Stealing God

by James Green

  ‘Are you thinking or have you just switched off? Maybe you’re dead. Should I close your eyes?’

  ‘I can’t believe I played along with it for so long. It was all there in plain view. I even got told and more than once but I still didn’t see it.’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘It’s all in my head, you told me that, you said it was like being sucked into my head and you were dead right. Danny said the same thing, it was like a film someone was running inside my head.’

  ‘Danny? Your black friend? For Christ’s sake tell me you haven’t told him anything.’

  Jimmy brushed aside Ricci’s concern.

  ‘We’ve been part of a bloody movie, everything so far has been scripted and directed. We get brought in and given Cheng’s death. When it was obviously going nowhere we get the cardinals?’

  ‘That was your idea, no one fed us that. You thought up that little fantasy.’

  ‘I did, didn’t I? I knew it was rubbish but I didn’t want the investigation to stop. I wanted it to go on so I forced a connection where there couldn’t be one and when I ask for someone to tell me all about it what happens? I get a monsignor who invites me to lunch and there it is, all the confirmation I need to turn a piece of nonsense into a possible lead. Sure there are some cardinals whose deaths might be suspicious and guess what? It might be something to do with a conclave, and guess who might have been elected pope in that conclave? Only Cheng. My God, I must have been sleep-walking. From Cheng’s death to fixing a conclave. It’s all been nothing more than a film show, Killing cardinals, a fantasy movie playing in a head near you: mine.’

  ‘And who’s supposed to be behind all this elaborate conspiracy? The minister, the pope, the president of the…’

  ‘I don’t know, but McBride is involved. She has to be.’

  ‘Your rector.’

  Ricci couldn’t restrain a burst of laughter.

  ‘Now that is a joke.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘She a bloody academic, a professor, a temporary rector. All right, she has Vatican connections but who doesn’t in Rome if they matter at all?’

  ‘She’s American. It could be something to do with the CIA.’

  ‘No, that’s enough. Not the CIA on top of everything else. Forget the Americans and any movie in your head or anywhere else because there’s one thing that blows your stupid theory right out of the water: Anna Schwarz. She’s real, she’s not part of any script. Nobody made Anna up.’

  ‘That’s right. And that’s what all this fucking crap of play-acting has to have been about, to lead us to Anna. Someone knew she was here. Once she was out of the apartment and on her way to do whatever she’s doing they arranged a break-in and made sure the police got called. Then Charlie Cherub kindly tells you all about it and lo and behold there’s a file on Anna with everything we need to know and it gets handed to you nice as pie.’

  ‘But why? Why the hell would anybody go to all that trouble?’

  ‘Because we’re not detectives on this, we never were. We’re going to be the bloody evidence. We’re witnesses. Whatever happens from now on will be as carefully managed as all the rest. We’ll be fed enough, but just enough, to be able to say at the end that it was definitely a terrorist attack aimed at the Vatican, that we stumbled on it as part of an investigation into Archbishop Cheng’s death. What we started out with might sound like a fairy story but no one will care about that after a bomb has gone off. All anybody will be interested in will be the bit about Anna and that will be all too believable. Mind you, if I’m right there’s one good thing about it all.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If I’m right then whatever happens we’ll survive, we need to be alive afterwards if we’re going to tell our story.’

  Jimmy said it like a joke but Ricci couldn’t see any funny side. Jimmy had thought it out and made his case. Ricci wanted to laugh at it, to tell him it wasn’t possible, another stupid idea. Unfortunately he agreed with it.

  ‘But who would know about a bombing and yet still let it happen?’

  ‘Someone who stands to gain from it all. It must be. Somebody who knew about the attack, wants it to go ahead, and be able to prove it was terrorists.’ A thought occurred, ‘Or better still, someone who’s set up the attack and when it’s done wants to be able to prove it was terrorists, and before you ask I have no idea who that might be or what they stand to gain. What I do know is that we’ve been used and will go on being used.’

