The city swept by in a blur, and my eyes fixed on the clock on the dashboard of the taxi. It read a quarter to eight – we had fifteen minutes to find the bomb and stop it. As we came into Piazza San Giovanni, the cathedral rose in front of us, the façade a mass of white marble glinting in the evening sun. And, just visible above it, the tip of the chapel pierced the evening sky.
I paid the driver and we got out and started running towards the square. The crowd was much bigger than I’d hoped, a great crush of people queuing to enter in advance of the service. I waved Zimotti’s identification above my head, and people reluctantly let us pass, until we finally reached the doors and entered the cathedral.
Incense hung heavily in the air. A procession of purple-robed priests were walking through the central candle-lit aisle, their chanting echoing around the space. At the far end of the nave there were two massive stairways with signs indicating that they led up to the Chapel of the Holy Shroud. We took the one on the right.
The stairs were steeper than I had expected, and halfway up I was nearly overcome by dizziness. Sarah grabbed my arm, and I shook the feeling away. She gave a taut smile and we carried on climbing, until we were in the chapel. Black and white marble and gilded bronze gleamed, and light shone through the cupola above, striking the ornate altar in the centre like a spotlight. Inside the altar was a magnificent silver chest, and inside that lay the Holy Shroud itself. I looked up at the frescos in the dome above. Barchetti had said ‘in the dome’, so that was where we had to go.
Sarah pointed to a staircase on the right. As we rushed towards it, I heard a disturbance from below. I looked down and saw one of the priests detaching himself from the procession. He’d seen us. He called out to us to stop, but we ducked into the staircase and started climbing, and then I heard him call out again and the sound of his footsteps echoing on the marble. There had been a tinge of panic in his voice, and I guessed that he was the inside man, the guard to make sure nobody came near the bomb.
There was a gallery directly under the dome, like the Whispering Gallery in London. I looked down and saw that the procession was entering the chapel below, heading for the altar with the Shroud. Ignore them. Concentrate. I looked around frantically. A large enough bomb here would not only destroy the Shroud, but might kill or maim people in the church – perhaps even some of the crowd outside. But where the hell had they put it? As in St Peter’s, there was nothing but a bench, which Sarah was now sitting on, catching her breath.
‘Stand up!’ I told her, and she did so with a guilty start.
‘You think it’s here?’
‘Perhaps.’
I knelt down and took a closer look. Yes, there was a lid to it – it was a chest as well as a bench. Perhaps this was where they usually kept spare parts or cleaning equipment or some such. It had a sliding lid, but I couldn’t get it open. I looked for a lock, but there was none. It was simply jammed at one end, and it wasn’t budging. I tried to place my nails into the tiny gap between the lid and the rest of the bench to lift it a fraction, but they weren’t long or strong enough. Sarah shuffled over and tried with hers, but with no better result. It was useless.
Footsteps were now echoing up the stairs, and they were getting louder by the second. In frustration, I hit the palm of my hand against the lid. It moved. Just a tiny amount, but now there was enough space for me to use my fingers. I formed my hand into a claw and tried again. Slowly, the lid glided open.
I looked down into the chest. There was a bag inside, a faded leather hold-all. Perhaps it had tools in it. Or perhaps a chunk of plastic explosive connected to a timer. I leaned down and unzipped it.
There was nothing there.
I looked again, rummaging my hand around the sides and bottom. It was completely, mystifyingly empty. So where the hell had they planted it? I looked around desperately, at the columns and the pillars and the procession swaying below.
‘Any ideas?’ I asked Sarah.
She didn’t respond, and I glanced up at her. She was sweating, shivering, with a panic-stricken expression on her face. That was understandable, but something about it seemed wrong, like she was terrified of something I wasn’t aware of. She placed a finger to her head and said something, but her mouth couldn’t seem to form the words, and my skin started to crawl as I realized why. She’d lost her hearing.
‘Have you had any muscle pain since you were last here, or sore eyes?… Have you had any more bouts of deafness?’
There was no bomb here. Because they weren’t using a bomb.
They were using me.
I looked up. There were three of them, all wearing black robes with masks over the lower half of their faces. The figure nearest to me stepped forward and I saw he had a syringe in his hand. I tried to stand to make a run for it, but I didn’t have any strength left and there was nowhere to run anyway, not any more. The other two men held me down, and as the needle plunged into my arm I imagined I felt the liquid pulsing through my bloodstream. They stepped over and I watched as they performed the same task on Sarah, and then my vision started to blur and my eyes closed.