Allan Folsom - Day Of Confession

Abruptly, he glanced behind him. The other man had come out onto the platform, keeping his distance, the same as the first man. Beyond him, a group of teenagers waited for a train, chattering, laughing. But it was the police who were closest.

'You don't want to take me in, Roscani, not now, anyway.'

'Why did you call me?' The policeman continued to stare at him. He was strong and very focused. The same as Harry remembered.

'I told you, we need to talk.'

'About what?'

'Getting Cardinal Marsciano out of the Vatican.'

They drove through midday traffic. Harry and Roscani in back. Scala up front, with Castelletti driving. Along the Tiber, and then across it and through city streets to the Colosseum, down Via di San Gregorio past the ruins of the Palatine and the ancient Circus Maximus, and then down Via Ostiense and into the EUR, Esposizione Universale Roma – a grand tour of Rome, a way to talk and not be seen.

And Harry did talk, laying it out for them as simply and succinctly as he could.

The one person, he told them, who could reveal the truth behind the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome, the killing of Roscani's partner, Gianni Pio, and, very probably, the explosion of the Assisi bus was Cardinal Marsciano, who was being held incommunicado and under the threat of death inside the Vatican by Cardinal Palestrina.

Harry knew this because his brother, Father Daniel Addison, had told him. It was all he knew, a revelation from one brother to another. But it was only a scratch on the surface; the real substance, the details, had been told to Father Daniel by Marsciano in confession, a confession secretly recorded by Palestrina.

Because of what Father Daniel had learned, Palestrina ordered him killed; but even before that, to keep leverage over Marsciano, Jacov Farel had set Father Daniel up, planting evidence to make it look as if he was the assassin of the cardinal vicar. And later, when Palestrina suspected Father Daniel was still alive, it was very probably he, through Farel, who had okayed the murder of Pio; because immediately afterward, they had taken Harry away and tortured him, trying to make him tell where Father Daniel was.

'That was when the video was made, when you asked your brother to give himself up,' Roscani said quietly.

Harry nodded. 'I was still in shock from the torture, I was told what to say over a headset.'

For a long time Roscani did nothing, simply sat and studied the American.

'Why?' he said, finally.

Harry hesitated. '-Because there's something else,' he said. 'Another part of Marsciano's confession…'

'What other part?' Roscani suddenly leaned forward.

'-It has to do with the disaster in China.'

'China?' Roscani tilted his head as if he didn't get it. 'You mean the mass deaths?'

'Yes…'

'What does that have to do with what's happened here?'

This was the beat Harry was looking for. As much as Danny loved and cared for Marsciano, it was crazy to think that he and Danny and Elena alone could free him. But with Roscani's help they might have a chance. Moreover – love and relationships and emotion aside – the truth was, Cardinal Marsciano was the only one who's testimony could vindicate Danny and Elena and him. It was the reason Harry was here, why he had taken the chance and called Roscani.

'Whatever I said, Ispettore Capo, would only be hearsay and therefore useless… And, as a priest, my brother can say nothing at all… It's Marsciano who knows everything…'

Roscani sat back abruptly, pulling a crushed cigarette pack from his jacket. 'So, we ask Cardinal Marsciano, he tells us on the record what, before, he would say only in confession, and everything is resolved.'

'-Maybe, yes,' Harry said. 'His situation is a great deal different than it was.'

'You're speaking for him?' Roscani said quickly. 'You're saying he will talk to us. He will name names and give us facts.'

'No, I'm not speaking for him. I'm only saying that he knows and we don't… And won't, unless we get him out of there and give him the chance.'

Roscani sat back. His suit was wrinkled and he needed a shave. He was still a young man but looked tired and older than he had the first time he and Harry had met.

'Gruppo Cardinale police blanket the country,' he said softly. 'Your photograph is on television and in the newspapers. A substantial reward offered for your arrest. How did you manage to get from Rome to Lake Como… and back?'

'Dressed as I am now, as a priest… Your country has a great reverence for the clergy. Especially if they are Catholic'

'You had help.'

'Some people were kind, yes…'

Roscani looked at the crumpled pack of cigarettes in his hand, then slowly crushed it and held it in his tightened fist.

'Let me tell you a truth, Mr Addison… All the evidence is against you and your brother… Even if I said I believed you, who else do you think would?' He gestured toward the front. 'Scala? Castelletti? The Italian court? The people of Vatican City?'

Harry kept his eyes on the policeman, knowing that to do anything else would make it seem as if he were lying.

'Let me tell you a truth, Roscani. Something only I would know because I was there… The afternoon Pio was killed I was called from my hotel by Farel. His driver took me to the country, near where the bus exploded. Pio was there. There was a scorched gun some boys had found. Farel wanted me to see it. Insinuated it had belonged to my brother. It was more pressure on me to tell Farel where Danny was… The trouble was, at that time I didn't even know if he was alive let alone where he was…'

'Where is the gun now?' Roscani asked.

'You don't have it?' Harry was surprised.

'No.'

'It was in an evidence bag in the trunk of Pio's car…'

Roscani said nothing. Just sat there, watching him with no expression at all. No expression, but his mind was churning. Yes, it had been the truth. How could Harry Addison even know about the pistol if he hadn't been there? And he had been genuinely surprised the police didn't have the gun. And the other things he said rang true with most of Roscani's own investigation – from the missing gun to bits and pieces of a high-level struggle going on inside the Vatican.

What he said also answered why so many people had sheltered, cared for, and protected Father Daniel and lied about it: because Cardinal Marsciano had asked them to.

Marsciano's shadow was huge. A Tuscan farm boy with roots deep in the Italian soil, a man of the people who had been loved and admired as a priest long before he'd risen to his high place inside the Church. It was a given that when such a man asked for help, it would be dispensed without question, a 'why?' never asked, that it had been done never revealed.

And Palestrina, as evil architect of it all – somehow, for some reason, involved in the mass deaths in China – and as a major figure in global diplomacy, was certain to have contacts that could have put him in touch with an international terrorist like Thomas Kind.

Furthermore, Cardinal Marsciano controlled the real purse strings of the Holy See, the type of huge financial base Palestrina would need to realize some immense ambition.

Harry could see Roscani weighing what he had said and wondering whether to believe him. To win him over, to have him fully on his side with no doubts at all, Harry knew he had to give him something else.

'A priest who worked for Cardinal Marsciano came to Lugano where we were hiding,' Harry said, his eyes locked on Roscani's, 'and asked my brother to come back to Rome. He did that because Cardinal Palestrina threatened to kill Marsciano if he didn't. So he came and told us. He arranged for a Mercedes and provided Vatican license plates and a place for us to stay when we got here… This morning I went to his apartment. He was dead. His left hand had been cut off… I was scared as hell and ran away… I'll give you the address, you can-'