by Jon Land
“You were going to lie again,” the woman accused, an edge of anger creeping into her voice. “From the normal Palestinian, this would not bother or surprise me. But from a Palestinian I respect, I take such behavior as demeaning and degrading of my position, for it shows you do not respect me, Inspector. How am I to take that?”
“I don’t really give a shit!”
The woman struck Ben on the side of the face this time, rattling his jaw. His teeth felt like marbles bobbing in his mouth.
“Someone else must have taken the disc,” Ben said, the words slurred by his already swelling mouth. “Someone else must have been following me. It’s them you should be after! They’ve got the disc now!”
The woman backed up, as if considering Ben’s words. Then, suddenly, she snapped the sap in straight and hard, and Ben’s world exploded into a breathless darkness.
* * * *
* * * *
CHAPTER 15
G
ianni Lorenzo, Captain commandant of the Swiss Guard, the elite force charged with maintaining security in the Vatican and protecting the pope, looked up from the report that had been handed to him just minutes before.
“Under the circumstances,” the man seated before him elaborated, “we felt it was the safest course of action.”
“I quite agree.”
“We felt—”
“I understand,” Colonel Lorenzo interrupted. “Just tell me what you have learned of the investigation.”
Although his formal title was captain commandant, all who led the Swiss Guard held the rank of colonel. The colonel rose and walked to the window of his office in the Palazzo del Governatorato overlooking the vast Vatican gardens. The office was richly appointed with genuine antiques that had weathered the years much better than he. His desk had once belonged to Pope John II. The Oriental carpets that covered the hardwood floors had been in the Vatican since the eighteenth century, when they had been delivered as gifts by returning Christian missionaries. A chiming wall clock had been a gift to a nineteenth-century Swiss Guard commander from the College of Cardinals.
The Swiss Guard seldom exceeded more than a hundred troops, all of them culled from the best ranks of the Swiss military, as had been the case since their origins as guardians of the pope in 1506. But in the wake of World War II the Guard’s number and training had been deemed woefully inadequate to fulfill their original function. Traditional guardsmen were fine for securing majestic entrances throughout the Vatican, or for smacking their halberds into the feet of those overly determined to approach the pope on ceremonial occasions. For other duties certain to be required in this new age of violence, though, a different kind of soldier was called for.
So, with the consent of the Curia and at the urging of Pope Pius himself, the colonel’s predecessor had secretly reestablished the Pontifical Noble Guard that had been disbanded in the late nineteenth century. Gianni Lorenzo and seven others formed the first graduating class, envisioned as the basis for a clandestine order to be called upon for special assignments and protective services, much like the American Secret Service.
But no one—not the cardinals, not the Curia, not even the pope himself— would ever know how this secret army had actually been utilized, starting that first time in April of 1948. On that day Gianni Lorenzo’s predecessor as leader of the Swiss Guard had faced him much the same way he was facing a subordinate now.
* * * *
I
have read a number of reports on you, Captain Lorenzo. You should take great pride in the success you have achieved. The small group you have been chosen to lead is the first of a new order. As such, something has come up I feel would be best handled by someone with your skills.”
Here, his predecessor’s eyes had darted toward the manila envelope torn open on his desk. The very same desk behind which Lorenzo was now seated. Nothing about the room looked any different than it had that first day. It was exactly as Lorenzo recalled a half century before when he saw the envelope was marked “EPHESUS.”
“Thank you, Colonel.”
In those days, Lorenzo’s wide back and shoulders had virtually obscured the entire width of the chair. His thick hair was cut short and roughly combed against the wave of its grain. He had deep, bushy eyebrows that nearly met in the center of his forehead above a set of piercing blue eyes, the message in those eyes clear. The original members of the Pontifical Noble Guard all came from Italian nobility, and Gianni Lorenzo certainly looked the part here fifty-two years ago when his predecessor had first addressed him.
“Your exploits before you came to us are well documented, Captain, especially at Nunzio.”
“I was a soldier. I did a soldier’s work.”
“You performed bravely and admirably. But I am curious as to why you chose service to the church in the years that followed.”
“I have strong feelings for the church, Colonel.”
“You had planned to become a priest, had nearly completed your studies, yes?”
“Until the war.”
“What changed?”
“A priest was not allowed to carry a gun.”
“And this was important to you.”
“I wanted to serve my country.”
“But not God?”
“We were fighting the devil, Colonel.”
“Then you came to us afterward.”
“To serve the church the best way I could.”
“You would do anything to protect the Holy Father and preserve the sanctity of the church, then.”
