Day of Confession (26 page)

70

A HANDSOME MAN WITH CLEAR BLUE EYES sat at a back table along the sidewalk café of the Hotel Du Lac. He was in his late thirties and wore loose-fitting jeans and a light denim shirt. He had been there for most of the evening, relaxing, occasionally taking a sip from his beer, and watching the people pass by in front of him.

A waiter in a white shirt and black trousers stopped and gestured at his nearly empty glass.

“
Ja
, “Thomas Jose Alvarez-Rios Kind said, and the waiter nodded and left.

Thomas Kind no longer looked as he had. His jet-black hair had been dyed strikingly blond as had his eyebrows. He seemed Scandinavian or an aging but still very fit California surfer. His passport, however, was Dutch. Frederick Voor, a computer software salesman who lived at 95 Bloemstraat, Amsterdam, was how he had registered at the Hotel Florence earlier that day.

Despite the Gruppo Cardinale’s announcement some three hours earlier that the fugitive American priest, Father Daniel Addison, was no longer being sought in Bellagio and that his reported sighting there had been deemed erroneous, the roads in and out of town were still being closely watched. It meant the police hadn’t given up entirely. Nor had Thomas Kind. He sat where he did out of experience, observing the people who came and went from the hydrofoils as they landed. It was a basic concept that went back to his days as a young revolutionary and assassin in South America. Know who you were looking for. Choose a place he would most probably have to pass through. Then, taking with you the arts of observation and patience, go there and wait. And tonight, like so many times before, it had worked.

Of all the people who had passed by in the hours he had been there, the most interesting, by far, was the bearded priest in the black beret who had arrived on the late hydrofoil.

THE NEARLY BALD, middle-aged night porter opened the door to room 327, turned on a bedside lamp, then set Harry’s bag on a luggage rack next to it and handed Harry the key.

“Thank you.” Harry reached in his pocket for a tip.

“
No, Padre, grazie
.” The man smiled, then abruptly turned and left, pulling the door closed behind him as he did. Locking it—a habit now—Harry took a deep breath and glanced around the room. It was small and faced the lake. The furnishings were well used but hardly shabby. A double bed, chair, chest of drawers, writing table, a phone, and a television.

Pulling off his jacket, he went into the bathroom. Turning on the water, he let it run cold, then wet his hand and ran it over the back of his neck. Finally he raised his head and saw his face in the mirror. The eyes were not the same as those that had peered so intently into another mirror in what seemed a lifetime ago, watching as he made love to Adrianna; they were different, frightened, alone, yet somehow stronger and more determined.

Abruptly, he turned from the mirror and walked back into the room, glancing at his watch as he did.

11:10

Crossing to the bed, he opened the small suitcase Adrianna had given him. In it was something the police had overlooked in their hasty search of the bag. A page torn from a notepad of the Hotel Barchetta Excelsior in Como, with the telephone number of Edward Mooi.

Picking up the bedside phone, he hesitated, then dialed. He heard it ring. Once, twice. On the third, someone picked up.

“
Pronto
,” a male voice answered.

“Edward Mooi, please—I’m sorry to be calling so late.”

There was a silence, then:

“This is Edward Mooi.”

“My name is Father Jonathan Roe from Georgetown University. I’m an American. I just arrived in Bellagio.”

“I don’t understand…” The voice was guarded.

“It’s about the hunt for Father Daniel Addison…. I’ve been watching television—“

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“As an American priest, I thought I might be able to help where others couldn’t.”

“I’m sorry, Father. I don’t know anything. It’s all been a mistake. If you’ll excuse me…”

“I’m at the Hotel Du Lac. Room three-two-seven.”

“Goodnight, Father.”

CLICK
.

Slowly Harry clicked off his own phone.

Harry heard the thinnest crackle of static just before Edward Mooi hung up. It confirmed what he had feared. The police had been listening.

71

Bellagio. Tuesday, July 14, 4:15
A.M
.

NURSING SISTER ELENA VOSO STOOD IN THE grotto’s main tunnel listening to the lap of water against the granite walls, hoping Luca and the others would come back.

Above her, the ceiling rose at least twenty feet, maybe more. And the wide corridor beneath it stretched another hundred to the canal and boat landing at the far end. Rudimentary benches, now fractured and worn by the years, had been hacked out of the natural stone walls and ran the full length of it on either side. Two hundred people could sit there easily. She wondered if that had been the purpose for cutting the benches in the first place, as a site for numbers of people to hide. If so, who had done it, and when? The Romans? Or peoples before them or after? Whatever its origin, the cave or really series of caves, as one chamber opened onto another, was now wholly modern—with electricity, air vents, plumbing, telephones, a small kitchen and large central living room, off of which ran at least three private suites, decorated luxuriously and complete with opulent baths, massage rooms, and sleeping quarters. Somewhere there, too, though she hadn’t seen it, was what was supposedly one of the most extensive wine cellars in all of Europe.

