The bus continued down the hill to the main four-lane expressway at the bottom. On the left, carved into the yellowish rock of the rugged cliff side, Holliday could see the man-made niche that had served as a guard booth during the war. Back in those days access to the big houses on the Barrandov hill had been restricted to the very few and there had been a barrier here. It was one of the few places in the city that still showed physical evidence of the Nazi occupation between 1939 and 1945.
The bus swung left and slipped onto the broad multilaned highway, threading through a couple of ramps and cloverleafs until they came out on Strakonicka Street. To the right Holliday could see intermittent views of the river, and to the left were railway yards, graffiti-covered rail and subway cars lined up waiting to be shunted in one direction or the other. Here and there they passed dark stucco buildings with either blue curtains or red.
“I always wondered what those places with the colored drapes were,” said Sister Meg as the bus rolled past yet another red-curtained building. “They always seem so dark.” A red neon sign in the front yard read PANSKYKLUB.
“A
pansky
club is a brothel,” explained Holliday. “A
pani
club is a brothel for women. Red for men, blue for women.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Prostitution isn’t legal here, but it’s not illegal, either. They’ve even got a brothel called Big Sister that’s online, like a reality show.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Sister Meg.
“That’s free-market capitalism.” Holliday shrugged and glanced over his shoulder. The BMW was still on their tail about three cars behind. Meg followed his look.
“What are we going to do about him?” she asked.
“We’ll get off at the Smichov terminal and get onto the Metro. He’ll have to park his car. Maybe we can lose him if we get lucky and catch a train right off.”
The bus turned left down a side street and then right onto a wider roadway set with streetcar tracks. They passed a war surplus outlet in an old brick warehouse, a banner advertising genuine KGB fur hats strung across the grimy front entrance. They finally pulled up under a fiberglass canopy.
They climbed off the bus and dodged across several sets of streetcar tracks, cutting through the streams of sleepy-looking late commuters. There was no sign of the BMW or the bald man. They went through the glass doors, then down a wide set of steps to a Stalin-era platform, the letters of the station formed out of sheet steel and bolted to the concrete slab wall. There were two choices, the 1 side of the platform and the 2. The trains arriving on the left side of the platform went to the last station at Slicin, and the ones on the right went to Cerny Most.
“Which way?” Meg asked.
“Two,” said Holliday. “Cerny Most.”
A train pulled in on the Cerny Most side of the platform and whined to a pneumatic stop. The trains were silver-sided with red doors, and like subways around the world the cars were slathered with graffiti of varying quality.
Holliday looked back up the stairs as the doors hissed open.
“Shit,” he muttered.
“Pardon?” Sister Meg said, a little shocked.
“Our large bald friend,” said Holliday.
Puffing hard, the man from the BMW was charging down the stairs to the platform.
Holliday and the nun stepped into the car. Holliday leaned out until there was a bonging chime and a mellow, almost sedated female voice spoke over the public address system.
“Ukoncete nastup a vystup dvere se zaviraji.”
Finish embarking and disembarking, doors are closing. Holliday ducked his head back into the car. The doors slid shut against their rubber bumpers and the train droned into motion.
“Did he get on?” Sister Meg asked, gripping the bar beside him.
“The car behind us.”
“Now what do we do?”
Holliday glanced up at the schematic system map above the doors. Four stops to the junction point of the A and B lines at the big Mustek station on the other side of the river. About eight minutes. The station they really wanted was one station farther on at Namesti Republiky.
“We’ll do a Charnier,” said Holliday.
“A what?”
“Alain Charnier, Popeye Doyle. Gene Hackman, Fernando Rey.”
The nun looked at him blankly. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“
The French Connection
?”
The nun shook her head. She was much too young, of course. Holliday sighed, suddenly acutely aware of the age difference between them.
“It’s a scene in a famous movie. A French crook fools a cop into getting off a New York subway, then hopping back on at the last second.”
“And we’re going to do the same thing?”
“We’re going to try.”
A minute later they moaned smoothly into the next station, Andel. The doors slid open and Holliday started counting softly to himself.
