Day Of Confession

126

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-'

Roscani cut him off. 'We know about the license plates, Mr Addison, and we know about Father Bardoni.'

'What do you know?' Harry pressed, emphatically. 'That it was Father Bardoni who found my brother still alive in the pandemonium of the hospital after the bus explosion? Found him, and got him out of there in his own car. Took him to the home of a doctor friend outside Rome and saw that he was cared for until he could make arrangements for the hospital in Pescara and the people to protect him there? – Do you know that, Ispettore Capo?' Harry stared at Roscani, letting what he'd said penetrate, then his manner softened and he finished. 'I'm telling you the truth about the rest.'

Castelletti was turning now, heading up Viale dell'Oceano Pacifico and back toward the Tiber.

'Mr Addison, do you know who killed Father Bardoni?' Roscani said.

'I have a good idea. The blond man who tried to kill us in the grotto in Bellagio.'

'Do you know who he is?'

'No…'

'Does the name Thomas Kind mean anything to you?'

'Thomas Kind?' Harry felt the name stab through him.

'Then you know who he is-'

'Yes,' he said. It was like asking if he knew who Charles Manson was. Not only was Thomas Kind one of the most publicized, brutal, and elusive outlaws in the world, Co some he was one of the most romantic. 'Some,' meaning Hollywood. In the last months, four major movie and television projects had been announced with Thomas Kind spinning as the central character. And Harry knew firsthand, because he'd been involved in negotiating two of them, one for a star, the other for a director.

'Even if your brother weren't confined to a wheelchair, he is in a very dangerous situation… Kind is ingenious in finding people he wants to find. As he proved in Pescara and Bellagio, and now here, in Rome. I would suggest you tell us where he is.'

Harry hesitated. 'If you take Danny in, it's even more dangerous. Once Farel knows where he is, they'll kill Marsciano and then they'll send somebody after Danny wherever you've got him. Maybe Kind, maybe somebody else…'

Roscani hunched forward, his eyes on Harry. 'We'll do our best not to let that happen.'

'What does that mean?' Suddenly a red flag went up. Harry's palms felt sticky, and there was sweat on his upper lip.

'It means, Mr Addison, there is no evidence that what you've said is true. There is, however, substantial evidence to prosecute both you and your brother for the crimes of murder.'

Harry's heart jumped for his throat. Roscani was going to arrest him right then. He couldn't let it happen. 'You are willing to let the prime witness be killed without any attempt to stop it?'

'There is nothing I can do, Mr Addison. I have no authority to send people into Vatican territory. No power to arrest, if I did…' Roscani's words, how he said them, at least showed Harry that he did believe his story. At least he wanted to.

'If we tried to extradite any of them,' Roscani continued, 'Marsciano, Cardinal Palestrina, or Farel,… it wouldn't work. In Italy it is the judge who must prove a suspect guilty 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. The investigator's mandate, my mandate' – he gestured toward the front – 'and that of Scala and Castelletti and the others of Gruppo Cardinale is to collect evidence for the prosecutor, for Marcello Taglia… But there is no evidence, Mr Addison, and therefore no grounds whatsoever… And with no grounds, to accuse the Vatican?' Roscani's voice trailed off. 'You are a lawyer, you should understand.'

Roscani's eyes had remained on Harry the entire time. And in them Harry saw volumes: anger, frustration, emasculation, a sense of personal failure. Roscani was fighting himself and his own position.

Slowly, Harry pulled away from Roscani to see Scala and Castelletti in pale silhouette to the glare of the midday Roman sun. He could feel the same emotion in them. They had come to the end of the line. Politics and law had overridden justice. The only thing they could do was what their jobs allowed. And that meant prosecuting him and Danny. As well as Elena.

In that moment Harry knew that it had come back to him. That somehow he had to turn around or they were all lost. He and Danny and Elena and Marsciano.

Deliberately, he looked back to Roscani.

'Pio and the cardinal vicar… The killings in Bellagio and the other places… All the crimes were committed on Italian soil…'

'Yes,' Roscani nodded.

'If you had Cardinal Marsciano. And if he would talk to you and to the prosecutor about those crimes. If he named names and said why. Would you have enough for extradition?'

'It would still be very difficult.'

'But it might work.'

'Yes. Except that we don't have him, Mr Addison. And we can't get him.'

'What if I could?'

'You?'

'Yes.'

'How?'

Scala turned in his seat. Harry saw Castelletti find him in the mirror.

'At eleven o'clock tomorrow morning, a work engine is going into the Vatican to pick up an old freight car and bring it out… Father Bardoni set it up as a way to try and get Marsciano out… Maybe I can find a way to still make it happen. I would need your help. But it would be on this side of the Vatican walls.'

'What kind of help?'

'Protection for me and my brother and Sister Elena. By you three. Nobody else. I don't want Farel finding out… You give me your word nobody will be arrested until we're done, I'll take you to where they are.'

'You are asking me to break the law, Mr Addison.'

'You want the truth, Ispettore Capo. So do I…'

Roscani glanced at Scala, then looked back to Harry. 'Continue, Mr Addison…'

'Tomorrow, when the engine takes that freight car out of the Vatican, you follow it until it stops. If it works, Cardinal Marsciano and I will be inside it. You take us back to where Danny and Sister Elena are. Give Danny and the cardinal time together alone, whatever it takes, until he is ready to make a statement. Then you come in with your prosecutor.'

'What if he chooses to say nothing?'

'Then our agreement's over and you do what you have to do.'

For a long moment Roscani sat stone-faced, and Harry wasn't sure if he would give him what he was asking or not. Finally, he spoke.

'My part is easy, Mr Addison… But I have grave doubts about you. It's not just getting a man into a freight car. First you have to get him out of where he is, and in doing that you will have to deal with Farel and his people. And then, somewhere, is Thomas Kind.'

'My brother was a marine,' Harry said quietly. 'He'll walk me through it.'

Roscani knew it was crazy. And knew that Scala and Castelletti felt the same. But unless they went in with him themselves – which was impossible, because if they did and were caught, it would make for a major diplomatic incident – there was nothing they could do but stand back and wish him well. It was a gamble and a bad one. But, ultimately, the only one they had.

'All right, Mr Addison,' he said quietly.

Harry felt the relief but tried not to show it. 'Three more things,' he said. 'First, I want a handgun.'

'Do you know how to use it?'

'Beverly Hills Gun Club. Six months' training in self-protection. One of my clients made me do it.'

'What else?'

'Climbing rope. A long length that can support two men without breaking.'

'That's two. What's the third?'

'You have a man in jail. The police took him by train from Lugano and back to Italy. He's wanted for murder, but a fair trial would prove self-defense. I need his help. I want him out.'

'Who is he?'

'He's a dwarf. His name is Hercules.'