The Secret of Fatima (34 page)

Chapter Forty-Six

Rome, Italy

Later, when Kevin went back to the apartment, Toby presented him with a care package. “After you leave, open it,” he said. “And Kev, whatever you do, be careful tonight. These Opus Mundi guys are ruthless.”

“Thanks,” said Kevin. “I appreciate your help.”

“You don't want me to come along?” asked Toby.

“No, it's best I brave this one alone,” said Kevin.

“OK. Good luck. I'll be here, just call.”

Leaving on his mission, Kevin opened the small package Toby gave him in a plain cloth zippered case. The tools included a set of master keys, a notepad with codes and passwords for a computer, a miniature crowbar, an LED flashlight, a miniature camera, and plastic gloves. Brilliant! Also, there was a card in an envelope:

Dear Kevin
,

I don't need to tell you to be careful. These tools should help. Consider them a birthday present. May you live well this year. Onward! Happy Birthday
.

Toby

Kevin was touched. It was just like Toby to remember his birthday. Kevin himself had nearly forgotten it.
Ugh, forty-three
.

The tools were only part of the gift. While Kevin was visiting the pope that day, Toby had learned, from his intelligence connections, the secure address of Cardinal Marini's private residence. Cardinal Marini had long kept it secret. Kevin knew that if the leader of Opus Mundi was a cardinal of the church, it left few places to look. It'd have to be someone high up inside the Vatican with access to confidential information. As head of Vatican security, Marini was suspect. He'd brilliantly derailed the investigation of his unlisted personal address, shifting all the attention to the attempted assassination of Pope Quintus II. This was a major clue.

The difficulty: proving it. There was nothing tangible to connect Marini with Opus Mundi. Only a handful of individuals knew the true identity of Visitor, the leader of Opus Mundi, and all of them would give their own lives not to reveal it.

The big break came when Toby secured the address of Marini's secret residence. Tonight, Kevin was heading out, undercover, to let himself into Marini's townhouse in Trastevere. The cardinal was scheduled to be at an ecclesiastic affair involving a religious delegation from Poland. Kevin had checked the schedule; the event started at seven p.m. and ended at eleven p.m., leaving ample time to get in and snoop around his digs.

At nine p.m. Kevin left his apartment, dressed in black slacks and a sweater, dark sneakers, and Toby's magic bag of tools. Kevin wore a black knit cap.

Kevin took two buses to get to the address. He got off the second bus at Viale di Trastevere, a residential neighborhood in the oldest section of Rome.

The building was on a tree-lined side street off the main bus line. Kevin double-checked the stone building's address, noting a massive double door at the entrance. Not a problem; it creaked open. Inside, as the centerpiece for the residential complex, was an elegant courtyard featuring an angelic three-tier marble fountain surrounded by lush foliage. There were four building entrances, for what Kevin estimated amounted to twenty individual units, two per landing on each of the five floors.

Toby's intelligence had pinpointed the cardinal's residence as unit C-4.

Kevin crossed the courtyard, tiptoeing gingerly on cobblestones. When he got to unit C-4, the door was locked. Kevin fiddled with the master keys, trying one, then another, without success. The third did the trick. With two apartments on the ground floor, it meant unit C-4 would be one flight up. Kevin climbed the stairs encircling a small elevator.

On the second floor, Kevin located a brass plaque with the number four. The wooden door was ornate, about ten feet high. There were two locks, a fairly modern upper bolt and an old-fashioned lock below, with a large keyhole. A cinch. Starting with the upper lock, he opened it on the first try. The second lock was even easier. Piece of cake.

Kevin surveyed the landscape outside one last time before turning the knob to enter. It was dark inside, but he waited until he was inside and had closed the door before activating his flashlight. Suddenly, the room lit up. An overhead chandelier, lamps on tables, picture lights over oil paintings—all at once, in a flash, everything illuminated.
Trouble
. Kevin withdrew his pistol and crouched low on the floor, waiting …

Nothing.

He took measure of the room, now that it didn't seem as though anyone was there. Slowly, he rose, his eyes peeled for possible hiding places for someone to pop out. He was in the foyer of a luxurious home with fifteen-foot ceilings, eighteenth-century oils lit by gold plated lamps, eighteenth-century period furniture, Persian carpets, and a Venetian crystal chandelier.

