So the Holy Father was mistaken, and the thing sitting perched on his shoulder was not the shadow of Palestrina's death but the emotional and spiritual infirmities of an old and fearful man.

10:15 a.m.

Roscani bit down restlessly on a knuckle and watched as the work engine came slowly down the track toward them. It was old and creaky with oily soot muddying most of the once bright green paint beneath.

'It's early,' Scala said from the backseat.

'Early, late. At least it's here,' Castelletti said, sitting in front with Roscani.

They were watching from Roscani's blue Alfa parked on the roadside halfway between the railroad spur to the gates in the Vatican wall and Stazione San Pietro. As the green engine drew closer, they could hear a grating of steel on steel as the engineer applied the brakes and the rumbling machine began to slow. A moment later it drifted past them, slowing even more. Then it stopped. A brakeman jumped from it and walked up the track to the spur. They saw him unlock a mechanical hand switch, then reach up and tug on a steel bar connecting it to the rail switches. A moment later he waved to the engine. There was a puff of brown diesel exhaust from the smokestack and it moved forward onto the spur. When it had gone far enough, the brakeman signaled, and it stopped. Then he threw the switch back the way it had been and climbed back onboard the engine.

Scala leaned forward against the front seat. 'They go in now, it's going to fuck up everyone's timetable inside.'

Castelletti shook his head. 'They won't. It's the Vatican. They'll sit there until precisely the time it takes to open the gates and go inside at eleven on the dot. No Italian trainman is going to risk pissing off the pope by being early or late.'

Roscani glanced at Castelletti, then looked back to the work engine. He was increasingly troubled by what he had done. Maybe he had wanted justice too much and had let some part of him reason the Addisons could somehow deliver it to him. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized they were all crazy. And he most of all for letting it happen. The Addisons might think they were prepared for what they were getting into, but the truth was, they weren't, not when they were going up against Farel's black-suited secret service, never mind someone like Thomas Kind. The trouble was, Roscani's insight had come too late, the event had already begun.

10:17 a.m.

Danny was out of his wheelchair and on the floor, his legs in the blue fiberglass casts twisted out awkwardly from his body. In front of him was a large blanket of crumpled newspaper. On top of it, he placed the last of eight of the rolled olive-oil-and-rum-soaked rags, setting them side by side and approximately eight inches apart and directly in front of the main air intake for the Vatican museums' central ventilating system.

'Oorah!' Danny said to himself. 'Oorah!' Ready to kill! The ancient Celtic battle cry the marines had taken as their own. It was both arousing and chilling and came from the soul. Everything to now had been the setup, here and now was where it all began. Emotionally he had shifted gears, working himself up to where he needed to be, his mind-set become that of a warrior.

'Oorah!' he said again under his breath as he finished, then looked over his shoulder to Elena standing at a work sink behind him, waiting with a battered galvanized bucket containing a dozen water-soaked equipment-maintenance towels.

'Ready?'

She nodded.

'Okay.'

With a glance at his watch, Danny lit a match and touched it in turn to the rags. Instantly they caught, throwing up a cloud of oily brown smoke and igniting the newspapers. Twisting abruptly left, Danny picked up more of the crumpled newspapers and fed them on top of those already burning. In seconds he had a roaring inferno.

'Now!' he said.

Elena came in a rush. Wincing against the heat and flame, they took the wet towels from the bucket, laying them one by one across the top of the fire.

Almost instantly the flames died away. In their stead was a thick billow of heavy brown-and-white smoke, all of it drawn, not into the room, but into the ventilating system. Satisfied, Danny pushed back, and Elena helped him into the wheelchair. As she did, he looked up at her.

'Next,' he said.

10:25 a.m.

Harry stood in the deep shade of pine trees just east and north of the Carriage Museum, waiting until a gardener's electric cart passed. When it did, he stepped out, cursing and fumbling with the stuck zipper on the waist pack inside his shirt. Finally, it came open and he reached in to take out a Ziploc bag. Opening it, he pulled out one of the rolled, oily rags, then closed the bag again and put it back in the waist pack.

It the distance near St Peter's he could see two white-shirted Vigilanza patrolmen walking along the road away from him and toward the Ufficio Centrale di Vigilanza, the Vatican police station, a building that he now realized was probably no more than a hundred yards from the railroad station.

'Christ,' he said out loud. Then, quickly kneeling, he pulled together a large mound of pine needles, placed the rolled oily rag near the bottom and lit it. Immediately it flared up, igniting the tinder-dry needles around it. Counting to five, he smothered the fire with more pine needles. Instantly the flames turned to smoke. Then, as the flames flared again, he piled on several heavy armloads of soaking leaves gathered from beneath a freshly watered hedgerow nearby.

It was then he heard the first wail of warning sirens coming from the direction of the Vatican museums. Dumping a final armload of wet leaves onto the fire and seeing the smoke billow up, he glanced around, then walked quickly up the hill toward the Central Avenue of the Forest.

Elena stared blankly ahead, waiting for the elevator to stop. She tried not to hear the sirens or think of the mass anxiety of the people or the damage the smoke might do to the priceless art – 'little, if any,' Father Daniel had told her. Then she realized the elevator had stopped and the doors were opening. As they did, the smell of smoke mixed with a clang of warning bells and shrieking fire alarms.

'Let's go!' Danny urged, and she pushed the wheelchair out into the corridor in front of them. Suddenly they were in a rush of frenzied tourists being urged on by white-shirted Vigilanza.

'The doors at the far end,' Danny said.

'All right,' Elena said. She could feel the adrenaline pump through her as she moved the wheelchair forward through the clamor and thickening smoke. Abruptly, and for no reason, her thoughts went to Harry and how he had looked at her without saying a word just as he and Hercules were leaving the apartment in the early-morning darkness. It was a look not of concern or even fear, but of love. Deep, even profound, there was no real way to describe it, except that it had been there and it had been for her, and it would stay with her for the rest of her life, wherever she was and no matter what happened.

'Out here,' Danny said suddenly.

The urgency in his voice brought her back to the instant. She was following his direction, pushing him forcefully through a rush of people into an outer courtyard, the screaming sirens drowning out the yells of people pouring out the myriad of doors right along with them. She could see Danny opening the camera bag – taking out three of the oiled rags, then three matchbooks whose covers had been inserted with nonfiltered cigarettes that would act as fuses, and then the covers tucked back in again to hold the cigarettes tight.