Suddenly, through blurry double vision, Conte saw something cartwheeling through the air. It struck him hard in the chest. A hammer? Raising the Glock, he blindly squeezed off a shot, just in case Bersei felt like attempting another blow.
The light disappeared down the passageway as Conte tried to pull himself together.
Running to the light source at the end of the passage, Bersei was grateful Conte’s shots had missed him. Agonizing over the possibility that this might be a dead end, he focused on the luminous cone of sunlight at the tunnel’s terminus that offered some hope of escape. The breeze was blowing stronger now. Maybe, just maybe, he’d get out of this appalling place alive.
But only a couple meters from the shaft, Bersei slid to a stop, just before the gaping opening in the floor where the sunlight flowed down a wide, ragged shaft. He stared down its throat, four, perhaps five stories to a rocky bottom.
The lower galleries . Three more levels lay below, he reminded himself. The restorers must have opened the ventilation shaft to help release lingering subterranean gases.
Christ help me .
His eyes drifted up to the light source. The shaft was too wide to climb. Worse, a heavy iron grate sealed the opening high above. Despair closed in on him like a vice.
Suddenly from behind, he heard a slight noise.
Bersei turned just in time to see Conte’s body poised in horizontal form, launched in mid air like a projectile. The assassin’s shoeless feet caught Bersei square in the chest, throwing him back violently across the mouth of the shaft, slamming his body against the wall beyond.
The flashlight tumbled downward end over end until it smashed onto the rocks far below.
For a split second, Bersei was suspended on the wall, his feet caught on the small ridge that formed a rim around the opening. But the force of the impact teetered him forward uncontrollably. He reflexively kicked out from the wall, hurling himself across to the other side of the aperture, adrenaline pumping hard. Fingers clawed earth and squeezed. But there was nothing to hold onto.
The jagged rocks pinwheeled around him as he plummeted down to collide head first into the tufa at the base of the shaft.
Conte stared down into the abyss. Spread across the shaft’s rocky bottom, Giovanni Bersei was bent into an unnatural shape, blood oozing from his collapsed skull, broken bones protruding through skin.
The hunter smiled. A clean kill that would appear to be an unfortunate accident. It would probably be days, perhaps weeks, before the body was found. Even the awful smell of rotting flesh could be dismissed down here. After all, that’s what this place was designed for.
Backtracking through the tunnels, Conte gathered his shoes, gun, and coat. He even managed to find the Glock’s discharged bullets and casings. It was a rule to never leave behind solid ballistics evidence. That’s why he’d used XM8s for the Jerusalem job. By now, those slugs would have the investigators spinning in circles, trying to figure out how a prototype weapon that should have been stockpiled somewhere in a United States military bunker had wound up in the possession of nameless mercenaries.
Unlocking the door, he made his way into the foyer. Returning the keys to the rigid docent, he grabbed the laptop bag, unbolted the entrance and went outside, closing the door behind him. Taking a moment to let his eyes adjust to the glaring sunlight, Conte proceeded to wheel Bersei’s Vespa over to the white Fiat rental van. Opening its rear doors, he manhandled the cycle into the rear compartment, closed the doors, and jumped behind the wheel. For a moment, he eyed himself in the rearview mirror. A purple lump the size of a walnut had welled up on his right temple. Luckily, Bersei’s swing hadn’t been perfectly timed or he might have been knocked unconscious.
All things considered, it had been a good job.
54
******
Vatican City
At ten to ten, Father Patrick Donovan entered the lab looking like he hadn’t slept in days. A leather satchel hung at his side. “Good morning, Dr. Hennesey.”
Seated beside the ossuary, Charlotte forced her eyes up from the relic.
Donovan looked around the lab for the anthropologist. “Is Dr. Bersei here?”
“I was going to call you earlier,” she said. “He hasn’t come in yet.” Bending the truth was not something she was good at. But now, for Giovanni’s sake, she found herself trying harder than ever to be convincing.
“That’s strange.” Immediately, he suspected that Conte was up to no good, because as Donovan had just come down the corridor, he had noticed that the makeshift surveillance room was unlocked and vacant. Apparently, Conte had left in a hurry. “I hope everything is okay.”
“I know what you mean. Doesn’t seem like him to be late.”
“Especially for something so important,” Donovan added. “Well, I was really hoping he could be here for the presentation. Think you can handle this without him?”
“Sure,” she replied, her insides roiling. How could she possibly go through with this alone? What if Bersei was right? And what if she wasn’t safe in Vatican City? The only solace she had was her gut feeling that this priest would watch over her. Rarely was she wrong about someone’s character.
Donovan checked his watch. “We really should get going. I don’t want to be late.”
Forcing a smile, Charlotte slung her laptop bag over her shoulder, took the sizeable presentation portfolio in her hands, and followed Donovan out into the corridor. “So where are we going exactly?”
He glanced over at her. “To the office of the secretary of state, Cardinal Antonio Carlo Santelli.”
55
******
Traversing the Apostolic Palace’s grand corridor, Donovan stole a glimpse at Charlotte as she strode beside him, seeing in her eyes the same awe he’d experienced the first time he saw this place. “Spectacular, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” She was trying to calm her nerves as she eyed the heavily armed Swiss Guards stationed along the corridor. “Amazingly grand.”
He motioned to the lofty ceiling. “The pope lives one floor up.”
