Allan Folsom - Day Of Confession

'Does the Church here still practice sanctuary?' Harry asked suddenly, remembering that places of worship had provided asylum and safe haven for refugees and fugitives for centuries.

'I don't know, Mr Addison…'

'Would they help us, at least for the night?'

'In Bellagio. Near the top of the steps. Is the Church of Santa Chiara. I remember it because it is Franciscan, and I belong to the Congregation of Franciscan Sisters… If anyone would give us assistance, it would be there.'

'Bellagio.' Harry didn't like it. It was too dangerous. Better to take their chances going south along the lake, where the police might not yet be.

'Mr Addison,' Elena said quietly, her gaze falling to Danny, as if she knew what Harry was thinking, 'we don't have the time.'

Harry followed her gaze to Danny. He was asleep, his head dropped down, resting on his chest. Bellagio. Elena was right, they didn't have the time.

In a blaze of landing lights and swirling dust, Roscani's helicopter set down on the driveway in front of Villa Lorenzi.

Ducking the still-churning rotor blades, he crossed the formal gardens and entered into the smoky chaos of the command post set up in the late Eros Barbu's grand ballroom. Gilded, polished, and dripping with chandeliers, it was the kind of place an invading army might have set up in, which, in a sense, was exactly what it was.

Pushing through the clamor, answering a fusillade of questions as he went, he glanced at the huge wall map with the small Italian flags marking the checkpoints and worried, as he had before, whether what they were doing, necessary as it seemed, was too big, too loud, too unwieldy. They were an army, and that made them think and act like an army, and made them subject to the limitations of a large force; while their prey, as they had proven so far, were essentially guerillas with the freedom of daring and creativity.

Going into a small office at the far end of the ballroom, he closed the door and sat down. There were calls waiting – from Taglia in Rome, Farel in the Vatican, his wife at home.

The call to his wife would be first. And then Taglia and then Farel. After that he would see no one for twenty minutes. He would take that time for himself. For assoluta tranquillita. His splendid silence. To be calm and to think. And then quietly go over the data he'd received from INTERPOL, to see if somewhere in those pages he could determine the identity of his blond man.

Bellagio. Hotel Florence. 8:40 p.m.

Thomas Kind sat at the dressing table in his room and looked at himself in the mirror. Astringent had cleaned the deep facial scratches made by Marta's clawing nails and drawn the wounds tightly enough to apply the makeup that he was now using to cover them.

He'd arrived back at the hotel a little before five after hitching a ride on the Bellagio road from two English university students on vacation. He'd been in a fight with his girlfriend, he'd told them; she'd lashed out, scratching his face, and he'd simply walked off – he was going back to Holland that night, and as far as he was concerned, she could go to hell. A half mile from the police checkpoint, he asked to be let out, saying he was still angry and wanted to walk it off. When the students had driven off, he'd left the road, crossed a field behind some trees, then come back to the road on the far side of the checkpoint. From there it had been less than a twenty-minute walk into Bellagio.

Coming into the hotel, he'd taken the back stairs to his room, then called the front desk to say he was checking out early in the morning and that whatever final payment was due should be added to his credit card and forwarded with the bill to his home in Amsterdam. Afterward, he'd looked at himself in the mirror and decided the thing to do was to take a shower and then change. And change he had.

Leaning toward the mirror, he touched mascara to his eyelashes, then dabbed once again at the eyeshadow. Satisfied, he stood back and looked at himself. He wore heels, beige slacks, and a loose white blouse under a lightweight blue linen blazer. Small gold earrings and a string of pearls finished the look. Closing his suitcase, he glanced once more in the mirror and then, pulling on a large straw hat, tossed the room keys on the bed, opened the door and left.

Thomas Jose Alvarez-Rios Kind of Quito, Ecuador, alias Frederick Voor of Amsterdam, was now Julia Louise Phelps, a real estate agent from San Francisco, California.

Harry watched breathlessly as the two armed carabinieri waved the white Fiat on toward Bellagio, then looked to the next car in line, motioning it forward and then stopping it in the bright glare of the checkpoint's work lights. Across, two more carabinieri worked the vehicles leaving the city. Four more stood in the shadow of an armored car at the roadside, watching.

Harry had seen the lights and knew what it was even before the traffic in front of him began to slow. He knew they'd been more than lucky the first time, when it had been just he and Elena going through the other way. Now, there were three of them, and he held his breath, expecting the worst.

'Mr Addison-' Elena was looking directly ahead.

Harry saw the car in front of them move off and realized they were at the checkpoint. Abruptly, an armed carabiniere waved them forward. Harry felt his heart pound, and suddenly there was sweat under his palms as his hands gripped the wheel. Again the carabiniere waved them forward.

Breathing deeply, Harry eased the clutch out. The truck moved ahead, then the policeman motioned him to stop. He did. Then two carabinieri came toward them in the purple-white of the checkpoint lights, one from either Bide. Both carried heavy flashlights.

'Christ!' Harry's breath went out of him with a rush.

'What is it?' Elena asked quickly.

'The same guy.'

The carabiniere saw Harry, too. How could he forget? The old truck with the priest who had nearly run him over earlier that same morning.

'Buona sera,' the carabiniere said carefully.

'Buona sera,' Harry acknowledged.

The carabiniere lifted his flashlight and played it over the inside of the truck. Danny was still sleeping, still wearing Harry's black priest's jacket, slumped against Elena.

The other carabiniere was at Elena's window. Motioned her to roll it down.

Ignoring him, Elena looked to the carabiniere beside Harry.

'We went to a funeral. You remember?' she said in Italian.

'Yes.'

'Now we are coming back. Father Dolgetta,' she gestured at Danny, then lowered her voice as if trying not to wake him, 'came from Milan to say the mass. You see how thin he is. He's been ill. He should never have come, but he insisted. And then what? A relapse. Look at him. We are trying to get him back and into bed before something worse happens.'

For a long moment the carabiniere stared, his light playing over Harry again and then Danny.

'What would you like us to do? Get out and walk around? Wake him up? Make him walk, too?' Elena's eyes flashed angrily. 'How long does it take for you to let people you already know pass?'

Behind them came a honking of horns. People impatient, waiting in line. Traffic backing up. Finally, the carabiniere snapped off his flashlight, nodded to his partner, then stepped back and waved them through.

Roscani broke off a piece of chocolate, bit into it, then closed the INTERPOL file.

Section one, fifty-nine pages, detailed twenty-seven men and nine women as active terrorists with histories of Europe as a workplace. Section two was twenty-eight pages of murderers still at large and thought to be in Europe: fourteen altogether, all men.