On the Fifth Day (13 page)

come distant. Pietro couldn't blame him. He knew they all thought he was secretive, paranoid, emotionally erratic, and, more generally, just strange, all of which had intensified since Eduardo left. Word that the American priest was dead had hit Pietro like a stroke, immobilizing him, plunging him into a 89

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black mood that had lasted for days and dogged his every step still.

And then there were the rumors, always tied somehow to the Fontanelle. Pietro didn't believe them, of course, and put the reports of a strange nocturnal prowler down to a combina

tion of his own antisocial behavior and the overactive imagi

nation of novices who confused a retreat with a species of summer camp. But the rumors had started when Eduardo was visiting from the States, and they had ended when he left. Now Eduardo's brother was poking around, and they were starting again.

Pietro had said nothing to anybody, but only yesterday a young Benedictine monk from Rome had reported waking in the night convinced there was somebody--or something--in his room. Pietro probably wouldn't have given it too much thought, except for the fact that the monk had reported the same sound that a young Dominican had reported in the last days of Eduardo's stay: a long, rasping breath that turned into a guttural snarl, like the growl of a large cat. But it hadn't been a cat. Because unless the monk had imagined the whole thing, what had been in his room was un

like anyone who had been seen in the retreat house by day, un

like anything the Benedictine or the Dominican had ever seen in their lives. Something so unsettling they couldn't put it into words . . .

Forget it. It's just night terrors and people who want a little
attention. God knows there's enough of that in the religious
orders.

But this morning, shortly after sunup, he had unlocked the chapel for matins and found . . . what? He assumed it had been a dog, maybe one he'd seen from time to time in the streets outside, though it was impossible to be sure in its pres

ent condition. It had taken him an hour to clean it all up, and the sweet rankness of the blood still hung in the air. It must have taken the killer almost as long to do what he--assuming it was a man--had done to the animal. Pietro hoped to God the beast was dead before the worst of it started. 90

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He would have to speak to Giovanni about it, he supposed. Eventually.

And how much would you tell?

Pietro knew that Giovanni--a levelheaded, serious-minded man--did not like the Fontanelle. It hung between them con

stantly like a sickness too painful to be discussed, so that the young priest only ever heard of it in the dark whisperings of those who had never been. Giovanni had probably hoped that with the church's relinquishing of the Fontanelle to the city, and the city's plans to one day reopen the place to the public, Pietro would leave it alone. But the opposite had happened. He couldn't help himself. He had spent, if anything, more time there than ever, skulking back at all hours feeling shifty and defensive.

And guilty.

Catholics always feel guilty. It comes with the territory.
But there are those who merely feel responsible for sin, and
those who earn it. Isn't that right, Monsignor?

Please Jesus, he thought, let it not be his fault. Let him not be the one who . . .

Waked it?

Yes, please God, not that.

Yes, Monsignor, pray. But don't pray for what you may have
done already. Pray not for what is past. Pray for what might
still happen. What has already started.

CHAPTER 21

Steve Devon looked up from his laptop screen, where a jittery piece of low-resolution home video was playing in a two-inch window. Then he threw his head back and laughed with delight.

"Yeah!" he said into the cell phone. "I'm looking at it right now. Man, you hit the daylights out of it!"

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"I just
saw
it, you know?" said his son. "Like the pros say when they talk about seeing the ball real well. I could just see it all the way from the mound to the plate. Soon as it left his hand I could see it. Is that crazy or what?"

"Sometimes it just goes that way, I guess," said Steve, still beaming, as he hit the replay button on the RealPlayer. "I'm so proud of you, Mark. A month ago you'd never have hit that ball. Now look at you! Your stance is great, your focus. Every

thing. Pow! Look at that thing go. The pitcher looks like they canceled Christmas."

"I felt kinda bad for him," said Mark.

"He'll have his day," said Steve. "This one was yours. You done good, kid."

"Thanks, Dad."

"Put your mother on, will ya?"

"Sure. Love you, Dad."

"Love you too, Mark. And Mark?"

"Yeah?"

"Enjoy it. You earned it."

"Thanks, Dad."

There was a click and some mumbled voices in the back

ground, and then a woman's voice came on.

"Is that awesome or what?"

"Pretty cool," said Steve. "Thanks for sending it."

"I'm sorry you didn't get to see it. It would be the one game you miss."

"He'll hit more next time."

"We miss you," she said, pleased but tender.

"Likewise," he answered. "Hey, I was thinking. You want to book us a week at the condo? Just the three of us."

"That's a great idea. When do you think this will all be done?"

"I should be home within the week. The end of the month at the latest . . ."

The phone in his other pocket buzzed softly.

"Hold on," he said. "That's the office. I'll call you right back."

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"Okay," she said. "Love you."

He hung up, took out the other phone, and tapped the re

ceive key.

"This is War," he said.

"I have your weapons contact lined up," said the Sealbreaker. "What do you need?"

"Heckler and Koch Mark 23 Special Operations Pistol. And a five-shot Taurus 415 revolver with an ankle holster."

"Is that all? You don't want your team?"

The rider of the red horse grinned.

"If I can't do this job by myself, you should consider re

placing me."

As soon as the Seal-breaker hung up, War tapped the send button on the other phone.

"Hey, honey, it's me again. Yeah, so about this trip to the beach . . ."

CHAPTER 22

Herculaneum was different from Pompeii. For one thing, it was much smaller and most of the remains were residential, not the grand temples and official buildings of its more fa

mous sister in disaster. The size of the place had less to do with the scale of the original town than it did with the posi

tioning of the present one: the site went right into the edge of the modern city. Without relocating large numbers of people, the excavators just couldn't go any farther.