They had been brought there Sunday night by the soft-spoken, erudite Edward Mooi, moments after their arrival at Villa Lorenzi. Alone and at the wheel of a sleek, shallow-bottomed motorboat, Mooi had taken them south in darkness. Hugging the lake’s shoreline for a good ten minutes, he had finally turned in through a narrow cut in what seemed the solid wall of a sheer cliff, then navigated through a tangle of rocks and overhanging foliage into the mouth of the cave itself.

Once inside, he had turned on the boat’s powerful searchlight and taken them through a maze of waterways until they reached the landing, a thirty-foot platform cut out of the stone at the far end of the tunnel where she stood. Then their supplies had been unloaded and she and Michael Roark brought to the suite where he was now, two large rooms—one, a bedroom where she slept, the other a small living-entertaining area where Michael Roark was settled—the spaces divided by an ornate bathroom cut from the cavern walls and inlaid with marble and accented with gold fixtures.

The cave, or
grotto
, Mooi had told them, was on property belonging to Villa Lorenzi and had been discovered years earlier by its celebrated owner, Eros Barbu. His first venture had been to turn it into an immense wine cellar, and then he’d added the apartments, the construction done by workers imported from a villa he owned in southern Mexico and afterward returned there. It was a way of keeping the cave’s existence secret, especially from the locals. At age sixty-four, Eros Barbu was not only a highly successful and distinguished author but was equally celebrated as a man whose legend mirrored his name; his subterranean grotto becoming an intimate and most discreet destination for erotic dalliance with some of the world’s most beautiful and prominent women.

But whatever the grotto’s history, for Elena it now held only fear and aloneness. She could still see Luca Fanari’s eyes bulging in horror and rage as he took the call. His wife was dead, tortured, her body left to burn to cinders in a fire that ravaged the apartment where they had lived all of their married life. Moments after hanging up, Luca was gone, returning to Pescara for her funeral and to be with their three children. Marco and Pietro had gone with him.

“God bless you,” she had told them as they left for Bellagio and the first hydrofoil to Como, taking the only transportation they had—a small, outboard-powered dinghy.

And now she was alone with Michael Roark sleeping in the room behind her, praying to hear the sound of the outboard coming back. But there was no sound other than the gentle lap of the water against the rock walls.

She was turning back for the room, determined her only course was to pick up the telephone and call her mother general in Siena, tell her what had happened and ask what she should do, when she heard the distant rumble of a motorboat echo off the grotto’s walls.

Certain it was Luca and the others, she walked, nearly ran, down the corridor toward the landing. Then she saw the bright beam of the searchlight, heard the cut of the engines, and then the sleek hull of the flat-bottomed motorboat slid into view. It was Edward Mooi.

72

THREE OF THEM CAME OVER THE BOAT’S gunwale. Edward Mooi and a man and woman Elena had never seen before.

“The men have gone,” she said quickly.

“I know.” Mooi’s look was intent as he introduced her to the couple with him. They were trusted, longtime employees of Eros Barbu and had come to stay with Michael Roark while she went into Bellagio.

“Bellagio?” She was startled.

“I want you to meet someone—a priest from the United States—and bring him here.”

“Here, to the grotto?”

“Yes.”

Elena glanced at the man and the woman, then looked back to Edward Mooi. “Why me?—Why not go yourself?”

“Because we are known in Bellagio and you are not…”

Again Elena looked to the man and woman. Salvatore and Marta, Edward Mooi had called them. They said nothing, only stared back at her. They were probably in their fifties. Salvatore was tanned, the woman, Marta, was not. Which meant he probably worked outside at the villa, while she worked inside. Both wore wedding bands, but there was no way to tell if they were married to each other. It made no difference, their eyes told everything. They were frightened and apprehensive and at the same time alert and determined. Whatever Edward Mooi asked, they would do.

“Who is this priest?” Elena asked.

“A relative of Michael Roark,” Edward Mooi said quietly.

“No, he is not.” Elena had already made up her mind when she said it. There was no fear, only anger at not having been told earlier, by Luca or Marco or Pietro or by her own mother general.

“There
is
no Michael Roark, or if there is, the man in there is not him.” She pointed off, back toward the room where her patient slept. “He is Father Daniel Addison, the Vatican priest wanted for the murder of Cardinal Parma.”

“He is in danger, Sister Elena, that’s why he’s here…”—Edward Mooi spoke calmly—“why he was given a new identity and moved as he was…”

Elena stared at him. “Why are you protecting him?”

“We were asked…”

“By whom?”

“Eros Barbu…”

“A world-famous writer is safeguarding a murderer?”

Edward Mooi said nothing.

“Luca knew and the others? My mother general?” Elena stared, incredulous.

