He mopped his face with his hands and tried to throttle back his anger. “Look,” he offered, his voice calmer now, but still resolute. “Maybe you think I was wrong, maybe you think I should have done things differently. Maybe you’re right. But in the heat of the moment, I just didn’t see any other option. I’m willing to face the consequences of what I did. Absolutely. You can do anything you want to me—once this is over. After he’s in custody or in the morgue. But until that happens, I need to be part of this. I need to help bring him in.”
Delpiero met his gaze straight on. “That’s very admirable of you, Agent Reilly. But we’ve discussed this with your superiors, and they agree with us.”
Reilly followed the inspector’s glance across to Tilden, who gave him a “what the hell did you expect?” shrug. “You weren’t here on Bureau business—worse, you withheld informing us about what you were really here for. That hasn’t gone down too well with the powers that be back home. Unless I’m missing something, my bet is you should consider yourself suspended,” the attache told him, “pending the Vatican and Italian authorities’ investigation.”
“You can’t sideline me on this,” Reilly protested. “This guy suckered me into it. I need to do this.” He looked around the room and noticed Brugnone studying him.
Tilden spread his hands open in a resigned, helpless gesture. “I’m sorry, but that’s how it has to play out for now.”
Reilly shot up to his feet. “This is insane,” he railed, his hands cutting the air emphatically. “We have to move fast. We’ve got a crime scene to process. We’ve got an unexploded bomb to analyze. We may have prints in the cars and in the archives and vidcaps on CCTV footage. We need to get a BOLO out to all ports of entry, we need to liaise with Interpol.” He focused on Delpiero. “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. I know you’re pissed off. So am I. But I can help, and I’m here now. You can use FBI resources on this and you can’t afford to wait until they figure out who to send and fly them over. He could be long gone by then.”
Delpiero seemed unmoved by Reilly’s plea. Three chairs away, however, Brugnone cleared his throat conspicuously, drawing everyone’s attention as he rose out of his seat.
“Let’s not rush into anything.” He slid a glance at Reilly and said, “Agent Reilly. Walk with me to my chambers, won’t you?”
Delpiero shot to his feet. “
Brugnone stilled him with a languid flick of his hand that, however understated, carried great authority. “
It was enough to stop Delpiero in his tracks.
Reilly got up, glanced uncertainly at Tilden and at Delpiero, and followed the cardinal out.
Chapter 14
Reilly accompanied the cardinal secretary across the leafy garden square of Piazza Santa Marta. It was past noon by now, and the air around them was scorched. Fifty yards to their left, the rear facade of St. Peter’s Cathedral soared high into the sky. Only faint wisps remained of the black cloud from the car bomb, but the square itself, usually lively with cars, buses, and tourists at this time of year, was deserted. Even though the second bomb had been defused and cleared, the Vatican felt like a ghost town, and seeing it like this made Reilly feel even lousier than he had felt in the inspector’s office.
The cardinal walked in silence, his hands clasped behind his back. Without turning to look at Reilly, he asked, “We didn’t get a chance to speak after your last visit—how long ago was it, three years?”
“That’s right,” Reilly confirmed.
Brugnone nodded, deep in thought. After a moment, he asked, “It wasn’t a pleasant time for you either, was it? The questions you had, the answers you got … and then, after all that, getting sucked into that catastrophic storm …”
Memories of that episode of his life came flooding back. Even three years later, he could still taste the salt water in his throat and feel the deep chill from the long hours spent half-dead in the sea, floating on a makeshift raft miles away from the coast of some tiny Greek island. But it was the words he remembered the cardinal saying to him back then that chilled him the most:
“Today wasn’t a cakewalk either,” Reilly replied.
The cardinal didn’t get it. “A ‘cakewalk’?”
“It wasn’t an easy day,” Reilly clarified. “For some reason, my visits here never seem to be,” he lamented.
Brugnone shrugged and brushed the comment away with a flick of his big hand. “This is a seat of great power, Agent Reilly. And where there is power, there is bound to be conflict.”
They crossed the road and entered the sacristy, a three-story building that had been tacked onto the south side of the cathedral. Once inside, they turned left and cut through the sumptuous halls of its Treasury Museum. With each step, the acres of rare marble and the bronze busts of past popes weighed heavily on Reilly. Every inch of this place was steeped in history, in the very underpinnings of Western civilization—a history he now knew a lot more about.
The cardinal asked, “You were quite a devout person when we first met. Do you still attend mass?”
“Not really. I help out Father Bragg with the kids’ softball on Sunday mornings when I can, but that’s about it.”
“If I may ask—why is that?”
Reilly weighed his words. The adventure he and Tess had survived three years earlier, and its disturbing revelations, had left their mark on him, but he still held Brugnone in great esteem and didn’t want to be in any way disrespectful. “I’ve read a lot, since we met … I’ve thought about it all, and … I guess I’m less comfortable with the whole concept of institutionalized religion than I used to be.”
Brugnone brooded over his reply, his hooded eyes distant with thought. Neither of them spoke as they reached the end of the frescoed gallery and entered the south transept of the cathedral. Reilly had never been inside the great basilica, and the sight that greeted him was a jaw-dropper. Arguably the most sublime piece of architecture on the planet, its every detail dazzled the eye and lifted the soul. To his left, he glimpsed Bernini’s papal altar, the twisted barley-shaped columns and exquisite canopy of the prodigious baldachino dwarfed by the mammoth dome that towered above it. To his right, he could barely make out the distant entrance at the far end of the nave. Shafts of sunlight streamed in through the clerestory windows high overhead, bathing the cathedral in an ethereal glow and rekindling a spark deep within him that had died out over the last few years.
Brugnone seemed to notice the effect it all had on Reilly and paused by the intersection of the transept arms to give him a moment to savor it.
“You’ve never had the time for a proper visit, have you?”
“No,” Reilly replied. “And it’s not going to be this time, either.” He paused, then asked, “I need to know something, Your Eminence.”
Brugnone didn’t flinch. “You want to know what’s in those trunks.”
“Yes. Do you know what he’s after?”
“I’m not sure,” the cardinal said. “But if it’s what I think it might be … it would be even worse for us than what that man Vance was after.” He paused for a beat, then asked, “After what he did today … does it matter?”
Reilly shrugged. It was a fair point. “Not really. But it would help to know. We need to find him.”
Brugnone nodded, clearly making a mental note of Reilly’s request. He studied Reilly for a spell, then told him, “I heard what you said back there. And while I don’t condone what you did or agree with your decision to exclude us from your deliberations, I can appreciate that you were in a tough position. And the fact is, we are indebted to you. You did us a great service three years ago, one that I realize was hard for you to stomach. But you kept true to your principles, despite your doubts, and you put your life on the line for us, and that’s not something
