briefcase.
Lisette and Rafiq stared at Marc, as he related what he’d seen. They’d fled the compound, supposedly en route to the hospital to have Rafiq examined for his chest pains, instead picking up Marc a few streets away. Lisette finally had to pull over. “You’re sure of what you saw?”
“Positive,” Marc said. “I couldn’t believe it myself.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t Dr. Balraj? It was Tex?”
“I couldn’t see his face clear enough. Not enough time to get that close to the monitor. But it definitely wasn’t Balraj. Besides, who the hell else would be wearing a tux and cowboy boots in the middle of the bloody afternoon in Tunisia?”
“Was he alive?” she asked.
“He wasn’t moving.”
Rafiq shook his head. “He was dead. Had to be.”
“No,” Lisette said. “Why go to the trouble of killing someone else to make us think Tex is dead, only to kill him, then hide his body in another country?”
Marc knew exactly why.
Rafiq answered. “He might not have been dead then, but maybe he is now. They needed time to torture him in hopes of finding out what we were about. If we thought he was dead, there would be no rescue attempts.”
Lisette looked sick. “You don’t think they have him in there because they know that building is our next target?” she asked Marc.
“We didn’t even know it was our next target, which means Tex couldn’t have known. Either way, we have to tell Griffin,” Marc said, trying to recall exactly what he’d seen. If Tex was tied up, then he wasn’t dead. But he couldn’t remember seeing any ropes, primarily because he wasn’t looking for them.
“They were best friends,” Lisette said. “To get Griffin’s hopes up…”
No one dared finish the thought. To get his hopes up, only to face the realization that if it was Tex in that warehouse, fortune would have to be smiling on them to perform a rescue. They were under orders that the warehouse and all its contents be destroyed by 0830 hours tomorrow. Any later and they risked that the biological weapons that were recently manufactured and stored there would be shipped out and used. According to Lisette, Adami’s scientists were working primarily with bacteria. For that she was grateful. Should any biomatter escape the blast, the full desert sun would kill what was left, so the earlier the better.
Tex’s life for possibly those of hundreds of thousands of innocents…
Marc looked at his watch. They had until tomorrow morning to destroy Adami’s warehouse. Now that they had the delivery schedule, they needed to figure out who they were going to impersonate, and how they were going to get the explosives onto the compound. “We need to get to a secure phone. I’ve got to call HQ.”
22
Sydney watched as Francesca pulled a book from the package. A photograph of a pyramid was displayed on the dustcover beneath a title that read
“It appears she bought it at the Smithsonian gift shop and had it mailed here,” Francesca said.
“There’s nothing in it. Why was it so important that she get it to us?”
“I have no idea. I’m only the messenger.”
He flipped through the book once more, then handed it to Dumas. “See if you can find something in it.”
Dumas opened it, doing a more thorough perusal of each page as Griffin started up the van, then pulled back onto the road. Dumas found nothing. Sydney was tempted to ask to see the book herself, but one look at Griffin’s face when he glanced back at her told her he was not even remotely close to forgiving her for not flying home this morning-a feeling that persisted long after they’d dropped off Dumas and the professor at the Vatican.
Still, she thought, once they started the long and circuitous trip back to the safe house, someone was going to have to talk first, and Sydney figured it might as well be her. “Exactly who does Father Dumas work for?”
Griffin looked at her, his anger over her actions still evident on his face. He turned back to the road, let out a tense breath. Then, surprising her that he was even going to talk to her at all, said, “The Vatican first and foremost. After that, he is, for all intents and purposes-and to my objection-part of our team.”
“I take it you don’t trust him?”
“I trust him as long as the needs of the Vatican and ATLAS coincide. It’s when they don’t that I have concerns.” He glanced in his rearview mirror, then over at her. “His loyalties to the church aside, his placement in the Vatican is a valuable resource, one that can’t be ignored.”
“It never occurred to me that the Vatican would be working covert operations.”
“It never occurred to the Vatican, either, at least not officially, until Pope John Paul I decided to investigate the Mafia’s involvement in the Vatican finances that uncovered the Banco Ambrosiano scandal. Unfortunately for him, the Mafia and the Black Network, another criminal organization, had infiltrated more than just the Vatican’s bank. They’d also penetrated the most venerable walls of the Vatican’s governing body, the Curia. There’s no doubt why he died thirty days after becoming pope.”
“So you believe his death was a murder?”
“Some historians might believe otherwise, but he was poisoned-not, however, before he handpicked a few of his most trustworthy associates to look after the Vatican’s true interests. Dumas is the second generation of the team that Pope John Paul I started. They are covert, but not black ops. They are rarely called out on our business, and only as a liaison to the church.”
“Why was Dumas called out on this operation?”
“That’s the problem. He wasn’t called out, though we had considered it initially. So either Alessandra brought him into this, or he is here for the church. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It does present problems. It’s clearly understood that Dumas has divided loyalties. Where our team must answer to the director of operations, Dumas must answer to God. And since God usually makes himself unavailable for personal interviews, the current pope stands in.”
“And the pope is aware of Dumas’s actions?” she asked, watching the side view mirror for any tails, and making sure she looked up at the corner buildings to read the street placards in case she ever had to navigate this place on her own. “He knows what you do?”
“The pope is aware of anything that directly involves the church. That does not necessarily mean he knows what we are doing.”
Griffin turned off the Corso Vittorio into the Via dei Chiavari, then drove into a horseshoe-shaped parking lot. He pulled into a slot marked “
“Don’t let the clerical garb fool you. The man is as dangerous as any of our full-time operatives. And he’s been a valuable resource at times. By the way, your bag is in the back. You left it at the academy.”
Only because she wanted there to be some sign of where she’d been. This didn’t seem the time to point that out, and she grabbed her bag, exited the vehicle. “Then what is the problem with Dumas?” she asked, as Griffin walked up to the sign, casually removed it, then replaced it with one that read “
“The problem?” Griffin replied. “He saved my damned life two years ago in an operation that went bad. And I hate owing favors to guys I can’t trust.”
Trust. Now there was a word Sydney had difficulty embracing. She didn’t trust herself, and apparently Griffin didn’t trust anyone. Quite a team. Especially when it came to this case. Not that she was about to mention this to him. Instead, she asked, “Do you get the feeling that the professor was holding something back?”
“Right now I’m more interested in why you aren’t seated on a plane that should be across the Atlantic right
