1

Los Angeles . Thursday, July 2, 9:00 p.m.

The voice on the answering machine had resonated with fear.

''Harry, it's your brother, Danny… I… don't mean to call you like this… after so much time… But… there's… no one else I can talk to… I'm scared, Harry… I don't know what to do… or… what will happen next. God help me. If you 're there, please pick up – Harry, are you there? - I guess not… I'll try to call you back.'

'Dammit.'

Harry Addison hung up the car phone, kept his hand on it, then picked it up again and pushed redial. He heard the digital tones as the numbers redialed automatically. Then there was silence, and then the measured 'buzz, buzz', 'buzz, buzz' of the Italian phone system as the call rang through.

'Come on, Danny, answer…'

After the twelfth ring Harry set the receiver back in its cradle and looked off, the lights of oncoming traffic dancing hypnotically over his face, making him lose track of where he was – in a limousine with his driver on a race to the airport to make the ten o'clock red-eye to New York.

It was nine at night in L.A., six in the morning in Rome. Where would a priest be at six in the morning? An early mass? Maybe that's where he was and why he wasn't answering.

'Harry, it's your brother, Danny… I'm scared… I don't know what to do… God help me.'

'Jesus Christ.' Harry felt helplessness and panic at the same time. Not a word or a note between them in years, and then there was Danny's voice on Harry's answering machine, jumping out suddenly among a string of others. And not just a voice, but someone in grave trouble.

Harry had heard a rustling as though Danny was starting to hang up, but then he had come back on the line and left his phone number, asking Harry to please call if he got in soon. For Harry, soon was moments ago, when he'd picked up the calls from his home machine. But Danny's call had come two hours earlier, at a little after seven California time, just after four in the morning in Rome – what the hell had soon meant to him at that time of day?

Picking up the phone again, Harry dialed his law office in Beverly Hills. There had been an important partners' meeting. People might still be there.

'Joyce, it's Harry. Is Byron-?'

'He just left, Mr Addison. You want me to try his car?'

'Please.'

Harry heard the static as Byron Willis's secretary tried to connect with his car phone.

'I'm sorry, he's not picking up. He said something about dinner. Should I leave word at the house?'

There was a blur of lights, and Harry felt the limo lean as the driver took the cloverleaf off the Ventura Freeway and accelerated into traffic on the San Diego, heading south toward LAX. Take it easy, he thought. Danny could be at mass or at work or out for a walk. Don't start driving yourself or other people crazy when you don't even know what's going on.

'No, never mind. I'm on my way to New York. I'll get him in the morning. Thanks.'

Clicking off, Harry hesitated, then tried Rome once more. He heard the same digital sounds, the same silence, and then the now-familiar 'buzz, buzz', 'buzz, buzz' as the phone rang through. There was still no answer.

2

Italy . Friday, July 3, 10:20 a.m.

Father Daniel Addison dozed lightly in a window seat near the back of the tour bus, his senses purposefully concentrated on the soft whine of the diesel and hum of the tires as the coach moved north along the Autostrada toward Assisi.

Dressed in civilian clothes, he had his clerical garments and toiletries in a small bag on the overhead rack above, his glasses and identification papers tucked into the inside pocket of the nylon windbreaker he wore over jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Father Daniel was thirty-three and looked like a graduate student, an everyday tourist traveling alone. Which was what he wanted.

An American priest assigned to the Vatican, he had been living in Rome for nine years and going to Assisi for almost as long. Birthplace of the humble priest who became a saint, the ancient town in the Umbrian hills had given him a sense of cleansing and grace that put him more in touch with his own spiritual journey than any place he'd ever been. But now that journey was in shambles, his faith all but destroyed. Confusion, dread, and fear overrode everything. Keeping any shred of sanity at all was a major psychological struggle. Still, he was on the bus and going. But with no idea what he would do or say when he got there.

In front of him, the twenty or so other passengers chatted or read or rested as he did, enjoying the cool of the coach's air-conditioning. Outside, the summer heat shimmered in waves across the rural landscape, ripening crops, sweetening vineyards, and, little by little, decaying the few ancient walls and fortresses that still existed here and there and were visible in the distance as the bus passed.

Letting himself drift, Father Daniel's thoughts went to Harry and the call he'd left on his answering machine in the hours just before dawn. He wondered if Harry had even picked up the message. Or, if he had, if he'd been resentful of it and had not called back on purpose. It was a chance he had taken. He and Harry had been estranged since they were teenagers. It had been eight years since they'd spoken, ten since they'd seen each other. And that had been only briefly, when they'd gone back to Maine for the funeral of their mother. Harry had been twenty-six then, and Danny twenty-three. It was not unreasonable to assume that by now Harry had written his younger brother off and simply no longer gave a damn.

But, at that moment, what Harry thought or what had kept them apart hadn't mattered. All Danny wanted was to hear Harry's voice, to somehow touch him and to ask for his help. He had made the call as much out of fear as love, and because there had been nowhere else to turn. He had become part of a horror from which there was no return. One that would only grow darker and become more obscene. And because of it, he knew he might very well die without ever touching his brother again.

A movement down the aisle in front of him shook him from his muse. A man was walking toward him. He was in his early forties, clean shaven, and dressed in a light sport coat and khaki trousers. The man had gotten on the bus at the last moment, just as it was pulling out of the terminal in Rome. For a moment Father Daniel thought he might pass and go into the lavatory behind him. Instead, he stopped at his side.

'You're American, aren't you?' he said with a British accent.

Father Daniel glanced past him. The other passengers were riding as they had been, looking out, talking, relaxing. The nearest, a half dozen seats away.

'Yes…'

'I thought so.' The man grinned broadly. He was pleasant, even jovial. 'My name is Livermore. I'm English if you can't tell. Do you mind if I sit down?' Without waiting for a reply, he slid into the seat next to Father Daniel.

'I'm a civil engineer. On vacation. Two weeks in Italy. Next year it's the States. Never been there before. Been kind of asking Yanks as I meet them where I should visit.' He was talky, even pushy, but pleasant about it, and that seemed to be his manner. 'Mind if I ask what part of the country you're from?'

'- Maine…' Something was wrong, but Father Daniel wasn't sure what it was.

'That would be up the map a bit from New York, yes?'

'Quite a bit…' Again Father Daniel looked toward the front of the bus. Passengers the same as before. Busy with what they were doing. None looking back. His eyes came back to Livermore in time to see him glance at the emergency exit in the seat in front of them.