change of clothes from the hotel management. He was dry, but that was the best that could be said for him. Every muscle in his body was sore; every bone felt bruised. It occurred to him with great irony that he had recently told Christopher Henderson that he enjoyed overseas work with the CIA because that’s where the action was.
Driscoll’s phone rang again as he was dressing, and he listened to Nina debrief him on the Khalid interrogation. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Jack had hoped that Khalid himself was the mastermind behind the whole plot, but that was not the case.
“We know there’s a third bomber out there, based on clues and the leftover C–4,” Jack said. “You can’t get any more information out of him?”
“I’ve already leaned on him,” she replied blandly. “He’ll go into shock soon.”
“Keep at it. We need to know who the final bomb is.”
“Agreed, but the Pope is safe, isn’t he? If he’s at St. Monica’s, surrounded by his people, he’s as safe as he can be.”
Michael admired and hated Yasin with a passion that rivaled his love for the true church. Yasin had built backup after backup into his plan, and it was working now to perfection. Of course, it had been Michael himself who executed that plan, but the brainchild had been Yasin’s. Michael had always assumed that, once the Pope had been killed, he himself would find Yasin and kill him, to eliminate the threat of any future blackmail. Now he wondered quite honestly if he was up to the task.
A few moments later, the Pope’s retinue arrived at St. Monica’s. Michael had arrived seconds before, and he was already posting his own security people all around the cathedral. As the three black Broncos appeared, and the Pope, shielded by his men, was hustled into the great chapel, Michael shook hands with Giancarlo.
“That was quite a scare,” he said.
“More than a scare,” Giancarlo said. He turned to speak to several of his Swiss Guards, then he turned back. “We will be here for only an hour. I have radioed to the Vatican’s private airplane. It is being prepared now. We will head to the airport and get back to Rome.”
Michael made himself look perplexed. “Do you think there is more danger?”
“I don’t know,” Giancarlo admitted, “but as the Arabs say, ‘Trust God, but tether your camel.’ After what has happened here in the last twenty hours, the safest place for us is St. Peter’s. In the meantime, is the entire facility secured?”
“Yes,” Michael said.
A new arrival entered through a small door in the north wall of the cathedral grounds, a door that should have been locked and guarded by Michael’s men, but it was not. He closed the door quietly and stepped behind a small bird-of-paradise. As planned, a plastic bag lay there. He quickly slipped on a black suit similar to the kind worn by the plainclothes Swiss Guards. In just a few minutes he was ready.
This would be a good end, a final part to play.
22. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 P.M. AND 4 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
“I would like to be alone for a moment, Giancarlo,” John Paul said. “Except for Cardinal Mulrooney. Please ask him to come.”
Giancarlo could not fully honor that request. He refused to leave the Pontiff unguarded. But he ordered his men to guard all the doors to the cathedral, and they had left him alone at the altar. Despite the pain in his knees, John Paul knelt at the altar and put his head in his hands.
What, what, O Lord, was he to do with such hatred? That someone would blow himself up to stop him from holding a peace conference was, to him, practically inconceivable. He had gone out of his way to invite diverse opinions and represent all possible sides of the argument. And still it was not enough.
“Your Holiness?”
John Paul looked up to see Mulrooney, tall and lean and hawkish, standing over him. “Your Eminence. Please, sit with me.”
Mulrooney sat, and for a moment, John Paul knelt beside him in silence. Finally: “Giancarlo spoke with an American agent. Do you know the man actually carried the explosives inside his body?”
“Horrible,” Mulrooney whispered.
“It may surprise you to hear me say this, Allen, but I believe our differences to be petty. In the face of this sort of unspeakable hatred, the schism in the church is meaningless.”
Mulrooney shifted ever so slightly.
“It’s true,” John Paul said. “We must get past them if we are to survive. What unites us is greater than what divides us. A war is coming, and we must prevent it.”
“I support you, Your Holiness. But why are you telling this to me?”
“Because I know you are a leader of the schismatics.”
The statement hung there in that sanctified air. “Your Holin—”
“Please do not waste my time or yours by denying it,” John Paul said. “You believe I am a heretic. A traitor to the church.”
Mulrooney felt the blood rise into his cheeks. This damned old man had done it to him again, looking so frail but then challenging him so directly. “This really can’t be the best time to discuss this…”
“What better time?” the old man said. “The world is entering a religious war, my friend. How will we help if we are at war within ourselves?”
Mulrooney realized where the Pope’s thoughts were leading him. “I was not there, Your Holiness, but I was told the bomber was a Muslim, not a Catholic.”
“He was neither,” John Paul said. “Whatever he was, whoever he worked for, he was not a man of God. Men of God reject violence. That will be all, Your Eminence.”
Jack, Harry Driscoll, and Dan Bender pulled up to the cathedral and got out. “Are you really expecting trouble here?” Driscoll asked. Jack laughed. “There’s been nothing but trouble here.”
At the front of the cathedral, they were met by one of the Swiss Guards. He detained them briefly until a radio call to Giancarlo cleared them.
The chief of the Swiss Guards met them in the courtyard. He shook Jack’s hand with both of his and said, “I did not have time to thank you properly before. You saved his life. Millions will thank you for it.”
“I think there’s one more bomber. And we still haven’t found out who is transmitting the signal.” He explained the design of the bomb found in Father Collins. “Someone set that bomb off, probably someone at the reception itself, since they would have waited until the bomber was next to the target.”
“No one from the reception is here,” Giancarlo said. “We’ve evacuated the entire cathedral except for our people.”
“You have a plan for evacuating him from here?”
“Yes,” Giancarlo said simply. “In approximately an hour. Come with me to the library. Tell me what you know.”
Michael walked around the outside of the chapel. There was a guard there, one of the Swiss Guards from the Pope’s retinue. Michael smiled and nodded to him. “I am making my rounds,” he said simply. “To check security.”
“Giancarlo does the same,” the man replied.
Michael smiled again and whipped his hand across the man’s neck. The small blade sliced his throat like butter. The man gurgled once, his eyes staring wildly, then he fell on his face.
Michael moved on to the next one.
