The Second Messiah (42 page)

SIXTY FEET ON,
Lela pointed to a trail of crimson splashes on the rubble. She knelt, touched one of the splashes, and withdrew her fingertip, red and wet. “It seems Ari hit someone.”

“Your cop friend?” Jack’s mouth tightened with fury. “What if it’s Yasmin?”

“Don’t blame me. And he’s not a cop, he’s Mossad.”

“Mossad?”

“Like I said, explanations later. Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

Lela cocked an ear. “It sounded like rumbling. From somewhere up ahead.”

They came to a winding metal staircase. The blood trail curved up the steps. Lela kept her gun aimed upward as she climbed the creaking metal, Jack behind her. At the top they found themselves in another passageway. This time the ground was smooth, no rubble in sight. Splashes of blood spotted the way every few feet.

“They went this way.” Lela pressed on and stayed in front. “I need to know what happened to the scroll, Jack.”

“Why does everyone assume I know where it is?”

“Who’s everyone?”

“You. The two guys who abducted Yasmin.”

“Who are they?”

“I don’t know that either. But I have a feeling they may be connected to a very unpleasant Syrian I met recently.”

“Where?”

“At a monastery.”

“You mean in Maloula?”

Jack stared at her, incredulous “How did you know …?”

“Later,” Lela answered simply.

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

“All in good time. Go on.”

“That’s all I can tell you. I don’t even know why you’re in Rome, except maybe to arrest me for something I didn’t do. I keep asking myself how the heck I got mixed up in this nightmare. Maybe I should have picked a less dangerous career. Like land-mine disposal.”

Lela put a hand on his arm, her brown eyes searching his face. “Are you telling me the truth about the scroll, Jack? You didn’t steal it from Green?”

“No, I sure didn’t.” Jack met her stare and felt the spark of attraction again.

Lela seemed conscious of it too but a second later she peered ahead and broke the spell. “The blood trail’s gone.”

Jack knelt and scanned the ground. The crimson spatters had disappeared. Lela said, “Whoever’s been hit, I guess their wounds have been bandaged to stop the bleeding, so chances are they’re still alive. If it’s Yasmin the men won’t harm her, not after going to the trouble of abducting her. At least until they get whatever it is they want.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Gut instinct. I’m guessing they’ll want to use her to get to you.”

A distant rumbling noise sounded. Jack said, “You hear that?”

“It’s like the noise I heard earlier.”

“We’ve got to be near street level.”

“It seems to be getting a lot louder. It’s probably traffic.” Lela swung the lamp. Ten yards away the wash of the light revealed a half-open metal gate set in the middle of an archway.

Jack said, ‘’What’s your plan now? Slap me in cuffs and drag me off to face a court in Israel?”

“Who said anything about dragging you anywhere? Except maybe to somewhere we can both clean ourselves up. First, I need you to help me find the scroll, Jack.”

“And then?”

“
Then
I may arrest you.”

They approached the gate. Jack pulled at the metal bars and they creaked open.

Lela went to step through first, her pistol readied, but the second she did so a thunderous roar exploded and a powerful blast of air almost knocked her off her feet.

Jack pulled her back as a thunderbolt of light streaked past. The earth shook beneath them, a metallic roar detonating in their ears as a train screamed past, its lights blazing. Jack felt the ground shake for at least ten seconds until the train roared away into darkness.

Lela was startled. “What was that? It felt like an earthquake.”

“I ought to have remembered that some of the tunnels intersect near Rome’s rail system.” Jack moved cautiously past the gate and pulled a dazed Lela after him. A hundred yards to their left the lights of an underground station blazed. A few passengers stood around on the platform, near a pair of escalators. “They probably took Yasmin out through the station. We’ve lost her, they’ve got away, Lela.”

She put a hand on his arm. “Maybe it’s time I told you what I can, and why I followed you. There’s something else you need to know, Jack.”

“What?”

“It’s about your friend, Yasmin.”

JOHN BECKET KNELT
on the cold tile floor of his monastery cell.

He stared up at the crucifix on the wall, his forehead drenched in perspiration. The cell was simply furnished with a metal bed, a nightstand, and a plain wooden locker.

As Becket knelt in front of the crucifix, his sinewy hands were locked together in prayer. He knelt there for a long time, unaware of time passing, or of the pains in his knees from the hard floor. His lips moved in whispered prayer until finally he blessed himself and rose to his feet with a faint groan.

He rubbed his knees vigorously, then took a small hand towel from the nightstand and dabbed the sweat from his face.

Sometimes his praying became so intense that he lost all sense of time and place. Just like now. When he looked at his watch he saw that over an hour had passed. He rinsed the towel under a stream of hot water from the sink, then folded it neatly and placed it on the rail to dry.

