Day Of Confession

27

Marsciano stopped briefly at the bottom of the stairway, then walked up. At the top, he turned down a narrow hallway, stopping at an elaborately paneled door. Turning the knob, he entered.

The late sun cut sharply through the lone window dividing the ornate meeting room in half. Palestrina stood on one side of it, partly in shadow. The person with him was little more than a silhouette, but Marsciano didn't need to see him to know who it was. Jacov Farel.

'Eminence… Jacov.' Marsciano closed the door behind him.

'Sit down, Nicola.' Palestrina gestured toward a grouping of high-backed chairs that faced an ancient marble fireplace. Marsciano crossed the shaft of sunlight to do as he had been asked.

As he did, Farel sat down opposite him, crossing his feet at the ankles, buttoning his suit coat, then his gaze coming up to Marsciano's and holding there.

'I want to ask you a question, Nicola, and I want you to answer with the truth.' Palestrina let his hand trail lightly across the top of a chair, then took hold of it and pulled it around to sit down directly in front of Marsciano. 'Is the priest alive?'

Marsciano had known, from the moment Harry Addison declared the remains were not his brother's, that it was only a matter of time before Palestrina came with his questions. He was surprised it had taken this long. But the interval had given him the chance to prepare himself as best he could.

'No,' he said, directly.

'The police believe he is.'

'They are wrong.'

'His brother disagreed,' Farel said.

'He merely said the body was not that of his brother. But he was mistaken.' Marsciano worked to seem dispassionate and matter-of-fact.

'There is a videotape in the possession of Gruppo Cardinale made by Harry Addison himself, asking his brother to give himself up. Does that sound like someone who was mistaken?'

For a moment Marsciano said nothing. When he did speak, it was to Palestrina and in the same tone as before. 'Jacov was there beside me at the morgue when the evidence was presented and the identification made.' Marsciano turned toward Farel. 'Is that not true, Jacov?'

Farel said nothing.

Palestrina studied Marsciano and then rose from his chair and walked toward the window, his enormous body blocking the sunlight. Then he turned, so that he stood wholly in shadow, with nothing visible except the dark hugeness of his form.

'The top is taken from a box. A moth flies out to disappear in the breeze… How did it survive where it was? Where did it go when it flew away?' Palestrina came back toward them.

'I grew up a scugnizzo, a common Neapolitan street urchin. My only teacher was experience. Sitting in the gutter with your head bleeding because you had been lied to but had believed you had been told the truth… From it you learned. And you took care so that it wouldn't happen again…' Palestrina stopped at Marsciano's chair and looked down at him.

'I will ask you once more, Nicola: Is the priest alive?'

'No, Eminence. He is dead.'

'Then we are finished here.' Palestrina glanced at Farel, then abruptly left the room.

His sensibilities all but frozen, Marsciano watched him go. Then, knowing Palestrina would question his policeman about his manner after he left, Marsciano gathered himself and looked to Farel. 'He is dead, Jacov,' he said 'Dead.'

One of Farel's plainclothes guards stood at the bottom of the stairs as Marsciano came down, and the cardinal passed him without a glance.

Marsciano's entire life had been given to God and the Church. He was as strong yet simple as his Tuscan background. Men like Palestrina and Farel lived in a world beyond his, one that he had no place in and feared greatly, yet circumstances and his own competence had placed him there.

'For the good of the Church,' Palestrina had said because he knew the Church and its sanctity were Marsciano's weakness, that he revered them nearly as much as he revered God, because to him they were close to one and the same. Give me Father Daniel, Palestrina was telling him, and the Church will be saved from the spectacle of a trial and the public scandal and degradation certain to come with it if it is true he is alive and the police get him. And he would be right, because if he did, Father Daniel, already presumed dead, would simply vanish, Farel or Thomas Kind would see to that. He would be judged guilty within the Church and the matter of Cardinal Parma's murder put to rest.

But giving up Father Daniel only to have him murdered was not something Marsciano was prepared to do. Under the noses of Palestrina and Farel and Capizzi and Matadi, he had called upon all the resources at his command in an attempt to get away with the impossible; to have Father Daniel declared dead when he knew he was not. And were it not for Father Daniel's brother, it might have worked. But it hadn't. In result, he had no choice but to continue the charade and, with it, hope to buy time. But he had done poorly, of that there was little doubt.

His attempt to reassure Farel he had been telling the truth after Palestrina left had been feeble and had fallen on deaf ears. His fate, he knew, had been sealed with the secretariat's glance at his policeman as he'd walked from the room. With it, he had taken Marsciano's liberty. From that moment on, he would be watched. Wherever he went, whoever he saw or spoke with, whether on the telephone or in the corridor, even at home, would be monitored and reported. First to Farel and then from Farel to Palestrina. What it amounted to was house arrest. And there was nothing at all he could do about it.

Once again he looked at his watch.

8:50

All he could do was pray there had been no glitches. That by now they were gone, safely out of there as planned.