“So now you are convinced he killed him in Rome. That doesn’t make sense, Vaughn.”
“Hanley, where is the tape?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is Devereaux?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t made contact.”
“Hanley, are you fucking with me?”
“Yes,” Hanley said. Very cold, very distant. Vaughn Reuben was sweating it. He really wanted that tape. But why? Why did any of this involve CIA?
And why had Devereaux suddenly made contact with Henry McGee? What did any of this mean except danger to Section?
Section was getting all the heat in the world because it had not called off one of its agents and because the orders for Section seemed to be coming from a dozen sources and a dozen points of view.
To hell with it, Hanley thought at last.
He stood up and buttoned his coat and pulled a wool scarf around his neck. He had a cap, too, with a little brim, all made of wool. British November weather had made him a believer in wool products.
Vaughn Reuben gaped at him for a moment. “Where are you going, Hanley?”
Hanley blinked. To hell with it. “Out.”
“What are you going to do about this?”
“Nothing,” Hanley said.
38
The surgeon was gifted. His fingers were strong and sure. The surgeon was young, and his scowl of concentration was enhanced by the darkness of his beard. He moved very quickly because the life of the girl on the naked operating table demanded it.
The problem was in the bleeding.
The single knife thrust had cut through muscle and intestines and touched the liver, and there was great damage. The girl had strength — they could see her strength on the heart monitor, on the screens that showed her blood pressure — but she was weakened by the loss both of blood and of that other, unmeasurable thing that doctors sometimes called the will to live. A curious lack of it in one so young.
All of the skill of this peasant child who had gone to university and medical school through the gift of his intellect was now bent to the task of healing this bleeding body. The girl’s face was soft and waxy, as though composed for death. She lay naked on her stomach and was draped with sheets, and only the wound of her back — enlarged by surgical incisions — was exposed. The operating room, like the hospital, was old and high ceilinged and not the most efficient place of its kind. But there was a spirit within the heart of the surgeon and in the attending nurses and nuns that could not be replicated or purchased. Others had seen it in these grim dungeons called hospitals in Italy, which seemed constructed as monuments to mortality; this human spirit was still alive amidst the ruins, and it would not accept mere death. It did not matter, none of it, except that this child should not die.
When it was over, the surgeon walked from the room with a drained look in his eyes. His thin body drooped as he walked down the lime green corridor to the room where they waited.
There were two men — one was a priest, the other was an American.
The priest in his plain black cassock might have been from some slum church in the ancient city. His face was ravaged by age and his hair was dull. He stared at the surgeon and did not speak, but his look asked a question anyway.
The surgeon shrugged. “It’s up to her. The bleeding is stopped. She can heal herself or not. She seems… so composed. As if for passing on.”
“Did she speak?”
“Not at all. She was nearly dead when she got here. Do they know who did this to her?”
“It is a complete mystery,” said the priest.
“Are you a friend?”
“Yes,” Cardinal Ludovico said. “A close friend.”
“Well, this will certainly be a scandal,” the surgeon said. He was very tired from the act of healing. He looked at Devereaux. “And what is your interest, signor?”
“I have no interest. I found her body in St. Peter’s. I called the guard.”
“Muggers and murderers working even in San Pietro. There is no safe place anymore,” the surgeon said.
“No,” Devereaux agreed.
“I have done my best. It’s up to God,” the surgeon said. He meant only civil piety and intended the words for the priest, because he had long concluded that if God existed, He was a Being the surgeon did not wish to know.
The priest nodded as though he understood, and made the sign of the cross to continue the fiction of piety.
The surgeon walked away from them. There were others in the waiting room, others full of jokes, whispers, sobs, all waiting for life or death to be announced. The hospital was full, the corridors were crowded with litters and wheelchairs, as though some great disaster had just been visited upon the city.
“I will pray for her,” Cardinal Ludovico said.
“How decent of you.”
“I did not intend—”
“I know. I was mistaken in what I saw.”
The old man turned to the American, and there was a cold thing in the leonine eyes that was meant to be disdain. It was a look that had terrified servants and staff, but it withered in the face of this American.
“I do not know the tape or what Michael intended,” Cardinal Ludovico said at last in precise English.
“He intended to give it to you. He intended to be safe after he gave it to you.”
“I did not kill him.”
“No. It would have been foolish to kill him when he would have given you the thing. Whoever killed him did not want you to have the tape. Or Michael’s memory of what was on the tape.”
“Then who did kill him?”
“We must listen to the tape.”
The cardinal stared at Devereaux for a silent moment. He said, “Will you know the secret then? Adam will have knowledge and will know the difference between what is good and what is not good. Will you eat the same fruit?”
Devereaux almost smiled.
“A madness seized me,” the cardinal said. “I will pray for her the rest of my days. I will commend my soul to God for her sake. It is madness, whatever is on that tape is madness and evil for its own sake. I think we should destroy the tape—”
“No. I don’t think that at all,” Devereaux said.
Devereaux held the tape cassette in his left hand for a moment and then slipped it into the Sony recorder on the large, walnut table.
Devereaux pressed Rewind. The key clicked immediately.
They sat in the most secret room of the Congregation for the Protection of the Faith on the Borgo Santo Spirito. Bright morning had faded to the gloom of afternoon, and there were more clouds scudding in from the Alps. Along the western coast of Italy, the waves swelled and there was a smell of the coming rain in the brittle air.
They had no amenities between them. The cardinal finally remembered Devereaux from the matter of Father Tunney in Florida years ago, when R Section and the congregation had first found themselves at odds. The man had not seemed so cold then, only hostile. The man had not seemed so detached then, as though the events of the world did not touch him. He had been touched since then; that was certain.
Cardinal Ludovico had no illusions about Devereaux or what Devereaux might do to achieve his ends. He studied the other man as he thought of the possibilities that might exist for the congregation — for the church — depending on what was on the tape.
But Devereaux sat there without playing the tape.
Cardinal Ludovico said, “Are you afraid, then?”
“Tell me about Michael Hampton.”
“He was a free-lance. He was employed by us from time to time.”
“This tape was intended for you. For your use. Someone intended it. If Michael Hampton was the innocent courier, then who gave him the tape? Who knew he worked for you at the conference in Malmö?”