The Da Vinci Cook (36 page)

They’d been greeted at the airport by a police escort and whisked through town to a large imposing gray building. It didn’t look like a police station, which was what they’d both been expecting, but more like a fortress.

The escort and the fortresslike
questura
was impressive. Paavo was sure that Charles now understood why he’d refused to allow him to bring the Luger to Rome. To avoid delays and red tape, he hadn’t even brought his own weapon. Instead, after tossing some clothes into his duffel, putting out several days worth of food and water for his cat, and finding his passport, they said good-bye to the teary-eyed Amalfi women, then rushed to the airport where the private air charter company that Charles’s company contracted with had a plane waiting.

Paavo had made a few phone calls to Rome from the private plane, but as soon as the full complexity of the Italian security force became clear to him, he contacted Serefina. The Amalfis were friends with San Francisco Police Commissioner Tom Barcelli.

Barcelli happened to personally know Italy’s Minister of the Interior, who got Paavo and Charles into Napolitano’s office.

As Napolitano hung up the phone, he regarded Paavo with all the friendliness of a pit bull. Although Barcelli might have been a friend of the Minister of the Interior, the day-to-day police work was Napolitano’s. It was his decision to go along, or to cart them off to the American embassy.

“It sounds as if you’ve taken a big chance coming here, Inspector Smith,” he said bluntly. “There are international laws and statutes to handle this sort of thing that don’t necessitate this kind of American cowboy riding-into-town and handling everything yourself.”

“I’m aware, sir,” Paavo said sternly, “but I have all the information in my head, and time is of the essence.”

Napolitano regarded him in silence, then said, “If this doesn’t work, it could mean your career, Inspector.”

Paavo’s expression never varied. “It could mean much more to me than that.”

“Is she worth it?”

Paavo knew exactly what Napolitano meant. His reply was simple, direct, and honest. “She’s worth everything to me.”

Napolitano smiled, but rather than warm, it was world-weary, as if he could barely remember a time when love burned that way in his own soul. He picked up the phone. “I’m expecting an envelope,” he told the person at the other end. “It’s here already? Excellent. Bring it in.”

He hung up, then began to explain the situation to Paavo and Charles. “A car registered to the Vatican was found abandoned near the airport at Fiumicino. It sustained a slight bit of damage to its fender. It looked as if it might have been driven off the road. We have been in contact with the Vatican to learn who had been given the car and for what purpose.”

Napolitano paused as the same aide who had given him the information about the phone call returned with an envelope. “Tucked under the front seat,” he went on as the aide departed, “as if purposefully hidden there, they found something that pertains to this case.” He tore open the packet and shook out a small card.

A California driver’s license. Name: Caterina Amalfi Swenson.

Rocco Piccoletti slammed down the phone. Bruno had just phoned in a panic. He’d been taken to the Questura Centrale and questioned by the police. They were looking for the two American women and heard they’d been working at Da Vinci’s. Bruno denied knowing anything and was freed.

Rocco wondered how the
polizia
had gotten involved. He also wondered how much Bruno had told them, and if Bruno had told them where he lived.

He called Stefano. It was too early for the bank to open, so they could get into the safe deposit box, but he didn’t want to wait at home any longer. An uneasiness had come over him. He reminded himself not to panic, not to rush. He must take it slowly, carefully. Victory was near, and he didn’t want to screw it up now.

A massive bulk of a man and a smaller one with a goatee peered from the shadows at the building where Rocco Piccoletti was now living.

They’d found it by following him two nights earlier.

They could no longer find the American women, which meant either that Piccoletti himself now had the St. Peter chain or that he could lead them to the women who had it.

They suspected the latter.

They weren’t about to give up, not after all those American witches had put them through. Especially the young one. They could hardly wait to get their hands on her again. As much as they wanted the chain, it was secondary now.

They wanted revenge.

A yellow car drove up to the front of the apartment and stopped, the motor running.

Rocco Piccoletti bolted from the building into the car, and it drove off.

The goons followed.

