Genesis Read online

  “Unless there’s anything else?” he added, simply for the insulting effect of the question.

  Gabriella looked at him stiffly. The downside of striving to be both a good person and an employed one was that it ruled out acting on the extraordinary urge to belt-whip the man in front of her.

  At this precise moment, she was seriously questioning whether it was worth keeping her job.

  But instead of reacting, Gabriella Fierro merely inclined her head slightly, then turned and walked away.

  Location unknown

  The man with no future sat surrounded by those who ruled over him. Former friends and colleagues, perhaps. But no more. His blunder had cost him that. It would soon cost him his life—of that there could be no remaining doubt. It was only a matter of what was to transpire between now and then.

  Is there good? Or evil? His mind, conditioned by so many years of education and contemplation, pulsed with weighty thoughts. We’re trying to create good. Perhaps the distinction is simply beyond us.

  His body was pressed firmly into a wooden chair. He’d tried to writhe. He’d made every vain effort to free himself from his predicament. But his hands were tied to the rough armrests at the wrists and the elbows. His ankles were independently bound to the two front legs of the seat, further ties at each of his knees. Even his waist was belted to the wood behind him.

  Almost ironically, all the ties were of a soft white fabric. Nearly the subtlety of silk, yet unflinchingly strong.

  Evil, dressed in silken fineries.

  Despite the ponderous thoughts, the sweat of terror, acrid and icy, poured over his features. When his mouth finally opened, the words that emerged did not have the solemn fortitude of the phrases in his mind.

  “Don’t torture me! Please, don’t torture me!” his panicked voice erupted.

  The cries, of course, were in vain. He couldn’t see the faces of the men around him—they’d gone through the charade of setting up the whole scene too carefully for that—but he knew who they were. The lamps positioned behind them, beaming a too-bright light directly into his eyes and casting them in phantom-like shadows, couldn’t conceal the identity of individuals he’d known for years.

  “Torture? Why are you talking about torture?” the Voice asked. “We haven’t laid a finger on you.”

  The Voice. To so many who heard it, it spoke as God. Seemingly omniscient, certainly vastly powerful. Never to be underestimated or ignored. The bound man was one of a select few who knew the identity behind it. He’d heard it often before—but this was the first time it had filled him with real fear.

  “You’ll find you’ve not been touched,” the Voice continued. “Save for the necessary measures of restraint.”

  The captive man took quick stock of himself. Though he was bound and the strain of his exertions against the ties was painful, he could sense no damage to his body. No cuts. No bruises. Nothing felt broken.

  “Why else would you have me here?” he asked. Confusion, close to panic, now reigned in his voice. “What’s this about?”

  One of the shadowy figures took a step closer.

  “That is a question with an answer you know only too well.”

  The figure who spoke was him. The Voice, in person.

  The man in the chair stopped writhing. These last words terrified him more than anything that had happened so far. On his face, an immediate recognition.

  “I didn’t mean … I never meant—”

  “Your intentions are of no concern to us.” The Voice cut him off mid-stutter. “Only your betrayal.”

  The man wagged his head—the only part of his body free enough to have a range of motion—in strenuous protest. “I didn’t mean to—”

  This time his words were cut short not by a response but by a movement. The figure advanced another step, his hands in motion near his waist. The shadows still concealed his face, and the captive’s vision was blurred from sweat he couldn’t wipe from his eyes.

  But he saw the knife. A flickering, bright reflection beamed off its metallic surface.

  His body tensed. A whimper of fear involuntarily escaped his lips.

  “No … no,” he finally pressed out of his trembling mouth. “You just said you weren’t here to torture me!”

  The man holding the knife laughed.

  “Oh, my brother, once again you simply do not listen. You’ve never paid close enough attention. That’s been your problem all along.”

  He leaned close to the man in the chair, bending down so his face was nose to nose with his captive. Any pretense of remaining anonymous was abandoned.

  He pressed the knife point against the bare skin of the bound man’s quivering chest.

  “I was speaking of the past. About the future, I’ve said nothing at all.”

  Chapter 4

  Three days ago: 2:35 p.m.

  Back in her office, the closer examination Gabriella gave D’Antonio’s file did nothing to alter her perception. Dross. Nonsense. The same as always. There seemed nothing left—in her work, in her life—to surprise her.

  For whatever reason, the Deputy Commissioner was intent on keeping Gabriella at the bottom of the pecking order as long as possible. Thus far, he’d been entirely successful. Two and a half years and nothing but the prerequisite promotion out of cadet status that code required be given to every new officer after six months on the job. Two and a half years of glowering, dismissive, unrestrained dislike. And cases like … well, like this.

  God alone knew the source of D’Antonio’s negative view of her. Maybe it was because Gabriella was a woman. Maybe it was because she was attractive, while D’Antonio was the superlative opposite of anything that might be called good-looking. Or maybe, perhaps more likely, it was because she was pious, while he was so obviously antagonistic toward any sort of belief. Whatever it was, the Deputy Commissioner of the Polizia di Stato’s Roman Monteverde XVI station clearly detested Gabriella Fierro. She often wondered if she’d work her whole life only to retire at the same lowly rank of agente she’d held since leaving her training.

