The Omega Team_Knight & Day Read online

  Resisting the urge to reach out, he gathered himself and spoke.

  “Backup in the next room?”

  “Both sides. The rest of the floor is empty. We used ghost reservations. No one at this hotel knows about the security.”

  “Here I am, the average man on the street,” His Holiness said. “I wish it were so. That I could walk out the doors and into the streets and pass through the neighborhoods and speak to people. As it is, I am lucky I’m allowed to say Mass tomorrow.” He looked amused and pained at the same time.

  Joe knew Pope Luke Paul grappled with the need for security. It was a constant reminder of the world’s evils and of his singular, so-called importance.

  “Mass at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross will be our main security concern. There will be strict entry into the church, weapons checks. But there will be hundreds of people in very close proximity to His Holiness when he gives communion.”

  “You’re giving communion?” Joe shouldn’t have been surprised. His second thought, after realizing the dangerousness of the close quarters of that many people, was that he’d like to receive communion from this man.

  “The cars, the streets, and the tops of every building will be covered for the speech in Government Center, but the church is my biggest concern. You and I will flank him.” Ariana smiled and added, “We’ll be the altar boys for Mass. Remember how?”

  “Sure. But you were never an altar boy.”

  “I’ve schooled Ariana well in the role. She’ll make an excellent altar assistant,” Pope Luke Paul said. “Or maybe I will call her an altar angel.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll have a couple of real altar boys with us to do the heavy lifting.”

  “Is that wise? They could be in danger.”

  She nodded. “I know. I tried to explain this to His Holiness and the church. They’ve conceded to wearing Kevlar under their robes.”

  “We’ll all be dressed in this protective clothing. Even me, Joe.” The Pope shook his head.

  “The latest technology—nothing is too good for you.”

  “Speaking of which.” Ariana raised a finger to say just a minute and left the room. She came back with a thin nylon-covered vest that looked like Joe’s size.

  “All yours. Put it on and let’s go. We’re taking the elevator to the third floor and then the stairs down to the parking garage. There will be a silver Mercedes E320 waiting.”

  “No standard-issue black SUV? Good call.”

  “We’ll check it—and I mean every inch of it—and then you’ll circle the garage on foot before we get in and go.”

  “I know you’ve thought of everything. I feel blessed and safe in your hands.” The Pope lowered his feet to the floor and leaned forward to stand.

  Joe jumped to the holy man’s side to help him. Ariana jumped to his other side.

  They both helped the old man stand up. He seemed frail and full of life at the same time. Joe felt humble and filled with the need to protect him at all cost. His heartbeat picked up, clattering in his chest.

  If his proximity to Ariana hadn’t strained his heart, then the presence of His Holy Greatness would have.

  “Are you ready?” She asked His Holiness. Joe braced himself.

  Pope Luke Paul nodded.

  She slipped a cell phone from her pocket and pressed a button then put it to her ear. “Go.” She slipped it back into her pocket.

  “I suppose the streets are crawling with undercover police of every denomination.”

  “Yes, but don’t worry—they know who you are.” She quirked a smile and he felt the jolt as if she’d tasered him. “Once His Holiness switches places with his double and is ready to go, law enforcement will know to expect you and me to be at his side.”

  Joe wanted badly to ask who had arranged for his presence, wondering whether it was OT or maybe the Pope himself. He damn well knew it wasn’t Ariana’s doing. Under the curtain of her professional seriousness, he felt the tension, the vibration of unshed emotion.

  It couldn’t have been her call to have him here. Joe wished to hell it had been.

  The cost of irrational flights of fancy was too high right now, so he set his jaw and flanked His Holiness, dressed as a man on the street, and walked him to the door of the nondescript hotel room.

  When the elevator doors opened, Joe took the lead, stepping outside into the garage. After a check of the area, he approached the silver Mercedes. The engine was running and a man sat at the wheel. Joe knocked on the window and looked over his shoulder at Ariana to check if she knew the man. She nodded, confidence—and maybe something else—radiating.

