Allan Folsom - Day Of Confession

Xi'an, China. Monday, July 13, 2:30 a.m.

Li Wen lit a cigarette and sat back, moving his body as far away as he could from the sleeping, overweight man crowding the seat beside him. In fifteen minutes the train would reach Xi'an. When it did he'd get off, and the fat man could have both seats for all he cared. Li Wen had made this same trip in May and then again in June, only that time he'd splurged and traveled in luxury on the Marco Polo Express, the green-and-cream train that follows the route of the old Silk Road, two thousand miles from Beijing to Urumqui, the capital of Xinjiang Uygur province, the first great east-west link. The train the Chinese hoped would lure the same monied traveler who frequented the fabled Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul.

But tonight Li rode in the hard-seat class of a packed train that was already almost fours hours behind schedule. He hated the packed trains. Hated the loud music, the weather forecasts, and the 'no-news' news that was broadcast ceaselessly over the train's loudspeakers. Beside him the fat man shifted his weight, and his elbow dug into Li's ribcage. At the same time, the middle-aged woman in the seat in front of him hucked up and spit on the floor, angling it to hit between the shoe of the man standing in the aisle beside her and the young man jammed in next to him.

Pushing at the fat man's elbow, Li took a heavy drag on his cigarette. In Xi'an he would change trains, he hoped to one less crowded, and then be on his way to Hefei and his room at the Overseas Chinese Hotel and maybe a few hours' sleep. The same as he had done in May and then again in June. And would again in August. These were the months when the heat grew the algae in the lakes and rivers that provided drinking water for the municipal water supplies throughout his area of Central China. A former assistant professor of research at the Hydrobiological Institute in Wuhan, Li Wen was a midlevel civil worker, a water-quality-control engineer for the central government. His job was to monitor the bacterial content of the water released for public use by water-filtration plants throughout the region. Today his chores would be the same as always. Arrive by five in the morning. Spend the day and perhaps the next inspecting the plant and testing the water, then record his findings and recommendations for forwarding to the central committee; and move on to the next. It was a gray life and tedious, boring, and, for the most part, uneventful. At least it had been until now.

Lake Como, Italy. Sunday, July 12, 8:40 p.m.

The sound of the motors changed from a whine to a low drone, and nursing sister Elena Voso could feel the hydrofoil slow as the boat's hull settled into the water. Ahead, a great stone villa sat on the lake's edge, and they were moving toward it. In the twilight, she could see a man on the dock looking toward them, a large rope in his hand.

Marco stepped down from the pilot house and went out onto the deck as they neared. Behind her, Luca and Pietro stood up to unhook the safety straps that had held the gurney secure on the twenty-minute trip from shore. The hydrofoil was large, able to seat, she guessed, maybe as many as sixty passengers and was used for public transportation between the towns sitting on the edge of the thirty-mile-long lake. But this trip, they were the only travelers – she, Marco, Luca, and Pietro. And Michael Roark.

They had left the house in Cortona just after noon the day before. Going quickly, leaving almost everything but Michael Roark's medical supplies behind. A telephone call had come for Luca, and Elena answered. Luca was sleeping, she'd said, but the male voice told her to wake him, to tell him that it was urgent, and Luca had taken the call on the upstairs extension.

'Get out, now, ' she'd heard the voice say as she'd returned to the kitchen to hang up. She'd started to listen, but Luca knew she was there and told her to hang up. And she had.

Immediately Pietro had driven off in his car, only to return three-quarters of an hour later at the wheel of another van. Less than fifty minutes after that they were in it, all of them, leaving the vehicle they'd come in behind.

Driving north, they'd taken the Al Autostrada to Florence and then gone on to Milan to a private apartment in the suburbs where they'd spent the night and most of that day. There Michael Roark had his first real food, rice pudding Marco had bought at a local store. He'd taken it slowly, between sips of water, but he managed, and it had stayed down. But it hadn't been enough, and so she kept him on the IV.

The newspaper she'd bought, with the photograph of Father Daniel Addison, had been left behind in the rush to depart. Whether Roark had seen her hide it away behind her as he'd so abruptly turned toward her she didn't know. All she did know was that the comparison had been inconclusive. He might be the American priest, he might not. Her entire effort had been in vain.

There was an abrupt roar as the propellers reversed, then a gentle bump as the hydrofoil touched the dock. Elena saw Marco toss the mooring line to the man onshore and turned from her musing to see Luca and Pietro lift the gurney and carry it forward to the steps. As they did, Michael Roark raised his head and looked at her, more for comfort and the assurance she was coming with them, she thought, than for anything else. As far as he had come, he could talk only in hoarse, guttural sounds and was still extremely weak. She realized she had become his emotional anchor as well as his caregiver. It was a tender dependency, and for all her nursing experience, it touched her in a way she'd never felt before. She wondered what it meant, whether somehow she was changing. It made her think, too, and ask herself, if he were the fugitive priest, would it make any difference?

Moments later they had him up and out, with Marco leading them up the gangway to bring him ashore. And then Elena was ashore as well, listening as the engines of the hydrofoil revved up, then turning to see the boat pull away in the enveloping darkness, its running lights glowing on the stern, the Italian flag above the pilot house flapping in the wind. Then the vessel picked up speed, and its hull rose out of the water so that the boat stood up on stilts like a huge, ungainly bird. And like that it was gone, the black water closing behind it, washing over its wake. As if it had never been.

'Sister Elena,' Marco called, and she turned to follow them up the stone steps toward the lights of the immense villa above.

Rome. Same time.

Harry stood in Eaton's tiny kitchen, staring at the cell phone on the counter. Next to it was a partially eaten loaf of bread and, with it, some cheese he'd picked up at one of the few stores open on Sunday. By now Marsciano would know what had transpired between him and Father Bardoni in the park. And the cardinal would have made a decision what to do when Harry called.

If he called.

'You have no idea what's going on, or what you're getting into.' Father Bardoni's warning hung chillingly in his mind.

The man in the blue shirt had been one of Farel's policemen, and he had been watching Father Bardoni, not Harry. Eaton had been certain some dark intrigue was going on at the highest levels of the Holy See. And maybe that was what Father Bardoni had been talking about, cautioning Harry that his intrusion was more than unwelcome – it was very dangerous. Suggesting he was close to drowning them all in his own waves.

Harry looked away from the phone. He didn't know what to do. By pushing Marsciano further he could make things far worse than they already were. But for whom? Marsciano. Farel's people. Anyone else involved. Who?