Silver Stars (Front Lines #2)(74)
I wish I believed in praying. I’d pray for Aryeh.
And myself.
And she thinks, too, about Halev. And, strangely, about Captain Herkemeier, an early supporter of her . . . what to call it? Job? Career? Both Halev and the captain are very smart, very perceptive men and for some reason this strikes her as funny, and in a bad impression of John Wayne’s cadence she says, “That’s how I like ’em, pilgrim: smart and perceptive.”
The sound of her own voice is reassuring.
Two a.m. She stands at the balcony door, hidden from view but able to see out. Barely a light anywhere. No sound of traffic. The humming from next door has become snoring.
Rainy gets her bag and stuffs the silenced .22 into it, barely, with about two inches of silencer sticking out and looking like a piece of plumber’s pipe. She steps all the way out on the balcony and looks down: three balconies, all dark. She goes to the bed, strips off the sheets, and carefully knots them end to end. Not long, but maybe long enough. She tugs at the knot a few times—it would be a long fall if the knot came undone.
She loops the sheets over the bottom post of the railing and climbs over, squats down in an awkward pose. She loops the handle of her purse over her head, grabs tight to the two sheets together, and with her heart in her throat she hangs in midair, willing herself not to gasp or cry out.
Or fall.
She slides down to the balcony below, hands burning on the sheet. Silence. Either no one is home or they’re sound sleepers. The drag of the purse on her neck cuts off her blood and makes her woozy.
She hauls the sheets down after her and repeats her maneuver. This time her foot kicks a chair and she half falls in panic, landing hard, freezing, listening, waiting. This balcony’s door is open. She hears breathing from within.
Next balcony and there’s no problem but for her hands cramping and already starting to blister. The steam burn on the back of her hand feels as if the flesh must split open at any moment. The final drop takes her down to a balcony from which she can step off onto a concrete retaining wall.
And then she is on the street below the hotel. She looks up: getting back up there will not be easy. There may be no way back.
It’s not hard to find her way to the church, it’s all downhill and that intriguing dome is the tallest thing around. There’s a small plaza between the church and the beach. Empty. No, wait!
She strains to hear, flattened against a wall. No, it’s just wind.
Dammit, Rainy, don’t panic!
Finding the entrance to the church is harder than she’d expected, but find it she does, only to discover it is locked. This is strange, shouldn’t churches be open all the time for . . . well, whatever Christians did in their churches? She’s momentarily disheartened.
Do priests live at their churches? Of all the things she’s studied to prepare her, this question has never come up. Keeping to the shadows within shadows she follows the walls of the church until she finds a door in the building adjoining and connected to the church. It’s also locked, but this lock is smaller, small enough to . . . click! Yes! Who knew you really could pick a lock with a bent hairpin? For a moment she savors the small victory. She is surprised—pleasantly—to discover that the lock-picking course back at the Army Intelligence school was actually useful.
Noise! Boots on cobblestones, a patrol?
She ducks inside and closes the door behind her, stands there and listens as the boots—two men, she guesses—pass by. Now she looks around. It’s an entryway, an old black bike leaning against the wall, a narrow stairway leading up. Step by creaking step, she climbs, her silenced .22 in her hand and leveled.
At the top landing there are two rooms, one is a parlor practically stuffed with books, the other is a bedroom. Both doors are open, and there’s a small candle burning in a glass lantern in the parlor. She takes the lantern in one hand, her gun clamped under her chin, opens the bedroom door. Breathing. A snort and a mumbled snatch of indecipherable sleep-talk. A man asleep, a mop of iron gray hair on a small decorative pillow. A bottle of grappa beside the bed. A small glass.
She creeps up to the bed, points her gun at the man’s head, and says, “Father Patrizio?”
The breathing stops, a different snort, a sudden upward lurch that smacks his forehead against the silencer and a cry of surprise and pain.
She lets him focus, collect his wits, and push his hair aside before repeating, in Italian, “Father Patrizio?”
“Yes, yes, what is it . . .” He stops, staring at the gun.
“Please don’t cry out. I’ll put the gun away if you promise not to cry out.”
He nods. She shoves the heavy, long thing back into her bag.
“Who are you? What do you want?”
“I’ve been sent here to kill you.”
It’s an unusual introduction, but after some more confusion, they move to his parlor and he pours them each a small glass of some sweet wine. Rainy, with her usual efficiency, fills him in on the details.
“I don’t really understand your religion, but if a good Catholic can’t kill a priest, then surely sending someone else to do it is the same thing morally.”
“I doubt you wish to discuss theology, signorina. Or my parishioners’ sometimes strange notions of it.”
He’s old, maybe in his fifties, with an old, faded scar down one side of his face, deep-set eyes beneath a cliff of forehead. He’s tall for an Italian, maybe six feet. He’s wearing a white nightgown and should look ridiculous but does not.