'Langley,' he blurted out as he shook his head, staggered. 'You're a goddamn spook, aren't you?
This whole thing . . .' His voice trailed off before coming back assuredly. 'Waldron, Petrovic . . .
The horsemen in New York. It wasn't Vance. It was you all along, wasn't it?' He suddenly lunged forward, grabbing De Angelis and pushing him back with a hard shove. He moved in, reaching for the priest's throat. 'You've been—'
He didn't have time to finish the sentence. The monsignor reacted with lightning reflexes, deflecting Reilly's hands while grabbing one of his arms and twisting it in one fluid, agonizingly painful move, bringing him down to his knees.
'I don't have time for this,' he rasped, as he held Reilly at bay for a moment before flinging him off onto the ground. Reilly spat out the dirt in his mouth as the pain in his arm throbbed. The monsignor took a couple of steps, circling around the fallen agent. 'Where are they? What happened here?'
Reilly slowly pushed himself back onto his feet. He caught a glimpse of the man in the chopper, who was looking on with a mocking grin on his face. He felt a fury rising from deep within. If he had been wondering about the extent of the monsignor's personal involvement in the murders in New York, that little demonstration of the man's physical prowess quickly dispelled any doubts he might have had. He had seen it before; the man had hands that could kill.
He dusted himself before staring at De Angelis. 'So what are you exactly?' he asked bitterly. 'A man of God with a gun, or a gunman who's found God?'
De Angelis remained impassive. 'I didn't have you down for a cynic.'
'And I didn't have you down for a murderer.'
De Angelis breathed out as he seemed to mull his response. When he finally spoke his voice was laced with indifference. 'I need you to calm down. We're on the same side.'
'So what was that, back at the lake? Friendly fire?'
De Angelis studied Reilly with cool, insolent eyes. 'In this battle,' he stated flatly, 'everyone is expendable.' He paused, seeming to wait for its significance to fully sink in with Reilly before continuing. 'You've got to understand something. We're fighting a war. A war we've been fighting for over a thousand years. This whole notion of a 'clash of civilizations' . . . it's not just a fanciful theory coming out of some Boston think tank. It's real. It's happening as we speak, and it's growing, becoming more dangerous, more insidious, more threatening by the day, and it's not going to go away. And at its core is religion, because, like it or not, religion is a phenomenal weapon, even today. It can reach into the hearts of men and make them do all kinds of unimaginable things.'
'Like murder suspects in their hospital beds?'
De Angelis let it go. 'Twenty years ago, communism was spreading like a cancer. How do you think we won the Cold War? What do you think brought it down? The SDI, Reagan's 'Star Wars'? The Soviet government's stunning incompetence? Partly. But you know what really made it happen? The pope. A Polish pope, reaching out, connecting with his flock, getting them to tear down those walls with their bare hands. Khomeini did the same thing, broadcasting his speeches from Paris while he was in exile, igniting a spiritually starved population thousands of miles away, inspiring them to rise up and kick out the Shah. What a mistake that was, allowing that to happen . . . Look where we are today. And now, Bin Laden's using it too . . .' He paused, frowning inwardly, then fixed on Reilly sharply. 'The right words can move mountains. Or destroy them.
And more than anything in our arsenal, religion is our ultimate weapon, and we can't afford to let anyone disarm us. Our way of life, everything you've been fighting for since you joined the Bureau, hinges on it . . . everything. So my question to you is simple: are you, as your president once put it so eloquently, with us ... or against us?'
Reilly's face hardened, and he felt his chest constrict. The wall of doubt he'd hastily erected was obliterated by the monsignor's mere presence. It was an unwelcome substantiation of everything Vance had said.
'So it's all true?' he asked, as if emerging from a fog.
The monsignor's answer came back dry and fast. 'Does it matter?'
Reilly nodded absently. He wasn't sure anymore.
De Angelis looked around, scanning the bare ground. 'I assume you don't have it anymore?'
'What?'
'The astrolabe.'
Reilly was taken aback by the question. 'How did you know about—?' he fired back, before his voice trailed off, realizing he and Tess must have been under audio surveillance the whole time. He went quiet and let his anger settle for a moment, then shook his head, dejected, and said, 'They've got it.'
'Do you know where they are?' De Angelis asked.
Reluctantly, and still deeply mistrustful of the monsignor, Reilly filled him in about what had happened the night before.
The monsignor weighed the information somberly. 'They don't have much of a head start, and we know the general area they're heading for.
We'll find them.' He turned, raising a hand and twirling it around, signaling the pilot to fire up the twin turbines, before glancing again at Reilly. 'Let's go.'
Reilly just stood there and shook his head. 'No. You know what? If it's all one big lie ... I hope it blows you all out of the water.'
De Angelis looked at him, thrown.
Reilly held his gaze for a moment. 'You can go to hell,' he said flatly, 'you and the rest of your CIA buddies. I'm out.' And with that, he turned and walked away.
'We need you,' the monsignor called out after him. 'You can help us find them.'
Reilly didn't bother turning around. 'Find them yourself. I'm done.'
He kept walking.
The priest's voice bellowed out after him, struggling against the growing whine of the chopper's engines. 'What about Tess? You gonna leave her with him? She could still be helpful. And if anyone can get through to her, you can.'
Reilly turned, still walking, taking a few steps backward. He saw De Angelis's knowing glare, which made it clear the monsignor knew how close he and Tess had gotten. He just shrugged. 'Not anymore.'
De Angelis watched him leave. 'What are you going to do? Walk back to New York?'
Reilly didn't stop. He didn't answer either.
The monsignor called out after him one last time. His voice was now angry, and tinged with frustration.
'Reilly!'
Reilly stopped, dropping his head for a moment before deciding to turn.
De Angelis took a few steps forward and joined him. His mouth shaped a smile, but his eyes remained bleak and remote. 'If I can't convince you to work with us . . . maybe I can take you to someone who can.'
Chapter 71
V atican or CIA, whoever made the travel arrangements had done a pretty good job. The helicopter had flown to a military air base near Karacasu, not far north from where Reilly had been picked up. Once there, he and De Angelis boarded a waiting G-IV, which had flown up from Dalaman to pick them up, and made the fast journey west to Italy. Immigration and Customs were swiftly bypassed in Rome, and, less than three hours after the monsignor had materialized out of a dust cloud in the Turkish mountains, they were speeding through the Eternal City in the cosseted comfort of an air-conditioned, black-windowed Lexus.
Reilly needed a shower and clean clothes, but, as De Angelis was in a hurry, he'd had to settle for washing on board the jet and replacing his wetsuit with BDU pants and a gray T-shirt hastily obtained from the Turkish air force base's supply center. He didn't complain. After the wet-suit, the battle dress uniform was a welcome relief, and, more to the point, he was in a hurry too. He was feeling increasingly uneasy about Tess. He wanted to find her, although he tried not to delve too deeply into his motives. He was also having second thoughts about having agreed to the monsignor's invitation; he wasn't sure what awaited him at their final destination, and the sooner he was out of there and back on the ground in Turkey, he thought, the better. But it was too late to pull out. He had clearly sensed from De Angelis's quiet insistence that this visit wasn't just an idle whim.
He had spotted Saint Peter's Basilica from the aircraft, and now, as the Lexus cut its way through the midday
