"What do you mean?"
She had a suspicion that he already knew what she meant; that he'd confronted it before. "An investigator can't take anything or anyone on trust. You can't take anything for granted. You deal in facts, in proof. Beyond a reasonable doubt and all that."
"Yes." He didn't seem at all thrown by her question.
"So how do you reconcile that with your faith?"
"My faith is in God, not man."
"Come on. It can't be that simple."
"Actually," he said with disconcerting calm, "it is."
She shook her head, a faint, self-deprecating smile lighting up her face. "You know, I like to think I can scope people out pretty well, but I
had you all wrong. I didn't think you would be . . . you
know, a believer. Is that how you were brought up?"
"No, my parents weren't particularly religious. It kinda happened later."
She waited for him to elaborate. He didn't. She suddenly felt embarrassed. "Look, I'm sorry, this is obviously something highly personal and here I am tactlessly bombarding you with all these questions."
"It's not a problem, really. It's just . . . well, my dad died when I was pretty young and I went through a tough time, and the one person who was there for me was my parish priest. He helped me find my way through it, and, after that, I guess it kinda stuck. That's all."
Regardless of what he said, she sensed he didn't want to go into too much more detail, which she understood. "Okay."
"What about you? I take it you didn't have a particularly religious upbringing?"
"Not really. I don't know, I guess the atmosphere in the house was academic, archaeological, scientific, and it all made it hard for me to equate what I saw around me with the concept of divinity. And then I found out that Einstein didn't believe in any of it either and I thought, well, if it wasn't good enough for the smartest guy on the planet . . ."
"That's okay," he deadpanned. "Some of my best friends are atheists."
She snapped a quick glance at him, saw that he was laughing, and said, "Good to know," even if he wasn't exactly right. She thought she was more agnostic than atheist. "Most of the people I know seem to equate it with being somehow morally hollow . . . if not bankrupt."
She led him back into the living room and, as they did, his eyes caught a glimpse of the TV. It was showing an episode of Smallvilk, the series about Superman's travails as a teenager. Staring through the screen, he went off on a completely different tack, asking, "I need to ask you something. About Vance."
"Sure. What about him?"
"You know, the whole time you were talking about what happened with him, in the cemetery, the cellar, all that ... I just wasn't sure how you felt about him."
Her face clouded. "When I knew him years ago, he was a really nice guy, normal, you know. And then, what happened with his wife and unborn child, I mean, it's pretty awful."
Reilly looked a bit uneasy. "You feel for him."
She remembered feeling that confusing empathy for him before. "In a way . . . yes."
"Even after the raid, the beheading, the shootings . . . threatening Kim and your mom?"
Tess felt uncomfortably exposed. He was making her aware of troubling, conflicting emotions she didn't fully understand. "I know it sounds crazy, but, it's strange—it's like, at some level, I do. The way he talked, the way his mood swings made him act differently. He needs treatment, not hunting down. He needs help."
"We have to catch him first. Look, Tess, I just need you to remember that regardless of what he's going through, the guy's dangerous."
Tess remembered the calm look on Vance's face when he was sitting there, chatting with her mother. Something about him, about her perception of him, was changing. "It's weird, but . . . I'm not sure they weren't hollow threats."
"Trust me on this. There's stuff you don't know."
She cocked her head quizzically. She thought she was ahead of the curve. "What stuff?"
"Other deaths. The man's dangerous, period. All right?"
His emphatic tone didn't leave much room for doubt, which confused her now. "What do you mean, other deaths? Who?"
For a moment, he didn't answer. Not because he didn't want to. Something was distracting him. He seemed to be in a slight daze, as if he was looking beyond her. Tess was suddenly aware that he was no longer paying any attention to her. She turned, following his gaze. He seemed to be mesmerized by the TV. On the screen, the teenage Clark Kent was about to save the day yet again.
Tess grinned. "What, did you miss that episode or something?"
But he was already heading for the door. "I've got to go."
"Go? Go where?"
"I've just got to go." And in seconds, he was gone, the outer door banging shut behind him, leaving her to stare incredulously at the teenager who could see through solid walls and leap over tall buildings with a single bound.
Which really didn't explain anything at all.
Chapter 45
T he evening traffic was still heavy as Reilly's Pontiac made its way south on the Van Wyck Expressway. Gleaming wide-bodied jets screamed overhead in a seemingly endless procession of landing runs. The airport was now less than a mile away.
Aparo, riding shotgun, rubbed his eyes as he glanced out, the crisp spring air rushing at him through the car's open window. "What was that name again?"
Reilly was busy scanning the barrage of signs bearing down on them from every possible angle. His eyes finally settled on the one he was looking for. He pointed at it.
"That's it."
His partner saw it too. The green sign to their right would lead the way to Airport Cargo Building 7.
Underneath the main signage, and lost among the smaller logos of airlines, was the one Reilly was particularly interested in.
Alitalia Cargo Services.
* * *
Shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress had enacted the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. Under this act, the responsibility for inspecting persons and property carried by airlines was transferred to a newly formed agency, the Transportation Security Administration.
Anyone, and anything, coming into the United States would now be undergoing far more rigorous checks. Computerized tomography machines that detected explosive materials in passenger and checked luggage were deployed across the country. Travelers were even briefly X-rayed themselves, until the practice was suspended following an uproar caused not by fears of unhealthy radiation exposure, but rather by the simple fact that nothing, however private, escaped the Rapiscan machines' scanners: they showed everything.
An area of particular concern to the TSA was that of global cargo; it was potentially an even bigger threat to domestic security, albeit a less publicized one. Tens of thousands of containers, pallets, and crates poured into the United States every day, coming from all corners of the world. And thus, in this new age of heightened security measures, the new scanning directives weren't limited to the luggage of travelers. They would also cover cargo shipments entering the country by air, land, or sea with large-scale cargo X-raying systems now deployed at virtually all ports of entry.
And at this very moment, as he sat down in the operations room of the Italian national airline's cargo terminal at JFK, Reilly was feeling particularly grateful for it.
A data technician was efficiently calling up the images on his monitor. "Better make yourselves comfortable, guys. It's a pretty big shipment."
Reilly settled into the worn chair. "The box we're interested in should be pretty distinctive. You can just zoom through them, I'll let you know when we get a hit."
"You got it." The man nodded as he started scrolling through his databank.
Images unfurled on his screen, side- and top-view X-rays of crates of various sizes. In them, one could clearly make out the skeletal images of the objects the curators at the Vatican had shipped over for the Met exhibit. Reilly, still annoyed with himself at not having thought of this before, fixed his concentration on the monitor, as did Aparo. His heartbeat raced as blue-and-gray ghosts of ornate frames, crucifixes, and statuettes cascaded before them. The resolution was surprisingly good, much better than he'd anticipated: he could even make out small details like encrusted jewels or moldings.