Glick exclaimed, pointing wildly through the windshield of the BBC van. “Something’s going on!”
Macri dropped her shot back down to the main entrance. Something was definitely going on. At the bottom of the stairs, the military-looking man had pulled one of the Alpha Romeos close to the stairs and opened the trunk. Now he was scanning the square as if checking for onlookers. For a moment, Macri thought the man had spotted them, but his eyes kept moving. Apparently satisfied, he pulled out a walkie-talkie and spoke into it.
Almost instantly, it seemed an army emerged from the church. Like an American football team breaking from a huddle, the soldiers formed a straight line across the top of the stairs. Moving like a human wall, they began to descend. Behind them, almost entirely hidden by the wall, four soldiers seemed to be carrying something. Something heavy. Awkward.
Glick leaned forward on the dashboard. “Are they stealing something from the church?”
Chinita tightened her shot even more, using the telephoto to probe the wall of men, looking for an opening. One split second, she willed. A single frame. That’s all I need. But the men moved as one. Come on! Macri stayed with them, and it paid off. When the soldiers tried to lift the object into the trunk, Macri found her opening. Ironically, it was the older man who faltered. Only for an instant, but long enough. Macri had her frame. Actually, it was more like ten frames.
“Call editorial,” Chinita said. “We’ve got a dead body.”
Far away, at CERN, Maximilian Kohler maneuvered his wheelchair into Leonardo Vetra’s study. With mechanical efficiency, he began sifting through Vetra’s files. Not finding what he was after, Kohler moved to Vetra’s bedroom. The top drawer of his bedside table was locked. Kohler pried it open with a knife from the kitchen.
Inside Kohler found exactly what he was looking for.
72
Langdon swung off the scaffolding and dropped back to the ground. He brushed the plaster dust from his clothes. Vittoria was there to greet him.
“No luck?” she said.
He shook his head.
“They put the cardinal in the trunk.”
Langdon looked over to the parked car where Olivetti and a group of soldiers now had a map spread out on the hood. “Are they looking southwest?”
She nodded. “No churches. From here the first one you hit is St. Peter’s.”
Langdon grunted. At least they were in agreement. He moved toward Olivetti. The soldiers parted to let him through.
Olivetti looked up. “Nothing. But this doesn’t show every last church. Just the big ones. About fifty of them.”
“Where are we?” Langdon asked.
Olivetti pointed to Piazza del Popolo and traced a straight line exactly southwest. The line missed, by a substantial margin, the cluster of black squares indicating Rome’s major churches. Unfortunately, Rome’s major churches were also Rome’s older churches . . . those that would have been around in the 1600s.
“I’ve got some decisions to make,” Olivetti said. “Are you certain of the direction?”
Langdon pictured the angel’s outstretched finger, the urgency rising in him again. “Yes, sir. Positive.”
Olivetti shrugged and traced the straight line again. The path intersected the Margherita Bridge, Via Cola di Riezo, and passed through Piazza del Risorgimento, hitting no churches at all until it dead-ended abruptly at the center of St. Peter’s Square.
“What’s wrong with St. Peter’s?” one of the soldiers said. He had a deep scar under his left eye. “It’s a church.”
Langdon shook his head. “Needs to be a public place. Hardly seems public at the moment.”
“But the line goes through St. Peter’s Square,” Vittoria added, looking over Langdon’s shoulder. “The square is public.”
Langdon had already considered it. “No statues, though.”
“Isn’t there a monolith in the middle?”