The Second Messiah

As Lela stepped outside Savage’s tent she saw her boss, Chief Inspector Danni Feld, climb out of the helicopter and duck his head under the dying blades. He hurried toward her. Feld wore civilian clothes, not his usual crisp police uniform, which suggested that he’d been summoned unexpectedly. As he reached Lela he stood upright and gave her a wave.

“Inspector Raul.”

“Sir, I thought it was your day off.”

Feld vainly patted down a raised flap of graying hair. “So did I. How is the investigation going?”

“I’m still gathering evidence.”

Feld scratched his head as he studied the Dead Sea landscape. “It must be a very interesting case, Lela, that’s all I can say.”

“Sir?”

Feld turned to stare at her. “I got an urgent call from the head of Mossad, no less. He wants to see you straightaway. Says it’s a matter of grave urgency.”

Lela was puzzled. Israel’s national security agency had a reputation as one of the best and most secretive intelligence organizations in the world. “I’m in the middle of a murder investigation. What does Mossad want with me?”

Feld jerked his thumb toward the helicopter. “I wish I knew. But I’ve a feeling you’ll get your explanation in Tel Aviv. You’re to fly there immediately.”

21

ROME

The sleek black Mercedes bearing Vatican diplomatic plates and a fluttering gold and white pendant turned into the Via della Conciliazione with a gentle squeal of brakes.

Sitting in the back of the chauffeured limousine that afternoon was a large, beefy, red-haired man with a pale complexion and bright green eyes. Sean Ryan removed his monsignor’s black biretta from his head and ran a handkerchief over his damp brow. It was only April but already the temperature was up to a cloudless seventy, the trees along the banks of the Tiber in full bloom.

Two thousand years of history lay around him, a ragged sprawl of ancient crumbling monuments and temples, and at the heart stood the famed Colosseum and the Forum. To the tourists, Rome seemed rather grand and noble, but Ryan knew it was also the most sordid and sinful of cities, and that some things had changed little in two thousand years.

On the Via Claudia, homosexual men dressed as women still solicited as prostitutes, much as they had during Emperor Caligula’s time. Immigrant black girls as young as fourteen had sex with their customers in city lanes and park bushes, just as their predecessors had during the time of the Caesars. Once the girls had been freed black slaves; now they were impoverished refugees from Africa.

As the Mercedes glided silently down the Via della Conciliazione toward the Vatican, Ryan glanced idly out of the window.

The broad street that led up to the magnificent St. Peter’s Basilica was lined on both sides with gaudy souvenir shops and kiosks, cafés, and currency exchange bureaus. Ryan didn’t appreciate the cheap commercialism that was permitted to exist a stone’s throw away from the burial place of St. Peter, crucified and tortured on a whim of the Emperor Nero, and his broken body dumped in a pauper’s grave on the ancient Roman hill that was now the symbol of Christianity. But this morning Ryan had other things to worry about.

His meeting with Cardinal Cassini was scheduled for noon. Ryan was Chief of the Corps of Gendarmes, with command of the Directorate of Security Services, responsible for protecting the pope and the Vatican State. He wondered what was so important that the head of the Curia had summoned him to his office.

Ryan’s personal history was an outlandish mix. He had at various times been a police detective with the Irish police, An Garda Síochána, an amateur heavyweight boxer, a champion target shooter, a gambler, boozer, and a womanizer until, at age twenty-eight, the car he was driving recklessly while he was over the alcohol limit had caused the deaths of his pregnant young wife and their two-year-old son. After that, there seemed nowhere for Ryan to deliver himself but into God’s hands. Soon after came the priesthood.

Ryan looked up as a flock of pigeons scattered in front of the car when it approached St. Peter’s Square, and he replaced the handkerchief in his pocket.

The Mercedes didn’t go through the Vatican front entrance—that was for the pilgrims and tourists—but instead veered right. There was a barrier down, three blue-uniformed Swiss Guards on duty. Ryan thought the young men looked blatantly ridiculous in their medieval uniforms, their private parts bulging through their skintight pants.

But of course, the real security was more discreet—inside the gate and off to the right was a long, gray brick building where a heavily armed plainclothes unit of the Vatican’s security services was stationed. At that moment, one of the doors to the security building opened and a man with a mustache stepped out, a holstered Beretta clipped under his leather jacket, his eyes cautiously scrutinizing the Mercedes’ occupants.