“I… don’t know….” Edward Mooi’s eyes narrowed. “What I do know is that the police are watching everything we do. That’s why I asked you to go into Bellagio. If any of us went and met this priest, they would either arrest us all on the spot or wait and see where we went.”

“This priest,” Sister Elena said, “is Father Addison’s brother. Yes?”

“I think he is.”

“And you want me to bring him here…”

Edward Mooi nodded. “By land there is another way in that I will show you…”

“What if, instead, I went to the police?”

“You don’t know for certain Father Daniel is a murderer…. And I have seen how you care for him….” Edward Mooi’s eyes were those of a poet. Fierce, yet at the same time trusting and sincere. “He is your charge, you will not go to the police.”

73

Villa Lorenzi. 6:00
A.M
.

HAIR DISHEVELED, BAREFOOT, AND IN A BATHrobe, Edward Mooi stood in the doorway of the caretaker’s cottage and simply shrugged his shoulders, letting Roscani and his army—Gruppo Cardinale special agents, heavily armed uniformed
carabinieri
, along with an Italian army canine unit, five Belgian Malinois dogs and their handlers—have their second run at Villa Lorenzi.

Again they searched the palace-like main house, the adjoining sixteen-bedroom guest wing, the wing opposite, which was Eros Barbu’s private quarters, the basements and sub-basements. The Malinois led them everywhere, hunting the scent of clothing flown in from Rome, and taken from Father Daniel’s apartment on Via Ombrellari and from Harry Addison’s belongings left behind at the Hotel Hassler.

Afterward they combed the huge domed structure behind the main residence, which housed the indoor swimming pool and tennis courts and, on the second floor, the immense, gilt-ceilinged, grand ballroom. And then the eight-car garage, the servants’ apartments, the twin, single-story maintenance buildings, and finally, the three-quarter-acre greenhouse.

Roscani walked through it all. Tie loosened, shirt open at the collar against the early heat. One room after another, one building after another, directing the operation, alert to the actions of the dogs, opening closet doors himself, looking for access panels, looking between walls, under floors—his personal attention given to everything. At the same time his mind kept coming back to the murders in Pescara and the man with the ice pick. Who he was, might be. And in that, he sent an urgent request to INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon, France, for a list of terrorists and killers still at large thought to be in Europe; the list to include suspected whereabouts and, where possible, a personality profile.

“HAVE YOU SEEN ENOUGH, Ispettore Capo?” Edward Mooi was still in his bathrobe.

Roscani looked up, suddenly aware of where he was and of both men standing at the top of a flight of stairs inside Villa Lorenzi’s boathouse. Outside, the morning sun painted a bright, shimmering surface across the still of the lake, while below, in semidarkness, two of the Belgian Malinois sniffed and grumbled at the gunwales of a large motorboat moored at the dock, their handlers letting them do as they pleased, four armed
carabinieri
watching closely as they did. Roscani turned to watch, and so did Edward Mooi, Roscani glancing at the South African as he did.

Finally the dogs gave up, one after the other, walking lazily around the dock sniffing at nothing. One of the handlers looked up and shook his head.

“
Grazie, Signore
, “Roscani said to Edward Mooi.

“
Prego
,” Mooi nodded, then walked out and back along the path toward the villa.

“That’s all,” Roscani called to the dog handlers, and watched as they and their animals and the four
carabinieri
climbed the stairs, following in the direction Edward Mooi had gone, toward the house and the convoy of parked police vehicles.

Slowly Roscani started up the path after them. They had been there for more than two hours and nothing had been found. Two hours wasted. If he was wrong, he was wrong. And he needed to leave it and move on. Still—

Turning, he looked back. There was the boathouse and beyond it the lake. To his right he could see the dogs and the armed
carabinieri
almost to the villa. Edward Mooi was out of sight.

What had he missed?

To the left of the villa, between it and the boathouse was the stone landing with its ornate balustrade where the hydrofoil captain had said he put the fugitive priest and the others ashore.

Once again Roscani looked to the boathouse. Absently his fingers went to his mouth, and he took a pull from his phantom cigarette. Then, his eyes still on the boathouse, he dropped the imaginary cigarette, ground it out with his toe, and walked back and went inside.

From the top of the stairs he saw nothing but the motorboat moored to the dock below and the equipment needed to tend it. At the far end, the rectangular opening to the lake. The same as before.

Finally, he went down the stairs and walked along the dock beside the boat. Bow to stern. Stern to bow. Looking. For what, he didn’t know. Then he climbed onboard. Studied the interior of the hull, the seats, the cockpit. The dogs had complained but found nothing. He could see nothing. A boat was a boat, and he was wasting his time. He was about to step over the side and back onto the dock, when he had one last thought. Crossing to the stern, he looked down at the twin Yamaha outboard engines. Kneeling, he reached over the side and gingerly ran his hand down the lower leg of each, touching the side panels between the power head and the water where the exhaust line ran.

Both were warm.