Day Of Confession

149

10:25 a.m.

Harry stood in the deep shade of pine trees just east and north of the Carriage Museum, waiting until a gardener's electric cart passed. When it did, he stepped out, cursing and fumbling with the stuck zipper on the waist pack inside his shirt. Finally, it came open and he reached in to take out a Ziploc bag. Opening it, he pulled out one of the rolled, oily rags, then closed the bag again and put it back in the waist pack.

It the distance near St Peter's he could see two white-shirted Vigilanza patrolmen walking along the road away from him and toward the Ufficio Centrale di Vigilanza, the Vatican police station, a building that he now realized was probably no more than a hundred yards from the railroad station.

'Christ,' he said out loud. Then, quickly kneeling, he pulled together a large mound of pine needles, placed the rolled oily rag near the bottom and lit it. Immediately it flared up, igniting the tinder-dry needles around it. Counting to five, he smothered the fire with more pine needles. Instantly the flames turned to smoke. Then, as the flames flared again, he piled on several heavy armloads of soaking leaves gathered from beneath a freshly watered hedgerow nearby.

It was then he heard the first wail of warning sirens coming from the direction of the Vatican museums. Dumping a final armload of wet leaves onto the fire and seeing the smoke billow up, he glanced around, then walked quickly up the hill toward the Central Avenue of the Forest.

Elena stared blankly ahead, waiting for the elevator to stop. She tried not to hear the sirens or think of the mass anxiety of the people or the damage the smoke might do to the priceless art – 'little, if any,' Father Daniel had told her. Then she realized the elevator had stopped and the doors were opening. As they did, the smell of smoke mixed with a clang of warning bells and shrieking fire alarms.

'Let's go!' Danny urged, and she pushed the wheelchair out into the corridor in front of them. Suddenly they were in a rush of frenzied tourists being urged on by white-shirted Vigilanza.

'The doors at the far end,' Danny said.

'All right,' Elena said. She could feel the adrenaline pump through her as she moved the wheelchair forward through the clamor and thickening smoke. Abruptly, and for no reason, her thoughts went to Harry and how he had looked at her without saying a word just as he and Hercules were leaving the apartment in the early-morning darkness. It was a look not of concern or even fear, but of love. Deep, even profound, there was no real way to describe it, except that it had been there and it had been for her, and it would stay with her for the rest of her life, wherever she was and no matter what happened.

'Out here,' Danny said suddenly.

The urgency in his voice brought her back to the instant. She was following his direction, pushing him forcefully through a rush of people into an outer courtyard, the screaming sirens drowning out the yells of people pouring out the myriad of doors right along with them. She could see Danny opening the camera bag – taking out three of the oiled rags, then three matchbooks whose covers had been inserted with nonfiltered cigarettes that would act as fuses, and then the covers tucked back in again to hold the cigarettes tight.

'Over there.' He was indicating the first of three large trash receptacles, each twenty yards apart.

Smoke was now drifting out from every open window and doorway. And everywhere people rushed and shoved to get out, afraid, yelling, uncertain.

Taking the matchbooks between oily fingers, Danny inserted them separately into the rags.

'Slow it up,' he said as they neared the first trash container. Elena did. Danny lit a match to the first cigarette fuse, made certain it caught, then glancing around, dropped it into the receptacle.

'Okay.'

They moved on to the second and did the same. And then again at the third.

Behind them the first cigarette burned down to the match pack. With a tiny whoosh it ignited, and, in turn, set fire to the oil-and-rum rag, setting the mess of collected refuse aflame.

'Back inside,' Danny yelled over the shriek of sirens and blaring alarms.

Elena wheeled the chair toward the nearest open doorway, where mountains of people continued to pour out with the smoke that was now heavier than ever.

They could see a half dozen helmeted, ax-carrying and rubber-jacketed vigili del fuoco - Vatican firemen – running along the edge of the roof above them looking for flames. It meant that as yet they had not discovered the source of the smoke. Now one of them stopped and pointed and yelled something. They saw others stop, too, and look in the same direction. And they knew the other trash containers were burning as well.

Now they were at the doorway.

