Allan Folsom - Day Of Confession

S: The target is alive. Possibly wounded… And, it is unfortunate to report, escaped.

Male voice: I know.

S: What do you want me to do? – I will resign if you like.

Male voice: No. I value your resolve and proficiency…

The police know you are there and are looking for you, but they have no idea who you are.

S: So I presumed.

Male voice: Can you leave the area?

S: With luck.

Male voice: Then I want you to come here.

S: I can still pursue the target from where I am. Even with the police.

Male voice: Yes, but why, when the moth has waked from its sleep and can be brought to the flame?

Palestrina pressed a button on a small box beside his telephone, then handed the receiver to Farel, who took it and hung it up. For a long moment the Vatican secretariat of state sat looking out across his sparsely lit marbled office at the paintings, sculptures, shelves of ancient books, at the centuries of history surrounding him in his residence on the floor beneath that of the papal apartments in the Palace of Sixtus V, the apartments where the Holy Father now slept, mind and body exhausted from the regimen of the day, trusting in his advisers to steer the course of the Holy See.

'If I may, Eminence,' Farel said. Palestrina looked at him. 'Say what is on your mind.'

'The priest. Thomas Kind cannot stop him, nor can Roscani with his huge force. He's like a cat who has not used up his lives. Yes, we may entrap him… But what if he speaks out first?'

'You're suggesting one man could make us lose China.'

'Yes. And there would be nothing we could do about it. Except to deny everything. But China would still be lost, and suspicion would live for centuries.'

Slowly Palestrina swiveled his chair, turning to the antique credenza behind him and the sculptured figure that sat on it – the head of Alexander of Macedon, carved of Grecian marble in the fifth century.

'I was born the son of the king of Macedonia.' He was talking to Farel, but his eyes were on the sculpture. 'Aristotle was my tutor. When I was twenty, my father was assassinated and I became king, surrounded everywhere by my father's enemies. In a short while I learned who they were and had them executed, and then, gathering those loyal to me, I moved out to crush the rebellion they had begun… In two years I was commander of Greece and had crossed the Hellespont into Persia with an army of thirty-five thousand Greeks and Macedonians.'

Slowly, deliberately, Palestrina turned toward Farel, the angle at which he sat and the spill from the lamp on the credenza behind him making his head and Alexander's appear almost as one. Now his eyes found Farel's and he went on. And as he did, Farel felt a chill cross his shoulders and creep down his spine. With every word Palestrina's eyes grew darker and became more distant as he was drawn ever deeper into the character he was convinced he was.

'Near Troy I defeated a force of forty thousand, losing only one hundred and ten of my men. From there I pushed southward, meeting King Darius and the main Persian army of five hundred thousand.

'Darius fled in our wake, leaving behind his mother and his wife and his children. After that I took Tyre and Gaza and moved into Egypt, and thereby controlled the entire eastern Mediterranean coast. Next came Babylon and what was left of the Persian empire beyond the southern shores of the Caspian Sea into Afghanistan… and then I turned north into what is now called Russian Turkestan and Central Asia… That was,' Palestrina's gaze drifted off, 'in 327 B.C… and I had managed most all of it in three years.'

Abruptly Palestrina swung back to Farel, the distance in him gone.

'I did not fail in Persia, Jacov. Priest or not, I will not fail in China.' Immediately Palestrina's voice lowered, and his stare cut into Farel. 'Bring Father Bardoni here. Bring him, now.'

Bellagio. 10:50 p.m.

Elena lay in the dark, looking at the square of light that came in through the small window high on the wall above her.

They were in the convento, the friary, behind the church, which served as housing for the priests. Except for Father Renato, the short, affable priest who had gone to the truck with her, and two or three others, the rest of the clergy were away on retreat. It was a happenstance that provided her with the tiny bedroom she was in and the one next to it, where Father Daniel slept, and the similar room across the hall, where Harry was.

She still regretted her delayed return to the truck and the anxiety she knew she had caused Harry, but she'd had little choice. Father Renato had been hard to convince, and it was only when she reached her mother general by phone in Siena and he had spoken to her personally that he'd relented and gone with Elena, waiting with the wheelchair in the church's shadow until the police on motorcycles had passed.

Then they'd brought Father Daniel in, given him tea and rice pudding, and put him to bed. Afterward Father Renato had taken them to the convento's tiny kitchen and served them a pasta-and-chicken dish left over from the evening meal. And then he had shown them the rooms where they could sleep and gone back to his room, warning them that tomorrow the priests would return and that they would have to leave before they did.

'Leave…' Elena thought, her eyes still on the square of light high on the ceiling above her. 'To go where?'

The thought, while deliberate, triggered something else – her own sense of freedom, or, rather, her lack of it. The turning point had come when she'd broken down so emotionally in the water cave, and Harry had left his brother to come to her and hold her and comfort her even though she knew he was exhausted and must have been at wits' end himself. A second moment had been even more pointed, when he'd returned with the truck and seen her standing naked outside the cave. It was something that, as she pictured it in her mind – the way he so quickly apologized and turned and went back into the cave – became no longer embarrassing but erotic. She wondered, if she were not a nun, whether, despite the seriousness and urgency of their situation, he might have let his eyes linger a little longer – after all, she was still young and had what she thought was a good figure.

'Nothing is wrong, Mr Addison… Would it be all right if I came in?'

Harry hesitated, puzzled. 'Yes, of course…'

He saw the door open a little more, and then the outline of her figure against the diminished light of the hallway outside, and the door closed behind her.

'I'm sorry to wake you.'

'It's all right…'

There was just enough light for Harry to sec her come toward the bed. She was wearing her habit but was barefoot, and seemed excited and nervous at the same time.

'Please sit down,' he said, and indicated the edge of the bed.

Elena looked at the bed and then quickly back to Harry.

'I would prefer to stand, Mr Addison.'

'Harry,' he said.

'Harry…' Still nervous, Elena smiled.

'What is it?

'I – I have come to a decision that I wanted to share with you…'

Harry nodded, still unsure what was happening.

'I – told you shortly after we met that God had given me a job to do in caring for your brother.'

'Yes.'

'Well, when it is done, I-' Elena stopped and Harry saw her dig down and find conviction. 'I plan to petition my superiors for dispensation of my vows and to leave the convent.'

For a long moment Harry said nothing. Finally he did. 'Are you asking my opinion?'

'No, I'm stating a fact.'

'Elena-' Harry said gently, 'maybe before you make a final decision you should realize that after what we've been through, none of us are thinking very clearly.'

'I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that what we've gone through has helped clarify thoughts and feelings I've had for some time. Before any of this happened… Most simply, I want to be with a man – and to love him in every way, and to have him love me in that way, too.'