For a moment Neri thought he was trying to stop him, and then he realized the young soldier intended to help any way he could. He shook his head. Sometimes there was no accounting for the stupidity of youth.
Noah didn’t know where he was going.
He just ran.
The place was a warren of little paths, overhung alleys and twisting side streets that wove a labyrinthine course through the chapels and apartments in this oddest of cities. He needed to get inside, which meant finding a door. As far as he was concerned any door would do. He knew it wasn’t true, but he didn’t know what else to do.
He tried to see over the rooftops to get a fix on the chimney above the Sistine Chapel and orientate himself. It was pointless.
He heard the heavy slap of running feet behind him and glanced over his shoulder. The young guard from the barrier was running with his Beretta held out in front of him as though it might bite. For a moment Noah thought he was going to try and stop him, and he started to turn back, figuring the soldier’s training wouldn’t be enough to stay his hand if it came down to shooting him in the back or letting him get away. Then the young soldier surprised him and shouted in terrible fractured English, “I help you, James Bond!”
It took Noah a moment to realize what the hell he meant, and that he wasn’t about to get himself shot in the back. “The Sistine Chapel? Where is it?”
“I help you, James Bond!” the guard repeated. “Follow me!”
He didn’t exactly have a lot of choice. He could have r around like a blind mouse in the maze for a month of Sundays without getting any closer to the chapel if he was left to his own devices.
Abandonato closed his eyes. His entire face was flushed, his hair was plastered down across his scalp. He was shaking. He was walking awkwardly, favoring his right side because a stitch burned there. He was panting.
The guard looked at him as he approached. He felt sure the guard was going to stop him, to challenge him to prove his right to be there. He had every right, of course, his apartment was beyond the wall. This was where he lived. There were only one hundred and ten guards sworn in the service of the Holy See. He knew them all by sight. Likewise they knew him by sight. If they were looking for him, now was when he would find out. They didn’t stop him. The guard nodded slightly, then stepped back, allowing Abandonato through. It was ludicrously simple. Even after the assassination, they trusted the outfit. It was a costume, clothes, the familiarity of his face. He wanted to scream in the man’s face. It didn’t make him good! He might have had the olive-white complexion of the Mediterranean, but he was every bit as vile a terrorist as any Middle Eastern suicide bomber. The only difference was he was too much of a coward. His “bomb” was already in place, just waiting for the flame that would shrivel the plastic and release the toxic gas.
He shuffled along quickly, heading for the Sistine Chapel.
He didn’t know how he was going to stop the conclave.
He hadn’t thought that far ahead.
The washed-out colors of the murals and the corridors seemed so much more alive to Abandonato. It was almost as though knowing it was all going to end heightened his senses and made everything so much brighter and more vivid. He saw the paintings of Michelangelo’s apprentices and Bernini’s journeymen as though looking at them through new eyes. Every brush stroke was rendered exquisitely. He wanted to linger, to run his fingers over the colors as though he might soak up their brilliance and absorb it into his skin. But that was the Devil talking, trying to delay him while his evil work was done.
He cursed himself and hurried on, following the path his feet knew so well, praying the Lord still believed in him. Give me the strength, he thought, coming around the final corner.
He had made it. A surge of relief broke over him. He thought he was going to collapse under it. He stumbled into the antechamber. He was consumed by a single thought: get inside the chapel before they lit the coals.
Six guards stood at the door of the Pope Sixtus’ chapel, the same six who had stood on the stage with Peter the Roman in Germany, the inner ring, the six most loyal. Five stared eyes front. The sixth looked at Abandonato as he buckled. For a moment he thought he was going collapse and go sprawling across the floor. He didn’t. The only collapse was internal, hope caving in to despair. It is always the most loyal, Abandonato thought, locking eyes with the man whose silver blade had slain the Holy Father. That had always been the Sicarii way.
He was so close.
One door away.
But that door wasn’t merely chained and guarded, it was chained and guarded by Peter’s murderer, the last Sicarii assassin. The assassin had one final task: to see that the conclave’s seal would not be broken until the new Vicar of Christ had been chosen-by which time the College of Cardinal’s would be dead, murdered not by the assassin, but by Abandonato’s hand.
He knew it was useless.
He knew he had failed.
Still he had to try.
“I have to speak with the Cardinal Dean,” he demanded, breathless. There was no conviction behind his words, as though he expected to be denied. He barely had the air in his lungs to fuel the words. He was a broken man.
“The conclave is sealed, Monsignor,” the assassin said. “It cannot be broken. That is the law of the conclave. Whatever your message, it must wait.”
“No,” Abandonato pleaded. “It cannot. I must speak with the Cardinal Dean.” He stepped forward, reaching out to grab the guard’s uniform and shake him to make him understand-but of course he understood. He had engineered it. The man was Solomon’s left hand. Abandonato hesitated at the thought of “most loyal.” It seemed foul when he applied it to the murderer’s cause. The priest didn’t even know what his real name was. He wasn’t Swiss; his entire identity was a lie, though he did bare a passing resemblance to the young man whose life he had stolen. When the fire was lit he would leave the Holy See and return to his master, his job here done. Abandonato stopped himself from clutching the man’s double His hand just hung there between them, reaching out, while the guard stared at him. Abandonato could see the black hatred smoldering in his eyes.
“Control yourself, Monsignor. Conclave will not be broken.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “You have to open the doors. You have to let me in. Please,” Abandonato begged. He didn’t know what else to say. All the way here he had thought about nothing more than reaching the doors, as though God would see them break open before him, like the waves of the Red Sea for Moses. He hadn’t expected the assassin to bar his way. He had thought he would simply throw himself on their mercy. He was so close. One door was all that stood between him and redemption. He couldn’t bear it. He reached out for the chains, but two of the guards beside him closed ranks and took hold of his arms, restraining him physically. They weren’t gentle. “There is a traitor,” he said, barely able to say the words. “The conclave is breached…”
“Impossible,” the assassin said, reasonably. His black eyes burned into Abandonato. “We have been on duty since the doors were sealed. No one has entered. No one has left. That is the law of conclave. You are mistaken. There is no traitor here. If you insist on trying to force your way in to the chapel, we will have no choice but to think you are the one with treachery in your heart, and we would have to stop you. I take no pleasure in this, Monsignor, but the law is the law.”
Abandonato felt every ounce of strength drain out of him. “Have mercy,” he pleaded. But there was no mercy here, and no redemption. His sins would find him out.
The assassin stepped in close, his lips no more than a few inches away from Abandonato’s ear and said, “Return to your chambers, Monsignor. Let God’s will be done. I will come to look in on you when my duty is done. I will see you are taken care of. I understand your grief and pain, but you must abide by the will of Our Father, just as we all must.”
Abandonato slumped.
“Go with God, Monsignor,” the assassin said, and from his tone Abandonato knew he was mocking him.
He wanted to scream, but all he could do was turn his back. He wasn’t a fighter. He didn’t have a gun and even if he had, he would not have been able to wield it. Force went against everything he believed in. But there was so little left for him to believe. He wanted to believe he had been seduced, like Eve, tempted into the path of evil.