It was early morning, but already tourists dotted the ancient Roman Forum like ants at a picnic.

Paavo rushed down a walkway to enter the area, Charles and a policeman following. Paavo could hardly believe how massive the Forum was, much larger than he’d ever imagined. Most of it was below street level. He realized it was essentially a gigantic archeological dig in the heart of Rome. The digging and restoration appeared to be still going on, as many marble and granite columns and pillars lay on their sides, and great portions of the area were cordoned off.

He could scarcely believe the scope of what he was looking at. Much had been restored, and massive archways and pillars from temples reached high into the sky. These were grounds where Roman senators and orators gave some of the most famous speeches in history, and wrote laws that continued to form the basis for many civilized societies to this day.

It was hard to believe that a civilization that could build something so grand and powerful had eventually crumbled under the internal weight of unruly mobs and attacks from those the Romans called “barbarians” from elsewhere in Europe and Asia. Evidence that it had happened before gave sudden credence that it could again.

Paavo watched as Rocco went down into the Forum. He followed, careful that Rocco didn’t notice him.

The plan he and Vice Questore Napolitano concocted had worked.

Arrest Bruno, get him to tell them where Rocco was living, then make him phone Rocco and let the man know the police were on to him. They hoped it would spur Rocco into action, and it had.

They had watched as Rocco got into a car driven by a younger man. Before they pulled out of their parking space, however, another car started after Piccoletti. They followed both.

The second auto stayed a safe distance behind Piccoletti all the way to the Forum. There, Piccoletti got out.

The entire episode was quite peculiar.

At the Forum, Paavo, Charles, and one of the officers with them sprang from the police car to follow Rocco, who went directly to a fenced area with signs for the public to keep out. He had a key to unlock the gate, and walked inside.

The only sound was Father Daniel quietly reciting prayers, psalms, and the litany of the saints of the Church, asking them for help on this long night. In the Catholic tradition, each sister had gone to a corner and made a confession to him in whispers, away from the prying ears of the other “just in case” things didn’t work out well the next morning.

His duty done, Father Daniel now sat alone at his station.

“Do you think Rocco forgot about us?” Cat whispered from her corner.

“I don’t know,” Angie whispered from hers. “It’s like watching water boil.”

In her almost slide into the pit, Angie had managed to find some rope left behind. A great idea had occurred to her as she was being dragged backward by Cat. Well, she considered it a great idea. Cat and Father Daniel greeted it with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. Nevertheless, since they were working in total darkness, it took them most of the night to set it up.

First, they felt along the wood supports until they found two spots at some distance from each other with loose boards. They pulled the boards free, making enough space for Angie to hide alongside one and Cat in the other. Even when the lights were on, they were fairly sure the area would be cast in shadow and they’d be obscured.

Angie took one end of the rope, Cat the other, and they stretched it between them, lightly covering it with dirt.

Their plan was that when Rocco showed up, Father Daniel would tell him Cat and Angie had fallen into the pit. They were hurt, maybe dead, he’d say.

Hearing this, their hope was that Rocco would get a ladder and climb down to the layer they were on. As he hurried to the edge, the women would lift the rope and trip him. Father Daniel would rush up from behind and give Rocco a shove.

They had to hope that while Stefano was a junkie or gambler—or whatever his “expensive habits,” as he’d put it, were—he wasn’t a killer, and he’d either run off or simply let them go.

And so they waited, each coming up with myriad ways the plan could fail.

“Father,” Angie said after a while, “you told us earlier what will happen to the chain of St. Peter if it’s authenticated. But if it isn’t, what happens then?”

“It’ll be locked away as just another unknown item in the basement of the Vatican. The basement storage area goes on for miles and miles. So much is down there, not even the Vatican has a complete inventory. Lay and clerical archivists have worked for centuries to catalogue the items, but it takes a lot of knowledge and expertise to know enough about what you’re looking at in order to catalogue it. What one man might see as a piece of sheet music, a musicologist might recognize as a previously unknown work by Monteverdi or Vivaldi.”

