Day Of Confession

63

The scope was a 1.5-4.5x Zeiss Diavari C, and through it Thomas Kind watched the dark blue Alfa Romeo come down the hill toward Bellagio. The crosshairs cut Castelletti in the middle of his forehead, and a slight shift to the left took Roscani the same way. Then, after a glimpse of a carabiniere at the wheel, the vehicle passed, and he stood back. He was uncertain if today he should once again call himself S, because he was not sure whether logistics or circumstance would present him with his target.

S for sniper. It was a designation he gave himself when he prepared, mentally and physically, to kill from a distance. It had begun as a self-promotion to an elite corps after his first kill, shooting a fascist soldier from an office window in Santiago, Chile, in 1976, as the troops opened fire on a gathering of Marxist students.

Moving the Zeiss down and to the right, he saw the carabinieri command post set up just outside the long formal drive leading to the palatial lakeside estate known as Villa Lorenzi. A move to the right again, and the scope picked up the three police patrol boats idle in the water, a quarter of a mile apart and a hundred yards offshore.

Through Farel, Kind had learned that Villa Lorenzi was owned by the renowned Italian novelist Eros Barbu and that Barbu was traveling in western Canada and had not been at Villa Lorenzi since the previous New Year's Eve, when he had given his annual ball, one of the most famous events in all of Europe. In Barbu's absence, Villa Lorenzi was managed by a black South African poet named Edward Mooi, who lived free of charge, saw after the buildings, and directed the staff of twenty full-time house help and gardeners. And Mooi, at Eros Barbu's order, had given the police permission to search the grounds.

A formal statement from Barbu's attorneys maintained that neither Barbu nor Edward Mooi ever knew or had heard of a Father Daniel Addison, and that neither they nor any of the staff were aware of anyone coming to Villa Lorenzi by boat. Most certainly not someone with a medical staff of four tending him.

Easing back from his craggy perch on a wooded hill overlooking the villa, Thomas Kind lifted the scope again and saw Roscani's Alfa Romeo pull up to the command post just as Edward Mooi came down from the main house at the wheel of a battered three-wheel maintenance vehicle that looked like an old Harley-Davidson motorcycle towing the bed of a small dump truck.

Kind smiled. The poet was wearing a khaki shirt, western jeans, and leather sandals. His long hair, tied in a ponytail that dropped to his shoulders, had touches of gray at the temples and gave him the appearance of a distinguished hippie or an aging biker.

For a moment Mooi and Roscani chatted, then the poet climbed back on his vehicle and led Roscani's car and two large trucks filled with armed carabinieri back down the driveway and onto the grounds of the villa proper. Thomas Kind was certain the police would find nothing. But he was equally certain that his target was somewhere there, or at a place close by. So he would wait and watch, and then make his move. Patience was everything.

Hefei, China. The Overseas Chinese Hotel.

Tuesday, July 14

Li Wen rolled over, restless. It was hot and still, and he was unable to sleep. Thirty seconds later he rolled over again and looked at the clock. It was twelve-thirty in the morning. In three hours he would have to get up. In four he would be at work. He lay back. This night, more than any, he needed to sleep, but it didn't come. He tried to erase thought from his mind, not think of what he was about to do, or what Hefei would be like twenty-four hours from now after he had introduced the deadly product of American hydrobiologist James Hawley's formula to the water supply at the treatment plant's clear-water outflow wells. Polycyclic unsaturated alcohol was not a monitored constituent in the water systems, nor could it be detected visually or by taste or odor in the drinking water. Introduced in frozen snowball-like form to melt in the already-treated water, the effect would be to cause severe digestive-system cramping, followed by intense diarrhea, and, ultimately, intestinal bleeding and death within six to twenty-four hours. The amount introduced, calculated at ten-parts-per-million concentration in a glass of drinking water, would have sufficient fatal contamination for one hundred thousand individuals.

Ten parts per million.

One hundred thousand deaths.

Li Wen tried to stop his mind from working, but he could not. Then, in the distance, he heard the crackle of thunder. At almost the same time he felt a breeze and saw the curtains billow slightly at the open window. A front was approaching, and with it would come wind and warm rain. By the time he got up, it should have passed, and tomorrow would be muggy and even hotter. Not-so-distant lightning Hashed, for an instant lighting up his hotel room. Eight seconds later there was a clap of thunder.

Li Wen moved up on an elbow, alert, his gaze crossing the room. In the corner next to his suitcase was a small refrigerator. Few hotels in China had room refrigerators, especially hotels in the smaller cities like Hefei, away from the major centers, but this one did. It was the reason he had chosen this hotel and asked for this room. Not only was there a refrigerator, but the appliance itself had a freezer, which was even more important because it was where he had frozen the polycyclic 'snowballs' after he had blended the formula. And where they would remain until he left for the treatment plant in something over three hours.

Again lightning flashed. For an instant the lights illuminating the hotel sign outside his window went out, then they came back on. Li Wen was wide awake now. Staring in the dark. The last thing he needed was to have the electricity go out.