The bomber tumbled to the ground. Reilly clambered right out of the car after him, but the man recovered fast and scurried back, putting a margin of ten yards or so between him and the FBI agent. Time slowed to a crawl as they stood there in silence, facing off under the hot Roman sun, taking stock of each other in the empty clearing. It was eerily quiet, especially after the pandemonium they’d been through, with only choruses of cicadas and the occasional tweet of a starling cutting the silence.
“Settle down,” the bomber told Reilly, holding up his cell phone with one hand while his other wagged a stern, warning finger. “One twitch from me and she’s gone.”
Reilly glared at him, clutching the book tight.
They studied each other as they tentatively inched sideways, moving in unison, keeping the same buffer between them.
“Where is she?” Reilly asked.
“Everything in its time.”
“You’re not walking away from this.” Reilly’s eyes were locked on him, his senses alert, processing every morsel of information at hand, looking for an edge.
“I disagree,” the bomber countered. “We’ve established that you care a great deal for this woman. You wouldn’t have flown halfway across the world and taken me into the Vatican if you didn’t. Which means you won’t stop me from walking away from here if that gets her killed. Which it would. Unquestionably.”
“But then again, I’ve got this book. And we’ve established that it’s pretty important to you, right?”
The man conceded Reilly’s remark with a small nod.
“So here’s what we’ll do,” Reilly said. “You want the book. I want Tess. In one piece. So we trade. Take me to her, show me she’s alive and well, and you can have the book.”
The bomber shook his head, a mock apology on his face. “Can’t do that. I’m not sure it’s safe for me to go down there right now, you know what I mean? No, you’ll have to go get her yourself. So how about this instead. The book, for her location. And my word that she’s safe and healthy.”
His word. Reilly mashed his teeth. He knew he had no choice. “And that phone you’re holding,” he added.
The bomber thought about it for a brief moment, then shrugged. “Sounds fair.”
The sick fuck’s talking about fair, Reilly bristled. He fought to keep his fury in check and see this through.
“Okay, here’s how we’ll play this,” Reilly said. “You put the phone down on the ground and tell me what car she’s in and where it’s parked. I’ll put the book down too. Then we’ll each move sideways, one step at a time, as if we’re going around an imaginary circle. Slowly. You get the book, I get the phone.”
“And then?”
“Then maybe you get away—for a while. But sooner or later, make no mistake, your ass is mine.” Reilly’s concentration was lasered on him, memorizing every pore, every wrinkle, every detail about him.
The bomber watched him, as if putting his plan through a final stress test. “She’s in a BMW.”
Reilly’s pulse spiked.
The man held up some car keys and dangled them, taunting Reilly. They were like a bloodred rag to a rabid bull. “A five-series. Dark blue. Brindisi plates. It’s parked by the Petriano entrance.”
Which made sense, Reilly thought. Insurance—to use the bomber’s callous word—in case they exited the Vatican from its other gate.
The man held the keys there for a moment, then he turned and tossed them behind him, slightly off to one side. They landed in a small stretch of lawn. He eyed Reilly, an icy smirk just cracking the surface of the hermetic expression on his face. “You’re going to want this too,” he added as he held up his phone—before turning around and tossing it too.
Reilly’s chest seized up as he watched the phone spin in the air several times before it landed on the same grassy patch, by a couple of benches. He just froze there, every muscle in his body knotted to the breaking point, his ears cranked up to eleven, dreading a telltale, distant boom—but he heard nothing.
“Drop the book and go get them,” the man barked, pointing an angry finger toward the lawn.
Reilly hesitated, his feet nailed to the ground—he couldn’t hang on to the heavy book and go around the bomber to retrieve the phone. The man would have no trouble tackling him. His legs twitched, getting conflicting signals about staying put or sprinting off—then he made his move. He turned and hurled the codex as far as he could, shot-putting it behind him, away from the bomber, then tore off toward the phone.
The bomber sprang forward at the same instant. The two men raced for their prizes, eyeing each other while angling away for safety as they rushed past each other, with Reilly harnessing all of his willpower to resist veering off his trajectory and taking the man down—which he couldn’t. He couldn’t risk it—failure meant condemning Tess to a certain death. So he stuck to his heading and was on the grassy patch within seconds. He spotted the phone and plucked it off the ground, staring at it in disbelief, hoping the fact that he hadn’t heard an explosion in the city below meant that it hadn’t triggered one, his pulse throbbing wildly—then he spun around.
The bomber was gone.
As was the book.
Chapter 8
Reilly moved with androidlike purpose, as if he weren’t in control of his body anymore. He had to do one thing, and one thing only—and nothing could be allowed to interfere.
He stormed up the hill and cut across the hotel’s grounds, shocking its refined guests with his haggard appearance. He didn’t even notice them. He just sprinted across to the hotel’s entrance, zeroed in on a taxi that was picking up an elegantly dressed couple, charged past them, and stormed into it.
“The Vatican, Petriano entrance,” Reilly ordered him. The man, incensed by Reilly’s move, started to mouth off in Italian, but he barely got a few words out before Reilly shoved his FBI ID in the man’s face and, with his other hand pointing ahead angrily, roared, “Vaticano. Now. Move.”
They got to as far as maybe half a mile from St. Peter’s Square before the traffic ground to a halt.
The whole area was crippled by pandemonium as a result of the blast. Police cordons were spreading out protectively on the roads leading up to the Vatican, while hordes of frightened tourists were being herded away from the site. On the roads, taxis and convoys of tour buses were fighting their way out of the snarl under a pall of black smoke that hovered over the cathedral’s dome.
Reilly exited the taxi and battled his way through the onslaught of cars and people. He spotted a sign for the “Cancello Petriano” that directed him to a narrow street that was choked by fleeing tourists. He hugged the facade of a building that fronted the street and fought his way through the human torrent, heading toward the back of the curved colonnade of St. Peter’s Square. Through the swarm of people, he spotted another sign for the gate, this one pointing left.
He cleared the building and turned left, breathing hard as he emerged from the throng. The gate was less than a hundred yards ahead of him now, with a parking area for a few dozen cars leading up to it. Reilly’s pulse sped.
A dark blue BMW with Brindisi plates.
It had to be here somewhere.
He had started toward the parked cars when a cop who was shepherding the evacuation cut across him and tried to block him. The cop was rambling something incomprehensible in Italian, his sweaty face bristling with stress. Reilly brushed him aside without breaking pace and kept moving. The cop recovered and caught back up to him and grabbed him by the arm, hard this time, yelling at him, his other hand waving a steel baton angrily and gesturing with it for Reilly to turn around and join the exodus. Reilly reached into his pocket for his creds—then remembered he couldn’t use them, not there. He was probably on their most-wanted list right now. He met the cop’s gaze, and the cop seemed to read his hesitation.