As he sat on the edge of the bed, from somewhere far off came the echo of the monks’ musical voices as they chanted their hymns. The sound of their voices always brought him back to those dark days after the desert of Qumran, to the remote monastery high in the mountains of northern Italy where he had chosen to atone for his sin. He prayed there earnestly for months on end for forgiveness. It was all many years ago now, but sometimes he felt that his sin had forever stained his soul.

Becket looked up again at the crucifix on the wall as if again to ask forgiveness. The simple cross of two pieces of wood symbolized so
much
. Once a brutal emblem of Roman injustice and savagery, it had been transformed into a blessed, enduring symbol—of hope and devotion, of justice, comfort, and peace. Proof, if proof were needed, that love and truth were greater than all the shadows.

He thought of the hard task ahead of him and sighed in despair, running a hand over his face. There was so much he needed to do, so many truths he needed to tell that had been kept secret. So many wrongs he wanted to make right, including his own grave sin. But in so doing, he knew he risked destroying both himself and the church.

The distant chanting that washed over him was suddenly interrupted by the jarring noise of his cell phone vibrating on the nightstand. It beeped twice, then twice again. Becket picked up the phone and saw he’d received a text message. When he read it, his face drained.

He had been waiting for this moment, and without hesitation he plucked a compact black leather bag from under his bed. Exiting his cell, he strode down the hall to the open door of the abbot’s office.

The abbot was leafing through some papers, his reading glasses perched on his nose, and he jumped to his feet, his eyes darting to the black leather bag clutched in the pope’s hand. “Holy Father. Is everything okay? You look pale. You’re sweating.”

“Fabrio, I need to borrow your car to make an important trip. The red Fiat 500 I’ve seen you driving will do. Is it available?”

The abbot looked horrified. “Well, yes … but surely the Holy Father will have need of a driver and his bodyguards?”

The pope firmly raised a palm. “No driver, no bodyguards. The car, right away if you please, Fabrio. It’s
extremely
urgent. Give me the keys.”

“But Holy Father, I was instructed to watch over you—”

“And now
I’m
instructing you, Fabrio. Please, it’s a matter of life and death. I haven’t a moment to lose. The keys.” The pope held out his hand.

The abbot opened a desk drawer and plucked out a set of car keys. “The Holy Father can’t be serious about driving alone in Rome? The traffic’s homicidal.”

The pope grabbed the keys from his hand. “Sorry, Fabrio, this is no
time
for argument.” He noticed a spare brown habit tossed on the back of a chair and threw the gown over his arm. “I’ll need to borrow this habit. Not a word to anyone that I’ve gone, and that’s a papal order.”

“If—if you insist.”

“I do. Now, have the guards open up the front gates, as fast as you can. Tell them you’ll be driving out in a hurry, that you have an urgent appointment to keep and can’t be delayed …”

“That
I’ll
be driving out? You want me to lie to the guards, Holy Father?”

Something seemed to snap in John Becket just then, a strained look on his face as if he was under enormous pressure. “I’ve been living a lie most of my life, Fabrio. One more won’t make much difference.”

The abbot frowned, puzzled by the reply. “I don’t understand what you mean, Holy Father. And where exactly are you going?”

“The less you know, the better.”

The young man with the mustache was confused. Wearing jeans, dark glasses, a faded Levi’s T-shirt, his corduroy jacket tossed on the passenger seat, he sat in the dark blue Lancia, parked across the street from the monastery.

He saw the guards open the electric gates and the tiny red Fiat erupt from out of the driveway. The tall figure of the monk who was cramped behind the wheel wore a brown habit, his face covered by the hood. He tore off down the road in the red Fiat, the car chugging a little at first, as if the driver was having difficulty shifting gear.

The young man frowned.
What monk wears a hood while driving?
It seemed a bit odd. He scratched his head and then picked up a notebook and pen from the seat next to him and jotted down the Fiat’s registration plate. Next, he reached for his cell phone, punched in the number, and a voice answered on the second ring. “Ryan.”

“It’s Angelo Butoni, Monsignor.”

“Good man, Angelo. What’s the story?”

Butoni was a seasoned Vatican security officer and kept his eyes on the red Fiat as it drove away down the long avenue leading from the
monastery
. “You told me to call you if I saw Uncle leave the monastery. Well, I didn’t, but I noticed something a little strange.”

“What?”

“I just saw a red Fiat 500 come out of the monastery and drive off like a bat out of hell. The monk at the wheel was alone and I couldn’t see his face. He had the hood of his habit up, which I thought was odd.”

Ryan’s voice flared. “Could it have been Uncle?”

Butoni rubbed his mustache. He saw the Fiat’s brake lights illuminate, then the car turned right at the end of the avenue and disappeared. “Impossible to say, but my gut instinct told me to let you know. You think I should follow the Fiat?”

“Get after it, Angelo. We can’t take the risk, not while we’re still trying to figure out the shooting near St. Peter’s Square. I’ll call the abbot to find out what in heaven’s name is going on. If it’s a false alarm you can always turn back.”