“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi . . .” At fifteen the sleepy voice of the announcement was heard; at twenty the doors slid shut and the train moved off again. The same happened again at Karlovo namesti and Narodni trida, the next stations on the B line.
“Get off at the next stop and walk forward on the platform and slightly away,” instructed Holliday. “When I say ‘go’ turn around and get back on the train as fast as you can.”
The nun nodded silently. The train moved off.
“You’ve done things like this before, haven’t you?” Sister Meg said quietly.
“Once or twice,” admitted Holliday. A few moments later they pulled into the junction station at Mustek and the doors slid open. Holliday stepped out, putting his hand on Meg’s back and propelling her onto the platform ahead of him. The lower-level platform was as bland as the one at Smichov, a set of stairs leading up to a flyover to the escalators taking you up to the A line level. There was a line of plain oval pillars running down the center of the platform.
Holliday started counting as they joined the herds of commuters heading toward the stairs, keeping his hand on Sister Meg’s back, guiding her toward one of the pillars and circling behind it briefly. He watched as cue ball head blundered forward toward the stairs, searching the crowd for any sign of Holliday and the nun. He reached the stairs then stopped, turning his head left and right, looking more and more panicked with each passing second.
“Fourteen Mississippi, fifteen Mississippi . . .”
The chime bonged its
ding-dong-ding
three-note refrain.
“Go!” Holliday urged, pushing Meg back toward the waiting subway train. She gave him a single, over-the-shoulder nasty look then did as she was told. Holliday followed. Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the bald man as the man spotted him. The fat man surged forward against the flow of the crowd as the announcer went through her recorded advisory. Meg stepped through the doors of the car ahead of the one they’d been traveling in with Holliday right behind her. Cue Ball didn’t stand a chance. The doors closed with the bald man lumbering forward, elbowing people out of the way. He was still ten feet away when the train began to move. He stood impotently on the other side of the doors as Holliday gave him a smile and a little finger-waggling wave, just the way the French crook had done in the movie.
“Bye-bye,” Holliday said and grinned.
They headed into the tunnel and disappeared.
7
Cardinal Secretary of State Antonio Niccolo Spada sat in the ornate carved oak throne behind his equally ornate fourteenth-century Spanish desk. Across from him Father Thomas Brennan, head of the Vatican Secret Service, Sodalitium Pianum, paced back and forth across the immense silk rug that covered the floor in Spada’s office.
The cardinal’s workplace was located on the top floor of the Governatorato, the Vatican Civil Administration Building located directly behind St. Peter’s Basilica. The lavish fourth-floor corner office also looked out across the Viale Osservatorio to the San Pietro Monument and the walled enclosures of the Papal Gardens. Next to the Pope’s own audience chamber there was no more important place in the Vatican.
The voice of God might well whisper orders directly into the Holy Father’s ear, but the orders were interpreted and carried out by Antonio Spada. The Pope was God’s emissary on Earth; Spada was His enforcer. The baker’s son from the village of Canneto di Caronia on the road to Messina had come a long way, and not just from Sicily.
“I think it’s a mistake,” said Brennan, pacing. As he walked back and forth he puffed on his inevitable foul-smelling Macedonia cigarette, spilling a continuous shower of ash across the carpet, even though the cardinal had a conspicuously placed crystal ashtray on the desk for his guests.
“Why?” Spada asked.
“Because Holliday is too far above the horizon. He has friends in high places, he knows people.”
The cardinal shrugged. “Accidents happen.”
“Accidents that happen to men like Holliday are investigated,” argued Brennan.
Spada allowed himself a small, knowing smile. “You’re frightened of this man.”
“You’re bloody right I am, begging your pardon, Eminence,” Brennan said and nodded, continuing his pacing. “He’s dangerous. He upsets the balance of power, he interferes where he has no business.” Brennan paused. “Not to mention the fact that he’s caused a great deal of trouble for us in the past. And a great deal of money as well, I might add.”
“All the more reason for us to rid ourselves of him now,” murmured the cardinal.
