The Malta Exchange (Cotton Malone 14)

He pulled Hahn back to solid ground.

The guy looked relieved.

But not for long.

Luke shoved him over the edge.

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

Cotton stepped from the DOJ jet onto the tarmac at Rome’s da Vinci–Fiumicino airport. The time was a little after noon and he was hungry. Some lunch would be great, but a white Vatican helicopter was waiting, its rotors turning. He hurried straight over and climbed inside.

The flight from Malta had been quick. He’d received no reports from either Stephanie or Luke. Obviously something was up, as Stephanie had managed to obtain the services of a Vatican chopper. Good thing, too. The drive from the airport to downtown would have taken a solid two hours. Rome traffic was some of the worst in the world, a cacophony of blaring horns, squealing brakes, and roaring engines.

And he had to admit.

Flying over it all was lovely.

* * *

Luke listened as Kevin Hahn dug in the guva below.

The moron had survived the fall and Luke decided Hahn would do the digging, retrieving the three bodies. He didn’t much care about the two. It was the cardinal’s that he needed exposed and fast. Hahn had been working for nearly ten minutes with steady swishes of blade to earth.

“You there yet?” he asked.

“Yeah. I have him,” Hahn said.

About time.

He peered down into the dark hole. At the bottom he saw Hahn use his cell phone as a light, illuminating the grave in the pit’s bottom. The light revealed pale-white flesh.

“It’s a shoulder,” Hahn said.

“I need a face.”

The light extinguished and he heard work resuming. He sat down on the ground at the hole’s edge, his feet dangling over the side.

“You ordered Laura killed, didn’t you?” he said to the void.

“Gallo did that.”

“You helped.”

The digging stopped. “I went along.”

It started again.

“She meant that little to you.”

“She meant nothing.”

Bastard. “What do you get out of this?”

“I was going to become head of the Entity.”

“How does Pollux Gallo think he’s going to be pope?”

“He has incriminating information on the cardinals. Stuff Spagna accumulated. We maneuvered Kastor Gallo to Malta to get that information from Spagna. What they didn’t count on was you and Malone.”

“We like to be underestimated.”

“You leave a lot of bodies in your wake.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

The digging stopped.

He peered down.

The light reappeared.

He saw a face in the ground.

“It’s the cardinal,” Hahn said.

“Did you know him?”

“Since we were kids. I never liked him.”

He found his cell phone and opened it to the home screen. “Catch this.”

He dropped it down.

“Take a picture of the face.” He watched as Hahn did as he asked. “Toss it back up.”

Hahn hesitated.

“You don’t want to piss me off,” he said.

The phone came up through the dark.

Everything about this guy ate at his stomach. He was a turncoat, a traitor, a guy who put himself before his duty. Even to the point of selling out one of his own. No question, Laura Price had been pushy and overeager, but she never stood a chance. She’d been a pawn in a game that she never understood. And the guy in the pit below caused all of her problems.

The rope that had dropped down earlier, when Hahn cut it, came up out of the void in a coil and landed on the hard ground.

“Get me out of here,” Hahn said. “I did what you wanted.”

He needed to report in, but that could not be done from here. He had to return to ground level and get outside. Kevin Hahn was going to be the main witness in the prosecution of Pollux Gallo. And what better place to keep him on ice.

“Daniels. Get me out of here.”

He turned to leave.

Hahn kept calling out.

He left the chamber and walked down the tunnel to the steps up. For added measure, he flicked the light switch off, plunging everything into darkness.

“Daniels,” Hahn called out. “Daniels.”

He climbed the stairs.

* * *

Cotton stared out the helicopter’s window.

The triangular-shaped, walled citadel that was the Vatican came into view.

A little over a hundred acres with a population of a thousand. At its center rose the pillared façade of St. Peter’s Basilica, capped by its majestic dome, which gleamed in the bright midday sun. Jutting off to one side were the long H-shaped galleries of the Vatican museums and the Vatican Library. Part of that complex included the Sistine Chapel, a simple rectangle at the southwest corner of the palace, where the cardinals would gather. Both religious and defensive in nature, as was evident from its austere exterior with battlements. The remaining pile of buildings, irregular in plan and clearly built at differing times without regard to any particular harmony, were all part of the administrative complex of the Catholic Church. The center of Christendom.

From his lofty perch he saw that over half of the enclosed space within the walls was consumed by the Vatican Gardens. A spectacular combination of poplars, maples, acacias, and oaks where popes once hunted for birds, deer, roebuck, and gazelles. The chopper swept in directly over the trees and he noticed a variety of medieval fortifications and monuments set among flowers, topiary, and grass. A rectangular slab of concrete at the far western corner, near the Leonine Wall, served as a helipad.

The chopper settled down on it.

He hopped out.

A priest at the far edge came forward and introduced himself, adding that Stephanie Nelle was waiting. He followed the younger man through the gardens, past Vatican Radio, the Ethiopian College, and the railway station, eventually entering St. Martha’s Square. He’d never been into the closed areas of the Vatican before, though he’d visited the public portions. On the flight in he saw that St. Peter’s Square, lined with the famed Bernini colonnade, was filled with people. The priest turned left and walked straight for the basilica and a side door that was being watched by a uniformed security guard.

Armed too.

Which was curious for a religious state.

But he assumed that the times were a-changing.

They entered the basilica.

No matter what a person’s faith, or if they had no faith at all, it was hard not to be overwhelmed by the majesty that was St. Peter’s Basilica. It had three claims to fame. A memorial to St. Peter. Coronation hall for popes and emperors. The foremost house of God in the world. Monuments and tombs were everywhere, adorning both the cavernous nave and the impressive side aisles. Every nook and cranny was dedicated to a pope or a saint. Beautiful marble empaneled the walls, the roof ornamented with sunken coffers richly gilded and stuccoed. Its immensity seemed disguised by the clear

symmetry of its proportions. With few exceptions all of the wall images were mosaics, executed with such accuracy to scale and tint as to be almost surreal. The roster of artists boggled the mind. Raphael, Michelangelo, Peruzzi, Vignola, Ligorio, Fontana, Maderno. A perfect example of what five hundred years and unlimited resources could accomplish. Everything was made even more noteworthy by the fact that the building was empty.

Not a soul inside.

Making it possible to hear their footsteps echoing off the sheets of colored marble that formed the floor.

They passed the papal altar and its gilt bronze baldachin that kept watch on the stairs leading down to the tomb of St. Peter. It sat in the center of the Latin cross formed by the building itself. He glanced up into the main cupola that rose to the top of Michelangelo’s dome. Mosaics filled its ribs, fading away toward the top as if dissolving into heaven.

The priest seemed unimpressed and just kept walking.

Off to the right he caught the bronze of a life-sized St. Peter, sitting as he gave a blessing while holding the keys to the kingdom of heaven. He knew it to be sixteen hundred years old. Intact, except for one part. For centuries pilgrims had kissed the right foot. Today people simply rubbed it. Each touch made little to no difference. But combined they had eroded the bronze, polishing the defined toes to smoothness. Surely there was a lesson in there somewhere.

They crossed to the far side of the nave and headed for an exit door, which was manned by another security guard. Probably a private firm contracted to assist during all of the commotion that came from a papal death and election. The exit door opened and Stephanie Nelle appeared, along with another man, dressed in black.