struck the Russian as dreadfully wrong that a holy man should be accorded the same sort of frenzied welcome as a pop star.
He was six rows from the front.
He needed to be closer, but the people were packed in so tightly now he found himself having to move sideways along the line as he looked for a gap to squeeze himself through.
Up on the facade of St. Florin’s church the huge iron minute hand of the clock juddered forward another minute, coming to hang over the Pope’s head like some huge sword of Damocles. Konstantin was breathing hard, forcing himself to keep it regular: in and out, hold, in and out. In and out, hold, in and out.
He knew exactly what he looked like.
He didn’t care.
In six minutes the Pope would be dead if he didn’t stop it.
The Vicar of Christ walked to the center of the stage, coming up to the microphones. He leaned forward and, holding both hands up palms toward the congregation, said, “Thank you.” He spoke in English, not German, not Latin, and not his native Italian. Up close Peter II, the man they called Peter the Roman, was older than he appeared in any of the photographs Konstantin had seen of the man. Indeed, he had aged since his election to office on the death of Benedict XVI a little over a year before.
Five minutes.
Peter II crossed himself then leaned on the lectern, supporting himself by grasping both sides of the stand. “Dear brothers and sisters,” the Holy Father said, his voice carried by the microphones to the far reaches of the crowd. He offered them all a smile. Konstantin’s eyes roved wildly from the Pope to the faces of the guards around him, looking for the traitor. “This evening we share between us is truly extraordinary, not for the sky beneath which we stand, nor for the friends at our sides, for both of which give thanks, but for the blazing light of the Risen Christ, which defeats the darkest power of evil and death and rekindles hope and joy in the hearts of believers. Look to the sky, see the failing sun and the rising moon, their light never fails us, for theirs is the light of the Risen Christ.
“Dear friends, let us pray together to the Lord Jesus so that the world may see and recognize that, thanks to his passion, death and resurrection, what was destroyed is rebuilt; what was aging is renewed and completely restored, more beautiful than ever, to its original wholeness.” He lowered his head.
Everyone in the crowd did likewise, except for Konstantin, the BKA agents and the Swiss Guard on the stage.
Konstantin forced his way closer to the stage as the murmured prayers rose to exhort the heavens. Konstantin had a single prayer on his lips, but God wasn’t listening, and the press of people mocked him. He risked a sideways glance and saw two of the black-suited BKA men pushing into the crowd behind him, and another running along the side toward the stage. They were hunting him. They hadn’t drawn their guns. Yet.
He was two people from the stage.
The guards on either side of the Pope stared at him.
Konstantin stared back, trying to read murder in their faces. Any one of them could have been capable of the killing. That was the chilling realization he had as he got close enough to really see them. They were the same. Face by face there was nothing different in the way they looked at him. Any one of them, or all of them, could have been the assassin.
Or none of them.
He could be wrong.
No. The Sicarii made themselves invaluable to their targets. They stood at their side as best friends, then slipped their daggers into their “friends.” This place, this crowd was perfect.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t have been played by Devere, steered into another mistake-this one fatal. The man was playing a long game, and each move was thoughtful and well planned. The set-up here was perfect. It could have been a fake, luring him into the open, turning him into the “assassin” and allowing the BKA to take him out, allowing the Pope to die another day when their guard was down.
He glanced to the right and saw two more BKA agents running along the side of the crowd, following the route the cars had taken to the stage. The pair had their guns drawn and held low so as not to startle the crowd.
They were staring at him as they ran.
He pushed between another couple with their heads bowed in prayer. He didn’t let them slow him. He couldn’t afford to. He looked up at the big clock. He had a minute. Two. It was difficult to tell precisely. There would be a small disparity between the timer, his watch and the church clock, but he had no way of knowing precisely how big it would be until the gunshot came. And by then it would be academic.
There was less than a minute.
He reached the stage as the first of the BKA men reached the steps.
Four things happened at once. The gunshot cracked, followed a fraction of a second later by two more, and the trees exploded in feathers and fear, a hundred birds startled into flight. Peter II’s head came up, his prayer broken. There was naked fear in his eyes. He knew tsound. Of course he knew it; it was hard-coded into the DNA of every man, woman and child under the sun. He stopped talking, so the speakers all around the square fell silent. There was a lull for a heartbeat as the shock registered, then people reacted, torn from their prayers by the unmistakable sound of the gunshot. At first there were screams of shock as the birds exploded from the trees, then the screams changed in nature and pitch from confused to frightened. On the stage the Swiss Guard reacted, lunging forward to protect the Holy Father. Konstantin saw the glint of silver in the nearest guard’s hand.
He couldn’t let the man reach the Pope-even though that meant throwing himself up onto the stage.
Konstantin shouted out a warning as he hit the red cloth of the stage.
He thought a second silent prayer then, gambling that the BKA agents wouldn’t take a shot through the crowd for risk of hitting some innocent bystander. In their place he would have taken the shot, risking the collateral damage to protect the principal. He had to hope they were better men than he was. Because that was what it was going to come down to: How much did they value human life? Pope Peter II’s, his, the crowd’s? For this instant, this second, everything hung in the balance. Another shot would almost certainly cause a stampede as frightened people ran for their lives, and in such a tight enclosure more than a few of them would be hurt in the crush.
Konstantin hit the stage and rolled, coming up on his knees, hands pressed flat against the red cloth.
Two of the Swiss Guard reacted while the others seemed trapped in indecision. They came forward to stop him, halberds leveled at his chest. The only other guard moving reached the Pope and seemed to be protecting him from the madman that had rushed the stage. Konstantin saw the silver dagger clenched in his fist.
He didn’t have a choice. He didn’t even have time to reach around and pull his Glock. All he could do was launch himself toward the Pope and pray his momentum took the pair of them out of the range of the Judas dagger.
He threw himself at the pair of them full on, hitting the old man in the chest, both hands hard to the ribs and barreling him off his feet. The collision sent all three of them-Pope, assassin and savior-sprawling. Konstantin fell on top of the old man, his weight throwing him down hard. They landed on the red carpet together. All around them screams and shouts erupted. He couldn’t hear any individual words. He didn’t need to. There was no doubting what they were for.
It didn’t matter.
He had done it. He had reached the Holy Father in time. He had beaten the clock, beaten the assassin. He had saved Peter II’s life. He closed his eyes, waiting for the hands to grab him and haul him off the white-haired Pontiff. He felt the man breathing beneath him. It wasn’t a smooth regular rise and fall of the chest; it was erratic, desperate, like a man struggling desperately to draw his next breath.
Konstantin rolled away from the old man.
It wasn’t his weight that had winded the priest.
There was blood on his hands when they came away from the Pope. He looked down at him. The old man lay sprawled across the red of the stage. It took Konstantin a second to see it. There was blood where the silver blade had pierced the Pope’s white cassock. The hilt of the damned dagger jutted out through the purple tippet wrapped around Peter II’s neck, driven in through the gold cross woven into the cloth. There was a lot of blood, too much. The gold and purple quickly stained red as the blood pumped out through the wound. The Holy Father clutched at the dagger’s hilt. His lips moved. Konstantin heard the barest whisper of a prayer on his lips: “Father, forgive… know not… what…” It was the last prayer of Jesus as he hung dying on the cross, the prayer to his father to save
