Silver ota-1

by Steven Savile

  This was not a proud history.

  How could he not be sympathetic to the horrors perpetrated against these people in their homeland? How could he not feel a historian’s distant, diluted guilt? He would have to be a monster not to. In his head he heard the mocking cries and laughter of the Herodians and the Roman legionnaires calling Jesus King of the Jews.

  It was a long time ago, he told himself, trying to make it less vile by adding the filter of time. It was difficult when Rome itself was still full of reminders of Hadrian’s rule, the Pantheon, even his mausoleum, Castel Sant’Angelo. His touch was everywhere in modern Rome.

  Abandonato was a scholar.

  He had dedicated his life to discovering the truth.

  And then it had all started happening and the truth had stopped feeling so important. People started suffering. And it became real. It was different when it was academic, when it was conjecture, a puzzle, something to occupy his brain.

  All of Solomon’s talk of a messiah coalesced into murder on a grand and sickening scale.

  He hadn’t agreed to that. He hadn’t sought to be a party to it.

  And now all he could do was think, and all he could think was that soe truths were better left hidden.

  That was what he was supposed to do now. Remain hidden.

  When Nick Simmonds had given him the small plastic sheath and bade him hide it amongst the coals in the fire grate of the Sistine Chapel two weeks ago he hadn’t known what he was really being asked to do.

  Now he did.

  Now he understood.

  He knew what he had to do, even if it meant surrendering his own life. It was a sacrifice he would have to make. He couldn’t live, knowing more deaths were on his hands. He wasn’t a murderer any more than the Apostles were. They had been saving their friends immortal soul. That was the only way the testimony of ben Jair made sense. They were angry, hurt, but they knew he could not live with his betrayal, and suicide would forever bar him from the kingdom of heaven. So they had saved him. Or so Abandonato believed.

  But did Gianni Abandonato have it in him to save anyone?

  He was a scholar. His world was paper. Words. Stories.

  To step outside of that world would damn him as a traitor, just as Judas himself had made the sacrifice that cast him forever as traitor. Abandonato had hidden that small plastic sheath in the fire pit, beneath the coals so no one would disturb it until they lit the coals. He hadn’t known what was inside the sheath until the stories started to emerge from Berlin. Poison gas on the subway. He knew then what it was that he had hidden beneath the coals. And when the fire was lit to say the new Vicar of Christ had been chosen he would be responsible for the murder of the entire College.

  He had been used.

  He was a fool.

  But stupidity was no excuse.

  Abandonato knew himself.

  He wouldn’t be able to bear life if that fire was lit while the plastic sheath was still hidden inside it.

  He was living-if it could be called living-in what had been Nick Simmonds’ apartment down by the old ring of the Circus Maximus. That had always been the plan. It was a truth his masters had learned from years of fighting. The police didn’t return to a place of interest once they had discounted it as abandoned. Simmonds’ apartment offered him sanctuary. He had stocked up on bottled water and lived frugally without light or sound. He didn’t want to reveal himself. It was ironic that he was hiding in the shadow of what had once been another Roman Emperor’s playground. More than ironic, it was poetic, the scholar thought: of all the places in Rome, Circus Maximus was used to make decisions of life and death.

  He knew what he had to do.

  He couldn’t stay hidden.

  He had to get a message to the Cardinal Dean. They couldn’t light the fire.

  Noah Larkin begged Neri to get him inside. He had to get inside the Vatican. That was all there was to it.

  He was useless out here.

  Nothing was going to happen in the square. That had been obvious from the start. It was always going to be inside the walls of the Holy See.

  How did you break a man’s faith?

  You did something spectacular, that’s how. You did something even God would take notice of.

  “For all His omnipotence, what one place is God watching now?” Noah said, trying to reason with the man. “And even if God isn’t, everyone else is?”

  Neri looked at him. The grizzled Italian didn’t like the way the conversation was going. “I don’t know, you tell me.”

  He pointed right across the square from their table in the overpriced coffee shop at Maderno’s facade. “The Vatican. Just like everyone else, God’s looking at the chimney of the Sistine Chapel waiting for the whitoke to say His new best friend has been chosen.”

  “The Vatican is a fortress, my friend. There is no safer place on earth. No one is getting in, no one is getting out.”

  “That’s called hubris, you know that? Forget the whole ‘they aren’t soldiers, they’re following a divine calling’ nonsense of the Swiss Guard. They’re men! They aren’t mythological heroes. They’re fallible. End of discussion. One thing we’ve seen is, these guys we’re up against are clever. They’re patient, and they have pulled off the ‘impossible’ more than once in the last few days. They had already put the plan in motion to poison the water long before the first victim was found. So the Vatican’s a fortress? So what? We don’t know if they caught the real assassin, do we? We don’t know if Abandonato’s being sheltered by them. There’s a snake in the garden, my friend-a bloody big one with poisonous fangs, just waiting to take a chunk out of some holy ass.”

