Page 103 of Skotos
The cell smelled like piss and whatever the hell they’d served for lunch in the station cafeteria. I’d been in worse places—a lot worse—but something about the cramped concrete box made my skin crawl in ways that had nothing to do with the accommodations.
Maybe it was the helplessness.
Maybe it was not knowing if Thomas was bleeding out on some Roman rooftop while I sat here like a caged beast, watching dust motes dance in the thin shaft of light that leaked through the single barred window.
Or maybe it was the way the officers had looked at my credentials like I’d handed them a child’s crayon drawing and claimed it was the Mona Lisa.
I paced the length of the cell for what felt like the thousandth time, my shoes scraping against concrete that was probably poured when Mussolini was still making his trains run on time. The walls werecovered in graffiti: names, dates, crude drawings, messages to God or lovers or lawyers who never came.
Someone had carved “INNOCENTE” deep into the stone near the toilet.
Someone else had scratched out the last three letters.
Thomas, what’s taking so long? You’d better be all right.
The thought crashed through my mind like a freight train, carrying with it all the scenarios I’d been trying not to imagine: him lying unconscious in some alley, him captured by whoever had orchestrated this whole mess, him trying to find me and walking straight into another trap.
Him bleeding . . . again.
Stop it, I told myself.Thomas is fine.He’s too stubborn to die on some Italian rooftop.
But the rational part of my brain, the part that had been trained to calculate odds and assess threats, whispered that even Thomas Jacobs had limits. Even he couldn’t dodge bullets forever.
I sank down on the narrow cot and tried to focus on what I knew rather than what I feared.
The Pope had appeared on the balcony.
There had been gunshots.
Someone had been hit.
But who? The Pope himself? One of the cardinals? Some innocent bystander caught in the crossfire?
And what about the shooter? The last thing I’d seen before the Italian police tackled me was Thomas waving frantically from his rooftop, pointing toward something I couldn’t see.
Had he spotted the assassin? Had he tried to stop them? Had he gotten himself killed trying to save the Pope?
The cell door clanged open, and I looked up to see the same police sergeant who’d arrested me, a stocky man with a mustache that looked like it had been borrowed from a 1930s movie villain who still had a hapless woman tied to a train track. The sergeant held my credentials in one hand and wore the expression of someone who’d just bitten into what he thought was chocolate but turned out to be dog shit.
“These papers,” he said in heavily accented English, waving my FBI identification like it was contaminated. “They are false, yes? You think we are stupid?”
I stood slowly, keeping my hands visible and my voice calm. “They’re genuine. I can give you a number to call—”
“Basta!” He slammed my ID card against the wall hard enough to leave a dent. “You think that because you are American, you can come toourcountrywith guns and fake papers? You think we are idiots who will believe your Hollywood stories?”
“Look, I understand your skepticism—”
“You understand nothing!” His face flushed red, spittle flying with each word. “You were found on rooftop with a weapon during an attack on the Holy Father. You are terrorist, yes? Assassin? Who do you work for? Did someone pay you to kill the Pope?”
I bit back my first three responses, all of which would have involved explaining exactly what I thought of his investigative skills and where he could shove his bushy stache, but getting into a pissing match with an angry Italian cop wasn’t going to get me out of here any faster.
“I’m not a terrorist,” I said as calmly as I could manage. “I’m an American intelligence officer investigating threats against European leaders. If you’ll just make a phone call—”
“To whom? Your friends who will lie for you?” He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “You Americans think you own the world, but this is Italy. Here, we do not bow to your fake badges and arrogance.”
He turned to leave, then stopped and looked back at me with a sneer.
“Your friend—the one who ran from the other building—when we catch him, he will join you here. You will both die for trying to kill our Holy Father.”
