The Second Messiah (18 page)

“Who told you that?”

“My people spoke to Sergeant Mosberg. Do you think Cane’s involved in this murder?”

“It’s too early to say, but I know his character. He’s a good man. Not someone who’d be easily driven to commit homicide.”

Weiss raised an eye. “A good man who’s gone on the run after a murder in which he’s a chief suspect. Such a man is either very stupid or very guilty, don’t you think? When was the last time you saw Cane before this morning?”

“When I was nineteen.”

“Forgive me, Inspector, but people change.”

Lela didn’t speak.

Weiss said, “You know the suspect, which ought to help us hunt him down. You’ve also worked with Ari Tauber, I understand.”

“We were partners in Jerusalem Homicide.”

“Ari’s a good man for you to work with. The scroll is an artifact of immense historical and religious importance that belongs to the Israeli people, and I want it back.” Weiss crossed to his desk. “I wish you the best of luck on your journey.”

“Journey?”

“You’re about to have an interesting trip. Mossad has gotten a tip that Jack Cane and Yasmin Green will attempt to illegally cross the desert into Syria sometime this evening, in the company of a Bedouin guide. Their destination is an old Catholic monastery at a place called Maloula, near Damascus. A priest there has a reputation for translating black-market parchments.”

Lela was amazed. “How do you know all that?”

Weiss tapped the side of his nose. “My secret for now. The Bedu may know the desert like the backs of their hands, but Cane’s an American with an Israeli stamp on his passport. My fear is, if he’s caught, the Syrians will either shoot him or throw him in jail, and then we’ll never get our hands on him. Worse still, he may have the scroll in his possession when the Syrians find him. And then they would never hand such a document back to us.”

Lela said, “Why not simply stop him from crossing into Syria?”

“I want to know what Cane’s up to at Maloula and if he can lead us to the scroll. Simply stopping him wouldn’t help us with that objective, now would it?”

“Why would he cross into Syria?”

“I’m hoping you and Ari will find that out.” Weiss stood and adjusted his trousers. “A special forces military helicopter is waiting to take you from a nearby air base and drop you at a desert location inside the Syrian border. Ari will explain all the rest. What’s the matter? You look concerned, Inspector.”

“There’s the slight matter of Syria’s ban on Israeli citizens entering that country. If I’m caught I risk being charged with spying.”

Weiss smiled. “True. But if I’m any judge of character, you’ll take that risk. You want to get to the bottom of this case involving your old friend Cane as much as I do. Syria’s certainly a dangerous place and its
secret
police are first-class. But Ari will have false passports with visas for you both, along with a cover story, expertly provided by Mossad. You also speak fluent Arabic, I believe?”

“Yes.”

“Good; so does Ari. He’s waiting outside, ready to get this mission under way. Any questions?”

“When do I leave?”

“You already have. Good-bye, Inspector.”

ROME

7
P.M.

THE RESTAURANT KNOWN
as L’Eau Vive is on the Via Monterone, a narrow backstreet near the Pantheon that the tourists tend to ignore. Owned by the Vatican, from the outside it looks quite ordinary, almost drab-looking, but inside the restaurant the walls are hung with expensive paintings, and the plush candlelit tables sparkle with silver and crystal.

Although open to the public, almost all of the clientele that afternoon were senior clergy, powerful businessmen, and bankers conducting important dealings with the Holy See. L’Eau Vive’s prices are much too steep for a humble parish priest.

Ryan noticed that the restaurant was quite full as he entered. A nun approached him. She was strikingly beautiful in an elegant long gown and her face had a look of studied piety. “Have you a reservation?” she asked politely.

Ryan smiled charmingly. “Monsignor Sean Ryan. I believe I’m expected. One of the private rooms.”

“Ah, yes.” The nun was immediately deferential. “Follow me, Your Grace.”

Ryan was led past a large statue of the Virgin, standing in its grotto in a corner, to a discreet alcove at the back of the restaurant. When the nun pulled back the thick red curtain, the room was almost dark, lit only by two candles set in silver holders on the table. The sole occupant was a man, his face in shadow. Ryan slipped inside, the curtain closed, and he found himself facing Cassini, wearing a clerical black suit with a
gold
cross in his lapel. “Sean. It was good of you to come on such short notice.”

“My pleasure, Your Eminence.”

“What will you have to eat? I can recommend the saltimbocca, or the duck filet in Grand Marnier. Both are always excellent.”

Ryan picked a modest fettuccine, served with a crisp side salad. Cassini ordered the wine. An expensive Barolo, as befitted his status. “So, Sean. What news do you have for me?”

“Security has been stepped up in all areas. I’ve had extra guards stationed everywhere, uniformed and the plainclothes variety. No one will get in or out of the Vatican’s restricted sectors without proper papers, I can promise you that. Even the zones open to tourists are being patrolled with extreme vigilance.”

“Excellent. As always, your professionalism puts me at ease.” Cassini looked genuinely pleased but noticed Ryan’s face suddenly crease with anxiety. “You look troubled. Is there something on your mind?”

“I think you could say that, Your Eminence. A worrying development, as they say.”

Before Ryan could speak further, there was a rustle of the curtain and the wine arrived, served by the nun. When Cassini nodded his approval with the first sip, the nun filled both their glasses. A waiter arrived with their food, serving them from silver platters. Their tasks completed, the nun and waiter silently withdrew. Cassini waited to be certain they were gone, regarded the food on the china plates with obvious relish, and then offered Ryan the briefest of smiles. “Grace first, I think. Then we talk.”

