Day Of Confession

150

'It's a diversion.' Thomas Kind stood on the roadway just below the tower, watching the smoke from the Vatican museums billow up, talking into the two-way radio in his hand. In the distance he could hear the scream of emergency vehicles en route from various Rome City locations.

'What will you do?' Farel's voice came back at him.

'My plans have not changed. Nor should yours either.' Suddenly Thomas Kind clicked off, and turned back for the tower.

Hercules crouched in his perch, tying the last of the heavy knots in the snout of his climbing rope, and watched Thomas Kind come back up the pathway toward the tower, radio in hand, talking into it as he came. Below, he saw the black suits on the far side of the hedge.

Hercules waited for Thomas Kind to pass the tower. Then, crutches tied together by a short length of rope and tossed over his shoulder, he moved up on the wall, hesitated briefly, and whirled a length of rope with its heavily knotted snout overhead. Standing up fully, balancing almost on air, he flung the rope up and over the roof.

The knotted end settled around a heavy iron railing, then fell back. As the rope went slack Hercules glanced around once more. In the distance he could see the smoke from Vatican buildings, and over the hill beyond the trees in front of him, still more smoke rising.

Standing, he whirled the rope once more and let it fly. Again it came back slack and he cursed himself. And threw it again.

On the fifth toss it snagged, and he tested his weight on it. The tension held and he went up, grinning, straight up the side of the Tower, crutches dangling from his back. Moments later he disappeared from sight over its red-and-white-tile roof.