The Last Templar - Страница 59

"Like murder suspects in their hospital beds?"

De Angelis let it go. "Twenty years ago, communism was spreading like a cancer. How do you think we won the Cold War? What do you think brought it down? The SDI, Reagan's 'Star Wars'? The Soviet government's stunning incompetence? Partly. But you know what really made it happen? The pope. A Polish pope, reaching out, connecting with his flock, getting them to tear down those walls with their bare hands. Khomeini did the same thing, broadcasting his speeches from Paris while he was in exile, igniting a spiritually starved population thousands of miles away, inspiring them to rise up and kick out the Shah. What a mistake that was, allowing that to happen . . . Look where we are today. And now, Bin Laden's using it too . . ." He paused, frowning inwardly, then fixed on Reilly sharply. "The right words can move mountains. Or destroy them.

And more than anything in our arsenal, religion is our ultimate weapon, and we can't afford to let anyone disarm us. Our way of life, everything you've been fighting for since you joined the Bureau, hinges on it . . . everything. So my question to you is simple: are you, as your president once put it so eloquently, with us ... or against us?"

Reilly's face hardened, and he felt his chest constrict. The wall of doubt he'd hastily erected was obliterated by the monsignor's mere presence. It was an unwelcome substantiation of everything Vance had said.

"So it's all true?" he asked, as if emerging from a fog.

The monsignor's answer came back dry and fast. "Does it matter?"

Reilly nodded absently. He wasn't sure anymore.

De Angelis looked around, scanning the bare ground. "I assume you don't have it anymore?"

"What?"

"The astrolabe."

Reilly was taken aback by the question. "How did you know about—?" he fired back, before his voice trailed off, realizing he and Tess must have been under audio surveillance the whole time. He went quiet and let his anger settle for a moment, then shook his head, dejected, and said, "They've got it."

"Do you know where they are?" De Angelis asked.

Reluctantly, and still deeply mistrustful of the monsignor, Reilly filled him in about what had happened the night before.

The monsignor weighed the information somberly. "They don't have much of a head start, and we know the general area they're heading for.

We'll find them." He turned, raising a hand and twirling it around, signaling the pilot to fire up the twin turbines, before glancing again at Reilly. "Let's go."

Reilly just stood there and shook his head. "No. You know what? If it's all one big lie ... I hope it blows you all out of the water."

De Angelis looked at him, thrown.

Reilly held his gaze for a moment. "You can go to hell," he said flatly, "you and the rest of your CIA buddies. I'm out." And with that, he turned and walked away.

"We need you," the monsignor called out after him. "You can help us find them."

Reilly didn't bother turning around. "Find them yourself. I'm done."

He kept walking.

The priest's voice bellowed out after him, struggling against the growing whine of the chopper's engines. "What about Tess? You gonna leave her with him? She could still be helpful. And if anyone can get through to her, you can."

Reilly turned, still walking, taking a few steps backward. He saw De Angelis's knowing glare, which made it clear the monsignor knew how close he and Tess had gotten. He just shrugged. "Not anymore."

De Angelis watched him leave. "What are you going to do? Walk back to New York?"

Reilly didn't stop. He didn't answer either.

The monsignor called out after him one last time. His voice was now angry, and tinged with frustration.

"Reilly!"

Reilly stopped, dropping his head for a moment before deciding to turn.

De Angelis took a few steps forward and joined him. His mouth shaped a smile, but his eyes remained bleak and remote. "If I can't convince you to work with us . . . maybe I can take you to someone who can."

Chapter 71

V atican or CIA, whoever made the travel arrangements had done a pretty good job. The helicopter had flown to a military air base near Karacasu, not far north from where Reilly had been picked up. Once there, he and De Angelis boarded a waiting G-IV, which had flown up from Dalaman to pick them up, and made the fast journey west to Italy. Immigration and Customs were swiftly bypassed in Rome, and, less than three hours after the monsignor had materialized out of a dust cloud in the Turkish mountains, they were speeding through the Eternal City in the cosseted comfort of an air-conditioned, black-windowed Lexus.

