The Inca Prophecy (33 page)

‘Security’s tight,’ he said, when he got back to the hotel, ‘and there’s no doubt Felici’s expecting us.’

‘He’s here? I thought with the Pope’s funeral …’

‘You’re right, he’s got his hands full in Rome, but there’s an army of thugs patrolling the grounds. I suspect that whatever he’s hiding
will be worth finding.’ O’Connor fired up his laptop and Google Earth. He’d already researched the plans of the ancient villa, which a prominent firm of architects had thoughtfully posted on the net after they’d undertaken some alterations, but now he was searching for weak points in the guards’ defences.

‘We don’t want a long swim, so the best approach will be out of the town of Lenno. The lake is deep and cold, and at night it’ll be darker than the inside of a cow’s ass. Lights are out of the question, so we’ll have to rope together.’

Aleta shook her head determinedly, but she was smiling. She still hadn’t quite adjusted to O’Connor’s colourful language.

‘We’ll leave our car in Argegno to pick up later and get a bus to Lenno, which is closer to the villa. We’ll get some bags for the scuba gear so it doesn’t attract too much attention. There’s a grove of trees near Via Comoedia in Lenno where we can change. From there, there’s a little access track to the lake. Once we’re in the lake, we’ll follow the northern shoreline of the Felici promontory until we come to the opening of the marina, here.’ O’Connor indicated the sea wall that protected the entrance. ‘From the look of it, there’s some sort of boatshed. That might provide the best way in.’

O’Connor and Aleta went through their gear checks together: regulators, cylinders, depth gauges, tank-pressure gauges, wrist-dive computers, buoyancy compensation devices, safety reels, weights and knives.

‘Let’s go.’ O’Connor led the way down the narrow access track
from Via Comoedia past some expensive waterfront properties and over a rock wall. They moved quietly to the edge of the lake where they put on their fins, checked they were securely roped together, pressed the deflation buttons on their buoyancy compensation devices and descended into the depths of the lake, Aleta swimming confidently behind O’Connor.

Visibility was poor, but O’Connor had calculated a series of compass bearings that would keep them on course. Thirty minutes later he stopped and waited for Aleta to swim up to him before making an ‘O’ out of his thumb and forefinger, the universal dive sign for ‘I’m okay/are you okay?’ Aleta returned the ‘O’ and he motioned her to wait while he rose to check where they were.

O’Connor surfaced quietly, his Navy Seal training ensuring there was hardly a ripple. The lights of the villa were blazing, extending silver fingers out on to the black surface of the lake. Every so often a searchlight probed the darkness, but as O’Connor had anticipated, the operator was combing the surface of the lake much further out. The entrance to the marina was about 100 metres away and O’Connor took a bearing with his wrist compass before sinking back into the depths.

They reached the stone wall of the marina and O’Connor cautiously led the way along it, sticking to the bottom. He swam past the steps and into the boathouse. Surprisingly, it was in total darkness. O’Connor glided under a speedboat rocking gently at its moorings and when he reached the far stone wall, he and Aleta climbed out on to a stone ledge, where they divested themselves of their scuba gear. O’Connor checked his Glock, its silencer already attached.

‘We’ll start with the library,’ he whispered. On the way out of the
boathouse O’Connor stopped to examine a narrow two-metre-high niche in the rear wall. A solid wooden door was set inside it. He tried it, but it was locked.

‘I wonder …’ he said softly.

‘Where this leads to?’

‘Exactly. I don’t think it’s a cupboard.’ O’Connor reached into his waterproof bag and extracted a set of mortice-lock keys. At the third attempt, the old two-lever lock yielded and O’Connor cautiously opened the door.

‘Felici might have an army of guards,’ he whispered, ‘but his locks are no better than the Vatican’s secret archives. We’ll hide the tanks, just in case anyone gets the urge to check the boathouse.’ But no sooner had he spoken than the lights went on and a security guard appeared on the top of the steps that led down to the water.

‘Hey!’ he yelled, raising his Socimi 821 submachine gun.

O’Connor’s Glock recoiled in his expert hands and the
sphut, sphut
of the silenced rounds sounded unusually loud in the confined space. The guard’s yell was replaced by an anguished gurgle as he dropped his gun, clutched his chest and tumbled forward into the water between the speedboat and the steps with a loud splosh. He tried to clamber out, but O’Connor was there in an instant and he whipped the guard around, pinning his arms and holding him beneath the surface. The guard’s struggles finally ceased and O’Connor recovered his belt and a pouch containing four magazines of bullets. He wedged the body underneath one of the rubber fender tyres and was about to turn out the light when he noticed the ignition keys had been left in the boat. Very careless, he thought, as he put them in a zippered pocket of his wetsuit.

‘We’ll have to move fast,’ O’Connor whispered. ‘That probably raised the alarm. Did they ever show you how to use one of these in that pistol club of yours?’

‘I’ve fired an Uzi,’ Aleta replied.

