A query to the Los Angeles bureau of the FBI had, in turn, accessed the files of the California Department of Motor Vehicles in Sacramento, requesting a copy of the driver's license thumbprint of one Harry Addison, 2175 Benedict Canyon Drive, Los Angeles, California. Less than thirty minutes later, a computer-enhanced copy of Addison's thumbprint had been faxed to Gruppo Cardinale headquarters in Rome. The whorl pattern and measured ridge tracings matched perfectly with those on the print lifted from the left grip of the gun that had killed Gianni Pio.

For the first time in his life Roscani grimaced at the sound of the saw as the morgue doors closed behind him, and he walked down the hallway and up the steps of the Obitorio Comunale. Something he had done a thousand times in his career. He had seen policemen dead. Judges dead. The bodies of murdered women and children. Tragic as they were, he'd been able to distance himself professionally. But not this time.

Roscani was a cop, and cops got killed all the time. It was a truth drummed into you day after day at the institute. One you were supposed to accept going in. It was tragic and sad, but it was reality. And when it came, you were supposed to be prepared to deal with it professionally. Pay homage and move on; without anger, outrage, or hatred for the killer. It was part of what you were trained for in the career you chose.

And you thought you were trained – until the day you walked around your partner's body and saw the blood and shredded flesh and shattered bone. The grotesque work the bullets had done. Then saw it all over again when the medical people began their work in the morgue. That was when you knew you weren't prepared for it at all. No one could be, no matter what he was trained for, or taught, or what anyone else said. Loss and rage stormed through you like wildfire, overtaking everything. It was why – whenever cops were killed – every policeman who could, from every district reachable, sometimes from across continents, came to the funeral. Why five hundred uniformed men and women on motorcycles were not uncommon, riding in solemn procession in honor of a comrade who might have been only a year on the force, a rookie on foot patrol.

Angrily Roscani shoved open a side door and stepped into the morning sun. Its warmth should have been a welcome relief from the coldness of the rooms below, but it wasn't. Taking the long way around the building, he tried to let his emotions fade, but they didn't. Finally, he turned a corner and walked down a ramp to the street where he'd parked his car. Sadness and loss and anger were crushing him.

Leaving his car, he stepped off the curb, waited for traffic to pass, then crossed the street and started to walk. He needed what he called 'assoluta tranquillita', a kind of splendid silence, that quiet time when you were alone and could think things through properly. Especially now, time alone to try and walk off the emotion, to begin to think things through as an investigator for Gruppo Cardinale, not as the shattered, enraged partner of Gianni Pio.

Time for silence and to think.

To walk and walk and walk.

Thomas Kind pulled back a window certain and watched as the men in coveralls emerged from the building and took Harry Addison across the courtyard. He had what he needed from him, or at least as much as he was going to get; now the men in coveralls simply needed to get rid of him.

Harry could see only from his right eye. And that was more shadow than image. His left eye had no feeling or sight whatsoever. His other senses told him that he was outside and being walked across a hard surface by, he thought, two men. Somewhere he had the vaguest memory of sitting on a stool or something like it, of taking directions and saying words out loud that were spoken to him through an earphone by the same voice that had spoken to him before. He remembered that only because of the fuss someone else had made about fitting the device in his ear. Most of the argument was in Italian. But part had been fought in English. It was the wrong size. It wouldn't work. It would show.

Abruptly a male voice beside him spoke sharply in Italian – the same man, he thought, who had argued about the earphone while trying to fit it. A moment later, a hand shoved him from behind and he nearly stumbled. His recovery cleared his thoughts enough to tell him that while his hands were still bound behind him, his feet had been freed. He was walking on his own, and he thought he could hear traffic. His mind cleared to another level, telling him that if he could walk, he could run. He couldn't see and he had no use of his hands. The hand shoved him again. Hard. And he fell, crying out as he hit and felt his face scrape the pavement. He tried to roll over, but a foot stamped on his chest, holding him there. Somewhere nearby came the sound of a man straining, then there was a clank, and he heard something heavy, like iron scraping stone, sliding past his ear. Then he was lifted up by his shoulders and put over an edge. His feet touched steel and he was forced down the rungs of a ladder. Instantly what little light there was faded, and stench dominated everything.

A second male voice farther off cursed and then echoed. There was the sound of rushing water. The smell was overpowering. And then Harry knew. He'd been brought into the sewer. An exchange came in Italian.

'Prepararsi?'

'Si.' The earphone voice.

Harry felt a jarring between his wrists. There was a snap, and his hands came free.

CLICK. The unmistakable metallic sound of a gun being cocked.

'Sparagli.' Shoot him.

In reflex reaction Harry stepped backward, throwing his hands in front of his face.

'Sparagli!'

Immediately there was a thundering explosion. Something slammed into his hand. Then his head. The force threw him backward into the water.

Harry did not see the face of the gunman who stepped over him. Or of the other man who held the flashlight. Harry did not see what they saw; the enormous volume of blood covering the left side of his face, matting his hair, a trickle of it washing away in the flow of water.

'Morto,' a voice whispered.

'Si.'

The gunman knelt down and rolled Harry's body over the edge into a deeper, faster rush of water, then watched as it floated away.

'I topi faranno il resto.'

The mice will finish it.

The Questura, police headquarters.

Harry Addison sat there, a bandage over his left temple, dressed in the off-white polo shirt, jeans, and aviator sunglasses he wore when he left the Hotel Hassler at little after one-thirty in the afternoon yesterday. Nearly thirty hours earlier.

The fifteen-second video of the fugitive Harry Addison had come anonymously to Sala Stampa della Santa Sede, the press office of the Holy See, at 3:45 that afternoon, with a request it be sent immediately to the pope. Instead it had been put on a shelf and not opened until approximately 4:50. Immediately it had been sent to Farel's office and, after being viewed by a junior staff member, sent to Farel himself. By six o'clock Farel, Gruppo Cardinale prosecutor Marcello Taglia, Roscani, along with Castelletti and Scala, the homicide detectives assigned to Pio's murder, and a half dozen others were sitting in the dark of a video room viewing it together.

'Danny, I'm asking you to come in… To give yourself up.' Harry spoke in English, and an interpreter from Roscani's office translated into Italian.

As far as they could tell, Harry was sitting on a high wooden stool in a darkened room, alone. The wall behind him appeared to be covered with a textured and patterned wallpaper. That and Harry, his dark glasses, and the bandage on his forehead were all that was visible.