Allan Folsom - Day Of Confession

Marsciano was another creature altogether, a man who had achieved what he had because he was not only intelligent and decidedly unpolitical but at heart a simple priest who believed in his Church and in God. It made him truly a 'man of trust', an innocent who would find it impossible to conceive that a man like Palestrina could exist inside the modern Church, thereby making it easy to use his faith as an instrument to manipulate him.

Suddenly Marsciano slammed his fist down on the table in front of him, in the same instant damning himself in anger for his weakness and naivete, even his own godliness, in pursuit of the calling he been drawn to his entire life. If his fury and self-realization had come earlier, he might have been able to do something, but by now it was far too late. Control of the Holy See had been all but relinquished to Palestrina by the Holy Father, and the only voice against him, Cardinal Parma's, had been silenced. And Capizzi and Matadi had bowed to their leader and followed him. As had Marsciano himself, hopelessly trapped by the substance of his own character. In result, Palestrina had taken the reins, setting in motion a horror that could not, and would not, be called back. Leaving them all to wait only for the broiling heat of Chinese summer.

Beijing, China. The Gloria Plaza Hotel. Sunday, July 12, 10:30 a.m.

Forty-six-year-old Li Wen came out of the elevator on the eighth floor and turned down the hallway, looking for room 886, where he was to meet James Hawley, a hydrobiological engineer from Walnut Creek, California. Outside, he could see the rain had stopped and the sun was breaking through the overcast. The rest of the day would be hot and oppressively humid as predicted, with the pattern to continue for several more days.

Room 886 was halfway down the corridor, and the door to it partway open when Li Wen reached it.

'Mr Hawley?' he said. There was no reply.

Li Wen raised his voice. 'Mr Hawley.' Still there was nothing. Pushing the door open, he entered.

Inside, the color TV was on to a news broadcast, and a light gray business suit for a very tall man was laid out on the bed. Alongside it was a white short-sleeved shirt, a striped tie, and a pair of boxer shorts. To his left, the bathroom door was open and he could hear the sound of a shower running.

'Mr Hawley?'

'Mr Li.' James Hawley's voice rose over the sound of the water. 'Another apology. I've been called to an urgent meeting at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. About what, I don't know. But it makes no difference – everything you need is in an envelope in the top dresser drawer. I know you have a train to catch. We'll have tea or a drink the next time around.'

Li Wen hesitated, then went to the dresser and opened the top drawer. Inside was a hotel envelope with the initials L. W. handwritten on the front. Taking it out, he opened it, glanced quickly at its contents, then slid it into his jacket pocket and closed the drawer.

'Thank you, Mr Hawley,' he said at the steam coming from the bathroom door, then quickly left, closing the door behind him. The contents of the envelope were precisely as promised, and there was no need to stay longer. He had little more than seven minutes to leave the hotel, dodge the traffic on Jianguomennan Avenue, and get to his train.

Had Li Wen forgotten something and come back to retrieve it, he would have seen a short, stocky Chinese in a business suit exit the bathroom in James Hawley's place. Stepping to the window, he looked out and saw Li Wen cross the street in front of the hotel and walk quickly toward the railroad station.

Turning from the window, he quickly took a suitcase from under the bed, put James Hawley's carefully laid-out clothes into it, and then left, leaving the room key on the bed.

Five minutes later he was at the wheel of his silver Opel, picking up his cell phone and turning onto Chongwenmendong Street. Chen Yin grinned. Publicly he was a successful merchant of cut flowers, but on quite another level he was a master of spoken language and dialect. One that he particularly delighted in using was American English – speaking the way a man like James I Hawley, a polite, if harried, hydrobiological engineer from Walnut Creek, California, might, if he existed.

Cortona, Italy. Sunday, July 12, 5:10 a.m., 11:10 a.m. in Beijing.

'Thank you, my friend,' Thomas Kind said in English. Then, clicking off the cellular, he put it on the seat beside him. Chen Yin's call had been within the allocated time window, and the news was as he had expected. Li Wen had the documents and was on his way home. There had been no face-to-face contact. Chen Yin was good. Dependable. And he had found Li Wen, not an easy thing to do – uncover the perfect all-too-accommodating pawn who had all the skills and reasons to do as asked, yet who, if circumstance required, could be disavowed or simply liquidated at any time.

Chen Yin had been paid beforehand, as a deposit in good faith, and once Li Wen had done his job, he would be paid the remainder of what he was owed. Then both would vanish: Li Wen because his usefulness would be over and they dared leave no trace back to themselves; Chen Yin, because it would be wise for him to leave the country for a time and because his money was out of China anyway, deposited in the Union Square branch of a Wells Fargo bank in downtown San Francisco.

Somewhere a rooster crowed, the sound bringing Thomas Kind immediately back to the task at hand. Ahead, in the predawn light, he could just see the house. It sat back from the road and behind a stone wall, a layer of mist hanging over the ploughed fields across from it.

He could have gone in just after he'd arrived, at a little past midnight. He would have cut the power, and the night-vision goggles would have given him the advantage. But still the killing would have had to be done in the dark. And against three men in a house he did not know.

So he'd waited, parking the rented Mercedes on an out-of-the-way cul-de-sac a mile away. There he'd field-stripped and checked his weapons in the darkness – twin 9mm Walther MPKs, mascinen pistole kurz, machine pistols with thirty-round magazines – then rested, his mind flashing back to the unfortunate happening in Pescara when Ettore Caputo, owner of Servizio Ambulanza Pescara, and his wife had refused to talk to him about the Iveco ambulance that left Hospital St Cecilia Thursday night for a destination unknown.

Stubbornness was an unfortunate trait in all of them. The husband and wife would not talk, and Thomas Kind was determined to have answers and would not leave without them. His questions were simple: who were the people in the ambulance? and where had they gone?

It had only been when Kind pressed a two-shot.44 magnum derringer against Signora Caputo's forehead that Ettore suddenly had had the urge to talk. Who the patient or passengers were he had no idea. The driver was a man named Luca Fanari, a former carabiniere and licensed ambulance driver who worked for him from time to time.

Luca had rented the ambulance from him earlier that week and for an unspecified period of time. Where he had gone with it, he did not know.

Thomas Kind pressed the derringer a little more firmly against Signora Caputo's head and asked again.

'Call Fanari's wife, for God's sake!' the signora shouted.

Ninety seconds later Caputo hung up the phone. Luca Fanari's wife had given him a telephone number and an address where to reach her husband, warning him that neither was to be given out under any circumstance whatsoever.

Luca Fanari, Caputo said, had driven his patient north. To a private home. Just outside the town of Cortona.

Streaks of daylight crossed the sky as Thomas Kind slipped over the wall and approached the house from behind. He wore tight gloves, steel-colored jeans, a dark sweater, and black running shoes. One of the Walther MPKs was in his hand, the other hung from a strap over his shoulder. Both were mounted with silencers. He looked like a commando; which, at this moment, he was.