by Gregg Loomis
"And for every heresy, the possibility of truth."
Lang propped a pillow behind his back and stretched out. "Someone faced the problem before. They plastered right over it. Why not just do it again?"
"I'd guess when that painting was obscured, there weren't newspapers and television. Word gets around pretty fast these days, and, will of the Holy Father or not, news of the discovery of an unknown fresco will get out, particularly if it's dated back to the rebuilding of the basilica. Could be attributed to Raphael or Michelangelo, far too big for a cover-up. Besides, the church is no longer in the business of concealing things."
"Right. Tell me what day the Vatican's secret archives will be open."
"It already is open to accredited scholars."
"Accredited scholars" being defined as those whose loyalty to the church is unquestioned.
But Lang felt this wasn't a time for argument. Instead he said, half joking, "You could always just give it an acceptable twist."
Francis looked at him blankly.
"You know, like how the church defaced or tried to destroy nearly every Roman monument in this town. The marble and steel support rods were stripped from the Colosseum to build the 'new' St. Peter's and I doubt Trajan was the one who put a statue of St. Peter on the top of his column."
"I doubt we'd have the Colosseum today if it hadn't been preserved for use as a church at one time. And as for Trajan ... One of the early popes, Gregory I, I think, was so taken with the depiction of the emperor comforting the widow of one of his fallen soldiers, he ordered not only the column be preserved but prayed Trajan's soul be released from hell where all pagan souls went."
Lang had never heard this before. "And?"
"And we still have Trajan's column and Gregory had a dream in which God told him he had released the emperor's soul but please not pray any more heathens out of hell."
Lang sensed the dark mood the fresco had inspired in his friend was lifting. "Just for the sake of argument, what if there really were some truth to the painting?"
"Peter is the founder of the church. It would change more than I can imagine. Christianity's premier saint exposed as a murderer. It could tear the church apart, something the more conservative members would never permit" Francis carefully placed his collar and studs on the top of one of the dressers. "Word of that fresco gets out, there'll be a brief stir among the usual skeptics. The faithful will continue. It would take more than a fanciful painting to convince anyone Peter killed James. Did you have anyplace in particular in mind for dinner?"
Even if his curiosity was far from satisfied, Lang was glad to drop the subject that had so bothered his friend. "I understand there's a really good seafood restaurant near the Pantheon, La Rossetta. Do you get priest discounts in this town?"
His BlackBerry buzzed.
He felt uneasy when he saw it was Gurt calling. She wouldn't be phoning after speaking with him only a few hours ago unless something had come up.
"Yes?" he said curtly.
Then he listened for the next two minutes before saying, "I agree."
He ended the call.
Francis was studying his face. "Trouble?"
"Yeah, sort of."
Had it been any woman but Gurt, Lang would have been overcome with anxiety. Gurt was not exactly your typical damsel in distress. The description fit her worse than a double-A bra. A deadly shot, she had run out of fellow agency partners with whom to practice martial arts, men and women. She had caused too many injuries.
And, as she was quick to point out, she had saved Lang's ass more than once.
She certainly hadn't called to worry him, to distract him from what he was doing. That wasn't the way they both had been trained.
But the training hadn't included a small child, his child.
"What sort of trouble?" Francis asked.
"Er, a car accident, nothing serious."
"Then why do you look worried?"
Because I am, Lang said only to himself.
Real worried.
"You need to leave Rome?"
"As soon as I finish some business."
IX.
Piazza dei Calvalleri di Malta
Aventine Hill
Three Hours Later
Late every afternoon, a phenomenon takes place in Rome: As the sun edges westward, it tints otherwise ordinary buildings a color somewhere between sienna and ochre. There is no hue exactly like it elsewhere, a fact disputed by Sienna, Florence and several Tuscan and Umbrian hill towns. Their afternoons are dismissed as either too red or containing not enough yellow by any native of Rome whose opinion is sought on the subject.
Dispute notwithstanding, the two men who had one of the city's best views from the window next to them paid no attention. Instead, they listened closely to the hissing of a recording device, interrupted by voices.
"The fresco has been found," the younger man said. "I had come to believe it existed only in rumor."
The older man shook his head. "An unfortunate time. It will only encourage the American to get whatever copy he has translated if he has not already done so."
"Why else would he have gone to see the Greek priest, Strentenoplis, other than seek a translation?"
The older man thought for a moment. "See to it. See to the Greek, also. But do so without leaving a trail for the police."
"And what of the Jew, the forger?"
"See to him also. We want no path for the authorities to follow. The American no doubt wanted papers of some sort. Watch the place against the possibility the American returns there. He must be eliminated quickly by any means other than violence in the Holy City. We cannot risk the gospel's message becoming known."
"We have located the German woman and the American's bastard child. I should know shortly. If we can take them captive, we may have this Reilly come to us."
The old man stood. "You are doing God's work. In his name, bless you."
"Thank you, Grand Master," the man said, trying to suppress the resentment bubbling in his chest.