Cassini joined his hands, lowering his head as Ryan did likewise. “
Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts …
”

THE CUISINE WAS
delicious, as always. Cassini was a man who relished his food and he wasted no time tucking into his meal. “So, Sean, what’s bothering you?”

“I asked the Holy Father to curtail his movements and agree to wear a bulletproof vest under his garments at all times, at least for the next few months.”

“And what was his response?”

“He refused point-blank. Looked me in the eye and said, “I trust in God.”

Cassini speared a piece of tender saltimbocca with his fork, popped it in his mouth, and washed it down with a mouthful of Barolo. “Knowing John Becket, I’m hardly surprised. He’s a remarkable man who doesn’t scare easily.”

“Such bravery is all very admirable, Your Eminence, as is his faith, but it’s my job to protect him. And despite what most people think, assassination of a public figure isn’t such a difficult thing.”

“Explain.”

“Take the slaying of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. Or Jack and Bobby Kennedy. Or even the attempt on Ronald Reagan’s life. High-profile political leaders, all tightly protected. But still each of them got hit. Why? Because no matter how careful the planning or how stringent the security cordon around them, all their assassins needed was the tiniest chink in the armor.”

“What are you saying, Sean?”

“That there are no guarantees. No matter how tight a ring of steel we put around the pontiff, history will tell you there’s always a chink:
a
window of opportunity when an assassin can strike, when he’ll have surprise on his side. He doesn’t even have to be particularly intelligent or an expert marksman. All he has to be is lucky.”

Cassini sighed. “Please, go on.”

“Ali Agca is a classic example. They might have called him ‘the jackal,’ but he wasn’t particularly bright, a mentally disturbed Turkish peasant really. Yet despite the fact that there were thousands of Rome police, carabinieri, and security officials in the vicinity of the pope’s cavalcade that day, he managed to get off five shots, three of them hitting their target.”

“But Agca was trained by the KGB in Libya. He was a skilled assassin.”

Ryan, only half his fettuccine eaten, pushed aside his plate and shook his head. “Trained he might have been, but he was never more than a zealous amateur, like most would-be assassins. And the proof is that he failed to kill his target and got caught.”

“What’s your point?”

“That I dread to think what chance we’d stand against a real professional. And there’s always another jackal who could come from anywhere.”

“Where, for example?”

There was noise beyond the curtain, a discreet pause, and then the waiter arrived to clear away their plates. “Dessert, Your Eminence?”

Cassini consulted the menu, chose a rich banoffee, followed by coffee laced with fragrant amaretto, and for afterward, a special reserve cognac. Ryan ordered the simplest dessert on offer: fresh fruit salad, drizzled with lavender honey, and tea to follow. They waited until their desserts and refreshments arrived, and when the waiter left, Cassini savored a mouthful of banoffee. “You were about to tell me from where this jackal might come.”

“Virtually any camp you’d care to mention. Catholicism, like any faith, has its own fair share of dissidents, fanatics with their own agendas, and insane people with grudges or deranged minds. Even terrorists like the Red Brigades, who plagued Italy for decades and were
more
than once suspected of attempting to kill the then Holy Father, were mostly right-wing Catholics.”

Ryan ignored his dessert and spooned two sugars into his tea and stirred. “And then there are the ultratraditional, secretive lodges within the church, notorious for conspiring, which see any kind of change as a direct threat to their power and influence. Or the lunatic religions on the fringe, who believe the pope’s some kind of Antichrist and want to see him dead. And I haven’t even mentioned the many different Christian churches in America that are deeply suspicious of the Roman pope. The source of the danger could come from any one of those quarters, as you suggested.”

“I know, and it’s depressing me, Sean,” Cassini said gloomily as he pushed aside his dessert plate. “Speaking of worrying developments, I’ve had my own.”

“Your Eminence?”

Cassini reached inside his black suit jacket and produced a letter and envelope, kept in a clear plastic bag. “This turned up with my morning’s post. Whether it was delivered deliberately or in error, I cannot say. My secretary showed it to me at once. I found it disturbing. I took the liberty, Sean, of placing it in a plastic bag.” Cassini shrugged. “Don’t ask me why, but I’ve seen certain detectives do it in films. What do they call it—an evidence bag?”

Ryan accepted the letter. Behind the clear plastic he saw that individual letters of the alphabet had been cut from newspapers to construct a message that was pasted onto a sheet of plain paper. The message read:

THE POPE IS THE ANTICHRIST. HE IS AN INSTRUMENT OF THE DEVIL. HE WILL RUIN THE CHURCH WITH HIS REVELATIONS AND MUST BE DESTROYED.

There was no signature, not that Ryan expected any. He raised his eyes. “No one else touched this, apart from you and your secretary?”

Cassini shook his head. “Not that I’m aware of.”

Ryan carefully folded the letter and placed it in his inside pocket. “I’ll need to have it checked out. It may be necessary to take the fingerprints of both you and your secretary, to eliminate you from any we might find on the evidence.”

“I understand.”

“May I ask if you informed the Holy Father?”

Cassini took another mouthful of the delicious Barolo. “No. I thought I’d leave that to you. You seem troubled. Is there something else on your mind, Sean?”

“The Holy Father disappeared this morning for at least two hours.”

“Disappeared?”

“Left the Vatican walls. Where he went I have no idea. When he showed up his secretary expressed anxiety that he couldn’t find him. The pontiff simply brushed aside any concern.”