Turn after turn they mounted, Pendergast driving in grim silence. D’Agosta reloaded and checked his gun: it beat looking out the window. Suddenly houses flashed past, and they whipped through the town of Chiusi della Verna, Pendergast leaning on the horn, pedestrians jumping into the doorway of a shop in terror as the car blasted by, clipping the side-view mirror from a parked van and sending it bouncing and rolling down the street. Just past town was another faded sign: Santuario della Verna 6km.
The road climbed steadily through a steep forest, one brutally sharp turn after another. And then suddenly they emerged from the trees into a meadow, and there—directly ahead but still a thousand feet above them—stood the monastery of La Verna: a great tangle of ancient stone, perched on a crag that seemed to hang over open space. It was windowless, so old and vast and scarred by time it looked a part of the cliff face itself. Despite everything, D’Agosta felt a chill go down his spine; he knew from Sunday school that this was perhaps the holiest Christian monastery in the world, built in 1224 by St. Francis himself.
The car blasted back into the forest and the monastery disappeared from view. “Have we got a chance?” D’Agosta asked.
“It depends on how quickly our man finds Father Zenobi. The monastery is a big place. If only they had a phone!”
The car careened around another turn. D’Agosta could hear a bell ringing, the faint sound of chanting floating toward him over the noise of the engine.
“I think the monks are at prayer,” he said. He glanced at his watch. It would be the service of Sext: sixth hour of the Opus Dei.
“Yes. Most unfortunate.” Pendergast pushed the car around the final bend, wheels slipping on ancient, mossy cobbles instead of asphalt.
The cobbled road—clearly never built to be driven upon—led up behind the monastery. There, at the stone archway leading through the outer wall of the monastery into a massive cloister, D’Agosta saw the Ducati lying on its tubular frame, fat rear wheel still spinning lazily.
Pendergast slewed to a stop and was out, gun drawn, even before the car was completely at rest. D’Agosta followed hard on his heels. They ran past the bike, across a stone bridge, and into the cloisters. A large chapel stood to the right, its doors wide, the vigorous sounds of plainchant rising and falling on the cool breeze. As they ran, the chanting seemed to hesitate, then die away in a ragged confusion.
They rushed into the church just in time to see the figure in red leather—his arm extended, rigid—fire point-blank into an old monk, who was kneeling, his hands raised in surprise or prayer. The report of the gun was shockingly loud in the confined space, reverberating even as the notes of the plainsong died away. D’Agosta shouted out in dismay, rage, and horror as the priest fell and the shooter raised his gun, execution style, taking careful aim for a second shot.
{ 66 }
In the predawn light, Hayward stood with Captain Grable on a rocky point just north of the Central Park Arsenal. From here, they commanded a good view of the tent city, still slumbering in the quiet morning air. They’d been briefed on the location of Wayne Buck’s tent, and she could make it out clearly: a large green canvas job in the heart of the encampment.
Hayward’s misgivings increased. This was no clean shot, in and out. The makeshift city had grown much larger than she realized: there had to be three hundred tents, maybe more, scattered through the foliage. And the landscape wouldn’t help: deep green swales and leafy hollows, surrounded by grassy hummocks, their sides frequently exposing long swaths of dark gray rock. Through the thicket of tree branches, she could just make out—parked along Fifth—the cop car that would take Buck away. It was idling on the park side of the avenue, right opposite the entrance to Cutforth’s building.
Fact was, this was just about the last place she wanted to be at the moment. By rights she should be pursuing the Cutforth murder. She shouldn’t be out here—not anymore, not when there was an open homicide to be worked. It felt too much like the bad old days when she was a rouster for the transit police.
She glanced at Grable. She had talked to D’Agosta the night before, briefly, and now she wished he was here. There was a guy you could count on. As for Grable—
Grable adjusted his tie, squared his shoulders. “Let’s circle around and come in from the west.” He was sweating, his shirt plastered to his chest despite the cool morning.
Hayward nodded. “As I see it, the key here is speed. We don’t want to be caught in there.”
Grable swallowed, hiked up his belt. “Captain, unlike some in the force, I didn’t waste my time in the classroom piling up degrees. I came up through the rank and file. I know what I’m doing.”
There was a long moment while Grable looked down on the slumbering tent city. Hayward glanced at her watch. The light was coming up moment by moment, and the sun would rise within minutes. Why the hell was Grable waiting?
“We’re running a little late, if you don’t mind me saying so,” she said.