Felici felt the blood drain from his face as he recognised O’Connor. He buzzed immediately for his private secretary.
‘Tell Monsignor de Luca to come and see me – at once.’ He turned back to the commandant. ‘You may leave the footage with me, and I want this information tightly held. If anyone asks, it’s been dealt with.’
‘Of course, Eminence,’ the commandant replied, taking his leave.
Felici drummed his fingers on his desk impatiently. There was only one reason for O’Connor to be in the secret archives disguised as a priest.
‘Monsignor de Luca is here, Eminence.’ Father Cordona showed in the head of intelligence and quietly left.
Felici briefed de Luca and issued his directions. ‘I want an immediate search of the vault. You are to report to me if anything has been tampered with.’
De Luca paled, knowing that if the cardinal ever saw his notes, he’d be finished.
Wiley read Felici’s encrypted email and immediately forwarded a sanitised version to the chief of station in Rome. Three minutes later he was headed for the Task Force Inca operations room, where Megan Becker and Larry Davis were waiting.
The CIA’s top man in Rome, Mike Shelby, had seen DDOs come and go, some good, some suited to other roles, but never in his nearly forty years with the Agency had he worked for a bigger asshole than Howard Wiley. He read the latest cable requiring his presence on the secure, encrypted video link and sighed. Shelby, like many others under Wiley’s command, both liked and respected O’Connor, and was dismayed by the vendetta against him. The former West Point quarterback made his way down to the CIA’s communications section in the Palazzo Margherita. The embassy, a stylish three-storey pink and grey palace on Via Vittorio Veneto, had once been home to Julius Caesar, and to the first queen of Italy, Queen Margherita. Shelby thanked the duty comms officer and settled in for another grilling as Wiley, looking as angry as his spiky red hair, appeared on the screen.
‘We have a situation,’ Wiley announced. ‘A short time ago, Tutankhamun was identified at the Vatican, disguised as a priest. We don’t have a definitive lead on Nefertiti, but it’s a fair bet she’ll be with him. It’s possible they’re headed for Villa Felici on Lake Como, owned by Cardinal Felici.’
‘Do we know why he might be interested in the cardinal’s villa?’
‘That’s not important,’ Wiley snapped. ‘What is important is that you have the approaches and the area around the villa covered. And that includes the lake. I want twenty-four-hour surveillance.’
‘It might help if we knew what Tutankhamun was after,’ Shelby persisted calmly.
‘And it might not,’ Wiley growled, annoyed that he didn’t know the answer. Felici had not disclosed any intelligence as to what his villa might contain. ‘What assets do you have?’
‘Sufficient for the task. This is Italy, sir, a country not known for its shortage of assassins,’ Shelby said. Megan Becker supressed a smile.
‘I assume you don’t want any contact with the guards at the villa?’ Shelby continued.
‘And have the whole operation leak to the media? Of course not. Get on with it!’
Chapter 40
‘We’re moving. Tonight,’ O’Connor announced to Aleta as he strode in the door of their room at the Hotel Sant’Anna.
‘They’re on to us already?’
‘If they’re not, they soon will be,’ he said. He gave Aleta a short version of the afternoon’s events. ‘I’ve fixed the bill and rented a car, and we’ll leave as soon as you can assemble that toiletry bag of yours.’
Aleta rolled her eyes. ‘Just watch me. I’m travelling light,’ she protested.
‘Glad to hear it!’
‘Do you mind telling me where we’re headed, or is that another state secret?’
‘Como. The villa we’re going to is at the southern edge of the lake, about 500 kilometres away. With a bit of luck, we’ll be there for breakfast.’
‘You don’t want to get some sleep and drive when you’re fresh?’
O’Connor shook his head. ‘I couldn’t do anything about the security cameras in the archives, and when they discover Bib and Bub tied up in the lab in their blue and yellow pyjama suits, Felici’s bound to recognise me. Felici’s got a direct line to Wiley, so on past form, we’ll need to get out of here – and into the villa – as soon as we can.’
Aleta shuddered. Wiley’s previous assassination attempts were indelibly seared on her memory.