Herculaneum had perished in the same eruption as Pom

peii, but had been buried not by ash and falling stone but by a river of volcanic mud that had swamped the city, producing quite different conditions in terms of preservation, even car

bonizing wooden furniture.

The place had been excavated pretty much at random after 93

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a local cavalry officer digging a well chanced on part of the theater in 1709. Under Charles III, the arbitrariness of the dig

ging continued, teams tunneling in at random, taking what they could find for their private collections, donating to local museums or spiriting stuff away. Buildings were uncovered, but there was little scientific or systematic about the excava

tions for more than two hundred years.

The remains sat well below the level of the modern city that had been built on top of it, in some cases almost forty yards below, and entering the site meant a long descent down a ramp. Thomas immediately noticed that the streets were nar

rower than those in Pompeii, the houses more complete, many with intact second stories. He recalled the lines from Keats's

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" about the abandoned city:
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

True enough.

Sister Roberta had agreed to meet him back at the entrance in two hours. Since his crack about not understanding nuns and religion she had barely spoken to him, so the decision to see the ruins separately had come as a relief. He wasn't sure whether she was offended or just unsure of what he thought of her, but he would have to apologize and go into more of his personal history than he wanted if he was to smooth things over. He sighed at the prospect, wondering why he cared. He barely knew the woman, after all.

Still, for all your isolated-maverick routine, it was nice to
have someone to talk to. Someone who didn't judge you, or
didn't do so out loud.

On the train he had been struck by a strange idea. It had oc

curred to him that Pietro might think him unworthy of his brother, which was why he had burned Ed's papers. The possi

bility angered him even though he thought it might not be so wide of the mark. There was no question that what Ed had 94

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shared with Jim, Giovanni, and Pietro spoke more to who he was than did any contact he had had with Thomas in recent years.

Was that why he was on this blind quest? To prove he loved his brother as much as did his brother priests?

He blinked, stared at the map, and tried to get a sense of where everything was. Ed had listed several locations, under

lining some. One--the House of the Bicentenary--had been set apart in a box drawn with red pen and marked with a sin

gle question mark. It seemed like a good place to start. It was about as far from the entrance as he could get, right back in the shadow of the modern city, but Thomas walked quickly, pausing only to check where he was, looking at what he could see from the street: stone-flagged roads with raised sidewalks, houses with ornate doorways and second-floor bal

conies, the now-familiar
thermopolia
with their jars set in the counters.

The House of the Bicentenary was one of the better pre

served two-story structures and he found it with no difficulty at all, but it was completely locked up, all windows and doors shuttered with padlocked panels of steel mesh. Thomas peered in. He could see paintings on the walls, a deep skylit atrium some way back in the house, and a flight of treacherous-looking stairs. There was scaffolding all over the place, but it was too dim inside to see anything noteworthy.

He flagged down a guide at the corner of the street, a short, officious-looking woman wearing huge sunglasses that made her look like a mantis.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Can I ask a question?"

She considered him for a moment, knowing he wasn't part of her group.

"One," she said.

"The House of the Bicentenary . . . ?"

"It's that way," she said, pointing.

"I know," he said. "I saw it but . . ."

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"It's closed."

"Why?"

"I said,
one question,
" she remarked, turning away. "It's having work done on it."

"Excavation work?"

"No," she said, turning back at him and glowering through those dinner-plate shades of hers, but she was back in guide mode and talking primarily to her group. "If you look around you, you will notice that there is work going on all over the site to consolidate the existing remains, reinforcing walls that are sagging, bracing arches and lintels that might collapse. Conservation of the
existing
remains," she spelled out as if she were dealing with an idiot child, "
not
excavation. Maintaining the site is an expensive and time-consuming project. We are fortunate to be supported by a grant from the Packard Foun

dation. Now, if you don't mind . . ."

She turned away again.

"Thank you," he said.

She waved a hand behind her in acknowledgment and dis

missal.

Thomas stood there, listening to the sound of machinery to the south. He walked down Decumanus Maximus and turned right onto Cardo V, another street of astonishingly wellpreserved house fronts. Inside a cordoned section of crum

bling brickwork and scaffolding a group of men were mixing concrete and taking measurements. Between him and them was a table with clipboards, folders, and tools. The workers hadn't seen him yet.

Thomas stepped out into the street. A few yards away was a large notice board explaining the reconstruction work being done by the Packard Foundation. Thomas stowed his camera and map and marched back into the work zone with an air of someone who knew what he was doing. As he walked in, he picked up a clipboard and a yellow hard hat.

"Excuse me?" he said over the drone of the concrete mixer. The workers looked from him to each other. They were all 96

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Italians. One of them, a shirtless young man in dungarees with a deep and complete tan, stood up, his eyes neutral.

"You speak English?"

The man nodded.

"I need to get into the House of the Bicentenary," said Thomas, as if this were the most normal thing in the world. The Italian shook his head."It is not safe."

"I just need a quick look to check something," said Thomas. The words were vague, and he instantly regretted them, but the young man--he was probably a graduate student--didn't seem unduly concerned. "It will take two minutes. Less."

"You work here?" he said.

"I'm visiting from the foundation. They didn't tell you I was coming?"

The other shook his head and his eyes narrowed a little.

"You are excavator? Archaeologist?" he said.

"No," said Thomas, smiling. "I'm from administration . . ."

he began, then waved away the rest of the sentence as if it were all tiresome and pompous. "I'm the money," he con