The door closed behind Taglia, and Roscani was left alone. Frustrated, emasculated. Maybe, he thought, his wife was right. For all his dedication, the world was neither just nor perfect. And there was little he could do to change it. What he could do, however, was to stop railing so hard against it; something that would make his life and his family's a little easier. His wife was right, of course. But the reality, as they both knew, was that he could do as little to change himself as he could the world. He had become a policeman because he did not want to go into his father's business and because he was just married and wanted stability before starting a family, and because the profession itself had seemed both exciting and noble.

But then something else had happened: victims' lives began to touch his on an everyday basis, lives torn apart, ripped often irreparably by senseless violence and intrusion. His promotion to homicide made it worse: for some reason, he began to see the murdered, whatever their age, not so much as themselves but as someone's children – his own, at three or four or eight or twelve – each deserving to live life to its end without such terrible and vicious interruption. In that, Cardinal Parma was as much a mother's son as Pio had been. It made finding the guilty all the more imperative. Get them before they did it again. But how often had he gotten them, only to have the courts, for one reason or another, let them go? It had driven him to rail against injustice, within the law or without. He was fighting an unwinnable war, but the thing was, he kept fighting anyway. And maybe the reason he did was simply that he was his father's son and, like him, had grown up to be a bulldog.

Abruptly, Roscani reached out and picked up the TV's remote, then pointed it at the large-screen television. There was a click as it came on. He hit rewind and then play and watched the video again. Saw Harry on the stool, saw him talk behind dark glasses.

'Danny, I'm asking you to come in… To give yourself up… They know everything… Please, for me… Come in… please… Please…'

Roscani saw him pause at the end, then start to say something more just as the tape itself ended. He hit rewind once more and played it again. And then again. And again. The more he watched, the more he felt the anger build inside him. He wanted to look up and see Pio come through the door, smiling and easy as always, talking about his family, asking Roscani about his. Instead he saw Harry, Mr Hollywood in sunglasses, sitting on a stool, begging his own brother to give himself up so that he could be killed.

CLICK.

Roscani shut off the television. In the semidarkness the thoughts came back. He didn't want them to, but they did. How he would kill Harry Addison when he got him. And there was no doubt at all that he would get him.

CLICK.

He turned the TV back on and lit a cigarette, forcefully blowing out the match afterward. He couldn't allow himself to think like that. He wondered how his father would have reacted if he had been in his place.

Distance was what he needed. And he got it by playing the tape again. And once more. And once more after that. Forcing himself to watch it coldly, analytically, the experienced policeman looking for the smallest piece of something that would help.

The more he watched, the more two things began to intrigue him – the textured, patterned wallpaper barely visible behind Harry; and what happened just before the end, when Harry's head started to come up with his mouth open as if to say something more, but he never did because the tape finished. Sliding a small notebook from his jacket, he made a note.

– Have video image computer enhanced/wallpaper.

– Have English-speaking lip reader analyze unspoken word(s).

REWIND.

PLAY.

Roscani hit the mute button and watched in silence. When it was finished, he did the same thing and watched it again.

Rome. The Vatican Embassy to Italy, Via Po. Same time.

In their first public appearance since the murder of the cardinal vicar of Rome, the pope's remaining men of trust – Cardinal Umberto Palestrina, Cardinal Joseph Matadi, Monsignor Fabio Capizzi, and Cardinal Nicola Marsciano – mixed freely with the members of the Council of Ministers of the European Union, who were in Rome for a meeting on economic relations with emerging nations, and who had been invited to an informal cocktail party given by Archbishop Giovanni Bellini, the apostolic nuncio to Italy.

Of the four it was the Vatican secretariat of state, the sixty-two-year-old Palestrina, who seemed most at ease. Dressed not in the clerical garments the others wore but in a simple black suit with white Roman collar, and unmindful of the plainclothes Swiss Guards watching the room, the cardinal moved affably from one guest to the next, chatting energetically with each.

Palestrina's size alone – two hundred and seventy pounds over a six-foot seven-inch frame – turned heads. But it was the unexpected intensity of the rest of him – the grace with which he moved, his broad smile and riveting gray eyes under an unruly shock of stone-white hair, the iron grip of his hand as he took yours, addressing you directly and most often in your own language – that so took you off guard.

To watch him work the room, and revel in it – renewing old friendships, making new ones, then moving on to the next, made him seem more a politician on the stump than the second-most powerful man in the Catholic Church. Yet it was as a representative of that Church, of the pope himself, that he and the others were here, their presence, even in the shadow of grave tragedy, speaking for itself, reminding all that the Holy See was tirelessly and unremittingly committed to the future of the European Community.

Across the room, Cardinal Marsciano turned from the representative of Denmark and glanced at his watch.

7:50

Looking up, he saw Swiss investment banker Pierre Weggen enter the room. With him – and immediately causing a turn of heads and a very noticeable drop in the conversation level across the room – were Jiang Youmei, the Chinese ambassador to Italy, his foreign minister, Zhou Yi, and Yan Yeh, the president of the People's Bank of China. The People's Republic of China and the Vatican did not have official diplomatic relations, and had not since the Communist takeover of China in 1949, yet here were its two ranking diplomats to Italy and one of the new China's most influential business leaders striding into the Vatican Embassy in public view with Weggen.

Almost immediately Palestrina crossed to greet them, bowing formally then smiling broadly and taking the hand of each, and afterward motioning for drinks and chatting happily as if they were his old and dear friends. Chatting, Marsciano knew, in Chinese.

China's expanding relationship with the West, coupled with its rapid emergence as a towering economic power, had had little or no effect on the all-but-nonexistent relations between Rome and Beijing. And while there remained no formal diplomatic communication between them, the Holy See, under Palestrina's careful posturing, was attempting to pry open the door. His immediate goal was to arrange a papal visit to the People's Republic.

It was an objective that had far-reaching implications because, if his overture was accepted, it would be a sign that Beijing was not simply opening its doors to the Church but was ready to embrace it. Which was something, Palestrina was certain, China had no intention of doing – today, tomorrow, or, in all likelihood, ever; making his objective exceedingly ambitious at best. Yet, the secretariat of state was no wallflower. And moreover, the Chinese were here, and publicly.

That they were here was due chiefly to Pierre Weggen, with whom they had worked for years and whom they trusted implicitly. Or, as implicitly as any Oriental trusted any Westerner. Seventy, tall, and genteel, Weggen was a pre-eminent international investment banker. World renowned and immensely respected, he functioned primarily as liaison between major multinational companies looking to create global working partnerships. At the same time, he continued to work as a private counselor to longstanding clients and friends; the people, companies, and organizations who, over the years, had helped build his reputation.