywhere?”

  He shook his head.

  She made the clicking noise again, opened her purse, and dropped the cigarette in.

  61

  They waited another forty-eight minutes by his watch. They were staring out the windows at the priests and nuns and businesspeople passing through the courtyard below when they heard the click of leather soles on marble, echoing slightly. When he turned, Brady realized the echo was actually a second pair of shoes. Following the priest who had taken their identification was a taller man, also about fifty. His face was lean and muscular, the wrinkles tight, not flabby. His eyes were expectant, piercing. He carried himself gracefully, almost floating across the floor, the way dancers do even years after their last curtain call.

  The first priest lowered himself into the desk chair with a sigh, as though he’d spent the time away in heavy labor. He handed Brady’s ID cards to him, Alicia’s to her.

  “Grazie,” he said without looking at them. He was bent over the newspaper in front of him.

  Brady and Alicia took in the other man. He had positioned himself beside the man in the chair. His hands were clasped in front of him. A thin smile creased his skin and made deep dimples.

  “Father Randall?” Alicia asked.

  “I am Monsignor Vretenar, vice prefect. Let us talk, perfavore.” He motioned for them to come around the desk, then turned and walked toward the far door.

  Brady and Alicia fell in step behind him. Finally, activity. Brady peered over his shoulder. The guards were not following, but they were watching. When they reached the center of the chamber, Monsignor Vretenar faced them.

  In a hushed tone he said, “Why have you come here?”

  Brady spoke for them. “To speak to Father Randall.”

  “Why?”

  “He may have some information about a case we’re working.”

  “May?”

  “He does. How much, we won’t know until we speak to him.”

  “What is this case?”

  “A burglary at a church in New York City.”

  The man shook his head. “That does not seem—”

  “The burglary may be related to a murder,” Alicia interrupted. “Several murders, in fact.”

  The monsignor’s eyebrows rose slightly. This news surprised him, but he was either an expressionless man or very good at keeping his thoughts off his face.

  “And Father Randall is . . . implicated?” he asked.

  “He’s involved,” Brady said.

  “How?”

  Alicia said, “H
e asked for a priest’s private files, supposedly for the Archives. After the priest refused, his files were stolen.”

  “Father Randall is an archivist, but he is not a thief.”

  “If we could just talk to him ourselves . . .”

  “This priest, was he murdered?”

  “No, but we believe the killer got his list of victims from the stolen files.” Alicia quickly brushed her hair behind an ear. Brady could tell she wanted to shake this guy, yell, “Help us!”

  “Monsignor,” he said, “one of the would-be assassins mentioned Randall’s name.”

  “In what context?”

  They did not want to get into that.

  Monsignor Vretenar read their silence perfectly. A thin smile bent his lips, then he chuckled.

  “What’s funny?” Brady asked.

  “I am sorry,” the monsignor said. “You should have told me you were fans of The Da Vinci Code !”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Agent Moore, Agent Wagner,” he said condescend ingly through a smile, “there are no killers here, no secret societies, no conspiracies. You are looking for the wrong man. I am sorry you traveled so far. Per favore.” He gestured for them to leave.

  “Now wait a minute!” Alicia seized his arm. “This isn’t funny, and this isn’t fiction. You are harboring a man who is somehow involved in at least five serial murders. Somebody is trying to kill us. Me. Agent Moore. They attacked his nine-year-old son! Why won’t you—”

  The two Swiss Guards were on them. One stepped between Monsignor Vretenar and Brady. He pushed Brady back and took a stance that said he was ready to whale on him if he even blinked in a threatening manner. Brady raised his hands chest-high, palms out. Alicia grunted, and he turned his eyes to her. The other guard had her in an uchikomi hold—her left wrist twisted behind her back and yanked up between her shoulder blades, the elbow of the same arm held down. All cops knew it, had practiced the maneuver as both cop and perp. It hurt. And it instantly pinched off any fight left in the person receiving it.

  Alicia was sucking air between clenched teeth, her right arm frozen up in a position that suggested she wanted to grab her shoulder. Her bandages were in plain sight, maroon spots just under the top layer of thin gauze. At least the guard had seized her undamaged arm.