  But what could she do? Gabriella had wanted as long as she could remember to follow that elusive, idealistic path—to do good. This had seemed a reasonable environment in which to do it. Enforcing the law. Fighting for righteousness. Never, in her most discouraged and depressed bad dreams, would she have thought she’d come to spend her time as little more than a government accountant, checking the public finances of a city parish.

  She forced her attention back to the file. San Sebastiano Penitente in eastern Rome, just beyond the Quartiere Prenestino-Labicano. A parish with a total membership, by its own records, of only 223. In many places that might be considered a decent church, but in the center of Rome, a stone’s throw from the walls of the Vatican, it was nothing but an insignificant spot on a map of shining stars and crosses. A nothing. A non-entity.

  A handful of parishioners had made accusations against the parish council of their donations going astray. The amounts were anything but staggering: 100 euros from a Signore Donatelli; 280 euros from a Signora Adelardi. The largest single sum Gabriella could see on the brief report was 1,500 euros given by the Matrenzo family. All of them claimed that their funds had been donated for the church but they’d not seen evidence the money was being used for the purposes for which it had been given. They’d filed complaints with the rector, but no explanation had been forthcoming. They’d taken the matter further up the church’s hierarchy, but again with no result. No investigation. No examination. And so at last, in desperation, they had reported it to the police.

  What in God’s holy name (may he forgive me for using it) was Fierro to do with this? Was it really of interest to the people of Italy? Was state money really to be spent reclaiming what amounted to barely a wallet-full of cash that had been, just possibly, misused? If she investigated the case and got to the bottom of what had happened, three or four small-time charitable donors would feel a little better. Hardly an investigative triumph.
r />   Gabriella sighed resignedly—an act with which she had become too familiar—then took up the file. She could lodge a protest, suggest the case didn’t merit police attention. But she knew D’Antonio would only take delight in ensuring it was overturned, mocking her further in the process.

  God, she wished she could take him down a peg. Or at least slap a little decency and politeness into the man’s bulky frame. That, at least, would be a project in which she could take some genuine interest.

  She allowed her office door to slam behind her as she left—an act of defiance she knew would be noticed by no one.

  This case was something that would interest no one at all.

  The present: Santa Maria in Trastevere church: 9:04 p.m.

  The barrel of the gun now seemed preternaturally steady in the otherwise shaking grip of the priest. It had all come to this. Everything on which Gabriella had worked for the past days had brought her here. Her life ending at the hands of this man of God.

  “Why are you doing this?” she demanded of the cleric.

  “You traipsed into territory you shouldn’t have,” he answered. “It shouldn’t have drawn you in. It wasn’t supposed to interest anybody.”

  “But it does. And you called me here because you know why. Because you were willing to talk.” Gabriella was feeling the stress of the situation. She’d successfully dodged three gunshots. She didn’t know how many more luck and skill would grant her.

  “There’s no time for more talk!” the old priest shouted. He took a few deep breaths to steady his tone. “Only to get our hearts in order. A few seconds before we meet our creator.”

  Gabriella’s attention sharpened. We. The priest had spoken in the plural. So he wasn’t intending simply a murder. No wonder he looks so panic-stricken. Suicide was, she imagined, frightening enough in any situation. But their shared religion had strict views on the subject, and that meant he was contemplating not just one mortal sin, but two.

  Not that the act of counting was likely to matter in this situation. The prospect of eternal damnation notwithstanding, the priest stood fast.

  “You know what’s happening, don’t you?” Gabriella asked. “My investigation. The accounts. The codes. Is that why you’re doing this?”

  “Oh, Miss Fierro,” the priest wagged his head, the gun sagging slightly, “you know nothing of what’s really going on. There is more at play than you could possibly comprehend. To men who want to write the history of the holiest institution on earth before it happens, there are only secrets and more secrets. You and I—we’re small players, important now only inasmuch as we’re eliminated. That has to be my part.” He straightened. “And I choose to play it, for the good of …”

  His voice choked in his throat. Emotion prevented him finishing his sentence.

  For the good of whom? Of what? Gabriella’s mind raced. She wanted to cry out her questions, but the priest was raising his gun again.

  “You thought you were on to something insignificant, Miss Fierro. I’m sorry to say that was one of the grander mistakes of your life. You discovered Genesis. The advent of a new path for God’s own church.” He steadied the gun in her direction. “And for every new beginning, some must meet their end.”

  Chapter 5

  Three days ago: San Cristóbal, Venezuela: 10:11 a.m.

  Cardinal Ernesto Medina had been prelate of the see of Táchira in Venezuela for the past fourteen years. Silver-haired, blue-eyed, eminently eminent and deeply loved by his flock. A paragon of ecclesiastical leadership. “Everything for which the faithful could hope in an apostolic pastor,” one of the local papers had put it, years ago. And they had only been expressing an opinion shared by most of the populace.

