Allan Folsom - Day Of Confession

A second male voice farther off cursed and then echoed. There was the sound of rushing water. The smell was overpowering. And then Harry knew. He'd been brought into the sewer. An exchange came in Italian.

'Prepararsi?'

'Si.' The earphone voice.

Harry felt a jarring between his wrists. There was a snap, and his hands came free.

CLICK. The unmistakable metallic sound of a gun being cocked.

'Sparagli. ' Shoot him.

In reflex reaction Harry stepped backward, throwing his hands in front of his face.

'Sparagli!'

Immediately there was a thundering explosion. Something slammed into his hand. Then his head. The force threw him backward into the water.

Harry did not see the face of the gunman who stepped over him. Or of the other man who held the flashlight. Harry did not see what they saw; the enormous volume of blood covering the left side of his face, matting his hair, a trickle of it washing away in the flow of water.

'Morto, ' a voice whispered.

'Si.'

The gunman knelt down and rolled Harry's body over the edge into a deeper, faster rush of water, then watched as it floated away.

'I topi faranno il resto.'

The mice will finish it.

The Questura, police headquarters.

Harry Addison sat there, a bandage over his left temple, dressed in the off-white polo shirt, jeans, and aviator sunglasses he wore when he left the Hotel Hassler at little after one-thirty in the afternoon yesterday. Nearly thirty hours earlier.

The fifteen-second video of the fugitive Harry Addison had come anonymously to Sala Stampa della Santa Sede, the press office of the Holy See, at 3:45 that afternoon, with a request it be sent immediately to the pope. Instead it had been put on a shelf and not opened until approximately 4:50. Immediately it had been sent to Farel's office and, after being viewed by a junior staff member, sent to Farel himself. By six o'clock Farel, Gruppo Cardinale prosecutor Marcello Taglia, Roscani, along with Castelletti and Scala, the homicide detectives assigned to Pio's murder, and a half dozen others were sitting in the dark of a video room viewing it together.

' Danny, I'm asking you to come in… To give yourself up.' Harry spoke in English, and an interpreter from Roscani's office translated into Italian.

As far as they could tell, Harry was sitting on a high wooden stool in a darkened room, alone. The wall behind him appeared to be covered with a textured and patterned wallpaper. That and Harry, his dark glasses, and the bandage on his forehead were all that was visible.

' They know everything… Please, for me… Come in… please… Please…' There was a pause and Harry's head started to come up as if to say something more, then the tape abruptly ended.

'Why wasn't I told the priest might still be alive?' Roscani looked at Taglia and then Farel as the lights came up.

'I learned of it only moments before this video was brought to my attention,' Farel said. 'The incident happened yesterday, when the American asked that the casket be opened, and when it was, swore the remains were not those of his brother… It could be the truth, it could be a lie… Cardinal Marsciano was there. He felt the American was emotionally overwrought. It was only this afternoon, when he learned of the circumstances of Pio's death, he sent Father Bardoni to tell me.'

Roscani got up and crossed the room. He was irritated. This was something he should have been told of immediately. Besides, there was no love lost between him and Farel.

'And you and your people have no idea where the video came from.'

Farel's eyes locked on Roscani's and stayed there. 'If we knew, Ispettore Capo, we would have done something about it, don't you think?'

Taglia, slim and dressed in a dark pinstripe suit, and with a bearing that suggested an aristocratic upbringing, intervened and spoke for the first time.

'Why would he do it?'

'Ask for the casket to be opened?' Farel looked to Taglia.

'Yes.'

'From what I was told he was overcome with emotion; he wanted to see his brother to tell him good-bye… Blood runs deep, even with murderers… Then when he saw the body was not Father Daniel, he reacted in surprise, without thinking.'

Roscani came back across the room, working to ignore Farel's abrasiveness. 'Suppose that's true and he made a mistake – why, a day later, does he assume the man is still alive and beg him to come forward? Especially when he's wanted for murder himself?'

'It's a gamble,' Taglia said. 'They're worried that if he is alive, what he might reveal if he is caught. They have his brother call him in so they can kill him.'

'This same brother who so emotionally asked to look at a hideous corpse now wants to kill him?'

'Maybe that was the reason.' Farel sat back in his chair. 'Maybe it was more calculated than it appears. Maybe he had a sense that everything was not as it seemed.'

'Then why did he say so out loud? Father Daniel was officially dead. Why didn't he leave it that way? It's not likely the police would search for a dead man. If he were alive, he could have gone after him quietly.'

'But where to look?' Taglia said. 'Why not let the police help find him?'

Roscani shook a cigarette from a pack and lit it. 'But they send the video to the pope instead of here. Why? There's been enough publicity, they know who we are.'

'Because,' Farel said, 'they want it released to the media. Gruppo Cardinale might do it, they might not. By sending the video to the Holy Father, they hoped he would intervene personally. Ask me to pressure you to release it. All of Italy knows how shocked and horrified he was by the cardinal vicar's murder and how much it would mean to him to have his assassin caught and brought to justice.'

'And did he ask you?' Roscani said.

'Yes.'

Roscani stared at Farel for a moment, then walked off.

'We have to assume they've calculated the odds. They know if we choose not to give it to the media, we would be losing a major chance to have the public help us fish for him. If we do, and he is alive and sees the story on television or reads about it in the newspapers and decides to do what his brother asks, we might very well get to him before they do. Thereby giving him the chance to tell us the very thing they are so concerned about.'

'Evidently it is a chance they are willing to take,' Taglia said.

'Evidently…' Putting out his cigarette, Roscani let his eyes wander from Taglia to Farel and then to Castelletti, Scala, and the others.

'There is one other concern.' Farel stood up, buttoning his suit coat. 'If the media are given the video, we must provide a photograph of the priest and, more significantly, details of what, until now, has been highly confidential… the Vatican cleric who murders a Roman cardinal… I have consulted with secretariat of state Cardinal Palestrina, and he agrees that no matter the pope's personal feelings, if this becomes public, the Holy See will be exposed to a scandal unknown for decades. And at a time when the Church's influence is quite the opposite of hugely popular.'

'Dottor Farel, we're talking about murder.' Roscani was looking directly at the Vatican policeman.

'Be respectful of your personal passions, Ispettore Capo. You will remember that they, among other things, were why you were not selected to head the investigation.' Farel stared at Roscani for a long moment, then turned to Taglia.

'I am confident you will make the right decision…'

With that, he walked out.

Once again Roscani had to work to ignore Farel. The Vatican policeman was gruff, direct, abrasive when it suited him, putting the Holy See before anything else, as if it and only it had any stake here. It was what you got when you dealt with him, especially if you were from a police force outside his control, and if you were, like Roscani, a person far more introspective, and a great deal less political. Roscani's daily life was devoted to grinding it out and doing the best job he possibly could, whatever it was and whatever it took. It was an attribute he'd learned from his father – a taskmaster and maker and seller of leather goods who had died of a heart attack in his own shop at eighty while trying to move a hundred-pound anvil; the same attribute that he tried to instill in his sons.