Day of Confession (4 page)

6

“
MERRY CHRISTMAS from the Addisons
”

HARRY COULD STILL SEE THE CARD, THE DECorated tree in the background, the posed faces smiling from it, everyone wearing a Santa Claus hat. He had a copy of it somewhere at home, tucked in a drawer, its once bright colors slowing fading, now almost pastels. It was the last time they were all together. His mother and father would have been in their mid-thirties. He was eleven, Danny eight, and their sister, Madeline, almost six. Her sixth birthday came on January first, and two weeks later she died.

It was a Sunday afternoon, bright and clear and very cold. He and Danny and Madeline were playing on a frozen pond near their home. Some older kids were nearby playing hockey. Several of them skated toward them, chasing after the puck.

Harry could still hear the sharp crack of the ice. It was like a pistol shot. He saw the hockey players stop short. And then the ice just broke away where Madeline was. She never made a sound, just went under. Harry screamed to Danny to run for help, and he threw off his coat and went in after her. But there was nothing but icy black.

It was nearly dark when the fire department divers brought her up, the sky beyond the leafless trees behind them a streak of red.

Harry and Danny and their mother and father waited with a priest in the snow as they came across the ice toward them. The fire chief, a tall man with a mustache, had taken her body from the divers and wrapped it in a blanket and held it in his arms as he led the way.

Along the shore, a safe distance away, the hockey players, their parents and brother and sisters, neighbors, strangers watched in silence.

Harry started forward, but his father took him firmly by the shoulders and held him back. When he reached shore, the fire chief stopped, and the priest said the last rites over the blanket without opening it. And when he had finished, the fire chief, followed by the divers still with their air tanks and wet suits, walked on to where a white ambulance was waiting. Madeline was put inside and the doors were closed and the ambulance drove off into the darkness.

Harry followed the red dots of taillights until they were gone. Finally he turned. Danny was there, eight years old, shivering with the cold, looking at him.

“Madeline is dead,” Danny said, as if he were trying to understand.

“Yes… ,” Harry whispered.

It was Sunday, January the fifteenth, nineteen seventy-three. They were in Bath, Maine.

PIO WAS RIGHT, Ristorante Cinese, Yu Yuan, on Via delle Quattro Fontane
was
a quiet place at the end of the street. At least it was quiet where he and Harry sat, at a highly lacquered back table away from the red-lanterned front door and spill of noontime customers, a pot of tea and large bottle of mineral water between them.

“You know what Semtex is, Mr. Addison?”

“An explosive.”

“Cyclotrimethylene, pentaerythritol tetronitrate, and plastic. When it goes off it leaves a distinctive nitrate residue along with particles of plastique. It also tears metal into tiny pieces. It was the substance used to blow up the Assisi bus. That fact was established by technical experts early this morning and will be announced publicly this afternoon.”

The information Pio was giving him was privileged, and Harry knew it, part of what Pio had promised. But it told him little or nothing about their case against Danny. Pio was just doing what Roscani had done, giving him only enough information to keep things going.

“You know
what
blew up the bus. Do you know who did it?”

“No.”

“Was my brother the target?”

“We don’t know. All we know for certain is that we now have two different investigations. The murder of a cardinal and the bombing of a tour bus.”

An aging Oriental waiter came up, glancing at Harry and grinning and exchanging pleasantries in Italian with Pio. Pio ordered for both by rote, and the waiter clapped his hands, bowed crisply, and left. Pio looked back to Harry.

“There are, or rather, were, five ranking Vatican prelates who serve as the pope’s closest advisers. Cardinal Parma was one. Cardinal Marsciano is another….” Pio filled his glass with mineral water, watching Harry for a reaction that never came. “Did you know your brother was Cardinal Marsciano’s private secretary?”

“No…”

“The position gave him direct access to the inner workings of the Holy See. Among them, the pope’s itinerary. His engagements—where, when, for how long. Who his guests would be. Where he would enter and exit what building. The security arrangements. Swiss Guards or police or both, how many—Father Daniel never mentioned things like that?”

“I told you, we weren’t close.”

Pio studied him. “Why?”

Harry didn’t respond.

“You hadn’t spoken to your brother for eight years. What was the reason?”

“There’s no point getting into it.”

“It’s a simple question.”

“I told you. Some things just build up over time. It’s old business. Family things. It’s boring. Hardly about murder.”

For a moment Pio did nothing, then picked up his glass and took a drink of mineral water. “Is this your first time in Rome, Mr. Addison?”

“Yes.”

“Why now?”

“I came to bring his body home…. No other reason. The same as I said before.”

Harry felt Pio starting to push, the way Roscani had earlier, looking for something definitive. A contradiction, a diverting of the eyes, a hesitation. Anything to suggest Harry was holding something back or was flat out lying.

“Ispettore Capo!”

The waiter came grinning, as he had before. Making room on the table for four steaming platters, setting them between the men, chattering in Italian.