In the corner of the room high on the wall, Kevin sighted a small black box. Definitely not a period piece: it had a blinking red light. He breathed a sigh of relief. The box was a sensor that turned on the lights when someone entered the room. Maybe Cardinal Marini had been to Las Vegas. But could the box have a security alarm signaling to the owner that someone had entered? Kevin had to act fast.

The pistol firmly in his grip, Kevin entered the living room, which was equally as majestic as the foyer, only twice as large. An oil painting of a cardinal hung over the marble fireplace. The air was musty; the windows probably hadn't been opened in days, but if musty air could smell rich, this air was luscious.

Kevin walked into the master bedroom and noted a massive California-style poster bed with carved bedposts. Gold sconces with faux candles decorated the walls. Past the bedroom, Kevin found a small door and opened it into a dark room. Fumbling about, he located a light switch and found himself in a modern space—an office with contemporary furniture, an iMac desktop, a laptop, two viewing screen monitors, and on a parallel opposite wall, a huge flat screen TV. A dramatic, high-tech contrast to the centuries-old elegance of the apartment proper.

Kevin put the pistol and flashlight in his bag and hurried to the desk. He sat down and turned on the iMac. The screen came on, asking for a password. Kevin got his notebook out of his bag. Fortunately, the CIA had been able to locate the computer's IP address and the folks in Langley, Virginia had monitored it for several days. They believed they'd captured the password from keystroke mimicking software, which tracked keystrokes using the computer's IP address. All highly illegal, of course, unless it was part of the agency's work to safeguard the United States from terrorist activities. In moments like these, it paid to have friends like Toby.

Typing in the password, folders popped up. Kevin opened some with self-explanatory names. Nothing worth getting excited about. Some folders involved humdrum church business, appointments with visiting dignitaries, budgets for various Vatican departments, and notes from meetings with the Curia. Then Kevin opened a subfolder. The text was garbled, in code. No way of deciphering it. He couldn't chance emailing the info; it'd leave an electronic fingerprint. He didn't want to use the printer, either; too easy to trace. Instead, he took his iPhone and snapped pictures of five pages of gibberish. Now he could safely enlist the CIA to decipher the code. Kevin was guessing these docs had info related to the security of the United States. After all, these were the same guys who'd started the Israel-Iran war.

Totally psyched about what he'd found, Kevin turned the computer off to check out the rest of the apartment.
Why would a high-ranking Vatican cardinal opt for such a secret, high-rent apartment?
Something was smelly—raunchy. For a moment, Kevin wondered if he'd find a pair of lacy fishnet thongs in the closet.

Something told him he would.

Exiting the office hideaway, Kevin went back into the bedroom. He opened the closet door and found an array of tailored, high-end men's clothes. Rifling through them, he marveled at the Italian designer tags: Zegna, Gucci, Brioni, Ferragamo. Even the shoes had Italian labels. Not a thread of clerical garb.

Kevin reached for the back of the closet and felt something like a drawer. Pushing some suits aside, behold, an almost imperceptible built-in safe, blended in with the wall. He felt around and found a tiny keyhole. Fumbling through his set of master keys, Kevin inserted one. Three tries later, the lock turned. Inside the safe were two items, a stack of 500-euro notes and a leather album.

Kevin took the large, bulky album to the desk and sat down. The album contained photos. They were medium close-up shots and head shots of young seminarians, dressed in robes, adolescents in training for the priesthood. Kevin smiled as he remembered those moments—but as he kept turning the pages, the pictures became disturbing. Now there were full disclosure shots of the young men without clothing, performing sex acts on an older man. In some of the photos, the older man's face was shielded by a mask. In others, the perpetrator's face became recognizable. Cardinal Marini.

“Good God!” Kevin said quietly to himself. “Good God!” For a long time he looked in horror at the pictures. He thought he'd be sick. Whatever else Marini was, he was a pervert. Kevin gagged and ran to the bathroom. He threw up in the toilet, and then waited while his stomach settled. He still had pain from the knife wound Alameda had inflicted on him. The retching made it worse.

