“Quiet,” she said. “He’s in here somewhere.”
She turned to scan the room again, as Nick looked up at the ceiling. There was a long silence, until it was broken by a door closing at the far end of the cathedral. Kate was off and running again, through the same door, until she picked up the intruder in the great expanse of St. Peter’s Square, a hundred yards ahead of her. She grabbed her radio and tried to speak. “He’s heading into the basilica.”
“Moving in,” the radio voice said. “Close off every exit.”
She ran up the steps to the front doors of St. Peter’s Basilica. One of the doors was ajar. She pushed it open. It was dark in the great lobby, the entire building closed down for the night.
Nick slipped in through the same door and stood beside her.
“My bat-sense is tingling,” Kate said.
“Spidey-sense,” Nick corrected. “But don’t worry about it. I’m not here to judge.”
They slowly made their way down the hallway, pausing every now and then to listen. The sound of footsteps came from above. Kate led with her Glock as she climbed the staircase. Every floor of the great basilica was dark and empty. Nick stayed close behind her.
They worked their way up each flight of stairs. A sign pointed them to the final staircase, leading to Michelangelo’s Dome. Kate heard the last echo of footsteps. There was nowhere else for him to go.
“He’s in the dome,” she said into the radio. She was determined to ignore anything that was said next, any order to stand down, because she had tracked this man all the way to the very top of the city and she wasn’t about to step back now.
Nick stayed behind Kate as she bounded up the staircase, which opened to the highest viewing platform in the city. In fact, it was the highest dome in the world. Under any other circumstances, it would have been a perfect night, with a million lights spread out below them, not just from the Vatican but from the city of Rome, which surrounded it.
“It’s over!” she announced to the night air. “If you’re armed, put your weapon down!”
She listened for a response.
Nothing. She picked one direction, went right, circling counterclockwise around the dome.
Nick appeared on the platform a moment later. He stood alone, looking down over the same view, until he heard a noise to his left. He edged around the dome, moving slowly, and saw nothing but the statues of the apostles that lined the platform’s stone rail.
One of the apostles moved.
“It’s time to give up,” Nick said.
“I don’t think so.”
Nick wondered where he had heard that voice before.
The intruder had climbed up onto the edge of the stone wall, and now he was facing out over the square.
“Don’t do it!” Nick said. He came forward, determined to grab the man by the waist.
The man turned to look at him. Both men were immediately frozen to the spot. They stared at each other, neither saying a word.
When Kate came around from the other direction, the spell was broken. The man spread out his arms and fell into the night.
Kate arrived at the wall just in time to see the man dropping to the square below.
There was a flash of white. A parachute! It unfurled within a fraction of a second. The air caught it and the man’s fall turned into flight.
He made one great sweep across St. Peter’s Square, then turned. The chute nearly brought him to a stop in midair before it regathered itself and took him toward the southern wall of the city. Kate watched, mesmerized, as the man disappeared over the wall, landing somewhere in the streets of Rome.
Kate stood motionless, trying to convince herself that she had really just seen the thief fly away.
“Why didn’t you stop him?” she asked.
Nick slowly shook his head, looking numb. “That was my father.”
CHAPTER TWO
There were two dozen people sitting in the Public Security Department’s conference room on the upper floor of an office building in Rome’s administrative subdivision, a few kilometers east of the Vatican walls. Present were members of the Gendarmerie’s Rapid Intervention Group, Interpol agents with their intelligence analysts, plus Kate O’Hare and Nick Fox, the on-loan consultants from the FBI.
“This is the suspect we are now looking for,” Inspector General Vitali said. For a man with such a romantic name, Lorenzo Vitali didn’t appear to be in love with anyone. Today he looked like he wanted to kill most of the people in the room with his bare hands.
The other major player in the room was Special Agent in Charge Carl Jessup. He had arrived at the Rome airport just thirty minutes before, after flying all night from the FBI field office in Los Angeles. He was fifty-seven years old, a lean, sinewy man originally from Kentucky who still carried a trace of Old Appalachia in his speech. On his best day, Jessup’s face looked like it needed a good ironing to smooth out all of the wrinkles and lines. After thirteen hours on an airplane, this did not come close to being his best day.
“The suspect’s name is Quentin Fox,” Vitali said.
The face of Nick’s father was projected onto the screen that dominated one wall of the conference room. It was a simple passport photograph on a white background, the farthest thing from a glamour shot, yet it was impossible not to see the glamour, the charm, the confidence, the raw charisma, radiating from this face.
It was a face that had a few years on it, but clearly every one of those years had been good to him. A face that could open doors, close deals, remove clothes, get the best table at a crowded restaurant, and make everyone in the room hang on his every word.
Kate saw the resemblance immediately, especially in the eyes. Eyes that looked right through you. She looked over at Nick, who was now staring up at the face of his father without any expression on his own. She was dying to know what he was thinking, but now was not the time to interrupt with questions.
“Quentin Fox is sixty-two years old,” Vitali said. “He was born in Paris, the son of an American diplomat and a French artist. He was educated first in Paris, then at Harvard when his father brought him to America. He majored in economics and art history.”
Vitali clicked his handheld remote control. The photo on the screen was replaced by an old black-and-white shot of a much younger man leaning against a stone wall, his hands in his pockets, a long scarf draped around his neck, looking like he owned the entire campus.
“He ran a gallery in Boston for seven years before moving to New York City and opening his own business. As a dealer specializing in European and Middle Eastern art, young Quentin found himself operating in a very competitive world, but by all accounts he thrived in it.”
The photo was replaced by another, and then another, Quentin Fox posing with artists and well-dressed buyers. Kate glanced over at Nick again, watched as the light from each new photo was cast on his face.
“This is Quentin Fox with a woman who was then named Olivia Price,” Vitali said, projecting a photograph taken at a fancy party. Quentin was in a tux and Olivia was in a stunning, shimmering cocktail dress with her hair pinned up to show off her diamond earrings. “She was a painter whose work Quentin was showing, the daughter of very wealthy parents. Quentin and Olivia were married in Cuba.”
Kate glanced over one more time. Nick allowed a faint smile as he looked at the image of his mother.