  “I hear what you are saying, but the conclave is sealed. No one can get in or out once it has begun. The doors were sealed at the end of the nine days of mourning. They will not be opened again until the bell rings and white smoke billows from the chimney. There’s no way in and no way out. The chapel’s even swept for bugs. This isn’t the Middle Ages. The security is state of the art.”

  “This only reinforces my argument, Neri. There couldn’t be a more shocking target, could there? Everyone thinks it is impenetrable. So what happens if it is penetrated? What happens in the worst case scenario? Can you imagine? Think like the other side for a minute. Does the difficulty outweigh the reward? If it does, it’s got to be worth it, hasn’t it? Hitting the Sistine Chapel during the election of the new Pope would send shockwaves around the world. You want to cause fear? This is how you cause fear! You want to break people’s faith? This is how you do it! ‘How could God let it happen?’ You can hear all the questions can’t you? You can see them in the square with their rosaries out, wailing and beseeching the heavens. With every Cardinal gone, hundreds of the most holy, the most faithful, wiped out.

  “Let’s extend the thought: What if it was never about the Pope as a person? What if it was always about the Pope as an office?”

  Dominico Neri looked at Noah, hard. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but we are way passed the point where I wished I’d never met you.”

  “You already said that. You know it makes sense.”

  “Unfortunately, it does. Not a good kind of sense, but sense.”

  “You have to get me inside that place.”

  “I can’t. No one goes in or out during conclave.”

  “I don’t give a crap about the rules, Neri. All I want to do is save lives. They can slap my hands about breaking the rules when they’re all safe. Okay, I don’t know the process. Tell me what’s happening in there right now. Talk me through it. I need to get a handle on how Abandonato’s going to do it.”

  Neri took his cigarette tin from his pocket and took his time fixing a smoke. He lit it and breathed deeply before he answered. “The College of the Cardinals is meeting inside the Sistine Chapel. It is one of the most isolated parts of the entire Vatican, one of the hardest to get to. And you can’t get to it from the outside. You have to be inside the Holy See. Like I said, it is a fortress. The Car
dinals will choose one of their number best suited to lead the Church into the future, and until they make their decision, the doors will stay locked.”

  “Right, that’s pretty much what I thought,” Noah said, following the thought to its natural conclusion. “So every Cardinal in the world is in that one room, yes? The holiest of the holy men all in the same place?”

  The Roman sucked on his thin cigarette. “Not quite. The eldest, the cardinals over 80, lose their right to participate in conclave. Around 120 of the 186 Cardinals will be inside the chapel.”

  “Okay, so let’s rephrase it, assuming the worst: the only ones left will either have Alzheimer's or one foot and a couple of toes in the grave. That’s just about as bad.”

  “I don’t like the way your mind works.”

  “Try living with it every day,” Noah said. “You have to get me in there. You have to. Whatever it takes. If you have to beg your man, beg.”

  “He isn’t my man, as you put it. There’s no love between the Corpo della Gendarmeria and the Carabinieri. It’s jurisdictional. It’s like cats pissing on their territory. They don’t want us in there. We’ve got no right to be there. And liaising to make it happen? It’s a nightmare.”

  “You’ve got a badge, you’ve got a gun, get me in there.”

  “It really isn’t that simple. This is Rome, my friend, home of bureaucracy. Take your worst nightmare, multiply it a thousandfold and you’ve got a jurisdictional fiasco. Throw in God’s faithful not wanting to admit crimes could actually happen on their patch and you’ve got the definition of a Vatican jurisdictional fiasco. It’s always that one step beyond the usual pain in the ass. What can I say? Once you walk across that line into Vatican City, all logic goes out the window.”

  “I hear that’s what happens when God gets involved,” Noah said. “But there’s a time for paperwork, Neri, and there’s a time for a swift kick in the ass. We’re well past filling in requisitions. I’ll let you in on a little secret: sometimes it is a lot easier to beg forgiveness that it was to ask permission to do it in the first place.”

  Neri looked at him with that world-weary face that seemed to say, Are you serious? And when he realized he was, he went very quiet.

  Noah could almost read his mind: You get to go home tomorrow, I don’t. All the crap we cause today is mine to swim in for the rest of my natural life. That’s what Noah would have been thinking if he was in his place.

  Gianni Abandonato was desperate. He almost ran every third step he was hurrying so quickly. Traffic was not in his favor. There wasn’t a cab to be found on the streets. He ended up running the entire length of Via Del Circo Massimo with his cassock lifted to his knees. There was nothing gracious or glorious about his race. He stared straight ahead, sweat streaming down his face as he ran. His breathing was out of control. He wasn’t a fit man. He lived in the stacks. His exercise was lifting a book down, turning a page. By the time he hit the Ponte Palatino he was on his knees, gasping and panting and struggling to push himself back to his feet and keep running.

  Fear drove him.

  He could have phoned the Corpo della Gendarmeria offices, but what was he going to say? I have poisoned the entire College of Cardinals? You have to stop the conclave? You have to get them out of the chapel? They wouldn’t believe him, and he wouldn’t have been able to convince them over the phone. He needed to be there. He needed them to see his face. Then they would unerstand.

  But they still wouldn’t interrupt the conclave.

