Day Of Confession

151

'Dammit!' Eaton choked against the smoke, handkerchief to his mouth, watery eyes searching the courtyard from the upper window of the Gallery of Tapestries, watching for wheelchairs in the mass exodus. He had already seen two of the handicapped people and discounted them. Where the hell Father Daniel and the nurse were in this confusion was impossible to tell.

Smoke, coughing, tearing eyes, and insanity aside, none of it was keeping Adrianna from rattling into her cell phone. She had two camera crews outside, one in St Peter's, the other at the entrance to the Vatican museums. Two more were on the way, and a Skycam helicopter pulled from the Adriatic coast, where it had been covering an Italian Navy exercise, was due any minute.

Suddenly Eaton was pulling her around, taking the phone from her, covering it.

'Tell them to watch for a bearded man in a wheelchair being cared for by a young woman,' he said urgently, his stare cutting into her. 'Tell them he's suspected of starting the fire or whatever. Tell them if they spot him to keep him in sight and let you know right then. Thomas Kind gets to him first, that's it.'

Adrianna nodded and Eaton gave her back the phone.

Grimacing at the pain in his legs, Danny struggled up in his wheelchair and pressed his full weight against the window frame. For a moment nothing happened. Finally, there was a loud creak. The old casing gave and the window swung open just enough to see out and onto the Belvedere Courtyard. The fire department was directly across, and the throw at this angle, awkward. Still-

Opening the camera bag, he took out one of the oil-and-rum-filled beer bottles, with the short wick sticking from the neck. Now he looked up to Elena, her face barely visible behind the bandana covering it.

'You all right?'

'Yes.'

Danny glanced back, then raised the bottle and touched a match to the wick.

Leaning back, he counted to five.

'Oorah!' he grunted and flung the bottle through the open window. Outside, a resounding crash was followed by a wall of flame as the shattering glass spread burning oil across the pavement and into the shrubbery beneath the window.

'Other side,' he said quickly, pulling the window closed, sitting back down.

Three minutes later a second bottle exploded on the gravel near the Courtyard of the Triangle – the closest point yet toward the papal palace – like the first firebomb, sending a sheet of flame across the open ground and igniting the brush around it.