He jumps.
His left leg buckles on impact and he falls heavily on to his damaged right shoulder.
Guilio shows no concern. He’s busy.
His hands are pushing hard against the black stone wall located directly beneath the barrier.
As hard as he possibly can.
He groans and strains again with all of his weight and might.
Nothing happens.
He turns and puts his back against the wall. Once more he pushes for all he’s worth.
His feet slip in the grit and soil.
Tom watches in amazement.
A thin section of the wall slowly starts to swing open.
103
Valentina keeps her gun trained on the body at her feet.
Whoever this jerk is, he holds the key to why Anna was so screwed up, and what’s behind all the killings.
She can’t wait for Trench Coat to come round.
The chiesa is silent.
Disturbingly silent.
Empty churches have spooked her since she was a kid, and this one is certainly a major kid-scarer.
She glances over her shoulder.
Two people are there.
A man and a woman.
They’re moving towards her and the man has a gun aimed at her head.
Valentina stays cool.
He’s slightly built and looks older than the woman – much older, maybe even in his sixties.
‘Lift your hands and move into the aisle.’ He waggles the gun towards where he wants her to go.
‘Not going to happen.’ She looks challengingly into his pale blue eyes.
‘Lift them!’
She places her bet. ‘I really don’t think so.’ She looks away from him and keeps the Glock pointed at Trench Coat. ‘You’ll have to shoot me before I give this creep up.’
The old guy’s gun kicks in his hand.
There’s a muzzle flash and a barking boom.
Valentina’s heart all but explodes.
She’s made the wrong call.
She doesn’t feel any pain, but then again, she’s been told that at first you don’t.
Still nothing.
Now she’s sure it was just a warning shot.
A warning duly observed.
If he’s prepared to let off a gun in a church, he’s desperate. Desperate men – even those who don’t intend to kill – often end up doing so.
Over in the pews near the entrance she spots two more figures.
Men, she thinks.
Younger than Shooter, maybe the same age as Trench Coat.
‘Drop it – drop the gun.’ He waves his pistol and speeds up his walk towards her. ‘Now!’
Valentina gives it up.
The clunk of the pistol on the floor is the cue for them to rush her. Not just Shooter and his female sidekick, but the watchers by the door.
A hand with a vice-like grip clamps around her neck. It forces her face first over the pew.
She feels the hard metal of a gun barrel against her temple.
Behind her, the young woman speaks for the first time. Her voice is shaky and nervous. ‘Is he okay, is he breathing?’
There’s a lot of movement. Valentina guesses they’re trying to resuscitate Trench Coat.
‘Attis, can you hear us?’ Someone slaps his face. ‘Attis, wake up!’
Valentina notes the name. She’s sure she remembers Tom mentioning it. Slowly it comes back to her. Attis was the unfaithful lover of the goddess Cybele, who was driven so crazy he castrated himself. Given the chance, she’d do the same to him, then stick the guy’s balls in Shooter’s mouth.
But for now, all she can do is listen and try to make sense of the voices.
‘He’s okay. He’s coming round. Get him to his feet.’ This is Shooter.
‘Come on, let’s get you up.’ This is a woman, an older, more authoritative one. ‘Let’s get moving.’
‘Which way?’ Another woman.
‘No choice.’ It’s the older one again. ‘We’ll have to go through the crypt.’
‘What about her?’ It’s the gentler woman speaking.
There’s silence.
‘She comes with us. We’ll deal with her later.’
104
Carabinieri snipers with Mauser SP66s crawl into position on rooftops in and around the courtyard of Santa Cecilia.
Soldiers speedily bundle visiting tourists and rubbernecking locals out of the church grounds and beyond the piazza.
Overhead, an Augusta-Bell helicopter hovers menacingly.
The 412 CRESCO is fitted with high-powered video cameras, infrared lenses, ground and surveillance radar and advanced heat-seeking thermal devices. Its eagle-eyed ops team is all primed and ready to track any sudden runners.
The crew watch paramedics stretcher an injured man into the back of an ambulance and then disappear with their sirens blazing.
Across the Trastevere back streets, troops spill from soft-topped Land Rover Defenders and start to stake out a dragnet.
No one is going to escape.
Public stabbings and gunfire in churches don’t go down well in Rome, as some jokers are about to find out.
From his command vehicle, Major Lorenzo Silvestri, the head of GIS – the Gruppo di Intervento Speciale – processes in information from his men, then calmly gives word for the operation to begin.
His team is the cream of the Carabinieri. Special-ops troops, specifically trained in hostage release, hijack situations and counter-terrorism.
Right now, they’re moving faster than the blink of an eye.
They enter in a cloud of tear gas, bursting through three main windows above the church and along two specific ground-floor routes.
Lorenzo’s soldiers move with startling synchronism. They sweep the sacred aisles with a deadly mix of Heckler and Koch MP5s and Berettas.
In less than two minutes they establish that the vast church floor and its side rooms and upper galleries are clear.
Lorenzo scratches his stubbly silver-grey hair and watches feeds from helmet cameras as his team enters the crypt. If anyone is still hiding, this is the place they’ll be.
The church lights are cut.
Soldiers slip on night-sight goggles and slide unseen into what they call the black zone.
Lorenzo knows the crypt well; it’s a riot of rich colours from ceiling to floor, with spectacular statues and innumerable marble pillars that create an amazing array of painted arches.
But none of this shows on his infra-red camera feeds.
Just the odd glowing movement of soldiers and blurred backgrounds.
He crosses himself and prays that a gun battle doesn’t break out down there. The crossfire would be horrendous.
The ROS veteran glances at his watch. Three more minutes have passed.
His radio feed crackles. ‘Clear!’ shouts one of his men.
‘Clear!’ confirms another.
‘Clear!’ The final confirmation rolls into Lorenzo’s earpiece.
They’ve all drawn blanks.
Every nook, niche, corner and confessional has been searched and they’ve found no one.
Lorenzo sits back from the monitors and stretches his long legs.
Where the hell did the bad guys go?
He has to see for himself.
He steps from the warmth of his ops vehicle and walks through the wind and rain of the piazza.
He enters the church courtyard, questioning whether the operation was necessary.
Maybe it was a bad case of crowd hysteria.
Perhaps the congregation heard a nearby delivery truck backfire and panicked.
Then he dismisses the notion.
It wouldn’t explain the stabbing, nor the eye-witness accounts of hearing shooting in the church and a woman identifying herself as a police officer.
But he’s still not satisfied.
Neither the Carabinieri nor the Polizia have been able to confirm that they had any officers in the church or even on duty anywhere near the building.
Was the woman one of the criminals?
Lorenzo doesn’t rule it out.
Crooks have long known that pretending to be a police officer is a good way of emptying a building. The public see a gun and they’re relieved to learn it’s being held by an officer of the law so they do whatever they’re told.