Allan Folsom - Day Of Confession

Harry heard the soft knock, then saw the door open in the darkness.

'Mr Addison,' Elena whispered.

'What is it?' He sat up, quickly alert.

It was a posture and generosity the Chinese took courteously and appreciatively, if not gratefully. But Marsciano – and, he knew, Palestrina as well – could see they were merely going through the motions. As much as their thoughts and concerns were with the people of Hefei, they were first and foremost politicians, and the focus of their attention was their government and its survival. Beijing, and what it did, was clearly under a world microscope.

Yet how, in their wildest nightmares, could they know, or even consider, that the prime architect of the disaster was neither nature nor a decaying water-filtration system, but instead the white-haired giant who sat only inches away, consoling them in their own language? Or that two of the three other highly distinguished prelates in the room with them had, in the last hours, become that architect's steadfast disciples?

If Marsciano had held any secret hope – now that the horror had started and Palestrina's 'Protocol' was exposed for the awful and savage reality it was – that either Monsignor Capizzi or Cardinal Matadi would be rocked to his senses and take a forceful stand against the secretariat, it had been quashed by an internal letter of support, hand delivered that morning by both men to Palestrina personally (a letter Marsciano was asked to sign but refused), fully backing the secretariat's rationale for his actions. A rationale maintaining that Rome had sought rapprochement with Beijing for years, and for years the Central government had spurned it; and would continue to spurn it for as long as they remained in power.

To Palestrina, Beijing's stance meant one thing – the Chinese had no religious freedom at all and never would have it. Palestrina's answer to that was simply that he was going to give it to them. The cost was irrelevant, those who died would be martyrs.

Obviously Capizzi and Matadi wholeheartedly agreed. Pursuit of the papacy was everything, and either would be foolish to defy the man who could put him there. In result, human life became merely a tool in that pursuit. And vile as it was now, it would get infinitely worse, because there were still two lakes yet to be poisoned.

'If you will excuse me.' Knowing what was to come, sickened by the awful hypocrisy and obscenity before him, unable to participate in it further, Marsciano suddenly stood.

Palestrina started and looked up sharply in surprise. 'Are you ill, Eminence?'

Palestrina's startled reaction made Marsciano realize how deeply mad the secretariat had become. He was playing his part so well he actually and truly believed what he was saying. At that moment the other side of him simply did not exist. It was a marvel of supreme self-deception.

'Are you ill, Eminence?' Palestrina said again.

'Yes…' Marsciano said quietly, his gaze swinging directly to Palestrina and holding there for the briefest second, his profound contempt for the secretariat made explicitly clear but at the same time kept wholly private between them. Immediately he turned away and bowed graciously to the Chinese.

'The prayers of all of Rome are with you,' he said and then left, crossing the room alone and walking out the door, knowing Palestrina watched him every step of the way.

Marsciano might have left the room alone, but that was where his freedom ended. Protocol forced him to wait for the others, and now, inside the limousine, there was silence.

Marsciano looked purposely out the window as the green gate closed behind them and they turned onto Via Bruxelles – knowing, with the investments already in place, his actions inside had all but sealed his fate.

Once again he thought of the three lakes Palestrina had promised. Which two were to come after Hefei, and when, only the secretartiat knew. Palestrina's sickness and cruelty were beyond comprehension. His just-witnessed act of self-deception, incredible. When and how had an intelligent and respectable man turned? Or had the monster always been there and only sleeping?

Now the driver turned onto Via Salaria and slowed to a crawl in heavy afternoon traffic. Marsciano could feel Palestrina's presence beside him, and the eyes of Capizzi and Matadi as they sat opposite watching him, but he acknowledged none of it. Instead his thoughts went to the Chinese banking head, Yan Yeh, remembering him not as an astute businessman who was, at the same time, an autocratic lifelong member of the Chinese Communist Party and prominent adviser to the party chairman, but rather as a friend and humanitarian, a man who could produce a cursory political diatribe one minute and in the next, talk about his personal concerns for health care and education and the well-being of the poor around the world; and then in the next, smile warmly and laugh and make small talk about Italian wine makers coming to the People's Republic to show them how it was done.

'-Do you often make telephone calls to North America?' Palestrina's voice echoed suddenly and sharply behind him.

Marsciano turned from the window to see Palestrina staring at him, his huge frame taking up most of the seat between them.

'I don't understand.'

'Canada, in particular.' Palestrina kept his eyes on Marsciano. 'The province of Alberta.'

'I still don't understand…'

'1011 403 555 2211,' Palestrina said from memory. 'You don't recognize the number?'

'Should I?'

Marsciano could feel the lean of the car as they turned onto Via Pinciana. Outside was the familiar green of the Villa Borghese. Abruptly, the Mercedes accelerated. Moving toward the Tiber. Soon they would be across it, turning onto Lungotevere Mellini, going toward the Vatican. Somewhere not far behind them was Marsciano's apartment on Via Carissimi, and he knew that he had seen it for the last time.

'It is the number for the Banff Springs Hotel. Two calls were made to it from your office on Saturday morning, the eleventh. Another, that afternoon, from a cellular phone signed out to Father Bardoni. Your private secretary. The man who replaced the priest.'

Marsciano shrugged. 'Many calls are made from my office, even on a Saturday. Father Bardoni works long hours, so do I, so do others… I do not keep track of every telephone call…'

'You told me in the presence of Jacov Farel that the priest was dead.'

'He is…' Marsciano's eyes came up and looked at Palestrina directly.

'Then who was brought to Bellagio, to Villa Lorenzi two days ago? On Sunday evening, the twelfth?'

Marsciano smiled. 'You have been watching the television.'

'The calls to Banff were made Saturday, and the priest was brought to Villa Lorenzi on Sunday.' Palestrina leaned forward into the face of Nicola Marsciano, stretching the material of his jacket tight across his back.

'Villa Lorenzi is owned by the writer Eros Barbu. Eros Barbu is vacationing at the Banff Springs Hotel.'

'If you are asking if I know Eros Barbu, Eminence, you are right. We are old friends from Tuscany.'

Palestrina watched Marsciano carefully for a moment longer. Finally, he sat back. 'Then you should be saddened to hear he has committed suicide.'

Lake Como. 4:30 p.m.

Banging and pitching, half sliding, Harry worked the farm truck down the rutted and overgrown forest road toward the inlet where he hoped Elena and Danny were. Two hours had passed since he'd climbed up from the lake looking for the truck, and much of the terrain was now in late-afternoon shadow, and this changed the look of everything.

The going was not only slow and difficult, but also dangerous; the old truck had bad brakes and nearly bald tires, making it hard to control as it rattled and bounced, pitched and slid over the road that was barely a road at all. Almost every turn was a hairpin switchback, and at each he was certain he was going over the side, to be sent plunging through heavy undergrowth into a steep ravine on one side, or dropping like a stone to the lake several hundred feet below on the other.