O’Connor drove sedately out of Rome and took the A1 to Bologna, and on to Milan, skirting the northern city and turning north on the A9 to the lake. Apart from the toll stops on the Autostrada, they made good progress. The immensely powerful Audi S5 V8 he’d rented was capable of over 250 kilometres an hour, but O’Connor kept it down to 120, and they rolled into the lakeside town of Como just as the sun was rising over the Alps. O’Connor had chosen the Hotel Metropolitan Suisse, an unobtrusive but comfortable hotel within a few hundred metres of the Como Nord Lago train station.
‘Don’t tell me … you have to go out for a while,’ said Aleta, once they’d breakfasted on the terrace.
‘You’re learning quickly, but —’
‘I know. Don’t answer the door for anyone. Fat lot of good that did me in Lima. They broke the thing down.’
‘Well, hopefully, as we speak, they’re still looking for us in Rome.’
O’Connor took the SS340, a narrow, twisting road that ran parallel to the lake shore on the east and the Swiss border to the west. He passed through the village of Laglio, where George Clooney had his villa, and north through Torriggia and Brienno, but when he reached Ossuccio, he parked the car in a side street and took the narrow track that led on towards a distinctive tree-covered promontory, on the point of which stood Villa Felici.
O’Connor left the track and, using the trees for cover, he approached slowly, stopping every 50 metres to listen. He worked his way to the top of a small rise and took up a position in the trees. O’Connor focused his binoculars, and the security at the villa was immediately apparent. Apart from the heavily guarded entrance, the villa was swarming with guards. Some were patrolling the shoreline and others were positioned on the roof of the library and the main residence, covering the road and the lake. O’Connor smiled grimly. Whatever Felici was hiding in the villa obviously merited fierce protection. Keeping to the tree line, O’Connor retreated down the path. As he drove back along the narrow road towards Como and to one of the local dive shops, he thanked the powers of the cosmos that Aleta was a qualified diver.
‘Security’s tight,’ he said, when he got back to the hotel, ‘and there’s no doubt Felici’s expecting us.’
‘He’s here? I thought with the Pope’s funeral …’
‘You’re right, he’s got his hands full in Rome, but there’s an army of thugs patrolling the grounds. I suspect that whatever he’s hiding will be worth finding.’ O’Connor fired up his laptop and Google Earth. He’d already researched the plans of the ancient villa, which a prominent firm of architects had thoughtfully posted on the net after they’d undertaken some alterations, but now he was searching for weak points in the guards’ defences.
‘We don’t want a long swim, so the best approach will be out of the town of Lenno. The lake is deep and cold, and at night it’ll be darker than the inside of a cow’s ass. Lights are out of the question, so we’ll have to rope together.’
Aleta shook her head determinedly, but she was smiling. She still hadn’t quite adjusted to O’Connor’s colourful language.
‘We’ll leave our car in Argegno to pick up later and get a bus to Lenno, which is closer to the villa. We’ll get some bags for the scuba gear so it doesn’t attract too much attention. There’s a grove of trees near Via Comoedia in Lenno where we can change. From there, there’s a little access track to the lake. Once we’re in the lake, we’ll follow the northern shoreline of the Felici promontory until we come to the opening of the marina, here.’ O’Connor indicated the sea wa
ll that protected the entrance. ‘From the look of it, there’s some sort of boatshed. That might provide the best way in.’
O’Connor and Aleta went through their gear checks together: regulators, cylinders, depth gauges, tank-pressure gauges, wrist-dive computers, buoyancy compensation devices, safety reels, weights and knives.
‘Let’s go.’ O’Connor led the way down the narrow access track from Via Comoedia past some expensive waterfront properties and over a rock wall. They moved quietly to the edge of the lake where they put on their fins, checked they were securely roped together, pressed the deflation buttons on their buoyancy compensation devices and descended into the depths of the lake, Aleta swimming confidently behind O’Connor.
Visibility was poor, but O’Connor had calculated a series of compass bearings that would keep them on course. Thirty minutes later he stopped and waited for Aleta to swim up to him before making an ‘O’ out of his thumb and forefinger, the universal dive sign for ‘I’m okay/are you okay?’ Aleta returned the ‘O’ and he motioned her to wait while he rose to check where they were.