Reilly needed a shower and clean clothes, but, as De Angelis was in a hurry, he'd had to settle for washing on board the jet and replacing his wetsuit with BDU pants and a gray T-shirt hastily obtained from the Turkish air force base's supply center. He didn't complain. After the wet-suit, the battle dress uniform was a welcome relief, and, more to the point, he was in a hurry too. He was feeling increasingly uneasy about Tess. He wanted to find her, although he tried not to delve too deeply into his motives. He was also having second thoughts about having agreed to the monsignor's invitation; he wasn't sure what awaited him at their final destination, and the sooner he was out of there and back on the ground in Turkey, he thought, the better. But it was too late to pull out. He had clearly sensed from De Angelis's quiet insistence that this visit wasn't just an idle whim.

He had spotted Saint Peter's Basilica from the aircraft, and now, as the Lexus cut its way through the midday traffic, he saw it again, looming up ahead, its colossal dome soaring gloriously out of the haze and chaos of the congested city. Although the sight of such a prodigious edifice inevitably inspired feelings of awe in even the most hardened of disbelievers, Reilly felt only betrayal and anger. He didn't know much about the world's greatest church, beyond that it housed the Sistine Chapel and that it was built over the resting spot of the bones of Saint Peter, the Church's first pope, who had died there after being crucified, upside down, for his faith. As he looked at it, he thought of all the sublime works of art and architecture the same faith had inspired, the paintings, statues, and places of worship that had been created around the world by the followers of Christ. He thought of the countless children who said their bedtime prayers every night, the millions of worshippers who attended church services every Sunday, the sick who prayed for healing, and the bereaved who prayed for the souls of the departed. Had they all been deceived too? Was it all a lie? And, even worse—had the Vatican known all along?

The Lexus made its way down the Via de Porta Angelica to the Saint Anne gate, where a large, cast-iron portal was opened by colorfully outfitted Swiss Guards just as the car reached it. With a quick nod from the monsignor, the Lexus was waved in, entering the smallest country on the planet and ushering Reilly into the center of his troubled spiritual world.

The car stopped outside a porticoed stone building, and De Angelis promptly got out. Reilly followed him up the short steps and into the solemn hush of a double-volume vestibule. They walked briskly along stone-flagged corridors, through dim, high-ceilinged rooms, and up wide marble staircases, finally reaching an intricately carved wooden door. The monsignor put away his aviator shades and replaced them with his old tinted glasses. Reilly looked on as, with the ease of a great actor about to go onstage, De Angelis's expression morphed from that of a merciless covert operative into the gentle priest who had materialized that day in New York. To Reilly's added surprise, he took a deep breath before he rapped his knuckles firmly on the door.

The answer came back quickly in a soft-spoken tone.

"Avanti"

De Angelis opened the door and led the way inside.

The walls of the cavernous room were lined with shelves from floor to ceiling and overflowed with books. The herringboned, oak floor had no rugs. In one corner, by a stone fireplace, a large chenille sofa sat between two matching armchairs. Backing up to a towering pair of French windows was a desk, which had a heavily padded chair behind it and three wingback chairs facing it. The room's only occupant, a burly and commanding figure with grizzled gray hair, stepped around the desk to greet De Angelis and his guest. A somber severity was etched on his face.

De Angelis introduced Cardinal Brugnone to Reilly, and the men shook hands. The cardinal's grip was unexpectedly firm, and Reilly felt he was being studied with an unsettling perspicacity as the old man's eyes moved over him silently. Without taking his eyes off his guest, Brugnone exchanged a few words in Italian with the monsignor, which Reilly couldn't make out.

"Please sit down, Agent Reilly," he finally said to him, motioning toward the sofa. "I hope you will accept my gratitude for all that you have done and continue to do in this unfortunate matter. And also for agreeing to come here today."

As soon as Reilly had taken a seat, and with De Angelis settling into another chair, Brugnone made it clear he was in no mood for idle chatter by coming quickly to the point. "I've been given some background information on you." Reilly glanced at De Angelis, who did not meet his gaze. "I'm told you are a man who can be trusted and who does not compromise his integrity." The big man paused, his intense, brown eyes bearing down on Reilly.