‘Not much difference,’ O’Connor said, handing her the Italian version. He led the way to the back of the boathouse, through the solid wooden door and up the stone steps of a narrow passage. When they reached a wide stone ledge, O’Connor switched on the torch he’d fitted with a red filter. It gave just enough light but wasn’t visible unless someone was directly in the beam. The alcove in front of them led to more steps, while another alcove signalled the entrance to a passage carved out of the rock. O’Connor reasoned the steps in front of them would lead to the library above, but the entrance in the rock intrigued him and he beckoned for Aleta to follow him into a dank, moss-covered tunnel nearly 50 metres long.

‘Well, well,’ O’Connor exclaimed softly as they reached the heavy steel door of a vault at the end of the tunnel.

‘If this is what they’re guarding, it’s strange they haven’t posted someone here,’ Aleta whispered as she held the filter torch on the first of the combination locks.

‘The guards may not even know this exists,’ O’Connor replied. ‘Felici operates on a need-to-know basis.’

As yet unaware of O’Connor’s presence at the villa, the cardinal was engaged on a high-risk strategy of his own. Attired in an Armani suit and seated in the back of his black Mercedes, Felici
acknowledged the salute of the Swiss Guard as the driver slipped out of the Vatican’s St Anne’s Gate for the short trip across town to a quiet bar with private booths. Felici’s arrangement with Luigi Campioni, a senior journalist writing for
La Stampa
and the
Vatican Insider
, was a long-standing one. Contact was always initiated by Felici and set up by Sister Bridget from a public pay phone. If there were any investigation into a leak, it would never be traced to Felici, or any of his staff. But the arrangement worked for both sides. Courtesy of Felici, Campioni had broken some amazingly accurate stories. This afternoon would be no different.

‘It’s very good to see you again, Eminence. A white or a red?’ Campioni queried, picking up the wine list. Campioni’s tab at the restaurant was mammoth, but given the explosive nature of the scoops, his editors didn’t complain.

‘I think a red. It’s going to be a difficult few days.’

‘Tahbilk,’ Campioni intoned after the waiter had left. ‘An Australian shiraz. The vines date back to the 1860s.’

Felici took a long sniff of the bouquet and swirled it around his tastebuds before passing judgement. ‘Excellent,’ Felici said finally. ‘Very fine tannins.’

‘Those Australians are giving the French a run for their money these days,’ Campioni replied, the relieved expression on his face quickly replaced with a professional look of interest. ‘I’ve been following the lead-up to the conclave with great interest, Eminence. You should not be surprised to find yourself as one of the favourites.’

‘He who goes in as a pope, comes out as a cardinal,’ Felici replied, reminding his inquisitor of the old Roman saying, proven correct on more than one occasion.

‘Yes, although not always,’ Campioni countered, ‘and of course, we all hope you’re successful. Even if that means I will lose a most trusted advisor.’

‘There are ways and means, even as pope,’ Felici replied, ‘but of course, Cardinal Sabatani is also a clear frontrunner.’

‘What would his election mean for the Holy Church, Eminence?’

‘In a word, disaster. If Sabatani is elected, I very much fear for the Church’s future. Many in his camp are seeking to water down Catholic doctrine with a sort of new-age theology they think will appeal to the masses: allowing contraception and remarriage for divorcees, and, worse still, allowing priests to revoke their vows of celibacy. Everything’s up for grabs at a time when we need to go back to our roots. Before you know it, we’ll be using crystals and chanting the mass in creole.’ Felici reached into his soft leather briefcase. ‘You may find these useful,’ he said, handing over copies of Sabatani’s discussion papers.

O’Connor held his finger to his lips for silence as he adjusted his stethoscope and listened for the first of the sounds that would indicate one of the tumblers in the lock falling into place. Another old lock – O’Connor shook his head at Felici’s carelessness. Despite the old design, it took O’Connor nearly ten minutes to crack it, rocking the gradations back and forth before he had both combinations, and with every passing minute, Aleta feared they would be discovered. At last, the old steel door moved noiselessly on its hinges and O’Connor probed the inside of the vault with the torch.

‘Look!’ Aleta gasped, grabbing O’Connor’s wetsuit. ‘A crystal skull!’ The life-size skull was nestling in a niche hewn out of the rock in the far wall of the vault. The filtered red beam from the torch seemed to explode within it, like a series of interconnecting neurons.

‘So the message you received about one of the skulls being in the hands of your enemies was right,’ O’Connor observed, fascinated by the kaleidoscope of red, blue and yellow impulses crackling deep within the crystal. But the extra light from the skull showed the outline of the small safe in another niche and O’Connor immediately moved towards it.

‘They’re not exactly high-tech with their security,’ said Aleta, shining the filtered beam on the single dial of the old safe.

‘Hopefully Felici’s loss is our gain, depending on what’s in this safe,’ O’Connor said quietly, placing the diaphragm of his stethoscope on the dial. Less than five minutes later, the safe gave up two thin crimson folders in a protective cover, each embossed with a raised gold coat of arms.

‘Copies of the documents in the secret archives?’ Aleta guessed.

‘The originals … and the documents in the secret archives weren’t complete.’ O’Connor glanced quickly inside the folders. ‘The cipher is the same, but the prophecy in this file has two pages, not one. I’m not sure why these are important enough for Felici to engage a small army to protect them, but it’s going to be fun finding out,’ he said, handing Aleta the files and closing the safe.