‘Cardinal Donoher knows what he knows about the Church in China and elsewhere in the world because it is his duty to know. He is the head of the Vatican’s intelligence service.’ The Pope paused to take a breath and to let Kilkenny absorb the revelation. ‘Few people know that first secret, and up to this moment, only I have known the second. Yin Daoming is a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. I made him a cardinal in pectore,’ the Pope placed his other hand over his heart, ‘over twenty years ago.’
‘Nolan,’ Donoher said gravely, ‘His Holiness has brought us into his deepest confidence regarding Yin Daoming. You can be certain that if this secret ever reached Beijing, it would be fatal.’
‘I will not endanger Cardinal Yin,’ Kilkenny swore, his eyes still locked with the Holy Father’s.
‘I have revealed these things so that you may understand what is about to be asked of you, and to know that this difficult request comes from me.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ Kilkenny asked without hesitation.
‘It is the wish of the Roman Catholic Church that Yin Daoming be free. I want you to help Cardinal Donoher devise a way to make this happen.’
‘I will find a way, Your Holiness.’
The Pope smiled as if a burden had been eased. He pulled his hand off Kilkenny’s shoulder and turned to face Donoher.
‘Cardinal, there is another matter we need to discuss. Our brother in Christ, Cardinal Mizzi, will reach his eightieth birthday in December. He has served the Church well, but I feel it is now time to relieve him of his last official post.’
‘A sad day for the Church,’ Donoher agreed, ‘but he has earned a rest.’
‘The office of Camerlengo is now yours.’
Camerlengo.…If Kilkenny were not mistaken, as Camerlengo, Donoher would assume control of the Vatican following the Pope’s death until the installation of his successor. The position, an ancient and once-powerful title, held little power until that time, but elevated Donoher’s political standing in the Vatican considerably.
‘Your Holiness — ’ Donoher protested.
The Pope raised his hand to silence Donoher. ‘I understand your desire to maintain the illusion that you are not a powerful man, but the needs of the Church must come first.’
Donoher nodded, acquiescing to the Pope’s decision. ‘I pray that I will be worthy of this sacred trust.’
Following their meeting with the Pope, Donoher led Kilkenny back to his quarters where they could talk privately. The cardinal ordered a simple meal and offered Kilkenny a bottle of Vernor’s from his refrigerator.
‘You can get this in Rome?’ Kilkenny asked, amazed to see the regional soft drink so far from Michigan.
‘The cardinal in Detroit keeps my pantry stocked.’ Donoher settled down in an old leather recliner and motioned Kilkenny toward the couch. ‘I can only imagine you are filled with questions.’
‘Vatican Intelligence?’
Donoher laughed. ‘Sounds quite sinister when you say it that way, but it’s nothing of the kind. Contrary to what some fiction writers and conspiracy theorists would have you believe, the Pope does not have the world’s most formidable spy organization at his beck and call. There was a time, back in the days of the papal states, when the Pope had need of spies and armies, but not for over a century now. When I took over, Vatican Intelligence was an underfunded and understaffed minor office within the Vatican bureaucracy. Pope Leo tasked me with building an organization that could gather and analyze information effectively in this day and age.’
‘So you’re the Pope’s spymaster?’
‘Far from it,’ Donoher said with another laugh. ‘We’re more of a think tank than a Catholic CIA, and that’s why you’re here. I understand that during your time in the Navy, you garnered a reputation as someone who could properly plan something on the order of what His Holiness has asked of us. Which reminds me, I have something for you.’
From a pocket inside his cassock, Donoher produced a small external hard drive.
‘What’s this?’ Kilkenny asked as Donoher handed him the drive.
‘That is the fruit of Miss Hwong’s sacrifice this morning.’
‘But those men took what she had on her.’
‘That they did, and they returned to Beijing believing they had prevented the Vatican and the world from learning what truly happened inside that theater. What you hold there is a recording of that tragedy and a great deal more. I pray that it’s all you need to plan Yin’s liberation.’
Kilkenny tasted the bile rising in the back of his throat. ‘You used her. She was nothing more than a decoy.’
Donoher nodded slowly. ‘I grieve her death as much as you, more perhaps for the part I played in it. In the end, the decision was hers, and she felt the risk was critical to the deception.’
‘Was I part of that deception?’
‘You were an afterthought. I knew Hwong was placing herself in mortal danger and felt certain she would be attacked on her morning run. I crossed her path with yours in hope of improving the odds of her survival. I apologize for placing you at risk without your knowledge, but it was absolutely necessary.’
Kilkenny stared at the hard drive, trying to imagine what information could be so valuable that acquiring it cost a human life.
‘If we now have the proof of what happened in the theater, why not announce it to the world and use international pressure to demand Yin’s release?’
‘As damning as the clip is, it provides us no leverage,’ Donoher explained. ‘The international outrage that followed the Tiananmen Square massacre had no effect on the Chinese government. They won’t bow in this matter. Better we act as though we don’t know the truth to conceal our intentions. And when Yin is free, he can unveil the truth to the world.’
5
Kilkenny carefully studied the holographic image of a building that looked like a long, nearly windowless block of concrete. The solitary wing of Chifeng Prison was part of a complex of buildings that housed a large population of inmates. These buildings comprised only a third of the structures on the prison grounds. The brickyard, where inmates were reformed through hellish hard labor, accounted for the remainder.
‘Display at two-hundred-meter radius,’ Kilkenny said.
The computer controlling the imaging chamber responded to Kilkenny’s voice and zoomed out to bring the rest of the penal facility and some of the surrounding countryside into view. The prison stood in the grasslands just north of the city whose name it shared. Also known as the Xinsheng Brickyard, the laogai’s kilns produced most of the masonry used by the nearby city of a half million people.
The model, which appeared atop an imaging table six feet in diameter, revealed elements of Chifeng Prison at an extraordinarily fine level of detail. From local topography and roads to door swings and light switches — anything that could be gleaned from architectural drawings, satellite images, and even the recollections of released prisoners had been painstakingly assembled into a computer-generated simulation. Kilkenny could view the prison at day or night, study the patterns of guard patrols and deliveries, even watch stacks of bricks grow in time-lapse fashion, only to disappear into railcars every Thursday.
After combing through the information gathered by Donoher’s people in China, Kilkenny found he lacked only two things: the location of Yin’s cell and a recent photograph of the man. Of the two images he had of Yin, one was a photograph taken in the early 1950s when Yin was a young man, and the other was a very grainy image culled from the Beijing video clip.