  The phone rang. Ricci stood up and watched as Jimmy picked it up and listened.

  ‘Thanks.’ He rang off. ‘We’ve got a briefing in one hour.’

  ‘Police headquarters?’

  ‘No. The Duns College rector’s office.’

  They stood for a moment.

  ‘Jimmy, do you think you could be wrong about this, about a bomb aimed at the Vatican?’

  ‘It fits what we know and I can’t think of anything else that does.’

  ‘And the bomb? What sort of bomb? A plane like you said?’

  ‘Maybe; I don’t know, but something that sends out the right message; we can do it and we can do it anywhere because we’ve done it in New York and now in the heart of your Christian world, we’ve done it in Rome.’

  ‘Christ. So what do we do?’

  ‘We do whatever we can.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Assume I’m right and pray that I’m wrong.’

  Ricci waited for the rest, but there was no rest.

  ‘It’s not much.’

  ‘No, it’s not, is it? But at the moment it’s all there is.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  Jimmy’s apartment was close enough to the Vatican for them to walk. The evening was pleasant, they had time before their appointment and both wanted to talk. Jimmy wanted to find a way forward and Ricci wanted to find a way out.

  ‘Why don’t we just tell the minister what we think? That the whole thing has been a set-up?’

  ‘And what will that do?’

  ‘Well, if he knows that we know then … then …’

  ‘Then we all know we know?’

  Ricci gave him a look. It was no time to try and be funny.

  ‘Then maybe we’d be no good to them any more. If they know we’ve worked out that it’s all some sort of set up then maybe they’ll let us drop out of it.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake think, will you? If we tell them that the whole thing was a set up by somebody who wanted it to look like terrorists do you think we get to walk away from it, to stay alive and tell whoever we like?’

  They walked on. A bomb, not a terrorist bomb but one that could be made to look like it was. Who would do that? Who would benefit? Jimmy had to ask the questions but didn’t like the only answer he could come up with. If it wasn’t terrorists but had to be made to look that way it meant the thing was planned by someone supposedly on our own side.

  The dome of St Peter’s became visible as part of the skyline.

  Ricci broke his silence.

  ‘Could we stop it?’

  ‘How? We aren’t even sure it’s happening. If it is, we don’t know when or how. We don’t know where the device will be or what it will be.’

  ‘All right, all right. So what can we do? There must be something we can do, someone we can tell.’

  ‘Like who, and what would we tell them? Whoever set this up has got us by the balls. What’s happened all makes sense to us because we know it all happened. Say we went to the police. The minister, McBride, your China-watcher, everyone we could name wouldn’t even have to deny anything, just tell a slightly different version and we’d look a couple of idiots. We’d probably get locked up for wasting police time.’

  They walked on. There were still plenty of tourists about, everything was as normal as it could be. It was Rome on a beautiful spring evening.

  ‘So what do you think we should do?’

  ‘We go on. What else is there? The way I look at it, it has to be something big, a suicide bomb
er in a vest or a car bomb would be just another atrocity, nasty but not unique.’

  ‘So you think it has to be big, bigger than anything before?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘How big?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘You think your plane idea will be the way they do it?’

  ‘No, hiring a plane shows them and gets recorded. Then they’d have to load it with explosives. It’s too risky. I also doubt if an unidentified aircraft can just swan over central Rome and the Vatican. But it has to be big enough to do the job. How do you get something really big close enough to the target? How do you get, say a lorry-load of high explosives right next to St Peter’s?’

  ‘You don’t. You can’t.’

  ‘That’s right and if you’re not close, not in Vatican Square, just nearby, what do you get? You blow up some shops and offices and kill bystanders? That’s bad, very bad, but it’s still not the Vatican and that has to be the target.’

  Ricci could tell from the way Jimmy spoke his mind had got to where he wanted it to go.

  ‘Then how?’

