CHAPTER 52
His composure was feigned. It was what he guessed would serve him best with those particular men, but he didn’t feel anything like as collected as he had seemed, and once out in the night air, he found his pulse beginning to race as the day’s accumulated horrors registered fully for the first time. His brain had managed to push back the enormity of Roberta’s deception, the attempt on his life, the death of Pietro, and the episode in the Fontanelle, but now it was all massing above him like a dam threatening to burst. He also ached from his various exertions, the fighting and the running, but he knew that he had to somehow keep it together, now more than ever.
He found a side window into the presbytery and broke it as quietly as he could with his elbow. He allowed himself no more than three minutes inside, time enough to wash, dump his clothes, and grab a pair of ill-fitting trousers and a cotton shirt, both gray, from Pietro’s wardrobe. They smelled musty, as if the priest had grown out of them long ago and they had merely hung there ignored ever since. He let himself out of the side door, walking in a manner that he hoped looked both casual and businesslike.
He wanted to call the police, tell them about Pietro and the ghoul in the Fontanelle, but he knew that he was a suspect in the death of Satoh and that he was the obvious link to Pietro. He also knew that he was no longer being merely threatened and spied upon: someone wanted him dead. Pietro’s body would probably remain undiscovered till morning, when a flower arranger or pious parishioner who stopped in to light a candle on her way to work would find him there. Thomas winced at the thought.
“Sorry,” he said aloud, to both the dead priest and whoever would be scarred by finding him.
But if they wouldn’t find Pietro till morning he had the rest of the night to go underground. He dared not go back to his hotel, but he had his passport and wallet with him. Roberta would be waking, maybe was already hitching a ride back into town, relying once more on the way her Franciscan habit made her respectable and safe.
But what did “going underground” mean in a city he didn’t know, where he didn’t speak the language beyond ordering a glass of wine and a pizza? He had two allies remaining in the area, he thought. Deborah Miller, whom he barely knew and who would be leaving the country in a matter of days, and Father Giovanni, whose friendship and trust would take a significant hit when the death of Pietro came out.
You have to get out of Naples.
And go where?
He hailed a cab and mimed tapping on a computer keyboard.
“Internet?” said the driver, checking his watch. It was after ten. “Si.”
Thomas got in.
The Internet point he was driven to wasn’t a café so much as an alcove in the corner of a sparsely populated bar. The computer was an ancient, bone-colored machine that seemed incapable of running anything produced in the last twenty-five years, the mouse a built-in orange tracking device the size of a billiard ball, the keyboard surrounded by large green lighted keys. It looked less like a computer than the representation of one from some sixties sci-fi show.
Astonishingly, it not only worked, it was fast and Thomas was soon online.
He was surprised to find a message from Deborah. It read simply, “Check this out. Intriguing, huh?” With it was a link to a New York Times story dated two days ago. Thomas read the headline, EVIDENCE OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY ROCKS JAPAN,” and then stared openmouthed at the picture below it. It showed a beaming Japanese man holding a silver cross, studded with precious stones, the center marked by a now-familiar fish with leglike fins. For a long moment he just looked, then he read:
Japanese anthropological science was today sent into astonished confusion by celebrity archaeologist Michihiro Watanabe, who revealed the discovery of a Christian burial site in a seventh-century Japanese tomb. If authentic, it would not only demonstrate a previously unknown Christian evangelism to East Asia, but would antedate the first known presence of any Europeans in Japan by many centuries. “It’s a breathtaking discovery,” said Robert Levine of the Center for Asian Studies at Stanford University. “It will necessitate the complete rethinking of Japanese-European relations in the medieval period.” The burial site in landlocked Yamanashi prefecture is structured in traditional Kofun style but contains what has been preliminarily identified as an early Italian crucifix amid what seem to be the bones of European travelers . . .
Thomas sat back and blew out a long sigh. Not just Japan: Yamanashi, the very place where he and Kumi had met.
Thomas read the text again. He knew his brother had been to Japan. Was this what took him there? Was this the Herculaneum cross Ed was alleged to have possessed?
You knew it would come to this.
He pulled up a series of travel websites and began looking at flights to Japan. Then he wrote to Deborah, to Jim, and—on impulse—to Senator Devlin. All three messages contained the same text.
“In danger. Going after Ed. Will be in touch.”
He needed another safety net. He stared at the three addresses that would receive the e-mail, then separated them out and attached his complete itinerary to the message that would go to Jim.