“Simon. Simon,” they heard shouted.

Impelled by a voice he recognized, he looked for the button to open the doors and pressed it.

“Simon, no!” Sarah shouted. “Don’t.”

Simon paid no attention to his boss and kept pressing the button. The doors promptly opened to light up the shape and reveal a spruce gentleman, older than Simon, closer to Sarah’s age.

“What’s going on, my love?” the unknown man asked.

“Oh, God, it’s been horrible. Someone’s killed this man.” A tear ran down Simon’s face from the fear and disgust of having seen what he’d never forget. “They’re after us, Hugh.”

“What? Who?” The man seemed lost, looking at the body and Simon, not looking at Sarah at all. “Who’s done this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Simon was weeping.

“Oh, my love, don’t cry.” Hugh comforted him, placing himself inside the doors in a way that prevented the sensors from shutting automatically. He embraced Simon. “Okay, it’s all over.” He kissed him tenderly on the head. Simon broke down in a torrent of held-back emotion. “It’s okay. Okay. It’s over.”

The two men turned in their fierce embrace so that Simon was outside the elevator and the other inside with his back to Sarah, who watched indecisively. She didn’t know what to do, or, she did, but feared the consequences. The embrace cooled, although the men continued holding each other. Simon’s eyes were closed and moist, enjoying every second.

“What are you doing here at this hour?” he asked. “How did you get in?”

The man hesitated a moment, but the embrace hid this doubt from Simon. Only Sarah saw it, even though he had his back turned to her. It helped her make her decision. And this was the right time to act. She hoped it worked.

“Uum… I have an acquaintance here. I couldn’t bear thinking about you.”

The force of the bottle of old port, vintage ’76, striking Hugh’s head, shattered it at once. Only the broken neck remained in Sarah’s hand.

“That’s for stealing what doesn’t belong to you, Hugh.” The emphasis on the name showed her suspicion of its veracity.

What a waste of good wine streaming down the head of Simon’s boyfriend.

Before Simon could perceive what was happening, Sarah grabbed him by the arm and pushed him inside the elevator, while she took advantage of Hugh’s momentary stunned condition to shove him outside. She was surprised to see him leave the elevator so easily and fall to the floor. Magnificent. In a single action, since the sensors were unhindered, the doors closed to carry the occupants to the ground floor. Mission accomplished. Sarah’s excitement was such that she didn’t notice the small hole appear in the mirror behind her, caused by the badly aimed gun of this supposed Hugh.

“What are you doing?” Simon cried. “Are you crazy?” He pressed the button for the floor they’d just left. “Fuck. How could you do something like that? You can’t suspect everyone in this way.” He was completely beside himself.

“Shut up, Simon,” Sarah ordered firmly. “This bottle.” She shook the neck that remained in her hand, as a defensive weapon, lacking something better. “When this was a bottle, it was in my house. Do you remember where I told you to look for the file?”

Simon managed to think with difficulty. He remembered her instructions. To get a file that was behind a bottle of vintage port.

“And?” he questioned. “Is it the only one? Aren’t there more in the store?”

“The box was intact in what remained of my house. The bottle was not inside it. Can I make things any clearer?”

Tears returned to Simon’s eyes.

“It can’t be. It can’t be. He must have an explanation.” He saw his life falling apart in front of him. “It must be a coincidence.” He grasped at this hope. There were other bottles of vintage ’76 port. It was a present from Hugh, nothing else, without all these complications. He remembered Hugh’s shape at precisely the moment he lost consciousness in Redcliff Gardens. It could be a confused vision, a hallucination, a trick of the mind that made him see his lover just then.

“I’m sorry, Simon. He’s probably not even named Hugh. I’m very sorry.”

The elevator reached the floor, and the doors opened. Waiting for them was Simon Templar.

“I’m glad I found you,” Sarah said, panting. “They’ve killed your partner and they’re after us.”

Sarah helped Simon leave the elevator, and they walked toward the exit, sixty feet away. Except for Templar, no one was in sight.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Templar asked in a roguish way.

Sarah kept dragging Simon Lloyd toward the doors to the outside. They heard an electronic sound similar to a walkie-talkie. Sarah quickened their pace, pulling a groggy Simon.

“James, you are truly stupid,” they heard Simon Templar say over the radio.

A hiss passed the ears of Simon and Sarah and shattered the marble floor, raising dust and stone. A shot with a silencer. Sarah looked back and saw Templar, gun in hand, aiming at them. Simon seemed not to care, but Sarah felt panic and frustration. A gun pointed at her again a year afterward.

“The next one’s in the head,” Templar warned, putting the radio to his mouth again. “James, come down. I’ve got them.”

33

You’re kidding me.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Are you telling me that we’re running around pursuing a dead man?” Father Phelps expressed disbelief. “I went to His Holiness’s funeral two years ago.”

“Me too, along with more than four million other mourners.”

“Less than a month ago I visited the Crypt of the Popes and prayed in front of his tomb. Peace for his holy soul.” He ignored Rafael’s observation.

“Some people don’t die.”

“Sure, historically, intellectually, culturally. Caesar, Emperor of Rome, will never die, Henry the Eighth, Christopher Columbus…”

“John Paul the Second,” Rafael completed the list. He concentrated on the few miles remaining on the M20 to the outskirts of London.

“John Paul the Second,” Phelps admitted. “Then we’re on the trail of his legacy.”

Rafael turned toward Phelps and looked at him gravely before immediately returning his eyes to the motorway and the red lights from the vehicles in front of them heading for the frenzy of the capital, neither confirming nor denying Phelps’s conjecture. All in due course.

Although Phelps was driven by morbid curiosity about Rafael’s orders from Benedict XVI, sleep began to overcome him. He’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours, and the movement of the van and engine noise began to sound like a cat purring. He closed his eyelids against his will.

When he noticed Rafael change direction, he opened his eyes.

“Are we there yet?”

“Not yet,” Rafael answered. He was looking at the side mirror. “Someone’s following us.”

“Seriously?” A lump formed in Phelps’s throat, dispersing sleep completely. “We’re being followed by someone?”

Rafael accelerated the van in the direction of a secondary road. Phelps bent his head to look in the side mirror at the white lights shining at the van. His heart pumped blood faster through his body. His breathing tightened.

“Are you sure?” he asked fearfully, without taking his eyes from the mirror.

“Absolutely.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing,” Rafael said. “Keep going.”

“Where are we going?”

“A little farther and we’ll know.”

Phelps undid the top button of his shirt, suspicious, distressed.

“I’m not feeling well,” he announced. “Rapid heartbeat.”

“It’s nerves,” Rafael said. His attention was on the road and the car following them, without any sign of worry.

“You… you’re not scared?” Phelps asked with his mouth crying out for something wet to placate his thirst.

“Afraid of what?”

Rafael insisted on not looking at him and assumed an insensitive tone highly discomforting to Phelps.