The Secret Cardinal

67

Cusumano climbed aboard the caboose with five workmen. He was dressed in boots and worn gray coveralls with a laminated photo ID clipped to his breast pocket. He carried a dark green sports bag slung over one shoulder with a tall metal thermos protruding from the top of the bag.

The caboose was at the end of a three-car train attached to a small steam locomotive. The engine was something of an anachronism compared with modern high-speed diesel electric engines and magnetic-levitation trains, but the tiny engine was well suited to this particular journey and seemed an appropriate nod to a more elegant era. The train sat on a siding at the Stazione San Pietro under a gray sky, and Cusumano watched tiny droplets of rain streak down the grimy windows of the caboose.

With a lurch, the ancient locomotive began to move. It was, as usual, behind schedule. The tracks it followed ran northwest from the station, parallel to Via Innocenzo III and just outside the protective walls that surrounded the medieval city of Rome.

Cusumano sat quietly, doing little to draw the attention of his fellow passengers. There was no regular crew for this run; the station manager simply selected however many men were needed to unload the freight once they reached their destination. Fortunately for Cusumano, this train was scheduled to run today.

The sky outside matched the Sicilian’s mood. Earlier that afternoon, he received an unexpected visit at his bookshop from Mr Chin. Their meeting was brief and to the point. Yin had escaped from China and was en route to Rome. In a reverse of their first meeting, Chin told Cusumano that it was now the mafia’s responsibility to deal with Yin. Failure to do so, Chin implied, would have more than a deleterious effect on their business relationship. The mafia dons conspiring with Gagliardi had decided the matter quickly, and Cusumano — due in equal parts to reputation, current involvement, and immediate availability — found himself pressed again into service as an assassin on an almost impossible assignment. In the parlance of Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, the dons made Cusumano an offer he couldn’t refuse.

A kilometer out of the station, the train veered to the right on a spur built by Mussolini as part of the Lateran pacts of 1929 between the Holy See and the kingdom of Italy. The locomotive moved slowly along the track, as there was little point in building speed for a journey of a few kilometers.

A loud whistle blast announced the train as it neared the twelve-meter-high Leonine Walls surrounding the Vatican. The iron gates that secured an arched opening in the wall slowly pivoted open. As it passed through the wall, the train crossed the border from Italy into the sovereign state of Vatican City. The section of track ahead was only 862 meters long — the shortest national railroad in the world. Once the train was inside, the gates closed behind it.

At the end of the line stood papal architect Giuseppe Momo’s candy-colored Vatican railroad station, a building clad in green, pink, and yellow marble and adorned with sculptures by Eduardo Rubino. Though conceived as a place where the Pope could greet arriving dignitaries, the station was rarely used to serve passengers, and its high-ceilinged gallery had become an ornate storage room. During his many visits with his uncle, Cusumano could not recall ever setting foot inside the station. Gagliardi had snidely dismissed the building as an overdone warehouse and bypassed it in favor of the Vatican’s more interesting sites.

The train pulled up to the station, and Cusumano followed his fellow workmen out onto the platform. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and the workmen, armed with hand trucks from the station, began unloading the freight cars. Much of what they brought into the Vatican was destined for the souvenir stands and duty-free shops. A clerk kept track of the boxes as they were brought into the station, logging each against the manifest, and all the activity occurred under the watchful eyes of a pair of Swiss Guards dressed in blue uniforms.

During a break, Cusumano sat inside the station quietly drinking espresso from his thermos. He listened as his fellow laborers speculated with the engine crew and the Vatican clerk about what might be happening inside the Sistine Chapel. News reports indicated that the conclave had remained locked in session since that morning. Three times today, black smoke spiraled from the chimney flue.

The workers took their time after the break, extending the job to the end of their shift with the hope of being inside the Vatican when, God willing, the new Pope was elected. The boxes slowly disappeared until, at last, Cusumano trucked in the final load.

As the clerk locked the station, Cusumano and the other men boarded the caboose. He sat alone in the front corner of the car where he had left his bag.

‘Stu cazzo!’ Cusumano cursed. ‘My thermos leaked all over my bag.’

Two of the workmen laughed at his misfortune; the others sat back with their eyes closed. Cusumano pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and slipped his hands inside the bag as if to wipe up the spill. The tall metal thermos contained three chambers, of which only the uppermost contained coffee. Cusumano had used the other two to smuggle weapons through security at the railway station. He deftly unscrewed the bottom of his thermos and carefully removed the contents of the bottom chamber. Piece by piece, the Beretta Px4 pistol took shape as he swiftly reassembled it — a procedure he could accomplish blindfolded in seconds.

The whistle blasted a long tone, then the train shuddered and began to roll. Cusumano kept an eye on the two Swiss Guards through the side window as he attached the laser sight and, last, fitted the silencer into place. The rumble of the train obscured the sound of the twenty-round magazine clicking into place. As soon as the Vatican personnel on the station platform were out of view, he stood and opened fire on the laborers.

Cusumano murdered the men with five quick, expertly placed shots. He slipped the pistol back into his bag, opened the rear door of the caboose, and leaped from the slow-moving train. His feet slipped in the moist gravel, but he kept his balance and stepped away from the rails. The freight cars screened Cusumano as he pulled himself over a short retaining wall and into a secluded corner of the Vatican Gardens. By the time the iron gates in the wall closed, he had concealed himself in the dense foliage where he would wait for Yin’s arrival.