  ‘If it was a small nuclear device.’ Ricci was too stunned to say anything. It had moved from fantasy to nightmare. ‘It would do the job. If the Vatican stood it would still be contaminated, it would be finished, and the pope would die, maybe not straight away, but he’d still die.’

  ‘Christ, and so would others, how many others?’ Ricci’s mind baulked at what it saw. ‘No. No one would do that.’

  ‘Some people would do anything and that way it works. It’s about the only way it works.’

  ‘Christ, you think that’s it?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? I’m as much in the dark as you and all I have to go on is what we’ve been told. It’s far-fetched, almost impossible, but so was what happened in the States. No one could hijack all those planes and navigate them into Manhattan and to the Pentagon. But they did.’

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘If I’m right the safest way would be to bring it in is by sea. Road or air have to be too risky. That means that Anna may not be picking up a team. They might be coming in by themselves and she’s gone to pick up the bomb. If she has then she’ll have gone to a port and it will be one near Rome. She’ll use the same name so long as she thinks it’s safe.’

  Ricci didn’t say anything for a moment, he was trying to think it through, to spot some fatal flaw, something, anything, that made it wrong, that made the whole idea impossible. But nothing came. It could happen the way Jimmy had figured it. This wasn’t dead cardinals, this might be real, as real as Anna Schwarz.

  ‘And you think it would come in by sea?’

  ‘Who would try to bring that sort of kit in by road or air?’

  ‘So the best line of enquiry is to check hotels in ports, starting with those ports nearest to Rome.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They walked and talked until they came to the Swiss Guards at the security fence. There they went through the usual routine and were admitted.

  When they arrived at the rector’s office door Ricci knocked. A man’s voice answered. They went in. From behind the desk the bland monsignor who liked to live modestly and, when asked, thought that only three cardinals to his knowledge may have been murdered, smiled at them. He gestured to two chairs at the desk.

  ‘Come in and sit down, please.’

  ‘I was told we were getting a briefing from the team who’s looking for Anna Schwarz.’

  ‘And so you are, Inspector, so you are. The minister asked for an up-to-the-minute report and I have been asked to deliver its contents to you.’ They sat down. The monsignor picked up a sheet of paper from the desk. ‘I was told you would only want relevant information. Needless to say I was not the one who decided what was and what was not relevant.’ He looked at the paper and began to read. ‘A woman calling herself Anna Bruck hired a red Fiat Punto from Hertz Rent-a-Car at their Rome central office four days ago using the address of her apartment in Rome and a current European driving licence. This afternoon at seventeen fifteen the car was located by Hertz at their Florence airport office. It is now being examined but first reports say there were no fingerprints nor any other traces in the car to make an initial forensic confirmation that the woman who hired the car was actually Anna Schwarz. Descriptions from Hertz in Rome were vague, a young woman of about the right age, about the right height, who wore dark glasses and a yellow headscarf. Her hair may have been blonde. The staff concerned were shown a photo of Anna Schwarz but were unable to confirm it was the woman they dealt with, it may have been. The car was left at the Florence airport office with the papers and keys in it. No one saw who returned the car. No further trace of the woman known as Anna Bruck has been found and no female of the name Bruck or Schwarz flew out of Florence after the car was returned. Enquiries are continuing.’

  The monsignor put the sheet of paper on the desk and sat back. Ricci looked at Jimmy.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘If she picked up what we think was coming she took it to Florence airport and handed it over some time this afternoon before taking the car back to the Hertz office. That means that whoever took delivery probably came into Florence by air, hired a car or van, met her, and took delivery. Once that happened her part was finished. They won’t find her now.’

  ‘So our package is on its way to Rome?’

  ‘Yes, or it’s already here.’

  Ricci felt a cold sweat forming on his brow. He had thought Jimmy was wrong, had forced the thing further than it could reasonably go. Now it looked increasingly as if he was right. Or was he letting himself be sucked into his mad movie idea? Either way Anna had sat tight until her team was due then gone to Florence and handed over whatever she had collected for them. It could be anything, any sort of bomb, but if Jimmy was right it could start World War Three, setting Islam against the West and probably with America shouting “charge”.

