'It's not that simple.'

'Why? – Can't trust them?'

'Hercules, I'm asking for your help. I'm willing to pay for it. And I know you need it…'

Hercules said nothing.

'Before, you said you could not collect the reward on me because you would have to go to the police for it… Money can help get you off the street.'

'Frankly, Mr Harry, I would just as soon not be seen with you. The police want you. The police want me. We're bad company. Twice as bad when we're together… I need you as a lawyer, not a banker. When you can do that, come back. Otherwise, arrivederci.'

Indignantly, Hercules grabbed for his other crutch. But Harry beat him to it and snatched it away.

Hercules' eyes flashed angrily. 'That's not a very good idea.'

Still, Harry held the crutch away. 'Before, you said you wanted to see what I could do. How far my wits and courage would take me. This is how far, Hercules. In a big circle, right back to you… I tried, it just didn't work…' Harry's voice softened, and he looked at Hercules for a long moment, then ever so slowly gave him back his crutch.

'I can't do it alone, Hercules… I need your help.'

Harry's last words were barely out when the cellular phone rang in his jacket pocket, its shrill intrusion startling them both.

'-Yes…' Harry answered warily, his eyes darting around the park, as if this were a trick, the police on to him.

'Adrianna!' Quickly Harry turned away, covering his free ear against the sound of the traffic on the boulevard.

Hercules swung up on his crutches, watching intently.

'Where!' Harry nodded once, then twice. '-Okay. Yes! I understand. What color? – Okay, I'll find it.'

Snapping off the phone, Harry slid it into his pocket, at the same time looking to Hercules.

'How do I get to the main railroad station?'

'Your brother-'

'He's been seen.'

'Where?' Hercules could feel the excitement.

'In the north. A town on Lake Como.'

'That's five hours by train through Milan. Too long. You would risk being-'

'I'm not going by train. Someone has a car waiting for me at the railroad station.'

'A car…'

'Yes.'

Hercules glared at him. 'So, suddenly you have other friends and don't need me.'

'I need you to tell me how to get to the station.'

'Find it yourself

Harry stared at the dwarf, incredulous. 'First you want nothing to do with me, now you're mad because I don't need you.'

Hercules said nothing.

'I will find it myself.' Abruptly Harry turned and walked off.

'Wrong way, Mr Harry!'

Harry stopped and looked back.

'You see, you do need me.'

The wind picked up Harry's hair, and dust danced past his feet. 'All right. I need you!'

'All the way to Lake Como!'

Harry glared. 'All right!'

In an instant Hercules was up and swinging toward him. Then he was past him, calling over his shoulder.

'This way, Mr Harry. This way!'

62

Lake Como, Italy. Monday, July 13, 4:30 p.m.

Roscani turned to look at Scala and Castelletti in the seats behind him, then with a glance at the jet-helicopter's pilot, turned to stare back out the window. They had been flying for nearly three hours, north along the Adriatic coast, over the cities of Ancona, Rimini, and Ravenna, then inland toward Milan, and finally north again to drop down over the high hills and sweep across Lake Como toward the town of Bellagio.

Below, he could see the tiny white wakes of pleasure boats cutting the deep blue of the lake's surface like decorations on a cake. To his left, a dozen opulent villas surrounded by manicured gardens dotted the shoreline, and to his right, the steep hillsides dropped sharply to the lake itself.

They'd been still in Pescara at the scene of the apartment house fire when he'd taken an urgent call from Taglia. A man thought to be Father Daniel Addison had been brought to a private villa on Lake Como by chartered hydrofoil the night before, Gruppo Cardinale's chief had said. The hydrofoil captain had seen the broadcast of the continuing public appeal messages on television and was all but certain who his passenger was. Yet he'd been reluctant to say anything because the villa was very exclusive and he was afraid he might lose his job if he was wrong and accidentally exposed a celebrity of some kind. But then sometime this morning his wife had convinced him he should notify the authorities and let them make the decision.

Celebrity, Roscani thought as the pilot banked sharply left and dropped lower over the water; who the hell cared who got exposed if they were on the right track? Time was more critical than ever.

The body found in the rubble had been that of Giulia Fanari, the wife of Luca Fanari, the man who, records had shown, had rented an ambulance from the slain proprietors of the ambulance company in Pescara. Signora Fanari had been dead before the fire began. Killed by a sharp instrument, probably an ice pick, inserted into the skull at the base of the brain. For all intents she was 'pithed', the way a biologist might dispatch a frog he was about to dissect. Cold-blooded wasn't a description. From the way it had been done, it appeared to Roscani to have been an act performed almost passionately, as if, with each involuntary squirm and muscular jolt the victim gave as her brain was slowly and deliberately crushed inside her skull, the killer was enjoying it. Maybe even sexually. If nothing else, the sheer inventiveness of the act told him the perpetrator was a person with absolutely no concept of conscience. A true sociopath who had complete indifference to the feelings, pain, or well-being of other people. A human being truly evil from birth. And if this sociopath was their illusory third person, Roscani could eliminate the 'they' of it, because everything told him the murder had been done by one person alone, and he could eliminate the 'she' as well, because it would have taken enormous strength to kill Giulia Fanari the way it had been done, meaning, almost without doubt, the creature who did it was a man. And if he had been in Pescara on the trail of Father Daniel and, through his doings there, had learned where he had been taken, it would mean he was a great deal closer to finding Father Daniel than they were.

Which was why, as Roscani watched the ground come up quickly, abruptly becoming obscured in a cloud of dust as the helicopter set down at the edge of thick woods near the lake, he prayed to God that the injured man delivered to the villa was indeed the priest, and that they would get there first – before the man with the ice pick.

63

The scope was a 1.5-4.5x Zeiss Diavari C, and through it Thomas Kind watched the dark blue Alfa Romeo come down the hill toward Bellagio. The crosshairs cut Castelletti in the middle of his forehead, and a slight shift to the left took Roscani the same way. Then, after a glimpse of a carabiniere at the wheel, the vehicle passed, and he stood back. He was uncertain if today he should once again call himself S, because he was not sure whether logistics or circumstance would present him with his target.

S for sniper. It was a designation he gave himself when he prepared, mentally and physically, to kill from a distance. It had begun as a self-promotion to an elite corps after his first kill, shooting a fascist soldier from an office window in Santiago, Chile, in 1976, as the troops opened fire on a gathering of Marxist students.

Moving the Zeiss down and to the right, he saw the carabinieri command post set up just outside the long formal drive leading to the palatial lakeside estate known as Villa Lorenzi. A move to the right again, and the scope picked up the three police patrol boats idle in the water, a quarter of a mile apart and a hundred yards offshore.