“Do you want me to come with you?” John asked.
“No, you’d better wait here with the backpack. You want some coffee?”
“That’d be great,” John said. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat as Leo exited the compartment.
Leo peered into every compartment as he walked through the connecting passages toward the front of the train. The only other passengers he saw appeared to be the local Italian gentry who seemed surprised when they looked up and saw someone who appeared to be a tourist within their midst. Not good, he thought. Anything that made them stand out from the crowd was not to their advantage, and he and John seemed to be the only tourists on this train.
Stepping into a wood-paneled coach from another era, Leo approached a marble-topped counter and ordered a small cup of dark espresso. He grabbed a paper and tried to look casual, sipping his coffee and glancing at the pictures of the devastation in Houston spread across the front page under bold headlines in Italian. A sense of urgency gnawed at his already unsettled stomach.
The priest folded the paper and offered it to an attractive middle-aged woman standing next to him. They made small talk for several minutes before Leo decided that it was probably unwise for him and John to remain separated for too long. He ordered coffee to go for John and tapped his fingers nervously on the counter as he and the woman next to him continued to smile at one another. She turned and leaned forward while laying her hand on his. “It’s a long ride into Rome,” she said. “Why don’t we have another cup of coffee and sit at one of the tables?”
It was obvious to Leo that he had been a little too charming. Forgetting John’s coffee in his haste to retreat, he excused himself from the disappointed woman and began making his way toward the back of the train.
Entering one of the tight connecting passageways, Leo stepped right into the path of two well-groomed men wearing suits. Leo froze and tried to think as the train swayed from side to side over the worn tracks. He had looked into every compartment on the way to the dining car, and these men hadn’t been in any of them. He held his breath as the two men squeezed past with only barely perceptible nods.
Walking quickly through the next car, Leo looked back over his shoulder at the men who appeared to be continuing on toward the front of the train. The train lurched around a bend just as he reached his compartment, forcing him to grab the edge of the doorway before stumbling inside. It was empty. No John … no backpack. He stepped back and looked up at the compartment number posted on a bronze plaque over the door. It was the same compartment they had been sitting in.
Looking up and down the empty passageway, Leo felt his heart beating in his chest as panic began to settle in. Abandoning the need to maintain a low profile, he raced toward the end of the train, systematically looking into every compartment until he came to the end. No John. He turned and retraced his steps, wondering what to do next. He knew that he hadn’t passed John when he was returning from the dining car. In his panic, had he missed him somehow when he searched the rear section of the coach? He swirled around just as a thin wooden door opened, almost hitting him in the face. It was John holding the backpack.
“What are you doing?” Leo asked breathlessly. “This is not a good time to disappear on me.”
“I had to use the bathroom, Father.”
Leo worked to slow his breathing. “Sorry, John … guess I’m a little jumpy … but from now on, we stay together. If one of us goes to the bathroom, the other waits outside the door.”
“I know, Father. That was a dumb move. I should have waited until you got back. Did you get my coffee?”
“I forgot, but we can’t go back to the dining car. I just passed two guys in suits heading in that direction. I could swear that I looked in every compartment on the way there, but I missed those two somehow. Anyway, it’s probably nothing, but I think it’s safer to stay in our compartment until we reach Rome.”
The two returned to their compartment as the long blue train left the fields behind and began hugging steep mountain cliffs. Speeding through a series of tunnels, it turned inland again and passed through the remote and wild regions of Basilicata and neighboring Calabria, two of the poorest regions in Italy. Greek, Roman, and Norman ruins dotted the landscape outside their windows. Calabria still retained its frightening reputation for crime and banditry thanks to the ‘ndrangheta, the violent first cousin to the mafia. Due in part to the Aspromonte and Sila mountain ranges, the rugged landscape they were traveling through had blocked change and left the region much as it had been for the past one hundred years.
The train snaked its way northward back to the coast, where it moved through Naples into the Lazio region of Italy surrounding Rome. Every stop was a cause for concern due to the constant parade of passengers that got on and off the train at every station.
Leo pondered the fact that they had escaped any undue attention on their passage through southern Italy and that so far, no attempt had been made to take the book from them. Leaving the rural countryside behind, they continued on seemingly unobserved, watching the suburbs of Rome come into view outside their windows. Both grew quiet with anticipation, knowing that soon, they would be arriving at the large Termini railway station in the center of the city. Their journey to the ancient chapel was almost at an end.
Chapter 38
After making sure Leo and John had caught their train to Rome without incident, Moshe and Alon had returned to the yacht via a dusty rural road through the hilly farmland. They wanted to make sure they weren’t being followed before circling back to the harbor.
Once onboard the yacht, they climbed the stairs to the helipad and jumped into the waiting chopper with Nava. In less than a minute, the chopper lifted off and skimmed the waves until they passed over the rugged coastline, staying low and speeding north through twisting valleys on their way to the airport outside of Rome.
All of the teams were now on their separate diversionary paths to the city. They were under orders to enter the city and drive around to see if they were being followed, then speed to the harbor when the Carmela arrived in Fiumicino harbor.
Daniel and Sarah had been the team chosen to drive to Morelli’s seventeenth-century house. It was located forty-five miles south of Rome along a narrow, tree-lined road in a valley below the ancient hilltop town of Sermoneta. The immense reddish-colored structure was the size of a small palazzo and was fronted by a circular gravel driveway with a four-hundred-year-old fountain in the center topped by the weathered statue of an angel. The house had been built among the remains of the abandoned medieval village of Ninfa, and the entire area had been converted into lush gardens, where clear streams and waterfalls punctuated the strikingly beautiful grounds surrounded by crumbling ruins.
Sarah’s eyes grew wide as the house came into view and they stopped next to the fountain by the entrance. “Oh, my God, Daniel. Look at this place!”
“It’s really spectacular. Father Morelli had excellent taste.”
A middle-aged couple came rushing down the front steps.
“Buon giorno. Welcome,” the man said. “Father Leo called yesterday and told us you were coming. You must be Daniel.” He bowed slightly from the waist. “And you must be Sarah.”
“Si. Piacere di conoscerla,” Sarah said.
The man and woman beamed, while Daniel stared at her with his mouth hanging open. “I didn’t know you spoke Italian.”