Day Of Confession

101

An attractive woman in a blue blazer and large straw hat sat alone at a table near the front window of the bar of the Hotel Florence. From there she could see the waterfront and the landing where the hydrofoil would come in. She could also see the Gruppo Cardinale police near the ticket booth and on the landing itself, watching the people who waited for the boat.

Her back turned slightly to the crowd of the room, she took a cell phone from her purse and dialed a number in Milan, where the call was received by a special switching box and forwarded to another number and switching box in the coastal city of Civitavecchia, and from there to an unlisted number in Rome.

'Si,' a male voice answered.

'This is S,' Thomas Kind said.

'Un momento.'

Silence. Then-

'Yes.' Another male voice had come on. It was distorted electronically so that it could not be recognized. The rest of the conversation was held in French.

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.'