Coming from the foyer, Kevin heard a creaking noise from behind him in the foyer. Someone had opened the large door. He could hear two men jabbering in Italian.
Shit!
He rushed to the den and with a flick of his wrist, grabbed the album and his bag. He wouldn't have time to put it back in the safe. He tore out two pages from the album, stuffed them in his pocket, and set it on the desk. He located his pistol and hid by the wide screen TV in the corner of the den. From there he'd have a clear shot at the door.

Of the two men chatting in Italian, one voice was Marini's.

“Yes, the lights are on. Someone's been in here,” Marini said.

“I called you right away, Eminence,” the other man said. “I heard the footsteps on the steps as I was leaving to inspect the building before retiring. I knew it wasn't you. That is why I phoned you.”

“Thank you, Renaldo. You will be rewarded. You may leave now.”

“Sir, the intruder may still be in the apartment. It isn't safe. I'll stay with you while the police are called.”

“No need, Renaldo. I have an idea who it might be; there'll be no danger.”

A few moments later, Kevin heard the door click shut.

Then a deep voice called out, “Father Thrall! If you're here, I suggest you come out!”

Kevin walked calmly through the bedroom and into the lounge area. His Eminence stood wearing a simple black clerical suit with the line of scarlet buttons. Kevin entered the room and stood at a distance facing the cardinal, keeping the gun visible in his hand.

“You've become something of a nuisance, Father,” Marini said calmly.

“And what shall I say of you, Eminence?” Kevin spit out the word with an intonation of contempt.

“If you'd like to shoot me, be my guest. I should like to point out that the black box over there does more than turn on the lights. It's a hidden camera.”

“Good to know. Then we'll just move to another room,” Kevin said.

Marini shrugged. “Same thing, I'm afraid.”

“I believe you, Marini, if only because I cringe to consider in what creative ways you've used those cameras.”

“Let's not get sidetracked. What you and I need to discuss is how we might come to a mutually agreeable arrangement between us. Shall we sit down?”

Kevin stared at him with anger and contempt. “I'm quite comfortable standing on my feet.” He raised his gun.

“As you wish,” Marini responded. “No doubt by now you and your clever friends have deduced what I stand for. I am the leader of Opus Mundi.”

“And a pervert,” Kevin said.

Marini raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Please, Kevin, let us not digress into sins of the flesh. Suffice it to say they afflict us all at some point. As I believe you know all too well, we mortals all wrestle with these burning, salacious inclinations.”

“Okay, tell me, how does someone like you get to be a cardinal in the Catholic Church?”

“Besides my
human
shortcomings, I have numerous qualities to recommend me. Many clergymen look to me to be the salvation of the Church. The Catholic Church has been losing members for decades. Many devoted to the Church pay little attention to our important teachings.”

Marini pointed a finger at Kevin. “By the way, the American church is among the worst. And we intend to reform it before the true mission of our Church becomes archaic.”

Kevin held his gun in one hand. With his other, he plucked his phone from his pocket.

“What are you doing?” Marini asked.

“Calling the Vatican police.”

“May I suggest you wait?” He held up a hand. “A little patience, Kevin. I haven't conveyed my offer.”

“There's nothing to offer.”

“Well Kevin, I'm offering a way to save your friend, Miss O'Connell. Surely that might be of interest.”

Fear overcame Kevin. He knew Opus Mundi was targeting Katie. MC's friend, Francesco, had told him so. Francesco also had told him Alameda was on his way to Washington to “talk to her.” Kevin got it. And he had to make sure it didn't happen.

“You son of a bitch. She has nothing to do with this,” he said. He clenched his jaw.

“Of course not,” Marini said with a patronizing smile. “But if you care for her, listen to me. Leave quietly. Forget about this encounter with me, and anything you may have seen tonight. Do this and I will give you my word no harm will come to your friend.”

“And if I don't?”

Marini shrugged his shoulders.

Kevin considered his options. The threat against Katie was real. Carlos Alameda, aka Columbo, was planning an operation in the United States. But there was more to it.
Would Alameda actually go after Katie? If he agreed to his terms, could he trust Marini to honor his word, his side of the bargain?