Day Of Confession

100

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.

Any of them could have blown up the Assisi bus. And any of the men could be the charred body misidentified as Father Daniel, the person who carried the Spanish Llama pistol. But in Roscani's estimation, none of them had the same ingenious, erotic, and purely sadistic feel of his blond, scratch-faced, ice picker/razor man.

Frustrated – damning himself for ever having quit smoking – he stood and opened the door of his tiny sanctuary and went back into Villa Lorenzi's grand ballroom. Walking through the tumult, looking around, he realized he had been wrong earlier. Yes, Gruppo Cardinale was an army. It was too big. Too unwieldy. Called too much attention to itself. Made mistakes. But considering the situation, he was glad to have it. This was not a game he would like to have played alone, leading the search personally with the attitude of his father, as if he and he alone were capable of finding a solution. This was an arena where you needed a saturation force, a thousand eyes, open, alert, crawling over every inch of land. It was the only way to snap closed the trap and guarantee your quarry would not slip away again.

Bellagio. The Church of Santa Chiara. 10:15 p.m.

Harry sat with Danny in the dark of the parked truck waiting for Elena. She'd been gone for nearly half an hour, and he could feel the uneasiness building inside him.

Across the street, several teenagers walked by, joking and laughing, one strumming a guitar. A few moments earlier an elderly man had passed the same way, humming to himself and walking two small dogs. Now the sound of the teenagers faded, and quiet took over, heightening the isolation and raising the level of anxiety and the fear they would be caught.

Turning slightly, Harry looked at Danny sleeping on the seat beside him, his legs in the blue fiberglass casts pulled up under him in a fetal position. It was innocent and unknowing, the way a child might sleep. He wanted to reach out and touch him, tell him again that it would be okay.

Looking away, Harry glanced back up the hill toward the church, hoping to see Elena coming toward them. But there was nothing but the empty street and cars parked along either side of it. Suddenly a wave of emotion passed over him. It was deep and from far inside. It was the realization of why he was there. It was something still owed, a deliverance, the working out of a karma.

He was carrying out a promise made to Danny years before, just as he was leaving to go away to college. It was a time when Danny was more rebellious than ever, in constant trouble at home and at school and with the police. Harry's first year at Harvard was beginning in two days, and he was in the downstairs hallway with his suitcase, looking for Danny to say good-bye, when Danny came in. His face was dirty, his hair disheveled, the knuckles on his right hand raw from a fight. Danny looked at the suitcase and then at Harry, then started to push past him without a word. Harry remembered his hand snapping out, grabbing Danny hard and pulling him around. He could still hear his own words – 'Just finish high school, all right?' he'd said strongly. 'When you do, I'll come back and get you and take you with me… I won't leave you here. I promise.'

It was more than a promise, it was an extension of the covenant they had made years ago after the deaths of their sister and father and the too-soon, too-wrong remarriage of their mother, to help each other get out of that life and that family and that town, and to never come back to any of it. It was a pledge. A given. Guaranteed, brother to brother.

But for so many reasons it had never happened. And though it had never been talked about – or that circumstances had changed and Danny had gone off to the marines the day after he graduated high school – Harry knew nonetheless his not coming back was the real reason for their long alienation. He'd made a promise and never kept it, and Danny still held it against him. Well, he was keeping it now. Finally, he had come for his brother.

10:25

Another glance up the hill.

The street still dark and empty. The same as the sidewalks on either side. No Elena.

Suddenly the muted ringing of a telephone cut the silence. Harry started, looked around, wondering where it was coming from. Then he realized it was his cell phone stuffed inside the glove box, where he put it when he had gone into the grotto with Elena to find Danny.

Abruptly the ringing stopped. Then started again. Reaching over, opening the glove-box door, Harry took the phone out and clicked it on.

'Yes,' he said carefully, knowing there was only one person who knew how to reach him.

'Harry-'

'Adrianna.'

'Harry, where are you?'

Her voice had an inflection, a probing. Not of concern or warmth or friendship. It was business. She was back to the original deal, the one she had arranged for Eaton and herself – they got to talk to Danny first, before anyone else.

'Harry?'

'I'm still here.'

'Is your brother with you?'

'Yes.'

'Tell me where you are.'

10:30

Quick glance up the street.

Still no Elena.

'Where are you, Adrianna?'

'Here in Bellagio. At the Du Lac. The same hotel you're still checked into.'

'Is Eaton with you?'

'No. He's on his way here from Rome.'

Suddenly headlights turned the corner at the top of the hill and started down. Police on motorcycles. Two of them. Cruising slowly, the streetlights glinting off their helmets, they were looking at the parked cars, the sidewalks. Looking for him and Danny.

'Harry, are you there?'

Harry heard Danny stir beside him. Christ, Danny, not now! Not like before, in the grotto.

'Tell me where you are. I'll come to you.'

Danny stirred again. The police were almost there. Car lengths away. Less.

'Dammit, Harry. Talk to me. Tell me where-'

CLICK.

Harry snapped off the phone and slid his body over Danny's in the dark, below window level, praying he would be silent. Then, from somewhere under him, the phone rang again.

Adrianna was calling back.

'Christ,' Harry breathed.

The ring was loud. Shrill. It sounded as if it were being blasted through a speaker. Desperately he fumbled under him, trying to find the phone in the dark. But it was caught between the folds of his shirt and Danny and the seat. Pulling his arms in, he tried to smother it with his body. Hoping to hell that in the stillness of the summer night the police couldn't hear it.

An eternity passed before the ringing stopped. And then there was silence. Harry wanted to look up, see if the police had passed. But he didn't dare. He could hear the thump of his heart. The thud of his pulse.

Suddenly there was a sharp knock on the window. A chill shot through him. His senses froze. The knock came again. Louder.

Finally. Terrified. Resigned. Harry raised his head.

Elena was looking in at him. A priest was with her, and they had a wheelchair.