O’Connor surfaced quietly, his Navy Seal training ensuring there was hardly a ripple. The lights of the villa were blazing, extending silver fingers out on to the black surface of the lake. Every so often a searchlight probed the darkness, but as O’Connor had anticipated, the operator was combing the surface of the lake much further out. The entrance to the marina was about 100 metres away and O’Connor took a bearing with his wrist compass before sinking back into the depths.
They reached the stone wall of the marina and O’Connor cautiously led the way along it, sticking to the bottom. He swam past the steps and into the boathouse. Surprisingly, it was in total darkness. O’Connor glided under a speedboat rocking gently at its moorings and when he reached the far stone wall, he and Aleta climbed out on to a stone ledge, where they divested themselves of their scuba gear. O’Connor checked his Glock, its silencer already attached.
‘We’ll start with the library,’ he whispered. On the way out of the boathouse O’Connor stopped to examine a narrow two-metre-high niche in the rear wall. A solid wooden door was set inside it. He tried it, but it was locked.
‘I wonder …’ he said softly.
‘Where this leads to?’
‘Exactly. I don’t think it’s a cupboard.’ O’Connor reached into his waterproof bag and extracted a set of mortice-lock keys. At the third attempt, the old two-lever lock yielded and O’Connor cautiously opened the door.
‘Felici might have an army of guards,’ he whispered, ‘but his locks are no better than the Vatican’s secret archives. We’ll hide the tanks, just in case anyone gets the urge to check the boathouse.’ But no sooner had he spoken than the lights went on and a security guard appeared on the top of the steps that led down to the water.
‘Hey!’ he yelled, raising his Socimi 821 submachine gun.
O’Connor’s Glock recoiled in his expert hands and the sphut, sphut of the silenced rounds sounded unusually loud in the confined space. The guard’s yell was replaced by an anguished gurgle as he dropped his gun, clutched his chest and tumbled forward into the water between the speedboat and the steps with a loud splosh. He tried to clamber out, but O’Connor was there in an instant and he whipped the guard around, pinning his arms and holding him beneath the surface. The guard’s struggles finally ceased and O’Connor recovered his belt and a pouch containing four magazines of bullets. He wedged the body underneath one of the rubber fender tyres and was about to turn out the light when he noticed the ignition keys had been left in the boat. Very careless, he thought, as he put them in a zippered pocket of his wetsuit.
‘We’ll have to move fast,’ O’Connor whispered. ‘That probably raised the alarm. Did they ever show you how to use one of these in that pistol club of yours?’
‘I’ve fired an Uzi,’ Aleta replied.
‘Not much difference,’ O’Connor said, handing her the Italian version. He led the way to the back of the boathouse, through the solid wooden door and up the stone steps of a narrow passage. When they reached a wide stone ledge, O’Connor switched on the torch he’d fitted with a red filter. It gave just enough light but wasn’t visible unless someone was directly in the beam. The alcove in front of them led to more steps, while another alcove signalled the entrance to a passage carved out of the rock. O’Connor reasoned the steps in front of them would lead to the library above, but the entrance in the rock intrigued him and he beckoned for Aleta to follow him into a dank, moss-covered tunnel nearly 50 metres long.
‘Well, well,’ O’Connor exclaimed softly as they reached the heavy steel door of a vault at the end of the tunnel.
‘If this is what they’re guarding, it’s strange they haven’t posted someone here,’ Aleta whispered as she held the filter torch on the first of the combination locks.
‘The guards may not even know this exists,’ O’Connor replied. ‘Felici operates on a need-to-know basis.’
As yet unaware of O’Connor’s presence at the villa, the cardinal was engaged on a high-risk strategy of his own. Attired in an Armani suit and seated in the back of his black Mercedes, Felici acknowledged the salute of the Swiss Guard as the driver slipped out of the Vatican’s St Anne’s Gate for the short trip across town to a quiet bar with private booths. Felici’s arrangement with Luigi Campioni, a senior journalist writing for La Stampa and the Vatican Insider, was a long-standing one. Contact was always initiated by Felici and set up by Sister Bridget from a public pay phone. If there were any investigation into a leak, it would never be traced to Felici, or any of his staff. But the arrangement worked for both sides. Courtesy of Felici, Campioni had broken some amazingly accurate stories. This afternoon would be no different.
