Salita ai Giardini Street, bordering Vatican City: 9:31 a.m.
“I’m not entirely sure I understand what just happened,” Alexander confessed as he and Gabriella left the round tower at the edge of the Apostolic Palace.
Gabriella made no attempt to keep the smile from her face. “Admit it, Alex, you walked in there expecting to be stonewalled and dismissed at every turn. Cynic!”
Alexander raised his hands in mock surrender. “Guilty.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a new pack of MS Filtros bought at the same time they’d purchased their new phones, and lit up. “That went nothing at all like I was expecting.”
“Later, you and I are going to have a conversation about your attitude toward the Church, Mr. Trecchio,” Gabriella said. “Enough experiences like this and I have hopes of bringing you back into the fold.”
Alexander smiled as they approached the mid-sized, wretchedly orange Opel. The locks clicked open. She was talking about a future.
“That being said,” Gabriella continued as she sat, “the bank’s openness was a little worrying.”
“Good to know there’s some suspicion left in you.”
She shook her head. “Only a suspicion that we might be on the wrong track entirely.”
“Why’s that?”
“Precisely because of the president’s candor. Crossler and Tosi thought they were exposing secrets, and we’re following their path on that assumption. But Holtzmann apparently had nothing to hide. He produced the bank’s bloody liaison list without a moment’s hesitation!” The sign of the cross was again in motion.
Alex raised a brow. The prim and professional facade of Gabriella Fierro occasionally slipped enough to let some of her police gruffness through, together with her personal quirks, and he liked it.
“Don’t be so sure,” he answered. “That list means nothing until we check it out and confirm what it is we’ve really been given.”
“I’ll manage that,” Gabriella answered, nodding. “You just drive us by a coffee shop. Holtzmann may take whisky before ten, but I could go with a latte. And put out that cigarette. My aunt will complain about the insult to her car’s upholstery for months.”
Alexander smiled, flicked the half-smoked cigarette out the window and started the engine. But before he could put the car into gear, his new mobile began to ring. He fished it out of his pocket, and when he saw the number on the display, his face contorted in surprise.
The series of digits were those he’d texted earlier. He and his uncle had kept a kind of running dialogue on their lives by SMS since text messages had become commonplace, and he’d texted him earlier chiefly out of habit. Since they’d discussed the absence of access to the IOR in the past, Alexander had thought that news of his being there would interest his uncle.
But given the current situation in the Vatican, and his uncle’s status there, he hadn’t expected a reply. In the circumstances, the call shouldn’t even be possible.
He clicked answer with an unusual hesitation. “Hello?”
“Alexander, is that you?”
“Uncle Rinaldo, I almost didn’t believe my screen. I thought you were all cloistered. How are you calling me?”
“The cloister has been in effect since the call went out to all the Cardinals yesterday afternoon. I was already here, so the trip was quick. Others have been flying in from all over the world.”
“We were told you were completely isolated. No calls taken, none going out.”
“That’s true, Alexander. But please, stop asking questions.”
The nervousness in his uncle’s voice was throwing Alexander. It wasn’t an emotion he was used to hearing there.
Rinaldo Trecchio had been a cardinal for sixteen years, a loyal and dedicated prince of the Church. He’d also been a caring and compassionate uncle as long as Alexander could remember.
As Alexander’s own faith had weakened, bit by bit, until his conscience finally approached a threshold he’d never anticipated nearing—the realization that he could not continue as a priest—his uncle had stayed by his side. By the time Gabriella had entered the scene, Alexander’s decision was all but taken, but even then Rinaldo had continued to show him love and kindness, while the rest of his deeply Catholic family had reacted with anger and disappointment. He was sure his uncle had felt those same sentiments, but to his credit he had never let them interrupt the care he showed his nephew.
“Where are you right now?” Rinaldo’s voice pressed through the phone.
“I’m in a car, not far from Vatican City.”
“And why have you changed your phone number?” The question sounded anxious, not curious.
Alexander wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’ve been involved in a bit of an . . . incident. The change was prudent.”
Suddenly his uncle’s tone was chilled with warning. “Alexander, listen to me closely. You have to be careful. Very careful.”
A rock formed in Alexander’s stomach. “What are you talking about?”
“I know you’re investigating the healing of the Pope and the arrival of this man at St. Peter’s,” Rinaldo answered. “I also know you’re looking into the deaths of two professors.”
Alexander blanched, his grip tightening simultaneously around the mobile phone and the steering wheel.
“How do you know that? Are you having me monitored?”
“It’s not important how I know, Alex. It’s better that you don’t. It’s only important that you listen to me when I tell you that there is far more going on than you can possibly understand.”
“Am I being followed?” Alex demanded, confused. “Watched, by the Vatican?” Was this what the magisterium did with priests who resigned? With the press?
“Alex, please. There’s no time to go into details,” his uncle answered, pleading. “But the further you step into this, the more of a threat you become to, to . . .”
“To who, Uncle?”
Rinaldo hesitated, then spat out the words: “To men who will have little hesitation in eliminating those they view as threats.”
Alexander swallowed hard. He glanced at Gabriella, who by this stage was looking up from the paperwork they’d received at the IOR. She was aware that something strange was taking place in Alexander’s conversation but was only able to hear his half of it.
“You’ve got to tell me more than that,” Alexander demanded of his uncle. “Who are we dealing with?”
He waited for an answer, but none came.
“Uncle Rinaldo?”
He glanced at the phone. The line was dead.