The Hand had made her see that. She’d been with him for a year, and the Angel burned with an almost sinful pride that he trusted her so much that he’d sent her on such an important mission. To know that The Right Hand of God held her in such high regard made her little short of ecstatic. It’d be better if he didn’t look at her with such fire in his eyes and lust in his heart, but she forgave him. Even though he was The Hand he was still only a man and, therefore, a weak sinner. Anyway, it was her fault. She tempted him with her body, though the Lord knew she didn’t mean to.
The Angel tensed as a long black limo pulled up to the entrance of the hotel’s underground parking lot. The car had Vatican diplomatic plates. It had to be the one she’d been expecting. She waited until it entered the building’s dark bowels, and then followed. There was no booth attendant this late at night, only an automatic ticket dispenser. She slipped under the wooden arm that bared entrance to the urban cave stinking of oil, gas fumes, and waste, praying to the Lord for strength and cunning.
God knows she needed it. She was on the track of the Allumbrados and she knew that her quest was dangerous. The Hand had sent others to investigate them who had simply disappeared after relaying the most uncertain, though provocative hints that the Enlightened Ones, as they styled themselves, were preparing for action.
The Hand knew that something big was imminent. He knew the general warning signs as well as the Allumbrados did, though as Papists their knowledge had to be imperfect. The Allumbrado conspiracy, however, had thrust its roots deep into the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. They could call on the vast powers and riches of that ancient institution whereas The Hand had only himself and his loyal minions, such as the Angel, to rely upon. Not that the Allumbrados had defiled everyone in the Church, of course. Most Papists were not satanic. They were just misguided.
The Angel, keeping to the darkness that enveloped the parking structure like a choking shroud, suddenly caught her breath. The limo’s dome light winked on as the driver opened the door and scurried around to let out his passengers.
The first to emerge was a patrician-looking man in his late sixties, but still tall, handsome, and distinguished, with a head of thick, white hair. He wore the black, scarlet-trimmed regalia of a Cardinal of the Papist church. It was, the Angel realized, just as The Hand had feared. Cardinal Romulus Contarini had come to America. He was a Dominican, of course. His sect had had an intimate connection with the Holy Office (A very bland name for something as terrible as the Inquisition, she thought) for a very long time. Contarini led the section of the vast and shadowy Vatican bureaucracy which dealt with theological purity. He was the highest-ranking member of the Allumbrados that The Hand’s agents could uncover. Before he’d suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, The Hand’s man in the Vatican had said that the Cardinal was possibly headed for the United States. This was obvious confirmation of the news he’d probably given his life to deliver.
Contarini was not alone. Three men got out of the limo with him. One was short, chubby, and bearded. He looked soft and jolly, like everyone’s favorite uncle. The other two had such similar facial features that they were probably brothers. But one was tall and strong looking while the other was thin, round-shouldered, and slumping. The tall, strong-looking one was possibly the most attractive man the Angel had ever seen. Her heart caught at the angelic handsome-ness of his face, which was white as unflawed marble. His eyes were as blue as Heaven, his hair a golden torrent with wave and thickness to rival her own. His lips...
She could almost taste them in her sudden desire. They were full, sensuously curved, and red as a woman’s. But his features were masculine, with a broad forehead, high cheekbones, and a strong jaw. His short-sleeved shirt exposed arms muscled like a blacksmith’s.
The Angel felt herself breathing heavier and then suddenly the silent parking garage echoed with the trilling opening notes to the “Ode to Joy.” She had forgotten to turn off her cell phone, and it rang at the worst possible time. Her hand fell to her side pocket, grabbed the instrument and silenced it.
Perhaps, she thought, they hadn’t heard.
The men stopped on their way to the elevator. The Cardinal looked impatient, but the jolly little man gazed into the darkness where the Angel lurked, holding her breath. His cheery blue eyes suddenly focused with a startling intensity.
“Someone’s out there,” she heard him say in a British accented voice.
“Witness—” the Cardinal said.
The two men, different, yet alike enough in features to be brothers, looked at each other. The tall, handsome one said, “Check it out,” and the other, grumbling to himself under his breath, moved off toward the darkness where the Angel hid.
♥ ♦ ♣ ♠
Turin, Italy: Cattedrale di San Giovanni
The cathedral’s two-story exterior was white marble, a little worse for age and blackened by five centuries of urban pollution. The detached bell tower on the cathedral’s left was constructed of darker, less noble material—simple brick—and was also some two hundred years younger. The intricate dome of the Capella della Sindone, a few decades older than the tower, loomed behind the cathedral. Their target was in the chapel.
Nighthawk waited in the shadows until the others had crossed the almost empty piazza. Traffic was sporadic, but there were still a few pedestrians wandering about, and Nighthawk had not reached his advanced age by being reckless. He waited until Usher and Grubbs had entered the cathedral through the middle of the three doors in its front façade—Usher pausing only the briefest of moments to force the cheap padlock that tried to deny him entry—and then he crossed the dark piazza in an unhurried stride as Magda surreptitiously joined her teammates inside San Giovanni.
It was dark inside the cathedral. The interior was lit only by some still-burning votive candles and a dim nightlight or two scattered like far-away stars among the massive columns of the gothic-style nave.
“We need the stairs at the end of the presbytery,” Nighthawk said in a quiet voice which a trick of acoustics turned into a reverberating whisper.
Usher thumbed on a pencil-thin flashlight and slashed it around the darkness.
“This way,” he whispered in an imitation of Nighthawk, grinning at the echoing sibilance of his own words.
They followed Usher down the aisle, past the rows of empty pews to the high altar set upon a dais in the rear of the nave. Two stairways flanked the altar. They were black marble, which contrasted vividly with the soft pastels of the cathedral’s painted interior. The stairs spiraled upwards into a small antechamber from where Nighthawk and his team could see inside the chapel’s central room.
The Capella della Sindone was the masterpiece of the baroque architect Guarino Guarini. It was a perfectly round chamber of black marble roofed by an intricately decorated six-tiered dome that was said to enclose a bit of Heaven in its complexly ornamented cupola. Nighthawk could feel its holiness in his soul. He gazed upward, as if expecting to see cherubim and seraphim dancing like flights of fireflies through the enshrouding shadows.