  His kindness and devotion had earned Cardinal Medina nearly universal respect, as well as several notable merits in the more than two decades he’d served in episcopal office—first in Barinas and subsequently here in San Cristóbal, the capital city of Táchira. He was the first Venezuelan bishop to hold a senior position in the World Council of Churches, which propelled his local actions on to a global stage. Then he’d become the first prelate to attain government recognition for his work in the region, becoming a counselor to politicians as well as his flock. Subsequently he’d been honored by the United Nations as an “Ambassador for Peace” for the work he’d done for the poor and destitute of his own territory and far beyond.

  And now, most significantly, his glowing reputation and long years of service had earned him a position so high up the international leadership of the Roman Catholic Church that he was a leading contender to fill the papal throne—a throne that wasn’t yet vacant.

  And it was precisely for this that he was of interest to the man in the black shirt.

  Back in Rome, Pope Boniface X had sat at the head of the papal see for over twenty-one years, casting him into the record books as amongst the ten longest-reigning Roman pontiffs in history. He was now eighty-seven, and in increasingly frail health, and it appeared that reign was closing in on its end.

  Which ordinarily would have suited the members of the Fraternitas Christi Salvatoris—the Fraternity of Christ the Savior—just fine. Though the Pope wasn’t the kind of heady reformer his predecessor had been, the kind that truly raised their ire and was the raison d’être of their resistance, he had not stood up against the gradual renovation of the magisterium’s power either. They would be glad to see him go. A fraternity dedicated to rooting out intrusions against old-guard dominion and authority in the Church could not tolerate anything other than the exercise of perfect, authoritative power. They needed his departure if change was to come.

  However, Pope Boniface had been at death’s door before. Many times. And his health had been increasingly frail and fragile, as the media so often put it, for over a decade. Those reports were frustrating, because none of them assured the Fraternity that the end was near.

  Yet it was still closer than it had ever been. Insider sources in the curia related that the pontiff’s current illness was progressing badly. Though in official reports he was “being carefully cared for and responding well to treatment,” preparations for a funeral and conclave were already being discussed in quiet whispers.

  And at such a conclave, Cardinal Medina of Venezuela would unquestionably be one of the front-runners for the Holy See. Certainly in the top five, even on a first vote. More likely in the top three, if he wasn’t simply chosen on sight by acclamation.

  As he fingered the tiny Beretta in his jacket pocket, the man in the black shirt knew that such a course of events would serve them terribly. It wasn’t just that Medina was not their ideal man—though he was far from it. The more important point was that they already had other plans.

  And those plans did not involve Cardinal Ernesto Medina.

  Chapter 6

  Two days ago: 11:30 a.m.

  The parish church of San Sebastiano Penitente—Saint Sebastian the Penitent—was nestled among the apartment blocks and residential shops east of the largely uninspiring Quartiere Prenestino-Labicano. Solid proof that not all of urban Rome was ancient masonry and fountained piazzas, the buildings just south of the Via Romolo Lombardi were mostly new-build, favoring function over form. In this neighborhood San Sebastiano blended inconspicuously into the background: small, situated between two five-story housing blocks, a nondescript warehouse rising behind it.

  Gabriella approached the building slowly, trepidation settling like a rock deep in her stomach. It was not due to the uninspiring edifice, nor even the interactions she foresaw having inside. The caution was born of the sense of disappointment that had settled into her since she’d first been given the file on this case the afternoon before. It was a disappointment she knew would only grow the further into it she stepped.

  A single wooden door opened into a small narthex. It was impossible to tell whether the four walls around her were modern or centuries old. Most of even the lesser churches in Rome were ancient, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been added to
, updated, extended—and every time in styles aimed to match antiquity. The foyer of the small church had the gray stone walls of a structure of anywhere from twenty-five to five hundred years old, with white plaster interiors, moisture-damaged in the corners. Probably not the twenty-five, then. But probably not centuries, either.

  Which was precisely why churches like this didn’t matter. Stealing money from the coffers of St. Peter’s or St. John Lateran—that would be a feat with potentially enormous ramifications. Such coffers ran deep. But parochial write-offs like San Sebastiano generally vied for just enough money to print their weekly bulletins, hold Lenten soup dinners and give token alms to the poor at the expected moments. Little more.

  Gabriella’s already low spirits sagged further as she took in her surroundings.

  Nothing here but disappointment. A career wasted. As bad as it gets.

  Then, in an instant, her day got ten times worse.

  11:36 a.m.

  The dog collar had been absent from Alexander Trecchio’s neck for almost two years, yet he still felt a fraud walking into a church. Take away the collar, take away the cassock and robes and titles—but a man was always marked by his past. And a man who had been a priest all the more so. Some marks didn’t go away.

  This was the curse Alexander Trecchio feared he would face for the rest of his life. Church territory had once been so familiar. It had been the arena of his love, his passion, his fervent belief and conviction. Now he entered sacred spaces with a mixture of emotions he could never quite pinpoint. Regret was certainly part of it. Disappointment. Bitterness. Shame. They were all there. They all haunted him.