'You do not feel pain?'

'No…'

Hercules grinned. 'Because of her medicine. She is a Gypsy who knows healing. I am not Gypsy, but I get along with them. They give me things, I give them things. We do favors. That way we respect and do not steal from each other…' A giggle erupted, and he let it run, then became serious again. 'Nor I from you, Father.'

'Father…?' Harry looked at him blankly.

'Your papers were in your jacket, Father Addison…' Hercules leaned on his crutches and swept his hand to the side.

Nearby, Harry's clothes hung on a makeshift rack to dry. On the ground next to them, carefully laid out to dry as well, was the envelope Gasparri had given him. Next to it were Danny's personal effects – his scorched watch, his broken glasses, his charred Vatican identification, and his passport.

Like an acrobat Hercules suddenly dropped the length of his crutches to sit on the ground next to Harry, face-to-face as before. As if he had abruptly pulled up a chair.

'We have a problem, Father. Decidedly you would want me to tell someone of your condition. Most probably the police. But you are not ready to walk, and I can tell no one you are here because then my home would be found out. Understand?'

'Yes…'

'Best you rest anyway. With good fortune, as early as tomorrow you will be able to stand and then go where you wish.'

Suddenly Hercules reversed his earlier motion and abruptly pulled himself up on his crutches.

'I am leaving for a time. Sleep without fear. You will be safe.'

With that he swung off and disappeared in the darkness, the sound of him echoing until there was the creak of wood, the same as when the woman left – a heavy door opening and closing.

Harry lay back and for the first time was aware of a pillow under his head and a blanket covering him. 'Thank you,' he whispered. Again he heard the vague rumbling and felt the ground shake as a Metro train passed in the distance. Then exhaustion overtook him and he closed his eyes and thoughts of Hercules and everything else faded away.

Beverly Hills, California. Thursday, July 9, dusk.

Byron Willis let out a deep breath and hung up the phone. Turning off Sunset and onto Stone Canyon Road, he switched on the Lexus's headlights and saw them illuminate the ivy-covered walls guarding the massive, elegant estates he wound past. What had happened was impossible. Harry Addison, his Harry Addison, the guy whom he brought into the firm and loved like a brother and who had an office down the hall, was suddenly on the run in Italy, wanted for the murder of a Rome detective. And his brother was accused of the assassination of the cardinal vicar of Rome. And it had happened bang, bang. Like an auto accident. Already the media were tying up the office switchboard, trying to get a statement from him and the other partners.

'Son of a bitch!' he enunciated angrily.

Whatever the hell had happened, Harry was going to need all the help he could get, and so was the firm. The night was going to be spent fending off the media and making certain their clients knew what had happened and telling them to say nothing when the reporters pounced. At the same time he would be trying to find Harry and get him the best legal representation in Italy.

Slowing, Byron Willis saw the satellite trucks and the gaggle of media gathered in front of the security gates of his home at 1500 Stone Canyon Road. Pressing the remote that opened the gates, he waited for people to clear, then drove through, waving politely, doing his best to ignore them. On the far side he stopped, making certain no one slipped past as the gates closed. Then he drove on, his headlights cutting an easy path through the darkness, illuminating the long, familiar drive up to his house.

'Dammit,' he breathed.

In an instant a friend's world was turned upside down. It only made him realize his own situation more. Another late meeting, another coming home after dark. His wife and two young sons were away at the family ski house in Sun Valley. A wife and two young sons whom, even when they were home, he barely saw, even on weekends. God only knew what lay around any corner. Life was rich and to be lived thoroughly, and the demands of work should not be allowed to take up so much of it. And in that moment he made a resolve that once the business with Harry had been worked through – and it would be worked through – he would cut his time at the office and begin to enjoy the unpretentious rewards life had presented him.

Another push of the remote, and the door to his garage swung open. Usually the garage lights came on when the door opened, but for some reason this time they didn't, and he didn't know why. Opening the door, he stepped out.

'Byron-,' a male voice said in the dark.

Byron Willis started and swung around to see the vaguest outline of a figure coming toward him.

'Who are you?'

'A friend of Harry Addison.'

Harry? What the hell did that mean? Suddenly, fear stabbed through him. 'How did you get in here? What do you want?'

'Not much.'

There was a dance of flame and the smallest sound, as if someone had spit. Willis felt something hit him hard in the chest. Instinctively he looked down, wondering what it was. Then he felt his knees begin to buckle. The sound came again. Twice. The man stood right in front of him.

Byron Willis looked up. 'I don't understand…'

They were the last words he ever said.

Rome. Friday July 10, 7:00 a.m.

Thomas Kind walked along the pathway above the Tiber, waiting impatiently for the cell phone in his pocket to ring. He was dressed in a beige seersucker suit and blue-striped shirt open at the throat. A white panama hat was tilted down over his face to protect him both from the early sun and the possible inquiring face, the one that might recognize him and alert the authorities.

Moving under an umbrella of shade trees, he walked another dozen paces to a place he had seen as he approached, a point where the flowing Tiber washed against the granite walls directly below him. Glancing around and seeing nothing but the rush of early traffic passing on the roadway beyond the trees, he opened his jacket and reached into his waistband, taking out an object wrapped in a white silk handkerchief. Leaning forward casually, he rested his elbows on the protective balustrade over the water, a tourist stopped to gaze out over the river, and let the object fall from the handkerchief. A moment later he heard the splash and slowly straightened up, absently wiping the handkerchief across the back of his neck. Then he walked on, the charred remains of the Spanish-made Llama pistol washing somewhere along with the current at the bottom of the river.

Ten minutes later he entered a small trattoria just off Piazza Farnese, ordered a cold espresso from the bar, and sat down at a table near the back, impatient for the call and the information that still had not come. Taking the phone from his jacket, he dialed a number, let it ring twice, then punched in a three-digit code and hung up. Sitting back, he picked up his glass and waited for the return call.

Thomas Jose Alvarez-Rios Kind had become famous in 1984 for killing four undercover French antiterrorist police in a botched raid in a Paris suburb and had been the darling of the media and the terrorist underground ever since. Becoming, as journalists liked to call him, a latter-day Carlos the Jackal, a terrorist of fortune, willing to serve the highest bidder. And through the late 1980s and into the 1990s, he had served them all. From remnants of Italian Red Brigades to the French Action Directe. From Muammar al Qaddafi to Abu Nidal, and work for Iraqi intelligence in Belgium, France, Britain, and Italy. Then to Miami and New York as a debt payer for the master traficantes, the leaders of the Medellin drug cartel. And later, as if they needed help, coming back to Italy as a contractor for the Cosa Nostra, assassinating Mafia prosecutors in Calabria and Palermo.