Day Of Confession

143

Harry walked slowly inside the basilica, moving just behind a cascade of Canadian tourists, stopping, as they did, to look at Michelangelo's Pieta, his impassioned statue of the Madonna with the dead Christ. Then he eased away from the Canadians to the center of the nave, casually studying the interior of the towering dome, finally bringing his gaze down to the papal altar and Bernini's Baldacchino, the grand canopy over it.

Then, following Danny's directions, he moved off alone.

Crossing to the right, passing the wooden confessionals, looking easily at the sculptures of the saints Michele Arcangelo and Petronilla, he reached the monument of Pope Clement XIII. Just past it, he found a protrusion of wall. Turning measuredly around it, he saw a decorative drapery that looked as though it hung from a solid wall.

Glancing back and seeing no one, he pushed quickly through it to a narrow hallway and walked to the door at the end of it. Opening it, he walked down a short stairway to another door at the bottom and went out, finding himself instantly out of doors and squinting in the bright sunshine of the Vatican gardens.

9:25 a.m.

9:32 a.m.

Elena pushed open the emergency exit door, carefully holding it with her foot, while she put a piece of clear plastic tape over the latch to make certain it wouldn't lock behind her.

Satisfied, she stepped out into the daylight and let the door close behind her. Then she walked off, glancing up at the second floor of the building she had just come out of, where she had been moments before when she'd left Danny alone in a hallway outside a men's rest room near the entrance to the Sistine Chapel – the same hallway to which she would return a few minutes later.

Adjusting the camera bag over her shoulder, she walked quickly across a small courtyard and out into a convergence of tended walkways, lawns, and ornamental hedges that was one of the many entrances to the Vatican gardens. Ahead, on her right, was the split stairway rising to the Fountain of the Sacrament.

She moved toward it quickly but carefully, looking around every so often as if unsure where she was going, knowing that if she was stopped she would say simply that she had taken a wrong door from the museums and was lost.

Climbing the stairs to the right, she entered the area of the fountain proper and turned right again to see a number of large planters near the base of a conifer. Again, she looked around, puzzled, as if she were indeed lost. Then, seeing no one, she took a black nylon waist pack from her camera case and tucked it carefully behind the planters at the base of the tree. Standing, she looked around once more, and went back the way she had come, passing through the courtyard, then pulling open the door and peeling the tape from the latch. Reentering the building, she let the door close behind her, and then took the stairs to the second floor.