Day Of Confession

136

Rome. 4:15 a.m.

Harry was in the bathroom shaving, getting rid of the beard. It was dangerous because he would be exposing the face the public knew from the Gruppo Cardinale television spots and from the newspapers. But he had no choice. Few if any Vatican gardeners, Danny had said, wore beards.

Hercules sat at the kitchen table watching tiny whiffs of steam rise from the steaming cup of black coffee he held between his hands. Elena was across from him, as silent as he, her coffee untouched.

Fifteen minutes earlier Hercules had left the bathroom – a treat so rare and luxurious he'd spent half an hour there to enjoy all of it, sit and wash in a tub of hot water, and shave as Harry was now. And when Harry was done, that would give them something else in common. Not only bold and brave crusaders about to march on a foreign land, but they would also both be freshly shaven when they did. A little thing maybe, but like a uniform, it added to the brotherhood and tickled Hercules no end.

Scala saw the front door open and the two come out. The only distinction between Harry Addison and an ordinary priest on his way to early mass was the long coil of climbing rope over his shoulder. That, and the dwarf who swung alongside him on crutches, his movements strong and smooth, like those of a gymnast.

They were leaving Via Nicolo V; he saw them cross onto Viale Vaticano and then turn left in the darkness, moving west, along the Vatican wall toward the tower of San Giovanni. It was twenty minutes to five in the morning.

Eaton – sitting behind the wheel of the Ford, using a monocular nightscope – saw them leave, too. The crippled dwarf as much a puzzle as the coil of rope.

'Harry and a dwarf.' Adrianna was awake and alert and had glimpsed them in the brief seconds when they'd passed under a streetlight before vanishing again in the dark.

'But no Father Daniel, and Scala hasn't made a move.' Eaton put away the nightscope.

'Why the rope? You don't think they're-'

'Going in after Marsciano?' Eaton finished Adrianna's sentence. 'And the police are letting them…'

'I don't get it.'

'Neither do I.'