“I swore an oath.”
“A soldier’s.”
“A soldier is what I am, Colonel.”
* * * *
A
nd so Lorenzo was still a soldier today, his commitment having never wavered, the duty he was now charged with passed on to him over a decade before by his predecessor.
Before the desk that had served countless Swiss Guard commanders well, Major Flave Pocacinni stood stiffly at attention. “We left nothing behind that can possibly lead back to us, Colonel,” Pocacinni informed Gianni Lorenzo.
“But you did leave something behind, did you not?”
Pocacinni’s angular chin came forward as his neck stiffened. “We searched everywhere. The box you described was nowhere in the camp.”
“Our information indicates otherwise.”
“I am aware of this. I would suggest the information is wrong.”
“You understand the depth of our intelligence-gathering apparatus?”
“Clearly, Colonel.”
“Its singular purpose and ultimate dedication?”
Pocacinni looked almost hurt, his massive shoulders sinking. “Do you really need to ask me such questions? I mean no disrespect, sir.”
Lorenzo sighed. “Of course you don’t. The fault is all mine. Please accept my apologies for questioning your loyalty and dedication.”
“I did not interpret your words that way at all.”
“It’s just that, well, there are certain inconsistencies that continue to plague me. The unusually quick response, for one thing.” The captain commandant of the Swiss Guard ran a hand down his face, tracing one of the many furrows that had deepened with age. He studied the report again. “Did you have any sense, Major, that something else was going on out there in the desert?”
“I . . . don’t understand, Colonel.”
Gianni Lorenzo waved his own suspicions off. “Never mind, Major. I think I’m just beginning to show my age. A dozen American archaeologists are found murdered, we should expect such a response from their Israeli hosts.”
“I agree, sir.”
“All the same ...” Lorenzo fought to keep his focus, not lapse from the subject at hand. “We would have known if the Israelis had found the box by now.”
“As I said, it wasn’t there. Perhaps . . .”
“What is it, Major?”
“I was just thinking, sir, that perhaps the Americans realized what they had actually uncovered, before our arri
val.”
Lorenzo chose not to consider the ramifications of Pocacinni’s suggestion. Instead his mind drifted back to another age and another archaeological team in Ephesus that had stumbled upon the very same discovery. That team’s inquiries all those years ago had been neither discreet nor restrained. Winston Daws had understood exactly what he had uncovered and was unable to contain either his passion or excitement. Daws’s attempts to obtain confirmation from a few renowned experts had alerted Lorenzo’s predecessor to the famed archaeologist’s discovery. That had been the first occasion the secretly reestablished Pontifical Noble Guard had been called to action.
Gianni Lorenzo thought again of the day he had been summoned to this very office by his predecessor to learn the truth, the day that had changed his life forever. From that moment on, he and the rest of the Noble Guard had dedicated themselves to protecting a secret the world could never learn. How many would die if the secret got out, how many lives would be destroyed forever? The inevitable cataclysm that would result was chilling, incomprehensible. There had been no more choice in 1948 than there had been just days ago.
But that did not make the memories any more palatable. Winston Daws’s team consisted of two dozen people, many of them mere students in their late teens or early twenties. As a soldier, Lorenzo knew that death never came easily or quietly, and the screams of the two dozen who had been murdered haunted his dreams to this day.
The recent deaths of the American archaeologists, though, were even harder for him to bear, because he himself had caused them by failing to complete his mission fifty-two years ago. The executions of Daws’s team were only one part of his charge and he had failed miserably with the other. Of course, he had never shared his mistake, or the circumstances surrounding it, with a single soul, the pain and guilt his to bear alone.
“Colonel?” Pocacinni prodded.
Pocacinni’s voice brought Gianni Lorenzo back to the present. “Yes, Major.”
“I was just saying that if the Americans opened the box, well, it’s possible they could have sent its contents somewhere else prior to our arrival.”
The colonel’s mind sharpened again. “If that were the case, our sources would have already alerted us. No, Major, the scroll has not left Israel or Palestine. Our people are still in the area?”
“Of course, sir. Six,” Pocacinni said, referring to the force of Noble Guardsmen whose numbers had increased only minimally over the years. “I will be rejoining them as soon as my business here at the Vatican is complete, sir.”
“Then you must delay no longer.”
Pocacinni saluted, then backed away from the desk and started to turn for the heavy wooden door.
“Major?”
Pocacinni stopped and turned back. “Yes, Colonel?”
The captain commandant of the Swiss Guard rose to his feet as well, remembering the days when he had stood as tall and straight as the former soldier before him. “Do you ever regret accepting the charge you were given?”
