Danny looked over his shoulder at Elena. 'Turn around, go the other way.'

If there had been a phone booth Harry would have felt like Superman. There was no phone booth, just a low wall with dense shrubbery behind it across the roadway from St Peter's where he'd come out. It was here he ducked out of sight and stripped off the beret and priest's clothing revealing the chinos and work shirt underneath.

Then, burying the priest's outfit in the thick of the bushes, he scooped up a handful of the powdery dirt at his feet and dusted it over his chest, rubbing the remainder off on his thighs. Then he moved from the bushes, waited for a small black Fiat to pass on the narrow roadway and stepped out, hoping to hell he looked enough like a gardener to pass if anyone saw him.

Resolutely, he walked down the short sweep of manicured lawn and crossed the road to the Fountain of the Sacrament. Getting his bearings, he took the short stairway to the right. At the top he stopped and looked quickly around. He saw no one. Directly before him were the planters and pine tree Danny had designated. As he moved toward them his coolness left. Suddenly he was aware of his own breathing, felt the awkward press of the Calico automatic in the waistband under his shirt, felt his pulse begin to race.

Now he was at the planters at the base of the tree. Anxiously, he glanced around, then knelt. His hand touched nylon and he could feel the breath go out of him in relief.

It meant not only that Danny and Elena were there, but also that the bulky package he'd decided not to wear at the last minute, for fear it might raise the suspicion of security guards inside St Peter's, had been safely delivered.

Glancing around once more, he stood and slipped into the tree's shadow. Loosening his shirt, he fastened the waist pack underneath at his waist and repositioned the Calico inside the pull of its strap. Then, tucking his shirt back in, letting it fall loosely at his waist to cover the pack's bulge, he walked off and back down the steps. The whole thing had taken no more than thirty seconds.

9:57 a.m.

The Tower of San Giovanni. Same time.

There was the cruel sound of the lock turning and then the door to Marsciano's apartment opened and Thomas Kind entered. Anton Pilger was in the hallway behind him, hands crossed in front of him, staring in. He stayed there as Kind crossed the room.

^'Buon giorno, Eminence,' he said. 'If I may.'

Marsciano stood back silently as Kind looked carefully around the room, then went into the bathroom. A moment later he came out and crossed to the glass doorway. Opening the doors, he stepped out onto the tiny balcony. Putting his hands on the railing, he looked down at the gardens below and then up, overhead, at the sheer brick wall leading to the roof.

Satisfied, he came back in and closed the glass doors and for a moment studied Marsciano.

'Thank you, Eminence,' he said, finally. Crossing the room, he went out immediately, pulling the door closed behind him. Marsciano shuddered at the sound of the lock turning. By now it was a grating that had become almost unbearable.

Turning away, he wondered why the assassin had visited him for the third time in the last twenty-four hours, and each time had gone through the exact same motions.

'When you reach the far doorway, turn right,' Danny said as Elena pushed him through the Room of the Popes, the last of the rooms of Borgia Apartments.

There was a rush and anxiousness to Father Daniel that Elena hadn't seen before. The abrupt turning in the hallway outside the men's rest room, the urgency in his voice now. It was more than concentration on what they were doing. It was fear.

Passing through the doorway, she turned him right, as he had said, moving him down a long corridor. Halfway down on the left was an elevator.

'Stop there,' Danny said.

Reaching it, they stopped and Elena pushed the button.

'What's wrong, Father? Something happened – what is it?'

For a second Danny watched people move past, going from one gallery to another, then he looked up at her sharply. 'Eaton and Adrianna Hall are in the museum looking for us. We can't be found by either of them.'

Abruptly the elevator door opened. Elena started to push him in when they heard an all-too-familiar voice behind them.

'We will be first, if you don't mind.'

Looking, they saw the pushy white-haired woman in the wheelchair and her dutiful middle-aged daughter from the shuttle bus. For the second time they were face-to-face with a couple from that bunch. And Danny wondered if it was a curse.

'Not this time, madam. I'm sorry.' Danny looked at her with a glare and Elena pushed him into the elevator.

'Well, I never-' the woman ranted. 'I shall not ride in the same lift with you at all, sir.'

'Thank you.'

Danny leaned forward and punched a button, and the door slid closed in the woman's face. As the elevator started down, Danny reached in his pocket and took out the set of keys Father Bardoni had given him in Lugano. Sliding one into a lock underneath the panel of elevator buttons, he turned it.

Elena watched the elevator pass the ground floor and continue down. When it stopped, the door opened onto a dimly lit service corridor. Danny took the key out and pushed a button that read lock.

'Okay. Out and to the left and then to the corridor immediately to the right.'

Fifteen seconds later they were moving into a large mechanical room housing the museum's massive ventilating equipment.

10:10 a.m.

The marble floors, the small covered wooden benches, the semicircular rose marble altar with its bronze crucifix, the bright stained-glass ceiling. The Holy Father's private chapel.

How many times had Palestrina been here before? To pray alone with the pope or with the few select guests who might have been invited to join them. Kings, presidents, statesmen.

But this was the first time he had been summoned on the spur of the moment to pray alone with the Holy Father. And now as he came in, he found the pope seated in his bronze chair in front of the altar, head bent in prayer.

He looked up as Palestrina approached. Outstretching his hands, he took Palestrina's in his and studied him, his eyes intense and filled with worry.

'What is it?' Palestrina asked.

'This is not a good day, Eminence.' The pope's voice was barely audible. 'There is a sense of foreboding. And dread and fearfulness in my heart. It was there on arising and has sat perched on my shoulder ever since. I don't know what it is, but you are a part of it, Eminence… a part of whatever this darkness is…' The pope hesitated and his eyes probed Palestrina's. 'Tell me what it is…'

'I do not know, Holiness. To me the day seems bright, and warm with the summer sun.'

'Then pray with me that I am wrong, that it is only a feeling and will pass… Pray for the salvation of the spirit…'

The pope stood from his chair and both men knelt before the altar. Palestrina bowed his head as Pope Leo XIV led them in prayer, knowing that whatever the Holy Father felt, he was wrong.

The forbidding horror that had begun in the early morning hours as Palestrina had waked from his nightmare of the disease-bringing spirits, even as Thomas Kind was calling to tell him of the situation with Li Wen, had turned suddenly and inconceivably to good fortune.

Less than an hour earlier, Pierre Weggen had called to tell him that despite the revelation that the lakes had been deliberately poisoned by, in the official words of the Chinese, 'a mentally ill co-worker and water-quality engineer' – Beijing had decided to go ahead with the massive plan to rebuild the country's entire water-delivery system. It was a gesture designed to comfort and unite a traumatized, still-fearful, and unsettled nation, and at the same time show the world the central government remained in control. It meant that despite everything Palestrina's 'Chinese Protocol' was in place and would not be turned back. In addition, what Thomas Kind had promised he had delivered – with the deaths of Li Wen and Chen Yin, any chance that a road might be discovered that would lead from China to Rome was closed forever. And under Thomas Kind's sure hand, the final chapter removing the last possible connection would soon be written here, inside the Vatican, for, as the moth comes to the flame – neither Father Daniel nor his brother were Death sent by the spirits, but simply a worry that had only to be eliminated.