Chapter IV

The draft in the tunnels grew much stronger now that several other access doors had been opened.

“Shots fired, shots fired!” Peter yelled into his radio as he burst out of the office, heading towards the tunnels. He had lost track of Thomas and the only image he had left was of a wide-angle suicide, in grainy low-resolution. He raced down two flights of stairs as the static on his radio was filled with all sorts of frantic communications. The air was stale down here.

“Peter, what is your location? Over—”

Peter shouldered his way through a large door at the bottom of a tight stairwell.

“I just entered the tunnels from South-three stairwell, heading towards the Translation chamber number five.” He pulled a small pistol that had been concealed in an ankle holster. Quickly he checked to see that a round was chambered as sweat poured down his brow. “I’m making my way to Donnie. I believe that he’s down with Pablo.”

“Who fired?” another voice blasted into the radio.

“It looked like Pablo fired on Donnie and then Thomas ran from them,” Peter answered as he made his way through a long stretch of tunnel lit by soft yellow lights. He felt like he was driving down a never ending highway.

Yellow and concrete . . .

Yellow and more concrete . . .

Yellow, and more cold concrete below.

“Wait for backup before you approach the chamber,” the recognizable voice said. It was the Colonel, Giovanni Ritti.

“Roger that, sir,” Peter replied as he turned the first of many turns he would have to make in order to reach Translation Chamber #5.

Ritti was handing all sorts of orders to all sorts of Guards as he and Abbot fast walked down a bright hallway near St. Peter’s Basilica. Abbot couldn’t understand much of it, and didn’t really try. He had been told that shots were fired somewhere underneath the Dome, and that they had to go into emergency procedures.

“I need two carry teams to get the ‘Book’ and the Nuncio together, and secured in the Safe Chamber. All staff is to remain in their housing quarters. I need medical staff to converge near St. Peter’s Basilica. All non-Guard staff, and or clergy need to remain in their quarters until the threat is assessed and contained.”

“Roger that, sir,” Gregg said. “I will push the carry teams and Dimitri’s team will secure all outside spaces.”

“I need it all locked down,” Ritti said quickly, but with a calm that was impressive to Abbot.

“Am I going to be in your way?” Abbot asked as they neared the end of the corridor. He was rolling up his sleeves to reveal thick, muscular forearms.

“I am going to take you somewhere no outsider has ever been,” Ritti said as they slowed near a large metal door with a keypad just to the right. Ritti punched in a few numbers and a large ‘thunk’ signaled that the lock had been disengaged.

Abbot wanted to make some funny little comment about going into the ladies bathroom, but realized that this was really not the time for jokes. Abbot felt a bit naked without his pistol, but when they had entered the Vatican they made it very clear to him that the Vatican was a country that did not let its citizens, nor its visitors possess firearms. “Do I need a gun?”

“Doubtful,” Ritti said as he pushed the large door aside to reveal a room with all kinds of high tech computers and flat-screen monitors. There were several men already inside the ‘Box’ as the security monitoring post was referred to.

Every kind of recording device you could imagine was hooked up to a wall of numbered televisions.

“So this is . . .” Abbot said as they entered, “what exactly?”

“This is the entire Vatican,” Ritti responded as two men anxiously approached him. “We are the proverbial fly on the wall, from in here.”

A thin man with bags under his eyes and a nose so bony you could break a window with it lifted his glasses and started appraising Ritti. They exchanged words and the man walked a couple of steps over to a keyboard and began to furiously type.

He looked like he had been awake for decades, and not happy about it.

Ritti turned to Abbot, “Apparently, some of our camera’s have experienced some technical difficulties recently.”

“How recently?” Abbot said as he walked toward the group of men who were trying to get three screens working again.

“Fifteen minutes, plus or minus,” Ritti answered.

“What area do they cover?” Abbot asked, and before there was an answer he continued, “And, have you sent guards in that direction?”

“Well, the direction is difficult to determine, as my security chief has just explained. The monitors are randomly going down and then coming back on line. One second we have visual in the Chapel, then it’s gone for a few minutes, then it’s back again.”

“This ever happen before?” Abbot asked, already knowing the answer. Ritti gave him an are-you-kidding-me glance. “Alright, then. It’s probably not a coincidence.”

“I would think not,” Ritti replied as he looked over at the security chief with the beak. The chief threw up his hands in submission.

“Non si puo sapere . . .” the security chief said frustratedly as he turned back to the keyboard.

There is no knowing.

“Cazzo!” Ritti said under his breath.

Fuck!

Abbot studied the monitors as they randomly went on and off. This is an inside job, he thought. “Mr. Ritti?”

“Yeah—”

“Are all of your computers networked throughout the Vatican?”

Ritti turned towards the security chief and asked him. The chief nodded,

“Si, si.”

“You guys just got hacked,” Abbot said flatly. “I’m not a computer genius or anything like that, but we had similar problems at the FBI building I used to be posted to. Anyone in the building could get anywhere they wanted if they could hack their way in. All of this,” he said pointing to the screens, “it looks random, but probably not.”

“A sabotage from within,” the chief said in thickly accented English.

“This is a real mess,” Ritti snorted. Just then his radio started to buzz again.

“Ritti, this is Gregg, I have the ‘Book’ and the Nuncio, and have secured them in the Safe Chamber. Over—”

“Roger that,” Ritti responded, “Dimitri, give me a sit-rep please.”

“I will need a few more minutes to secure all of the staff and check the perimeter. Over—”

“Carryon, Dimitri,” Ritti said as he leaned over to Abbot. “There are tons of people, including staff and clergy, that live here. It’s a headache having them all accounted for, so we just try and corral them until the danger is over.”

“How many times have you done this?” Abbot asked.

“Just one other time since I’ve been here,” Ritti said and then he got back on his radio and ordered people to and fro.

Abbot approached a monitor where several other technicians had gathered.

They were watching a group of people make their way down a corridor of some kind. Abbot knew he had never seen that part of the Vatican on any map. “Where is that?”

None of them answered him. “Excuse me,” he tried again, “dove . . . che stanza, che spazio?”

Where . . . what room, what space?

A few of the technicians looked at him, unsure what they should say. Ritti answered from behind him, “Those are the tunnels that lay beneath the Vatican.”

“How do you access them?” Abbot asked flatly.

“Well they don’t really exist,” Ritti said with a smirk, “but if they did, we could gain access at one of six different hidden entrances.”

“And the shots were fired from down there?”

“Yes.”

“Then we need to go down there . . . to the imaginary place.”

Ritti eyed Abbot, trying to figure out how much the American could be trusted.

Everything told him not to trust him. That Americans always get involved in things they shouldn’t, always blurt out secrets, try to bully the world around them. But then, this Mr. Abbot was different. He was kind of a lonely man.

Very sharp, quick witted, and anxious to listen to anyone’s ideas. He was probably of European blood. But above all of these things that Ritti considered, the eyes told all. Abbot had honest eyes. He had seen sadness buried just below the surface of this American’s eyes. And in that sadness was truth.

“I swear I won’t write a book, or anything like that?” Abbot said with a toothy grin.

“Please, Mr. Abbot,” Ritti pleaded, “something like this could hurt the Vatican. You must never discuss any of this, or any of what you might see down there.”

“I’ve never been a witness. I don’t even like the Jehovah witnesses. Nobody listens to me anyway. I’m just some has-been detective from Texas,” Abbot assured him.

Ritti nodded a couple of times and then got back on his radio again. What a fine mess they were in now.