Harry waited for him to finish, and when he left, looked at Pio directly. “I’m telling you the truth. And have been all along…. Why don’t you keep your promise and tell me what you haven’t, the particulars of why you think my brother was involved in the cardinal’s murder?”

Steam rose from the platters, and Pio gestured for Harry to help himself. Harry shook his head.

“All right.” Pio took a folded sheet of paper from his jacket and handed it to Harry. “The Madrid police found it when they went through Valera’s apartment. Look at it carefully.”

Harry opened the paper. It was an enlarged photocopy of what looked like a page taken from a personal phone book. The names and addresses were handwritten and in Spanish, the corresponding telephone numbers to the right. Most, from the heading, seemed to be from Madrid. At the bottom of the page was a single phone number, to its left was the letter
R
.

It didn’t make sense. Spanish names, Madrid phone numbers. What did it have to do with anything? Except that maybe the
R
at the bottom of the page referred to Rome, but the number beside it had no name at all. Then it came to him.

“Christ,” he said under his breath and looked at it again. The telephone number beside the
R
was the one Danny had left on his answering machine. Abruptly he looked up. Pio was staring at him.

“Not just his phone number, Mr. Addison. Calls,” Pio said. “In the three weeks leading up to the killing, Valera placed a dozen calls to your brother’s apartment from his cellular phone. They became more frequent toward the end, and of shorter duration, as if he were confirming instructions. As far as we’ve been able to tell, they were the only calls he made while he was here.”

“Telephone calls do not make killers!” Harry was incredulous. Was this it? All they had?

A newly seated couple looked in their direction. Pio waited for them to turn back, then lowered his voice.

“You were told there is evidence of a second person in the room. And that we believe it was that second person and not Valera who killed Cardinal Parma. Valera was a Communist agitator, but there is no evidence he ever fired a gun. I remind you your brother was a decorated marksman trained by the military.”

“That’s a fact, not a connection.”

“I’m not finished, Mr. Addison…. The murder weapon, the Sako TRG 21, normally takes a .308 Winchester cartridge. In this case it was loaded with American-made Hornady 150-grain spire-point bullets. They are bought primarily at specialty gun shops and used for hunting…. Three were taken from Cardinal Parma’s body…. The rifle’s magazine holds ten rounds. The remaining seven were still there.”

“So?”

“Valera’s personal phone directory was what sent us to your brother’s apartment. He wasn’t there. Obviously he had gone to Assisi, but we didn’t know that. Because of Valera’s directory we were able to get a warrant to search…”

Harry listened, saying nothing.

“A standard cartridge box holds twenty rounds of ammunition…. A cartridge box containing ten Hornady 150-grain spire points was found inside a locked drawer in your brother’s apartment. With it was a second magazine for the same rifle.”

Harry felt the wind go out of him. He wanted to respond, to say something in Danny’s defense. He couldn’t.

“There was also a cash receipt for one million seven hundred thousand lire—just over one thousand U.S. dollars, Mr. Addison. The amount Valera paid in cash to rent the apartment. The receipt had Valera’s signature. The handwriting was the same as that on the telephone list you have there.

“Circumstantial evidence. Yes, it is. And if your brother were alive, we could ask him about it and give him the opportunity to disprove it.” Anger and passion crept into Pio’s voice. “We could also ask him why he did what he did. And who else was involved. And if he had been trying to kill the pope…. Obviously we can’t do any of that….” Pio sat back, fingering his glass of mineral water, and Harry could see the emotion slowly fade.

“Maybe we will find out we were wrong. But I don’t think so…. I’ve been around a long time, Mr. Addison, and this is about as close to the truth as you get. Especially when your prime suspect is dead.”

Harry’s gaze shifted off, and the room became a blur. Until now he had been certain they were mistaken, that they had the wrong man, but this changed everything.

“What about the bus…?” He looked back, his voice barely a whisper.

“Whatever Communist faction was behind Parma’s murder, killing one of their own to shut him up?… The Mafia doing something else entirely?… A disgruntled bus company employee with access to, and knowledge of, explosives?… We don’t know, Mr. Addison. As I said, the bombing of the bus and the cardinal’s murder are separate investigations.”

“When will all this be made public?”

“Probably not while the investigation continues. After that we will, in all likelihood, defer to the Vatican.”

Harry folded his hands in front of him and stared at the table. Emotions flooded. It was like being told you had an incurable disease. Disbelief and denial made no difference, the X rays, MRIs, and CT scans stared back from the wall just the same.

Yet, for all of that—for all the evidence the police had presented, one solid piece stacked upon the another, they still had no absolute proof, as Pio had admitted. Moreover, no matter what he had told them about the substance of Danny’s phone message, only he had heard Danny’s voice. The fear and the anguish and the desperation. It was not the voice of a murderer crying out for mercy to the last bastion he knew, but of someone trapped in a terrible circumstance he could not escape.

