Red Rabbit

the on/off switch and flipped it off and on. “What’s the range on the radios?”

“Three miles—five kilometers—the manual says. More than we need. Ready?”

“Yeah.” Jack stood, set his pistol snugly on the left side of his belt, and followed Sharp out to the car.

Traffic was agreeably light this morning. Italian drivers were not, from what he’d seen so far, the raving maniacs he’d heard them to be. But the people out now would be people heading soberly to work, whether it was selling real estate or working in a warehouse. One of the difficult things for a tourist to remember was that a city was just another city, not a theme park set in place for his personal amusement.

And damned sure this morning Rome wasn’t here for anything approaching that, was it? Jack asked himself coldly.

Sharp parked his official Bentley about where they expected Strokov to park. There were other cars there, people who worked in the handful of shops, or perhaps early shoppers hoping to get their buying done before Wednesday’s regularly scheduled chaos.

In any case, this most expensive of British motorcars had diplomatic tags, and nobody would fool with it. Getting out, he followed Sharp into the piazza and reached back with his right hand to flip his radio on without exposing his pistol.

“Okay,” he said into his lapel. “Ryan is here. Who else is on the net?”

“Sparrow in place on the colonnade,” a voice answered immediately.

“King, in place.”

“Ray Stones, in place.”

“Parker, in place,” Phil Parker, the last of the arrivals from London, reported from his spot on the side street.

“Tom Sharp here with Ryan. We’ll do a radio check every fifteen minutes. Report immediately if you see the least thing of interest. Out.” He turned to Ryan. “So, that’s done.”

“Yeah.” He checked his watch. They had hours to go before the Pope appeared. What would he be doing now? He was supposed to be a very early riser. Doubtless the first important thing he did every day was to say Mass, like every Catholic priest in the world, and it was probably the most important part of his morning routine, something to remind himself exactly what he was—a priest sworn to God’s service—a reality he’d known and probably celebrated within his own mind through Nazi and communist oppression for forty-odd years, serving his flock. But now his flock, his parish, straddled the entire world, as did his responsibility to them, didn’t it?

Jack reminded himself of his time in the Marine Corps. Crossing the Atlantic on his helicopter-landing ship— unknowingly on his way to a life-threatening helicopter crash—on Sunday they’d held church services, and at that moment the church pennant had been run up to the truck. It flew over the national ensign. It was the U.S. Navy’s way of acknowledging that there was one higher loyalty than the one a man had for his country. That loyalty was to God Himself—the one power higher than that of the United States of America, and his country acknowledged that. Jack could feel it, here and now, carrying a gun. He could feel that fact like a physical weight on his shoulders. There were people who wanted the Pope—the Vicar of Christ on earth—dead. And that, suddenly, was massively offensive to him. The worst street criminal gave a priest, minister, or rabbi a free pass, because there might really be a god up there, and it wouldn’t do to harm His personal representative among the people. How much more would God be annoyed by the murder of His #1 Representative on Planet Earth. The Pope was a man who’d probably never hurt a single human being in his life. The Catholic Church was not a perfect institution—nothing with mere people in it was or ever could be. But it was founded on faith in Almighty God, and its policies rarely, if ever, strayed from love and charity.

But those doctrines were seen as a threat by the Soviet Union. What better proof of who the Bad Guys were in the world? Ryan had sworn as a Marine to fight his country’s enemies. But here and now he swore to himself to fight against God’s own enemies. The KGB recognized no power higher than the Party it served. And, in proclaiming that, they defined themselves as the enemy of all mankind—for wasn’t mankind made in God’s own image? Not Lenin’s. Not Stalin’s. God’s.

Well, he had a pistol designed by John Moses Browning, an American, perhaps a Mormon—Browning had come from Utah, but Jack didn’t know what faith he’d adhered to—to help him see about that.