“Never, sir, not even for a moment.”
“You understand that you and those you lead were selected from hundreds, thousands even. You and the others were chosen for this vigil because all of you were deemed the best suited to be guardians of our realm, of our very way of life.”
Pocacinni straightened to attention once more. “I was honored then, Colonel. I am still honored today.”
“Even after what your duty forced upon you in the past forty-eight hours.”
“The pain of a task in no way negates its necessity, sir.”
“They will come to you in your dreams, my son,” Gianni Lorenzo said softly. “For many years after this, they will come to you in your dreams.”
Lorenzo’s assertion did not seem to trouble Pocacinni. If anything, he looked more resolute and sturdy. “Then they will understand what it was they had to die for, sir.”
* * * *
CHAPTER 16
B
en woke to a body throbbing with pain. His mouth felt packed with cotton, and he worked his tongue around to find, thankfully, it was just dry and swollen. A few of his teeth were loose, and his jaw felt as though the bone had shifted, clicking when he moved it. His hair was matted to his scalp and forehead by the water the Israeli soldiers must have poured on him in a failed attempt to revive him.
The closet within which he had been held prisoner, still tied to the chair, stank of rust and metal. Not so much as a single sliver of light was able to sneak through a slat in the boards or crack in the wood. Ben could not see his watch and had long lost sense of the passage of time. He kept nodding off, only to come awake with a jolt; out, for what, seconds, minutes, hours? It could have been any of those.
Still, Ben stiffened in the chair and felt his breath wedged tight in his throat when he heard a key rattle in the lock outside. He let his head slump to his chest and pretended to still be unconscious, feeling the soft half-light upon his closed eyelids.
“Inspector Kamal?”
The voice was masculine, clearly not that of his inquisitor.
“Inspector Kamal, can you hear me?” The voice sounded closer. Then Ben felt a hand shake his shoulder gently. “Wake up, Inspector, you must wake up.”
Though the man’s grasp was gentle, his next squeeze drew an involuntary wince of pain from Ben, who let his eyes come open slowly. A figure stood before him in the thin light radiating from the large room beyond, dressed all in black. A big man with a V-shaped torso and arms like molded steel. The man whipped a hand up and a knife flashed amid his fingers, glinting in the naked light.
“Let me do something about these,” he said, and crouched down.
As the ropes were sliced away, Ben could see the garage door in the square room beyond had been raised, allowing sunlight to flood inside, revealing more darkly clothed men. The Israeli soldiers and his female interrogator, apparently, were gone.
“Can you stand up?” the man asked him.
Ben tried to stretch his arms. “I don’t know. Who are you?”
“A friend. That’s all you need to know.”
“What happened to the soldiers?”
“They were called away. Come, let me help you up. . . .”
Ben felt a tremendously powerful arm loop beneath his shoulder and raise him effortlessly to his feet. He stood on his own, but his left leg buckled when he tried to take a step.
The dark man caught him as he bent at the waist. “Easy now. It’s not as bad as it feels.”
Ben looked up at the man who was supporting him. “It feels pretty bad.”
“You must be treated, of course.”
“Where?”
“We have a complete hospital facility. You’ll see.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“You need a change of clothes. We can take care of that too.”
This had to be a trick, Ben thought as the dark man ushered him into the room where he’d been tortured. Ben felt a shudder sweep through him but the Israeli soldiers were nowhere to be seen, replaced by these apparent saviors.
He counted four of them inside the building and two more outside once they reached the open door. Dressed in black as well, stiffly vigilant. Some holding guns, others not.
“Watch your step,” his escort advised, guiding Ben into the sunlight that burned his eyes. When Ben’s vision cleared, he saw the man was missing a neat chunk of his right eyebrow. A birthmark, judging by its pale smoothness.
Ben had heard of this technique before, resorted to when the more harsh forms of interrogation failed. An apparent rescue, dramatic or otherwise, leading the subject to confess all to his saviors. The Israelis were nothing if not persistent. The trouble was Ben didn’t have anything to tell them; if he had, he would have told the others long before.
“What time is it?”
“Just after eight A.M.”
Outside, a final man clothed in black stood vigil between a pair of American Humvee vehicles.
“See if you can put pressure on your
legs now,” Ben’s escort suggested, sliding out from beneath his shoulder.
Ben tentatively took one step, then another. His legs trembled but held. His hands flopped weakly in search of something to hold on to.
The dark man sighed. “I apologize for the actions of my countrymen.”