Today he had lost two good knights, one with burns that might cost him an eye, the other with a fractured skull. It had been bad enough to lose the hired help in Prague and the men in the United States who had mysteriously disappeared after finding Reilly's place south of Atlanta. But he had only a limited number of soldiers, knights, who were even remotely competent to deal with the American. Or who, for that matter, had even fired a gun.
It was easy enough to give orders; not always so simple to carry them out.
God's work or not.
X.
The Vatican The Next Morning
Notwithstanding taking the middle of the day off, offices in Rome generally open between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m. As far as Lang could tell, the Vatican was no exception.
After showing his pass to the Swiss guard still dressed in the uniform designed by Michelangelo, he was admitted to the scavi and walked a short way down the hall to Father Strentenoplis's office. The door was closed. Lang knocked briskly, waited a moment or two and knocked again without result.
He pushed gently. Like most of the doors here, it had no lock. It swung open. The space looked the same as it had the day before. Smelled the same, too. Whatever the good father smoked, it clung to the walls like paint.
Lang considered looking through the papers on the desk and decided against it. He had the remaining copy of the gospel, so there was no need to try to retrieve the one given to the priest and the priest hadn't expected to have a translation until now.
The problem, of course, was, where was the priest?
Lang shut the door behind him, went down the hall and stopped in front of an open office where a very short nun sat on a very tall swivel chair. Her feet barely touched the floor as she pecked at a keyboard with the hesitancy of someone not entirely comfortable with the machine.
Lang stepped across the threshold. "Mi scusi, parlal' inglese?"
She spun around in the chair, bathing him in the most radiant smile he
had ever gotten from a seventy-year-old. "Of course I speak English, but thank you for asking! Most of your countrymen take it for granted that everything and everybody speaks English, and, if not, the problem can be cured by progressively raising the voice. How may I be of service?"
"Father Strentenoplis, I had an appointment with him..."
She sniffed disdainfully. "You are early. He rarely is in his office before ten thirty."
Lang's suspicions about the priest's drinking habits were confirmed.
"It's really important I see him. I'm leaving Rome this afternoon..."
She turned the chair to face the monitor. "He is a visiting priest, staying in one of the apartments the Holy See keeps for such purposes. We have no phone number." She scowled at the screen as though the omission were its fault. "He must use a cell phone."
Lang shifted his weight back and forth. "Do you have an address?"
"Of course! We keep the scoop on all our visitors. Is not that what you say in America, 'the scoop'?"
Not in the last thirty years.
"Ah, here! Do you know the Via de Porta?"
"'Fraid not."
She pointed. "As you leave St. Peter's Square, turn right on Porta Cavalleggeri. It's a main drag. Then left on Via del Crocifisso. De Porta will be on your left." She wrote something down on a piece of paper. "Here. You want apartment nine at number thirty-seven. A piece of cake, as you would say!"
Lang thanked her and left, wondering how she had acquired so many outdated American idioms.
There was nothing wrong with her directions, though. Father Strentenoplis's street was one of those Roman alleys so narrow Lang doubted the sun touched it more than a few minutes each day. The building was a former palazzo converted into apartments by the high taxes of the Socialist state. A massive arched wooden door could easily have accommodated a carriage and mounted outriders. A more human-scale Judas gate had been cut into one side.
Lang surveyed the list of doorbells mounted beside the entrance. He pressed number nine with no result.
The good father was probably sleeping off the night before, in no shape to hear the buzzer. And Lang had a plane to catch.
He pushed all the buttons.
He got two garbled responses he could not have understood even if he had spoken Italian.
"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party," he said.
The door's latch buzzed open. Someone had been expecting a visitor and the electronics were as unintelligible inside as they were out.
Lang stood in a vaulted stone vestibule even taller than the door. To his right was a shallow set of marble stairs that wound around an old birdcage elevator before disappearing into darkness above. In front of him was the private interior piazza that had once contained a garden secluded from the noise and smell of the street. Rather than fountains and flowers, it was now a parking lot for tenants' cars. Over a field of Fiats and Volkswagens, Lang watched a man in coveralls emerge across the courtyard, no doubt the servants' entrance in better days.
He acceded to joints already aching and took the elevator. He feared he might have made a poor choice as the contraption groaned its way to the third floor, the fourth in the US. The door creaked open and he could see the number nine in the dim light of low-watt bulbs in sconces.
A series of knocks were fruitless. Lang inhaled deeply as he tried the lock, remembering the blood-soaked apartment in Prague. He stepped back and visually checked the lock, its bolt visible where the door had shrunk from its frame. Less than a minute's application of a credit card and there was a gratifying click. He pushed the door open.
"Father Strentenoplis?" he called.
No response other than the wheezing of an overworked window air-conditioning unit.
A sagging curtain leaked enough light from the room's only window to see two weary club chairs facing a short sofa across a plain wooden table on which rested a Compaq laptop and a stack of papers. A crucifix over the sofa was the only effort at decoration. Two steps down a short hallway a door opened into the bedroom: a single bed, a small bureau resting on three legs on which a clean clerical collar and studs waited and a curtained alcove. If the priest had slept here last night, he hadn't made up the bed. Beyond the rumpled sheets was a doorless entrance to a small bath. On the sink was an open tube of Grecian Formula.
