Steven Savile - Silver

A hundred yards after the car came the first of the foot patrol, Swiss Guard walking in their ceremonial uniforms like a marching band. They didn’t look half as professional, aware or as imposing as the BKA men to Konstantin’s trained eye. He knew that the Guard were professional soldiers, but there was something cartoonish about their appearance that made it easy to underestimate them-which made it the perfect cover for his assassin.

And then the crowd in front of him burst into cheers and applause as the Popemobile came around the corner. Konstantin’s heart sank. He was still less than halfway to the stage. He felt the weight of people press up behind him and tried to go with it, hoping it would carry him through a few ranks closer to the front, like riding a crowd at a rock concert. He dropped his shoulder slightly, turning side on to the stage. He didn’t want to start pushing people and making a scene, but he would if he had to.

The converted Mercedes Benz turned into the square.

Konstantin could see the white-haired old man in his seat waving slightly to the people as the car drove by. He looked serene, beatific. Even behind the glass there was a calm about him that touched the crowd. All of the crowd save Konstantin. His nearness only heightened his sense of desperation. He needed to get to the front. He needed to be there.

The car swept around the skirt of the crowd, already halfway to the stage.

Konstantin abandoned any pretense of calm and forced his way between the people in front of him. He knew what it would look like to the BKA agents. They’d see a desperate man forcing his way to the stage. They’d see his determined stare, his perspiration and his erratic breathing, and they would think he was their man. He lips weren’t moving, but he had no way of knowing just how good the agents actually were, and whether they would see the difference between a man trying to do everything in his power to stop an assassination and an assassin fixated on the kill.

There were fifteen or sixteen rows of people between him and the stage.

“Excuse me, sorry, excuse me, danke,” he said, pushing his way between a young family come to see the service, when he realized his lips were moving. They were moving all the time, his apologies like a mantra that from a distance would almost certainly look like a fanatic’s prayer.

He shoved the back of the man in front of him, forcing his way between him and the woman at his side. The man stumbled forward, reaching out for support and shoving the man in front of him as he tried to catch his balance. The effect of the shove rippled throughout crowd. Konstantin tried to duck away from the man as he turned to face him. He barked something at him in German. Konstantin ignored him. He only had eyes for the stage. He knew people were looking at him. He didn’t care. He had maybe two minutes before the Pope walked onto the stage, six more until the gunshot was timed to go off and all hell broke loose.

He risked a backward glance, up in the direction of the window of number 13 with the sniper rifle, then stared straight ahead.

There were three television cameras, one set up on a crane, the other two on the left side of the square, looking out at the crowd. One of them seemed to be pointed directly at him. He realized that back in the mobile broadcast control trailer some very anxious people were staring at their screens, seeing him, and fearing the worst.

The Popemobile pulled up alongside the red carpet that led up to the stage steps. Two BKA men, bulky beneath their well-cut suits, moved quickly toward the back of the car and opened the door, stepping back so the Holy Father and the two Swiss Guards sitting inside with him could emerge. The guards were the first out. The second man turned and held out a hand for the Pope to take to steady himself as he walked down the short flight of steps, then stepped back as he turned and held his hand up to the crowd in blessing and welcome.

Konstantin’s view was partially obscured. He could only see the Pope from the collar of his Fanon, the two super-posed cloaks sewn together around his throat, and up. The precious miter, his conical headdress meant Konstantin could follow him as he walked through the crowd and climbed onto the stage. A papal throne had been set up in the center of the stage, and the Swiss Guard assembled at either side of it.

On the top step, the Pope turned to the people, again holding out his hand as they cheered and applauded. It struck the Russian as dreadfully wrong that a holy man should be accorded the same sort of frenzied welcome as a pop star.

He was six rows from the front.

He needed to be closer, but the people were packed in so tightly now he found himself having to move sideways along the line as he looked for a gap to squeeze himself through.

Up on the facade of St. Florin’s church the huge iron minute hand of the clock juddered forward another minute, coming to hang over the Pope’s head like some huge sword of Damocles. Konstantin was breathing hard, forcing himself to keep it regular: in and out, hold, in and out. In and out, hold, in and out.

He knew exactly what he looked like.

He didn’t care.

In six minutes the Pope would be dead if he didn’t stop it.

The Vicar of Christ walked to the center of the stage, coming up to the microphones. He leaned forward and, holding both hands up palms toward the congregation, said, “Thank you.” He spoke in English, not German, not Latin, and not his native Italian. Up close Peter II, the man they called Peter the Roman, was older than he appeared in any of the photographs Konstantin had seen of the man. Indeed, he had aged since his election to office on the death of Benedict XVI a little over a year before.

Five minutes.

Peter II crossed himself then leaned on the lectern, supporting himself by grasping both sides of the stand. “Dear brothers and sisters,” the Holy Father said, his voice carried by the microphones to the far reaches of the crowd. He offered them all a smile. Konstantin’s eyes roved wildly from the Pope to the faces of the guards around him, looking for the traitor. “This evening we share between us is truly extraordinary, not for the sky beneath which we stand, nor for the friends at our sides, for both of which give thanks, but for the blazing light of the Risen Christ, which defeats the darkest power of evil and death and rekindles hope and joy in the hearts of believers. Look to the sky, see the failing sun and the rising moon, their light never fails us, for theirs is the light of the Risen Christ.

“Dear friends, let us pray together to the Lord Jesus so that the world may see and recognize that, thanks to his passion, death and resurrection, what was destroyed is rebuilt; what was aging is renewed and completely restored, more beautiful than ever, to its original wholeness.” He lowered his head.

Everyone in the crowd did likewise, except for Konstantin, the BKA agents and the Swiss Guard on the stage.

Konstantin forced his way closer to the stage as the murmured prayers rose to exhort the heavens. Konstantin had a single prayer on his lips, but God wasn’t listening, and the press of people mocked him. He risked a sideways glance and saw two of the black-suited BKA men pushing into the crowd behind him, and another running along the side toward the stage. They were hunting him. They hadn’t drawn their guns. Yet.

He was two people from the stage.

The guards on either side of the Pope stared at him.

Konstantin stared back, trying to read murder in their faces. Any one of them could have been capable of the killing. That was the chilling realization he had as he got close enough to really see them. They were the same. Face by face there was nothing different in the way they looked at him. Any one of them, or all of them, could have been the assassin.