“So, very likely, it’ll be buried again,” Angie murmured. “That doesn’t seem right. The elderly priest I met at St. Monica’s seemed to think it should be displayed. He said, ‘to help them remember.’ I’m not sure what he meant.”

“He said that?” Father Daniel asked. At her confirmation, he was silent for a long moment. “It reminds me of a strange experience I had when I was in the seminary. In the churchyard one day, I met a visiting priest from Italy. The other seminarians said they didn’t notice him with me. They thought I was just sleeping out there and didn’t disturb me because I’d been staying up late studying for exams. Yet, that priest was as real to me as you are.

“We talked about helping the poor and having a parish. The priest believed that most people search for something deeply meaningful beyond themselves. Some find it in Catholicism. Others elsewhere—Buddhism, Islam, a tree, spirits and faeries, or—as I’ve heard some people in your hometown of San Francisco once did—a fire plug. Anyway, it’s in the nature of man to search, the priest said, but many people get so caught up in the tedium of their lives that they stop looking. They grow bored and disillusioned and hopeless. It’s a priest’s duty, he said, to help them renew their search for the truth that opens their lives. Help them remember God, and remember faith.” When Daniel stopped speaking, quiet and darkness settled over them again.

“The priest at St. Monica’s seemed to think the chain could do that,” Angie said, “and that it was real.”

“It might be,” Father Daniel conceded. “The more I think about it, though, I doubt it matters. You said it, Angie, when you first saw that harsh, rough, ugly piece of iron. It reminded you of the very earliest days of Christianity, and how a motley group of apostles, despite persecution and martyrdom, spread their faith against what—using logic alone—were impossible odds. Yet they did it. Now, when many people look at the Church, all they see are riches, scandals, and politics. They don’t remember anymore what it all means: faith and divine grace. Maybe that’s why the chain has shown up here, now. To help all of us remember.”

Angie wasn’t sure if she should ask something so personal, but she knew Daniel had been struggling. “Has it helped you?”

His lengthy silence made her think she’d gone too far, but then he spoke. “I was a very scholarly sort, even in the seminary, and because of that, I was encouraged to come to the Vatican. It’s a great honor. I love the Vatican, I truly do, but that wasn’t the reason I joined the clergy. I did it to work with the people, especially the poor. I’d forgotten that. I’d forgotten a lot, caught up in the majesty, the pomp, and the importance of my more intellectual pursuits. I need to go back to the beginning, back to the basis of my love of God. I don’t know if I’d be any good at it. . . .”

“I think you would, Father,” Angie said. “Look at how you’ve tried to help me and my sister. You could have shut the door on us. Our own cousin did. But you’re here with us, doing your best, no matter the danger.”

“Thank you for saying that, Angie.” Then, considering their circumstance, she heard the deprecating smile in his voice as he added, “I’m only sorry I didn’t do a whole lot better.”

“Did you ever meet the visiting priest again after you came to Rome?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve concluded the others were right. It was only a dream. Although he didn’t have a terribly uncommon name, there’s no longer any living priest in or near Rome with it, and hasn’t been for many, many years.”

“What was his name?”

“Father Pio.”

“Pio?” Angie shivered. That was the name of the priest she’d met.

And she, as well, had been told his visit was a dream.

She pondered what Daniel had just said, especially that there was no longer any Father Pio in the area. “When I think about yesterday morning,” she began, “about the rain, the warmth of the little church, the comfort offered by the elderly priest, I can’t say I know what happened. Maybe I did dream the entire thing. In my heart, I don’t think so. As the nuns in school used to say, ‘It’s a mystery.’ Or, ‘You must have faith.’ Maybe that’s what this is all about. My faith, to a degree . . . but even more than that, it’s about yours.” She placed her hand on his arm. “It seems you have some decisions to make. Some very serious decisions.”

As Paavo stood with Charles and the policeman watching Rocco, he saw two strange men, one big and hulking, the other slight, with a black goatee, creeping stealthily toward the gate Rocco had opened.

As Rocco entered the building inside the fence, the two men began to run.