Father Strentenoplis cared about his appearance.
And Lang was feeling more and more like a burglar.
Recrossing the room, Lang slid the curtain back. Behind it was a single rod on which several cassocks hung beside two black suits, a pair of jeans and two golf shirts. Two pair of black wingtips, one each of brown loafers and Nikes paraded across the floor in a neat line.
Lang started to close the curtain when something on the floor gleamed in the dim light. He stooped and scooped up a cross on a gold chain, a cross with a third cross member. A Greek cross. He frowned. Not something Father Strentenoplis would leave behind. With it in his hand, he walked over to the apartment's second window, one across from the bed. Closer examination showed the catch on the cross's chain still closed. The chain was broken.
Lang carefully placed the cross and chain on the bureau and crossed the short hall into a minuscule kitchen. The heel of a baguette lay on the counter next to the sink along with a chunk of hard pecorino, cheese made from ewe's milk, and a sliced pear, its edges already turning brown, a typical Italian breakfast. A coffeepot sat on one of the stove's two gas burners. It was still warm to the touch.
Father Strentenoplis hadn't impressed Lang as a man who would leave a meal prepared but uneaten and he certainly wouldn't leave a gold cross.
Lang went back into the living room and turned the computer on. Nothing but a blank screen. He tried several booting-up procedures but the screen never wavered from its unrelenting blue. Had its main drive been removed?
He was leafing through the papers when he jerked his head up. Footsteps in the hall. He slipped the .45 from his belt and cocked it. The sound receded and he eased the hammer to half cock and made certain the safety was on. Cocked and locked.
He returned to the papers, but found nothing he could read.
A broken chain, opened hair dye, unfinished breakfast. It was beginning to look like Father Strentenoplis had made an unplanned departure.
Why?
Perhaps the priest had taken another route between his apartment and the Vatican and Lang had simply missed him. Possible but Lang didn't think so. He would certainly go by the office again. There was nothing further here.
At least nothing tangible. Lang had a feeling, a gut vibe that if someone had made the good father disappear that person could still be around.
He took the stairs rather than making himself a stationary target on the elevator.
They came for him there.
Between two floors, two men were waiting on the landing. Each looked as though he might have had a career as a professional wrestler. Each carried a gun with a very visible silencer. Each held his weapon at arm's length as though fearing it might bite.
Amateurs, Lang guessed.
But it doesn't take a professional assassin's bullet.
And there wasn't anything amateurish about the footsteps Lang heard behind him. Get your quarry in a cross fire, as professional as you please.
"Ah, Mr. Reilly," said one of the men below him, speaking in accented English, "we need to speak with you."
"Throw the guns over the bannister and we'll chat all day."
The man who had spoken smiled. It wasn't a nice smile, either. "Just put up your hands where I can see them."
Lang sensed, rather than heard, whoever was at his back upstairs getting closer, closer than anyone who knew what he was doing would be if he planned to shoot. The plan was to distract him while someone grabbed him from behind. Then dispose of him in some manner honoring a saint.
Was a saint ever shot?
He was thankful he had cocked the .45. There was no time to do so now. He raised his left
hand, his right brushing his back a little slower. His only defense was they had no way to know he was armed.
A soon as he felt the Colt clear his belt, he whirled as he lifted it. Over its muzzle he saw two astonished faces. One turned to crimson mush as the big gun bucked in Lang's grasp. The impact knocked the man into a spin and over the railing. There was a wet-sounding impact as he hit the floor below.
The roar of the .45, rolling up and down the stairwell like a departing thunderstorm, momentarily transfixed the men below. Someone yelled and a door slammed.
A spitting sound and something unpleasant buzzed past Lang's ear.
Using his other hand, Lang grabbed the gun arm of the remaining assailant above him on the steps and yanked him to the side as he stepped behind him.
Now he had a shield. Or so he thought.
There were the coughs of two silencers and the man went limp.
Lang was holding a lifeless body, one that had taken bullets meant for him.
The dead weight was pulling Lang off balance. He had the right gun for bluff and bluster but not marksmanship. All he could do was fill the air with lead and hope. He pointed the automatic in the general direction of the two remaining men and emptied the clip. Chips of plaster and stone filled the staircase like shrapnel. One man cursed and dropped his weapon to try to staunch a river of red coursing down his arm.
Lang would have bet the wound was inflicted by flying debris rather than accuracy with the heavy pistol.
The remaining man fled.
Lang looked around him. A stinking fog of gun smoke filled the staircase. Shell casings glittered on the stairs like a field of gold nuggets. The man he had held was stretched out headfirst, his arms reaching for a discarded weapon, a Beretta 9mm. Another dead at the bottom of the stairs. Blood made abstract patterns against the gray stone walls and stairs.
It wouldn't take the police force's resident rocket scientist to figure out what had happened and Lang was the only person left to question. He started down the steps as fast as his gimpy legs would go. The bottom was in sight when he heard the pulsating wail of sirens. From the sound of them, they would arrive at the front door about the same time he did.