  He was on a fool’s mission.

  He knew that, but knowing it didn’t stop him from trying.

  He had to. If not to save them, to save himself.

  “Confiteor Deo omnipotenti et vobis,” he mumbled, the prayer comfortable on his lips. “Fratres, quia peccavi nimis, cogitatione, verbo, opere, et omissione: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem, omnes Angelos et Sanctos, et vos, fratres, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum.”I confess to almighty God, and to you, my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done, and in what I have failed to do; and ask blessed Mary, ever virgin, all the angels and saints, and you, my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.

  No confession would ever be enough if he couldn’t stop them lighting the fire.

  He couldn’t think. Keeping his legs moving, staying on his feet, took all of his strength. By the time he reached Della Farnesina he was spent. Every new step came on trembling legs. His muscles burned. His lungs were on fire. He reached out to steady himself, stumbling against the walls of the houses set back off the street, and pushed himself on. And he was still so far from Bernini’s piazza. He regretted running, but he couldn’t stop. He knew what he must have looked like to passersby. He wasn’t a hero running to save the day.

  He stumbled on.

  Dominico Neri walked up to the Swiss Guard’s station and held out the badge that identified his as Carabinieri as though it would mysteriously lift the barrier for him. It didn’t. The guard barely looked at it and shrugged as though to say, So what? That doesn’t impress me.

  There were four guards at the tation.

  None of them seemed particularly enamored with the combination of hot weather and their heavy uniforms.

  It wasn’t one of the main entrances. There was no point trying to get anywhere near the front of St. Peter’s with the crowd. It would be a fight they wouldn’t win. Neri wasn’t big on fights he couldn’t win. He led Noah to a side entrance. There was a sentry box, stern-faced boy-guards and a road beyond the barrier that opened up into a forecourt and beyond that splintered into a dozen paths between the cramped buildings.

  “Get me the Inspector General,” Neri demanded, staring straight at the youngest guard. It was simple bully-boy tactics and he knew it. But Noah was right; there was plenty of time to apologize later. Right now it was enough that the young guard snapped to attention.

  “Your identification,” one of the guards beside him demanded, a little older, a little less willing to be intimidated. He didn’t just want a little flash of the badge, he held out his hand. Neri handed over his ID. The guard looked pointedly at Noah.

  “I don’t have any,” he said. “I’m still going inside though, so why don’t you just open up the barrier and save us all a lot of wasted time and energy.”

  His almost flippant attitude didn’t amuse the soldier.

  The guard who had taken Neri’s ID disappeared into the guardhouse. No doubt he was going to call the Carabinieri offices to confirm he was who he said he was, then call his superiors and ask for a reason to turn them away. A few minutes later he emerged with a wireless phone in his hand and an expression on his face that said, You lose. He handed the phone across to Neri and moved to block his way.

  They weren’t getting in, Neri knew, even as he raised the phone to his ear.

  Before he could begin to argue their case with the policeman on the other end of the line, Noah ducked under the barrier and sprinted off across the forecourt.

  One of the guards drew his pistol and started to aim it at Noah’s back as though he intended to shoot him dead in his tracks.

  “Don’t you dare, soldier!” Neri barked, slapping the man’s arm aside. “That man’s with the British Secret Service!” He had no idea what effect his words would have.

  What he didn’t expect was for the youngest soldier to look at him and say, “Like James Bond 007 Licensed to Kill?” all in one rushed breath, as he took off after Noah Larkin as though someone had just lit a fire under his ass.

  For a moment Neri thought he was trying to stop him, and then he realized the young soldier intended to help any way he could. He shook his head. Sometimes there was no accounting for the stupidity of youth.

  Noah didn’t know where he was going.

  He just ran.

  The place was a warren of little paths, overhung alleys and twisting side streets that wove a labyrinthine course
through the chapels and apartments in this oddest of cities. He needed to get inside, which meant finding a door. As far as he was concerned any door would do. He knew it wasn’t true, but he didn’t know what else to do.

  He tried to see over the rooftops to get a fix on the chimney above the Sistine Chapel and orientate himself. It was pointless.

  He heard the heavy slap of running feet behind him and glanced over his shoulder. The young guard from the barrier was running with his Beretta held out in front of him as though it might bite. For a moment Noah thought he was going to try and stop him, and he started to turn back, figuring the soldier’s training wouldn’t be enough to stay his hand if it came down to shooting him in the back or letting him get away. Then the young soldier surprised him and shouted in terrible fractured English, “I help you, James Bond!”

  It took Noah a moment to realize what the hell he meant, and that he wasn’t about to get himself shot in the back. “The Sistine Chapel? Where is it?”

  “I help you, James Bond!” the guard repeated. “Follow me!”

  He didn’t exactly have a lot of choice. He could have r around like a blind mouse in the maze for a month of Sundays without getting any closer to the chapel if he was left to his own devices.

  Abandonato closed his eyes. His entire face was flushed, his hair was plastered down across his scalp. He was shaking. He was walking awkwardly, favoring his right side because a stitch burned there. He was panting.