Time passed slowly for Ryan. Constant reference to his watch didn’t help. People were arriving steadily. Not in large numbers, but rather like a baseball crowd, arriving single, or in pairs, or in small family groups. Lots of children, infants carried by their mothers, some escorted by nuns—school trips, almost certainly—to see the Pontifex Maximus. That term, too, came from the Romans, who with remarkably clarity likened a priest to a pontifex—bridge builder—between men and what was greater than men.

Vicar of Christ on earth was what kept repeating in Jack’s mind. This Strokov bastard—hell, he would have killed Jesus Himself. A new Pontius Pilate—if not an oppressor himself, then certainly the representative of the oppressors, here to spit in God’s face. It wasn’t that he could harm God, of course. Nobody was that big, but in attacking one of God’s institutions and God’s personal representative—well, that was plenty bad enough. God was supposed to punish such people in His own good time… and maybe the Lord chose His instruments to handle that for Him… maybe even ex-Marines from the United States of America…

Noon. It would be a warm day. What had it been like to live here in Roman times without air-conditioning? Well, they hadn’t known the difference, and the body adapted itself to the environment—something in the medulla, Cathy had told him once. It would have been more comfortable to take his jacket off, but not with a pistol stuck in his belt… There were street vendors about, selling cold drinks and ice cream. Like money changers in the Temple? Jack wondered. Probably not. The priests in evidence didn’t chase them away. Hmm, a good way for the bad guy to get close with his weapon? he suddenly wondered. But they were a good way off, and it was too late to worry about that, and none of them matched the photos he had. Jack had a small print of Strokov’s face in his left hand, and looked down at it every minute or so. The bastard might be wearing a disguise, of course. He’d be stupid not to, and Strokov probably wasn’t stupid. Not in his business. Disguises didn’t cover everything. Hair length and color, sure. But not height. It took major surgery to do that. You could make a guy look heavier, but not lighter. Facial hair? Okay, look for a guy with a beard or mustache. Ryan turned and scanned the area. Nope. Nothing obvious, anyway.

Half an hour to go. The crowd was buzzing now, people speaking a dozen or more languages. He could see tourists and the faithful from many lands. Blond heads from Scandinavia, African blacks, Asians. Some obvious Americans… but no obvious Bulgarians. What did Bulgarians look like? This new problem was that the Catholic Church was supposed to be universal, and that meant people of every physical description. Lots of possible disguises.

“Sparrow, Ryan. See anything likely?” Jack asked his lapel.

“Negative,” the voice in his ear answered. “I’m scanning the crowd around you. Nothing to report.”

“Roger,” Jack acknowledged.

“If he’s here, he’s bloody invisible,” Sharp said, standing next to Ryan. They were eight or ten yards from the interlocking steel barriers brought in for the Pope’s weekly appearance. They looked heavy. Two men to put them on the truck, or four? Jack wondered. He discovered that the mind liked to wander at times like this, and he had to guard against that. Keep scanning the crowd, he told himself.

There’s too many goddamned faces! the self responded angrily. And as soon as the fucker gets into place, he’ll be looking away.

“Tom, how about we edge forward and sweep along the railing?”

“Good idea,” Sharp agreed at once.

The crowd was difficult, but not impossible, to slip through. Ryan checked his watch. Fifteen minutes. People were now edging against the barriers, wanting to get close. There was a belief from medieval times that the mere touch of a king could cure the ill or bring good fortune, and evidently that belief lingered—and how much more true if the man in question was the Pontifex Maximus? Some of the people here would be cancer victims, entreating God for a miracle. Maybe some miracles actually happened. Docs called that spontaneous remission and wrote it off to biological processes they didn’t yet understand. But maybe they really were miracles—to the recipients they certainly were exactly that. It was just one more thing Ryan didn’t understand.

People were leaning forward more, heads were turning to the face of the church.

“Sharp/Ryan, Sparrow. Possible target, twenty feet to your left, standing three ranks back of the barrier. Blue