Despite the risks of slipping, I was going to have to speed my descent. Otherwise, I was going to run out of strength long before I reached the bottom, which meant that there'd be a neat, dwarf-sized hole at the base of a castle in San Marino.
I started taking chances, accepting toeholds that felt spongy, digging my fingers into dusty pockets in the wall that could give way as soon as I touched them. One did, and for a few brief moments that felt like years I found myself dangling by one hand that had no feeling.
Phil's soft oath wafted down to me. I kept my eyes level, sucked in my breath, and swung back again. My other hand found a grip and my feet found solid footing. The muscles in my belly crawled, as if reaching out by themselves in an attempt to grasp the smooth rocks on the face of the wall. I didn't want to move; I wanted to stay there until all the feeling left and I dropped. I convinced myself that that wasn't positive thinking; I forced myself to calm down and continue groping. Then I could see the tops of trees out of the corner of my eye. I scurried down another twenty feet and fell the rest of the way, banging into the ground with a force that momentarily dazed me.
I half expected to hear a chorus of boos from some circus gallery. All I got was the croaking of a frog in the forest behind me. I shook my head to clear it, then took a quick mental inventory and decided nothing was broken.
I glanced up toward the window. Bonatelli might have been a dead man; he was in exactly the same position-with the same expression on his face-that he'd been in when I'd gone over the window ledge. Phil was standing with his hands clasped over his head.
I got to my feet and slipped into the forest.
It was a clear day, and I could see Italy below me, through breaks in the trees. I needed a messenger. It was only a matter of a few hours before Fordamp would discover that I was missing, and things would start to come apart. On the positive side, Fordamp obviously didn't feel that secure of his position, or he wouldn't have felt the need to cut off the telephones and seal the country.
Regardless of what I did or didn't do, the fact that I had escaped from the castle would increase the pressure on Fordamp. I decided that I'd have to risk upping the ante some more, and hope that things in San Marino wouldn't start exploding.
That decision was given added urgency by a discovery I made in a small glen a few yards in from the tree line. Whoever had shot Danny Lemongello hadn't even bothered to dig a hole for him. Apparently Fordamp had found out that Danny had talked to me; more probably, the boy simply knew too much. Whatever the reason, Danny's body lay sprawled on the grass. His glazed eyes were crossed, as if trying to see into the hole someone had put in the center of his forehead.
Petrocelli didn't look exactly overjoyed to see me. His jaw dropped open when I walked into the police station. He was still fumbling for his gun when I hit him on the side of the head with the heavy glass ashtray he kept on his desk. He slumped forward and his face smacked into the desk top with the satisfying sound of cracking egg shells. I took his keys and went back into the cell block.
Jandor was standing, gripping the bars of his cell, when I came through the connecting door. His eyes widened. He'd put on some weight since I'd last seen him, and it all looked like muscle. He was a broad-shouldered man with surgeon's hands that could flick a blade of steel and shave a rose petal at fifty feet.
"Mongo!"
I grinned and unlocked the cell door. "Exercise time, Jandor."
"What?"
"No time now to tell you how I got here, Jandor. We've got a lot of work to do, and not much time to do it in."
I opened the door of the cell. Jandor didn't move. He seemed dazed; he stared at the open space between us as if it was a barrier he couldn't ever cross.
"You must know about Roscoe and my knife in his neck. How do you know I didn't kill him?"
"I've got a better suspect."
"Petrocelli killed him," Jandor said defensively.
"How do you know?"
"He bragged about it. He thought it was a big joke that I should be locked up for a crime the chief of police committed."
I nodded grimly. "Let's get him into the cell. The walls are pretty thick, and it will probably be a time before anybody comes looking for him."
Jandor went into the office, then dragged Petrocelli back to the cell. Then he paused and looked at me.
"I'd like to hurt him," Jandor said quietly.
"Be my guest."
In one single, fluid motion, Jandor picked the unconscious Petrocelli up and flung him toward the steel bunk at the back of the cell. Petrocelli hit the bunk with the full force of his weight on his right shoulder. I heard it snap. He was going to have some more pain when he woke up. I locked the cell and connecting doors, then motioned Jandor out the back of the jail, into an alley.
I filled Jandor in on what was happening, then gave him the Regent's ring and instructions on what to do with it. Jandor nodded and started off down the hill, into the forest. I headed in the opposite direction, toward the town.
I knocked lightly at the back door of the Marinello's souvenir shop. Molly, her front draped with a spaghetti-splashed apron, came to the door; the apron reminded me that I hadn't eaten anything in close to twenty-four hours. Molly opened the door, but her welcoming smile faded when she saw the expression on my face.
"I have to talk to John, Molly, and I'd like you to hear what I have to say."
Molly, sensing trouble, hesitated a moment, but finally went to the front of the shop to get her husband. I was glad to see that
John Marinello was clear-eyed. We sat around a small table while I told him what had happened to their country.
Molly's face grew progressively sadder and more tense, but she didn't interrupt. John's breathing grew short and sharp. I finished quickly, then paused, searching for my next words.
"I know I have no right to ask you this," I said to both of them, "but I need John's help. Fordamp's trump card is the explosive charges he's planted in the castles and churches. If we take those away from him, he's relatively powerless. Also, it means that he won't be able to blow up your Regent and a friend of mine."
"Why John?" Molly's voice was barely a whisper.
"John said that he used to be a construction worker, specializing in stonemasonry. My guess is that he knows something about explosives."
"I do," John said evenly.
Molly gripped her husband's arm. "The charges could blow up in your face."
"Yes," I said quietly.
John abruptly stood up. "Let's go, Mr. Frederickson. We're wasting time."
I waited, watching Molly. Her answer surprised me. "You go, John. Mr. Frederickson is right; we must fight."
Marinello and I headed for the door. Molly's voice came after us, her words incongruous yet somehow reassuring. "I'll keep your dinner warm, John."
According to John Marinello, finding the explosives wasn't going to be as difficult as I'd first expected. Assuming that the explosive charges had been placed by an expert, they would be found near the architectural centers of the buildings, where they would do the most damage. It came down to a matter of second-guessing the person who had originally planted the charges.
For practice, we started with the most secluded spot we could find: St. Francesco's Church, built in the fourteenth century. John outlined the search procedure he wanted to follow. He cautioned me for the tenth time not to touch anything I might find, then we split up.
Forty-five minutes later John found one of the charges. I rounded the corner of the church and saw him kneeling tensely beside a niche in the foundation wall, near the ground. He glimpsed me out of the corner of his eye and raised his hand, signaling me to stop. Then he reached inside the niche and slowly withdrew a bundle consisting of five sticks of dynamite lashed together. On top of the bundle was a small metal cannister that resembled a miniature soup can with the label torn off.