Jacob shook his head. 'I wasn't planning on claiming credit for this any more than I was expecting the sodding Nobel Peace Prize. We either get this done soon or there'll be a lot more people likely to get hurt.'
Lang thought a minute. 'OK, here's what we're gonna do…'
Two minutes later, Lang crossed the street like a man without a care in the world. He pushed the buzzer by the gate as casually as though he were a guest invited to a dinner party. The response was immediate if unintelligible.
'Please tell the police that Langford Reilly wants to see them.'
There was a pause before more Italian squawked through the speaker box, then, 'Langford Reilly? Police?'
'Yes, si.'
It was as if someone had been expecting him. The giant gates began to rumble open. By the time they had parted wide enough, two plainclothesmen and a uniform squeezed through.
Lang easily recognized Manicci. 'I understand you're looking for me?'
Across the street, Jacob dialed a number on his cell phone and waited. Two rings later the call was answered. 'Prego?'
'The grand master,' Jacob said.
The voice switched to English. 'How did you get this number?'
'That doesn't matter. Tell the grand master Lang Reilly wishes to speak with him.'
Pause.
'Momento, just a moment.'
The second voice came so quickly the grand master must have been in the room when the call came through. 'Yes?'
Jacob pushed the button on his garage-door opener and winced.
Nothing.
Bloody hell! He had tested the tiny battery before he left London. He pushed the button again with the same lack of result.
'Hello?' The grand master was getting impatient. He wasn't going to hang on the line forever. If he left the room, the explosive device might not do the job.
Across the street, the policeman approached Lang.
'Ah, Mr. Reilly,' the older of the two men in plain clothes said in accented English, 'we are indeed looking for you. But I am curious, how did you know Inspector Manicci and I would be here?'
'Lucky guess.'
The policeman nodded his head slightly. 'Perhaps so. Will you be so kind as to step inside? We have much to talk about.'
Lang took a step back. 'If it is all the same to you, I'd rather talk out here.'
Another nod, this time to the uniformed officer. Arms reached around Lang, pulling his hands behind him.
'I regret we cannot accommodate you, Mr. Reilly,' the older inspector said. 'But I'm sure you understand.'
Lang was shoved toward the open gate.
Jacob looked at the device in his hand as though he could actually see it in the dark.
'Mr. Reilly?' the voice on the other end of the line asked.
'Reilly here. I think we might have something to talk about.'
Stall, keep the man on the line before he hung up and left the room.
Jacob was holding the phone with one hand, fumbling with the door opener with the other. If the problem wasn't the battery, it must be the contact point. Blindly, his fingers searched for the seam in the plastic casing. He thought he had found it when the thing slipped from his hand. It was pure luck it fell at his feet. It took only seconds to retrieve, but from what he saw across the street, there weren't any seconds to waste.
Lang shoved back. 'Look, there's no reason we can't talk out here.'
Delay, stall. Standard agency tactics. When things are going badly, make your opponent spend time he hadn't planned on. There's always the chance something will happen. In this case, Lang knew exactly what. But he couldn't figure out why it hadn't already. According to Jacob's announced plan, there should have been an explosion several minutes ago. Lang had a sinking feeling at the bottom of his stomach. Now was not the time for one of his friend's concoctions to fail.
'If you prefer,' the older man said, 'we can handcuff you and have you bodily carried to a proper place to ask you questions. The grand master has kindly consented to give us an office for the purpose.'
Hardly good news.
At the moment, there were only three possibilities, none attractive: Either he would be inside the building when Jacob's contraption went off or he was about to meet the grand master himself. Or both. Lang doubted he would be greeted with anything resembling traditional hospitality.
'And what did you have in mind, Mr. Reilly?' the voice on Jacob's cell phone asked. 'I'm not sure I know why you called.'
'I think you have a bleeding good notion,' Jacob said as he managed to insert a thumbnail into the seam between the two plastic parts of the door opener's plastic casing. Taking care not to drop it again, or dislodge the battery, he pried the two halves apart and blew gently. If condensation on the contact point had been the problem, that should take care of it. If not, Lang was in for a spot of bother.
'What's that you say?' The grand master's temper was getting shorter and shorter.
As slowly as he could manage, Lang let himself be pushed through the gates. The piazza was tastefully lit, hidden lights accenting a number of monuments as well as the facades of buildings. A double file of cypress trees were columns reaching into infinity. In the distance, Rome's lights sparkled like a handful of jewels.
He was being taken to the building he and Jacob had entered that morning.
'I said, we have something to talk about.' Jacob fumbled in the dark, trying to get the two halves back together. Across the street, those formidable doors were beginning to swing shut.
He forced himself to take a deep breath. Somewhere there was a catch. He ran fingers made clumsy by anxiety around the edge, found the protruding piece of plastic.
With a snap, the device closed.
Lang and the police were less than fifty yards away from the building.
'Ah, Mr. Reilly?' A man was standing in the open door. 'Then who is the grand master talking to…?'
He turned to dash inside.
'I'm curious how the grand master of the Knights of Malta knew who you were,' one of the policemen said.
Lang wondered. Did the order's power reach into the police, too?
He would never know.
At that moment, night became day, a day with the light of a dozen suns. A wall of heat knocked Lang over as an explosion clapped silencing hands over his ears.
Groggy, he got to his knees, able to see only streaks of light as though someone had fired a flashbulb in his face. His ears felt pressure as if he were in a rapidly descending aircraft. The grip on his arms was gone. He could only guess at the direction of the way out of the piazza and stumbled that way.
Blurs of vision were returning as he reached the gates and squeezed through before they completely shut.
He felt a hand on his arm. 'This way, lad!'
His last sight of the piazza was of blazing rubble where the building had been. The flames reflected from the windows of the nearby church. Not a one had been damaged. Then the gates clicked shut, sealing off pursuit.
Lang's sight and hearing had returned by the time they reached the bottom of the hill, just in time to hear the wail of fire trucks on the way. He turned and looked behind him to see a flickering glow that turned the Aventine into a contemporary Vesuvius. The curious, singly and in small groups, were already filling the street as they hurried uphill to see what had happened.
Minutes later, Lang and Jacob were on the metro again.
'You destroyed the entire building,' Lang finally said in wonderment, 'but I saw not even a crack in the church's windows.'
Jacob was sucking on an empty pipe. Public transportation was one of the few places in Rome where smoking