For some reason, and he didn’t know why, Harry felt closer to Danny now than he had since they were boys. Maybe it was because his brother had finally reached out to him. And maybe that was more important to Harry than he knew, because the realization of it had come not as a thought but as a rush of deep emotion, moving him to the point where he thought he might have to get up and leave the table. But he hadn’t, because in the next moment another realization had come: he wasn’t about to have Danny condemned to history as the man who had killed the cardinal vicar of Rome until the last stone had been turned and the proof was absolute and beyond any doubt whatsoever.

“Mr. Addison, it will be another day at least, perhaps more, before the identification procedures are complete and your brother’s body can be released to you…. Will you be staying at the Hassler the entire time you are in Rome?”

“Yes…”

Pio took a card from his wallet and handed it to him. “I would appreciate it if you kept me informed of your movements. If you leave the city. If you go anywhere where it would be difficult for us to reach you.”

Harry took the card and slipped it into his jacket pocket, then his eyes came back to Pio.

“You won’t have any trouble finding me.”

7

Euro Night Train, Geneva to Rome.

Tuesday, July 7, 1:20
A.M
.

CARDINAL NICOLA MARSCIANO SAT IN THE dark, listening to the methodic click of the wheels as the train picked up speed, pushing southeast out of Milan toward Florence and then Rome. Outside, a faint moon touched the Italian countryside, bathing it in just enough light for him to know it was there. For a moment he thought of the Roman legions that had passed under the same moon centuries before. They were ghosts now, as one day he would be, his life, like theirs, scarcely a blip on the graph of time.

Train 311 had left Geneva at eight-twenty-five the night before, had crossed the Swiss-Italian border just after midnight, and would not arrive in Rome until eight the next morning. A long way around, considering it was only a two-hour flight between the same cities, but Marsciano had wanted time to think and to be alone without intrusion.

As a servant of God he normally wore the vestments of his office, but today he traveled in a business suit to avoid attracting attention. To that same end his private compartment in the first-class sleeping car had been reserved under the name N. Marsciano. Honest, yet simple anonymity. The compartment itself was small, but it provided what he needed: a place to sleep, if he ever could; and, more important, a moving station to receive a call on his cellular phone without fear it would somehow be intercepted.

Alone in the darkness, he tried not to think of Father Daniel—the accusations of the police, the evidence they had discovered, the bombed bus. Those things were past, and he dared not dwell on them, even though he knew at some point he would have to confront them again personally. They would have everything to do with his future, the future of the Church, and whether either could survive.

He glanced at his watch, its digital numbers a transparent green in the dark.

1:27

The Motorola cell phone on the small table beside him remained silent. Marsciano’s fingers drummed on the narrow arm of his chair, then pushed through his gray-white hair. Finally he leaned forward and poured what was left of the bottle of Sassicaia into his glass. Very dry, very full-bodied, the stately red wine was expensive and little known outside Italy. Little known because the Italians themselves kept it a secret. Italy was filled with secrets. And the older one got, the more there seemed to be and the more dangerous they became. Especially if one were in a position of power and influence, as he was at age sixty.

1:33

Still the phone remained silent. And now he began to worry that something had gone wrong. But he couldn’t let himself think that way until he knew for sure.

As he took a sip of the wine, Marsciano’s gaze shifted from the phone to the briefcase lying flat on the bed beside it. Inside, tucked away in an envelope beneath his papers and personal belongings, was a nightmare. An audiocassette that had been delivered to him in Geneva Sunday afternoon during lunch. It had come in a package marked
URGENTE
and had been delivered by messenger with no return address or indication of who had sent it. Once he had listened to it, however, he knew instantly where it had come from and why.

As president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, Cardinal Marsciano was a man in whose hands rested the ultimate financial decisions for the investment of the Vatican’s hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. And as such, he was one of the very few who knew exactly how much those assets were worth and where they were invested. It was a position of solemn responsibility and by its very nature open to those things men in high station are always heir to—the corruption of mind and spirit. Men who fell to such temptations usually suffered from greed or arrogance or both. Marsciano was afflicted by neither. His suffering came from a cruel intermingling of profound loyalty to the Church, grievously misplaced trust, and human love; made worse, if that were possible, by his own high position within the Vatican.

The tape recording—in light of the murder of Cardinal Parma and the timing of its delivery—only pushed him farther into darkness. More than simply threaten his own personal safety, by its very existence it raised other, more far-reaching questions:
What else was known? Whom could he trust?

The only sound was that of the wheels passing over the rails as the train drew ever closer to Rome. Where was the call? What had happened? Something had to have gone wrong. He was certain now.

Abruptly the phone rang.

Marsciano was startled and for a moment did nothing. It rang again. Recovering, he picked up.

“
Si
.” His voice was hushed, apprehensive. Nodding almost imperceptibly, he listened. “
Grazie
,” he whispered finally and hung up.