Sign of the Cross

‘That’s right! I noticed that on the way in. Come on, I have an idea!’

With a burst of energy, she charged up the stairs at a pace that Boyd was unable to maintain. By the time he reached the top, he was forced to slump against the wall in oxygen-starved agony.

‘Are you all right?’ she demanded.

‘No,’ he blurted, gasping for air. ‘But I’ll live.’

‘Are you sure? Because — ’

Her concentration was broken when she heard voices and footsteps on the stairs below. Acting quickly, she used the guard’s key to open the service entrance to the roof, then helped Boyd inside just as the police lunged for his foot. Miraculously, Boyd fought them off, using the cylinder to beat on the lead cop’s hand while Maria slammed the door in his face.

‘That’s the second time I beat you,’ she teased in Italian. ‘You must be quicker than that if you’re going to catch a woman.’

The SWAT team replied with several curse words while trying to break down the door.

‘Good Lord,’ Boyd said, still gasping for breath. ‘They sound terribly upset.’

‘You think they’re mad now? Wait until we escape. They’re going to be furious.’

Boyd laughed as he watched her climb a twenty-foot ladder that extended to a trapdoor in the ceiling and work on the metal hatch. Psssssssssss. The waterproof seal hissed as it was being opened and was followed by a burst of daylight that temporarily blinded her. But she didn’t mind. She was never happier to see the sun in her entire life.

‘Is it safe?’ he yelled from the bottom of the ladder. ‘Is it all right?’

‘Just a second.’ She searched the roof for problems and found none. ‘We’re fine.’

‘Thank goodness.’ Boyd climbed to the roof at a methodical pace, trying to catch his breath as he did. Several seconds later, he asked, ‘Now what? Are we just going to sit here and wait?’

‘Wait? Of course we’re not going to wait! For now I’m going to unscrew the bolts on the ladder so we can steal it before they have a chance to use it.’

Boyd stared at Maria for several seconds before breaking into a wheezing laugh. ‘Are you sure you haven’t been chased by the police before? Because you seem to be at ease.’

She shrugged. ‘If you watch enough movies, you can be prepared for anything.’

‘I certainly hope so because our situation is still precarious… Or are you keeping something from me?’

Maria laughed at the irony of his statement and gave him a confident smile. ‘Everyone has some secrets. Right, Dr Boyd?’

It didn’t take long for her to disconnect the ladder and pull it to the roof. To slow the cops even more, she jammed the hatch shut by wedging the guard’s keys between the door and its sturdy metal frame, a trick she’d learned from a Bruce Willis movie.

‘That ought to hold them.’

Boyd didn’t answer, but his smile was a welcome sign to Maria. A few minutes earlier she was afraid that he was going to have a heart attack.

‘I hope you’re feeling better, because you’ll need all your strength to survive our next trick.’

‘And if I may ask, what do you have in mind?’

Instead of answering, she helped Boyd to his feet and led him to the edge of the hundred-foot building. ‘If you’re up to it, I figured we could just jump for it.’

‘What?! You’ve got to be kidding me!’

Maria pointed to a long metal tube that ran from the rooftop at a seventy-degree angle until it flattened out near the bottom. The purpose of the chute was to aid in the disposal of unwanted materials during the construction project. Instead of carrying debris down the stairs or flinging it off the side of the building, the workers dumped their scraps down the slender tube and into a Dumpster below.

She said, ‘I noticed it when I walked to Il Duomo. I figure if it can hold bricks and wood, it should be able to support us.’

Boyd tapped on the tube, trying to gauge how much weight it could handle. Then, after running a few calculations, he eyed the pile of rubble at the bottom and realized it wouldn’t be a comfortable landing.

‘All right, my dear, I’m willing to give this a shot, although I think it would be best if we attempted this one at a time. No sense putting extra strain on the chute by climbing in together.’

‘I couldn’t agree with you more.’

‘Now all we need to do is decide who shall take the initial plunge. In most situations I would follow the rules of chivalry and insist on ladies first. However — ’

‘Great! Sounds good to me!’

Grabbing the top of the chute before Boyd could argue, Maria swung her body inside, giving her all the momentum she needed to get started. From there, it was all downhill as she sailed down the pipe like a bobsledder at the Winter Olympics. The ending was a little rough for her taste — she was shot feet-first into a large pile of wood and plaster — but figured that was much better than the alternative: being shot on the roof by an angry SWAT team.

After dusting herself off, she glanced toward the roof and gave Boyd a big thumbs-up. Reluctantly, he nodded his head, took one last gasp of air, and followed her lead, plunging into the escape tunnel.

In truth, their adventure was just starting. And most of the craziness was yet to come.

33

Jones could speak some Italian, so he was able to translate the article on the bus crash. Which, it turns out, wasn’t a crash after all. According to the newspaper, Dr Boyd was more than just a professor/forger/thief. He was also an escape artist/munitions expert, capable of blowing up a bus in front of half the cops in Italy without getting injured or caught. Pretty good trick, huh?

The story claimed that Boyd shot down a helicopter, hijacked the first bus leaving town, and then fled down a country road that the cops were able to block. After a brief standoff, Boyd detonated a device that killed everyone except himself and managed to escape capture while the heroic police force risked their lives trying to pull injured passengers from the raging inferno.

Payne laughed when he heard that, because he knew it was total bullshit. He knew the worst thing a criminal could do was kill a cop, because it guaranteed a motivated police force, a group looking for retribution even if it meant breaking some laws along the way. Why? Because the police knew if they didn’t strike quick, then every punk with a gun would think they could kill a cop and get away with it. And the next victim could be the cop’s partner. Or even himself.

Therefore Payne knew there was a major problem with the story. There was no way an entire police force was going to surround a bus that had been hijacked by a cop-killer and let him get away. Not a chance. So how did Boyd survive? Furthermore, what type of explosive did he use that could blow up the bus but let him walk away? None that Payne knew, and he knew them all.

Anyway, those were just a few of the things running through Payne’s mind when he listened to the details of the story. They were running through Jones’s mind, too, because he insisted that they drive to the crime scene before it was too dark to see.

To get to the site, which was less than ten miles from the gas station where Payne had cleaned himself up, they pulled off the main highway and went down a country lane that wasn’t built for buses, let alone a Ferrari. A wooden barricade blocked their path a few miles from the site. Plants, flowers, and a few dozen pictures surrounded the barrier, items left behind by the victims’ families in a makeshift shrine. Some people were able to shrug off scenes like that without a second thought, often driving past them like they were street signs or mailboxes. But Payne wasn’t one of those people. His parents were killed by a drunk driver when he was a teenager, so he got reflective every time he saw a bundle of flowers near the road. Of course, Jones knew this about Payne so he got out of the car and moved the barricade by himself.

For as long as he could remember, whenever Payne started thinking about his parents, he found that music helped ease the pain. He knew they still had a few minutes to drive to the bus site, so he decided to test the audio system in the car. Sadly, the only stations Payne could find in the middle of the Apennine Mountains were filled with the depressing sounds of Andrea Bocelli and Marcella Bella. Not exactly what he had in mind. Flipping from station to station, he hoped to find something more upbeat when Jones started yelling at him from near the barricade