“But why?” Brennan insisted. “He and the woman are looking for a box of relics that probably don’t even exist.” The priest eyed his superior. “Besides which the Church forbids the worship of such things. The twenty-fifth session of the Council of Trent, I believe. As are the purchase or sale of such relics.”
“Don’t presume to teach me about Church dogma, Father Brennan,” the cardinal said coolly.
“Then tell me why we’re interested in this so-called True Ark or whatever it is.”
“A relic is as a relic does, Father Brennan,” said the cardinal obscurely.
Brennan frowned. “You’ll have to explain that, I’m afraid,” said the priest.
“The True Ark is said to contain the Holy Grail, the Crown of Thorns, the Holy Shroud, and the Ring of Christ.”
“The fecking jackpot then,” snorted Brennan.
“Nevertheless,” said Spada.
“You can’t believe it’s true,” said Brennan, astounded.
“It doesn’t matter what I believe, Father Brennan,” the cardinal answered. “Perception is everything. It’s like the story of the emperor’s new clothes: if enough people
say
the emperor is wearing silk, then he might just as well
be
wearing silk. If enough people
say
Paris Hilton is beautiful, then she
is
beautiful—even though it’s patently untrue. She’s far too skinny, she’s flatchested, her nose is too large and her ankles too small.” The secretary of state paused. “Whatever they find, we must have. That rag in the cathedral in Turin has been scientifically proven to be a fraud, but that doesn’t stop tens of thousands coming to see it.”
“If they find anything,” grumbled Brennan. He butted his cigarette in the ashtray and lit another. Cardinal Spada let out a long-suffering sigh. He was tired of discussion. Why didn’t Brennan just do as he was told?
“The best way to guarantee that they find nothing is to stop them looking,” the cardinal said. “Besides that, if what you told me earlier is true, then this man Holliday has been entrusted with the true secret of the Templars—the numbers for their bank accounts. A bonus, although the money rightfully belongs to the Church, anyway.”
“If we do this thing we can’t have this coming back on us,” warned Brennan.
“I understand that,” Cardinal Spada said and nodded. “Hire outside help if you wish.” The man in the scarlet skullcap stared across the desk. “Holliday is important, but remember who the woman is, as well.”
“They’re in Prague. I know just the people.”
“Then get on with it,” said Spada.
It was a dismissal.
Brennan left Spada’s office and went down two flights of marble stairs to his own, much smaller office on the second floor. It was a plain square room with bare wooden floors, a metal desk, some black metal filing cabinets and a plain cross on the wall.
The only other decoration was a photograph of his long-dead sister Mary, a Magdalene nun, standing in front of St. Finnbar’s in Cork City, smiling into the camera, squinting in the sunlight. The picture was from the late sixties, faded to sepia.
She’d worked as a supervisor of the indentured girls at the Magdalene Laundry on Blarney Street, above the North Mall and the River Lee with its famous swans. She’d so loved to feed the swans. She’d imagined they were the souls and spirits of ugly girls come back to the world as something beautiful. She’d died of some terrible respiratory sickness a year after the photo was taken, coughing her lungs out and praying to a heedless god.
The priest sat down at his desk, flipped through his old-fashioned Rolodex and came up with a number with a 420 prefix. He dialed and almost immediately the Vatican switchboard broke into the call. He gave the male operator the number, and then a name. There was a pause and then the double tone of the call ringing through in Prague. The phone rang three times and then was answered.
“Prosim?”
The voice was a slightly phlegmy baritone.
“
Pan
Pesek? Antonin Pesek?”
“I am Pesek,” said the voice. “Who are you?”
“This is Romulus,” said Brennan, staring blankly at the photograph of his sister as he ordered the killing. “I have a job for you.”
The Convent of St. Agnes of Bohemia is located on Milosrdnych Street in the Josefov, or Jewish Quarter, of Prague, the eleventh-century center of the original city that had grown on the banks of the Vltava River a thousand years before. The convent, now part of the National Gallery of Prague, was a collection of meticulously refurbished fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Gothic buildings centered around the old vaulted cloisters that now contain one of the finest collections of Baroque and Renaissance art in the world.