The Key

82

Vatican City

Clementi was dragged from a troubled dream by the harsh sound of a phone ringing. He checked the clock by his bed. The numerals showed that it was a little after four in the morning; the worst of all times to receive a call. He reached for the phone in the dark and snatched it up to silence the ring.

‘Hello?’

‘How quickly can you log on to your secure server?’ It was Pentangeli, the American member of the Group.

‘Ten minutes,’ Clementi said, instantly awake. ‘I need to get into the office.’

‘Do it faster. I’ve just sent you something you really need to see.’

The phone went dead.

Clementi could hear the phone ringing in his office when the elevator opened on to the fourth floor of the Apostolic Palace eight minutes later.

He stumbled down the hall, keenly aware that the Holy Father was currently sleeping in the room next door. His own apartment was in a different building, on the other side of the Sistine Chapel. He had run the whole way, or as close to running as his bloated body would allow. Fumbling his key in the lock, he fell into the dark room, knocking a pile of newspapers to the floor as he grabbed the phone to silence it.

‘I’m here,’ he said, his words more breath than substance.

‘Are you looking at your email?’

Clementi collapsed in his chair. ‘I’m just… accessing it.’ He fought for breath, his heart hammering in his chest, fingers shaking as they pecked away at the keyboard. There were two messages in his secure email account, one with the location ID of the compound in Iraq and one with no subject line or sender. He guessed this would be from Pentangeli. He opened it and a pop-up window automatically started playing a video clip.

At first it was too dark and shaky to make out; then the picture settled and a bright light came on, surprising a huge blond man dressed in black pushing a large box. Clementi felt the ground fall away from beneath him as he realized what he was watching.

‘What you’re looking at is raw, unedited news footage, flagged up by one of my senior news producers. They were going to run it as an exclusive on the next news cycle, but I made them spike it. All the media has now been destroyed. The only evidence that this ever happened is the file you’re now looking at.’

The footage steadied again and showed the lid being removed. The camera framed up the sleeping form of the girl curled inside then panned away and tilted up showing the Citadel behind it. It was as damning as it could possibly be.

‘Shortly after this footage was taken the girl was taken away under police escort to Ruin City Hospital — only she never got there. She’s disappeared. Again. I know you said you were “handling” this,’ Clementi couldn’t miss the mocking quote marks around the word, ‘so could you mind telling me where she is now?’

Clementi thought about lying, making up some story about how she was under surveillance and would be silenced within the hour, but he had made so many of those promises in the last few days that he couldn’t bring himself to say it. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.

There was a long exhale on the line before Pentangeli spoke again. ‘I don’t know why you’re having such difficulty sorting this mess out. Don’t forget, if this whole thing goes belly up, you’re the one who’ll suffer most. Beyond lending you money, we have no evident connection to this whole business. And one way or another we will get our money back, whether it’s in cash or commodities. Hell, the site of St Patrick’s in downtown Manhattan has got to be worth a quarter of a billion in real estate terms. So if I were you, I would throw everything you have at finding these people, before they stumble on to something that could really do some damage. Between us, we own most of the news and TV stations in the world, but we don’t own them all. Don’t count on the story being spiked if you screw up again. It’s time you got your house in order, Cardinal. Let me know when it’s done.’