  The monsignor waited patiently until Jimmy spoke.

  ‘Can you get a message to the officer in charge of this investigation?’

  The monsignor pulled out a phone and began to key in a number.

  ‘What is your message?’

  He finished dialling and held the phone to his ear.

  ‘Get the car checked for any signs of radioactivity. If it’s there then check for anyone who flew into Florence today and rented a car or van. Tell him it’s terrorist-related and it’s as bad as it sounds. That he should take whatever action he thinks fit.’

  Somebody answered the monsignor’s phone.

  ‘Hello. Yes it is, I have a message which is to be passed to the officer leading the search for Anna Schwarz. He is to check the car she used, the one she left at Florence airport, for radioactivity and if he finds any he is to cross-check the names on passenger arrivals with car or van rentals at the airport.’ He listened for a second, then looked across at Jimmy. ‘How long before?’

  ‘Up to six hours, that should be enough, but if they turn up nothing then keep going to twenty-four hours.’

  The monsignor passed on the answer.

  ‘If there is radioactivity present in the car the threat is real and present and whatever action thought fit should be taken.’ He held the mobile away from his mouth and looked across again. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘If he finds any likely matches among the rentals the vehicle and its contents will be headed for Rome or will already be in Rome.’ He looked at his watch and turned to Ricci. ‘How long to drive here from Florence?’

  ‘From the airport it would be three to four hours depending on how fast you drove and where in Rome you wanted to get to.’

  Jimmy worked out the timing. They got the bomb before five p.m., it was now eight-thirty.

  ‘If the radioactivity test is positive they should start turning Rome inside out.’

  The monsignor passed on the message then looked back.

  ‘I’d like to know the outcome of the test as soon as they have it.’

  ‘Do you have a numb
er they can reach you on?’

  Ricci gave the monsignor a number and turned to Jimmy.

  ‘It’s the mobile I gave you.’

  The monsignor gave the number then slipped his mobile inside his jacket.

  ‘Is there anything further, gentlemen?’ They couldn’t think of anything. ‘In that case I will wish you good evening.’ He stood up, picked up the paper from the desk, put it into an inside pocket, and went to the door. He looked at his watch. ‘I’m meeting friends, drinks and Il Trovatore. I’ll just make the interval.’ He smiled and left, pulling the door shut behind him.

  ‘Who the hell was that?’

  ‘He’s my monsignor, a man who thinks to live modestly is to live well.’

  ‘Look, stop playing fucking games. Who the bloody hell is he?’

  ‘He’s the one McBride sent to give me the information on the other cardinals, the one who confirmed the link between them and Cheng, that they would be important in a conclave. He also dropped me the bit about Cheng being pope material. He was very helpful and had everything ready at his fingertips just like he did tonight, everything we wanted, ready to hand to show us we’re right.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  Ricci rubbed a hand across his forehead. Jimmy thought he looked worse. The strain was really beginning to show, or the headaches, probably both.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘No I’m not OK. I’ve still got a bloody headache and my back hurts.’

  ‘You should take something.’

  ‘I am taking something, aspirin. Look, stop fucking me around, will you? We tell that guy to pass on a message that something radioactive could be on its way to Rome, that it’s terrorist-related and as bad as it can be and he doesn’t bat an eye. Then when he’s finished he tells us he’s off to drinks and the opera. No shock, no questions, no nothing? That makes no sense.’

  ‘It doesn’t, does it? But somehow I’m not altogether surprised.’

  Ricci got up angrily and began to walk around the small office.

  ‘For Christ sake stop being cryptic and give me a straight answer and I don’t want to hear any more of that movie shit. My family live in Rome, for God’s sake: parents and a sister. What should I do if those guys you’re so sure are coming set off their bomb before they can be picked up?’