Allan Folsom - Day Of Confession

9:40 a.m.

Danny opened the door to the men's room stall cautiously and peered out. Two men stood at urinals, another was picking his teeth in the mirror. Opening the stall door wider, he wheeled himself to the men's room door and tried to push it open. It didn't work. Someone was on the other side trying to come in. Danny looked back. The other men were still there. Neither was watching him.

'Hey!' A voice came from the far side of the door.

Danny moved back, not knowing what to expect, his hand going to the camera bag to fling it if he had to.

The door swung open and another man in a wheelchair came through from the other side – the American from the shuttle bus, wearing the L.A. Dodgers cap. The man stopped dead in the doorway, the two of them chair to chair facing each other.

'You really a Yankees fan?' The man was looking at his baseball cap, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. 'You are, you're crazy.'

Danny looked past him into the hallway. People moved back and forth in a steady stream. Where was Elena? They were on a tight clock. Harry would already be outside crossing the Vatican gardens looking for the waist pack.

'I just like baseball. I collect a lot of caps.' Danny moved his wheelchair back. 'You come in. I'll go out.'

'What teams you like?' The man didn't budge. 'Come on, talk the game. Tell me the teams. Which league, American or National?'

Suddenly Elena appeared in the hallway behind the Dodgers fan.

Danny looked at the man and shrugged. 'Since we're in the Vatican I guess I ought to pick the Padres as my favorite… I'm sorry, I have to go.'

The man grinned broadly. 'Why, sure, pal, go ahead.' Abruptly he pushed into the men's room and Danny went out.

Elena took the wheelchair and they started off. Then suddenly Danny put his hand on the wheels, slowing the chair.

'Stop,' he said.

Eaton and Adrianna Hall were crossing at the far end of the hallway in a crowd, alert, moving quickly, looking for someone.

Danny looked over his shoulder at Elena. 'Turn around, go the other way.'

If there had been a phone booth Harry would have felt like Superman. There was no phone booth, just a low wall with dense shrubbery behind it across the roadway from St Peter's where he'd come out. It was here he ducked out of sight and stripped off the beret and priest's clothing revealing the chinos and work shirt underneath.

Then, burying the priest's outfit in the thick of the bushes, he scooped up a handful of the powdery dirt at his feet and dusted it over his chest, rubbing the remainder off on his thighs. Then he moved from the bushes, waited for a small black Fiat to pass on the narrow roadway and stepped out, hoping to hell he looked enough like a gardener to pass if anyone saw him.

Resolutely, he walked down the short sweep of manicured lawn and crossed the road to the Fountain of the Sacrament. Getting his bearings, he took the short stairway to the right. At the top he stopped and looked quickly around. He saw no one. Directly before him were the planters and pine tree Danny had designated. As he moved toward them his coolness left. Suddenly he was aware of his own breathing, felt the awkward press of the Calico automatic in the waistband under his shirt, felt his pulse begin to race.

Now he was at the planters at the base of the tree. Anxiously, he glanced around, then knelt. His hand touched nylon and he could feel the breath go out of him in relief.

It meant not only that Danny and Elena were there, but also that the bulky package he'd decided not to wear at the last minute, for fear it might raise the suspicion of security guards inside St Peter's, had been safely delivered.

Glancing around once more, he stood and slipped into the tree's shadow. Loosening his shirt, he fastened the waist pack underneath at his waist and repositioned the Calico inside the pull of its strap. Then, tucking his shirt back in, letting it fall loosely at his waist to cover the pack's bulge, he walked off and back down the steps. The whole thing had taken no more than thirty seconds.

9:57 a.m.

The Tower of San Giovanni. Same time.

There was the cruel sound of the lock turning and then the door to Marsciano's apartment opened and Thomas Kind entered. Anton Pilger was in the hallway behind him, hands crossed in front of him, staring in. He stayed there as Kind crossed the room.

' Buon giorno, Eminence,' he said. 'If I may.'

Marsciano stood back silently as Kind looked carefully around the room, then went into the bathroom. A moment later he came out and crossed to the glass doorway. Opening the doors, he stepped out onto the tiny balcony. Putting his hands on the railing, he looked down at the gardens below and then up, overhead, at the sheer brick wall leading to the roof.

Satisfied, he came back in and closed the glass doors and for a moment studied Marsciano.

'Thank you, Eminence,' he said, finally. Crossing the room, he went out immediately, pulling the door closed behind him. Marsciano shuddered at the sound of the lock turning. By now it was a grating that had become almost unbearable.

Turning away, he wondered why the assassin had visited him for the third time in the last twenty-four hours, and each time had gone through the exact same motions.

'When you reach the far doorway, turn right,' Danny said as Elena pushed him through the Room of the Popes, the last of the rooms of Borgia Apartments.

There was a rush and anxiousness to Father Daniel that Elena hadn't seen before. The abrupt turning in the hallway outside the men's rest room, the urgency in his voice now. It was more than concentration on what they were doing. It was fear.

Passing through the doorway, she turned him right, as he had said, moving him down a long corridor. Halfway down on the left was an elevator.

'Stop there,' Danny said.

Reaching it, they stopped and Elena pushed the button.

'What's wrong, Father? Something happened – what is it?'

For a second Danny watched people move past, going from one gallery to another, then he looked up at her sharply. 'Eaton and Adrianna Hall are in the museum looking for us. We can't be found by either of them.'

Abruptly the elevator door opened. Elena started to push him in when they heard an all-too-familiar voice behind them.

'We will be first, if you don't mind.'

Looking, they saw the pushy white-haired woman in the wheelchair and her dutiful middle-aged daughter from the shuttle bus. For the second time they were face-to-face with a couple from that bunch. And Danny wondered if it was a curse.

'Not this time, madam. I'm sorry.' Danny looked at her with a glare and Elena pushed him into the elevator.

'Well, I never-' the woman ranted. 'I shall not ride in the same lift with you at all, sir.'

'Thank you.'

Danny leaned forward and punched a button, and the door slid closed in the woman's face. As the elevator started down, Danny reached in his pocket and took out the set of keys Father Bardoni had given him in Lugano. Sliding one into a lock underneath the panel of elevator buttons, he turned it.

Elena watched the elevator pass the ground floor and continue down. When it stopped, the door opened onto a dimly lit service corridor. Danny took the key out and pushed a button that read lock.

'Okay. Out and to the left and then to the corridor immediately to the right.'

Fifteen seconds later they were moving into a large mechanical room housing the museum's massive ventilating equipment.

10:10 a.m.

The marble floors, the small covered wooden benches, the semicircular rose marble altar with its bronze crucifix, the bright stained-glass ceiling. The Holy Father's private chapel.