‘It’s very good to see you again, Eminence. A white or a red?’ Campioni queried, picking up the wine list. Campioni’s tab at the restaurant was mammoth, but given the explosive nature of the scoops, his editors didn’t complain.
‘I think a red. It’s going to be a difficult few days.’
‘Tahbilk,’ Campioni intoned after the waiter had left. ‘An Australian shiraz. The vines date back to the 1860s.’
Felici took a long sniff of the bouquet and swirled it around his tastebuds before passing judgement. ‘Excellent,’ Felici said finally. ‘Very fine tannins.’
‘Those Australians are giving the French a run for their money these days,’ Campioni replied, the relieved expression on his face quickly replaced with a professional look of interest. ‘I’ve been following the lead-up to the conclave with great interest, Eminence. You should not be surprised to find yourself as one of the favourites.’
‘He who goes in as a pope, comes out as a cardinal,’ Felici replied, reminding his inquisitor of the old Roman saying, proven correct on more than one occasion.
‘Yes, although not always,’ Campioni countered, ‘and of course, we all hope you’re successful. Even if that means I will lose a most trusted advisor.’
‘There are ways and means, even as pope,’ Felici replied, ‘but of course, Cardinal Sabatani is also a clear frontrunner.’
‘What would his election mean for the Holy Church, Eminence?’
‘In a word, disaster. If Sabatani is elected, I very much fear for the Church’s future. Many in his camp are seeking to water down Catholic doctrine with a sort of new-age theology they think will appeal to the masses: allowing contraception and remarriage for divorcees, and, worse still, allowing priests to revoke their vows of celibacy. Everything’s up for grabs at a time when we need to go back to our roots. Before you know it, we’ll be using crystals and chanting the mass in creole.’ Felici reached into his soft leather briefcase. ‘You may find these useful,’ he said, handing over copies of Sabatani’s discussion papers.
O’Connor held his finger to his lips for silence as he adjusted his stethoscope and listened for the first of the sounds that would indicate one of the tumblers in the lock falling into place. Another old lock – O’Connor shook
his head at Felici’s carelessness. Despite the old design, it took O’Connor nearly ten minutes to crack it, rocking the gradations back and forth before he had both combinations, and with every passing minute, Aleta feared they would be discovered. At last, the old steel door moved noiselessly on its hinges and O’Connor probed the inside of the vault with the torch.
‘Look!’ Aleta gasped, grabbing O’Connor’s wetsuit. ‘A crystal skull!’ The life-size skull was nestling in a niche hewn out of the rock in the far wall of the vault. The filtered red beam from the torch seemed to explode within it, like a series of interconnecting neurons.
‘So the message you received about one of the skulls being in the hands of your enemies was right,’ O’Connor observed, fascinated by the kaleidoscope of red, blue and yellow impulses crackling deep within the crystal. But the extra light from the skull showed the outline of the small safe in another niche and O’Connor immediately moved towards it.
‘They’re not exactly high-tech with their security,’ said Aleta, shining the filtered beam on the single dial of the old safe.
‘Hopefully Felici’s loss is our gain, depending on what’s in this safe,’ O’Connor said quietly, placing the diaphragm of his stethoscope on the dial. Less than five minutes later, the safe gave up two thin crimson folders in a protective cover, each embossed with a raised gold coat of arms.
‘Copies of the documents in the secret archives?’ Aleta guessed.
‘The originals … and the documents in the secret archives weren’t complete.’ O’Connor glanced quickly inside the folders. ‘The cipher is the same, but the prophecy in this file has two pages, not one. I’m not sure why these are important enough for Felici to engage a small army to protect them, but it’s going to be fun finding out,’ he said, handing Aleta the files and closing the safe.
The Inca Prophecy Page 23