'Scusi! Scusi!' Elena yelled at the crowd, forcing the wheelchair into their midst. Miraculously, enough of them moved out of the way for her to push through. And then they were inside. Pushing along an interior hallway, moving with a river of people going that way, Elena saw Father Daniel pull the cell phone from his shirt pocket and dial.

'Harry – where are you?'

'Top of the hill. Number two is burning.'

Harry was moving quickly through a heavy growth of conifers toward the northwest corner of the gardens, trying not to think that it was working and that only three of them were doing it. Planning, surprise, and determination of the individual, Danny had emphasized over and over, were at the heart of any successful guerrilla action, and so far he was right.

Fifty yards behind him he could see the towers of Vatican Radio. To his right, another fifty yards downhill, heavy smoke began to billow from behind a high hedge, where he had just been. Beyond that he could already see the smoke from his first fire rising slowly.

'No wind, Danny,' Harry said into the cell phone. 'All this stuffs going to hang around.'

'You should be near the shut-off valves.'

'Right.'

Harry pushed through an opening in a protective hedge to find the plumber's Christmas tree, the low twist of piping that came up from underground and held the control valves for what appeared to be the main water shut-off. But, according to Danny, it wasn't; it was only an intermediary shut-off, aged and almost never used. And unless the maintenance engineers on duty were old-timers, they probably had no idea of its existence. Still, if one shut it down, it turned off the water to all of the Vatican from that point out, which meant all of the buildings below, including St Peter's, the museums, the Vatican palace, and the administrative buildings.

'I'm on top of them. Twin valves, one opposite the other.'

Elena tilted Danny backward in the chair, taking them down a flight of stairs and deeper into the smoke.

'How badly rusted?' Danny coughed strongly against the smoke.

'Can't tell.' Harry's voice crackled through the phone.

Elena stopped at the bottom of the stairs and opened her own camera case. Coughing, wiping her tearing eyes, she took out two dampened handkerchiefs and spread them open. Pulling one over Danny's nose and mouth, she tied it behind his head like a bandana. Then she did the same for herself and pushed them forward and into the Chiaramonti Gallery of Sculptures. The portrait busts of Cicero, Heracles with his son, the statue of Tiberius, the colossal head of Augustus, all were lost in the fog of smoke and mass confusion as people rushed both ways down the long, narrow gallery at the same time. All looking for a way out.

'Harry-' Danny hunched over into the phone.

'First one's okay. – The second's-'

'Shut it down now!'

'As soon as I can, Danny-'

Harry grimaced, the second of the two wheels was rusted, and it took everything he had. Finally it gave all too fast, and he pitched sideways against the Christmas tree, ripping the skin from his knuckles and tossing the phone a dozen feet away.

'Shit.'

Their bandanas making them look like Old West bandits, Elena turned Danny sideways and pulled him back, avoiding a half dozen Japanese tourists running hand in hand toward them like a train, yelling, choking, crying with the smoke like everyone else. As she did, she glanced out one of the narrow windows and saw a phalanx of blue-shirted men in berets and armed with rifles run into the courtyard outside.

'Father,' she said, alarmed.

Danny looked. 'Swiss Guard,' he said, then turned back to the phone, as Elena moved them forward again.

'Harry-'

'Harry-'

'What?-'

Harry was bent over, recovering the tossed phone and at the same time sucking on his bloody knuckle.

'What's wrong?'

'The fucking water's off, okay?'

Danny put up a hand as they reached the far end of the gallery. Elena stopped the wheelchair. In front of them was a closed gate to the gallery beyond. The Galleria Lapidaria, the Gallery of Inscriptions. As far as they could tell, no one was inside.

For the first time they were alone, the crowd, the rush, the panic moving in the opposite direction.

'I'm going for fire three. Are you out of there?' Harry's voice came through the phone.

'Two more stops.'

'Hurry the hell up.'

'The Swiss Guards are outside in force.'

'Forget the last two stops.'

'We do, you'll have Farel and the Swiss Guards all over you.'

'Then stop talking and do it.'

'Harry.' Danny looked back. Through the window he could see the Swiss Guards pulling on gas masks, and firemen with breathing tanks and fire axes.

'Eaton is somewhere here. Adrianna Hall is with him.'

'How the hell did-?'

'I don't know.'

'Jesus Christ, Danny, forget Eaton. Just get the hell out of there!'