  The man rolled down the window.

  “Everything is ready here, Mr. Knight. Would you like me to step out of the car?”

  “Circle around first. Then park it and step out.” Joe resisted a smile. He wasn’t used to the “Mister” moniker. The man did as he was told and a minute later was back.

  He and the driver were probably the same age, Joe figured as he stepped back from the door to let him alight. The driver took a reverent glance in the direction of Pope Luke Paul. His Holiness raised a hand in the sign of the cross blessing.

  “What’s your name?” Joe asked.

  “Benedict Farini, sir.” It matched the information he’d been given.

  “Ben, do me a favor and stand with Pope Luke Paul. Watch his flank. You up for that?”

  “Yes, sir.” Ben moved with haste, yet in a reluctant, jerky manner.

  That was about how Joe felt. All jittery and at odds and serious as Armageddon. But he would never let Ariana or Pope Luke Paul see anything but cool confidence. He leaned inside the car and began running his hands along every surface, under the floor mats, under the seats, behind the pads, pressing down on the upholstery front and back. After he’d touched every surface, he took a gadget from his pocket, one he’d brought from his room before he’d joined Ariana and the Pope. This gadget was his latest invention. It detected the presence of listening or other surveillance devices as well as explosives or incendiaries of any kind. It let him know via LED readout the exact location on the small screen.

  The car was clear. He performed the same careful check of the exterior and undercarriage using a mirror at the end of a telescopic pole he found in the trunk of the car. When he was finished, he shut the trunk with a solid thud and nodded at Ariana. She looked both ways and all around the underground garage as if she were crossing a highway, then and hurried the Pope toward the back door. Joe held it open for them and slid in, sandwiching Pope Luke Paul between them.

  Benedict got back into the driver seat and put the car in gear, pulling smoothly from its spot and toward the parking garage’s exit ramp.

  “You ready for this, Your Eminence?” Joe sat back in his seat to look at the man at his side, glancing at Ariana over the Pope’s shoulder.

  “I’m always ready to address the people, Joe. This is what I live for. To speak with the people is the most important and most rewarding thing.” His smile convinced Joe that he spoke a universal truth.

  “Tell me, do you work from a prepared speech?’ Ariana watched Joe. He flicked his gaze to hers. She held a subdued version of a Mona Lisa look.

  The Pope chuckled and Joe felt the kindness radiate as the holy man put a hand on his arm.

  “Maybe I should, Joe, but no. I speak from the heart. My only preparation has been my entire life.”

  “Well, when you put it that way.”

  The Pope chuckled again and Ariana looked the other way, out the window. They were approaching the Cathedral on Washington Street in the south end of Boston. All familiar territory to Joe. It was where he’d grown up. People walked the streets, not giving the car a second look.

  “This was a brilliant security strategy. The value of anonymity is underrated.” He smiled at Ariana. She nodded, but she was already back into security czar mode with her phone out and to her ear. She spoke quietly, letting whoever was at the other end of the line know that they were two
minutes out.

  “You ready to trade in your man-on-the-street persona for the mantle of Pope?” Joe asked, but in truth, the mantle of Pope never left the man, even wearing a tan suit and necktie.

  “I am always ambivalent in these moments, but the die is cast—that’s how you say it?”

  “That’s how it is. Couldn’t be a better man for the job.”

  He chuckled with that kind warmth that Joe could listen to all day for its comfort value. The car pulled into a narrow drive where a wrought iron gate stood open. They drove around the back of the grounds where Benedict got them close to a simple wooden back door in the ornate granite-and-pudding-stone Cathedral.

  Ariana took the Pope’s arms when the car stopped and leaned toward him.

  “Your Holiness, I beg you to reconsider your appearance.” Her eyes glittered with concern and profound affection. Joe heard the familiar tremble in her voice. His heart would have cracked in two if it hadn’t already been obliterated by her. But it must have healed enough to feel the pain again, because there it was. She’d been irretrievably caught up in her mission to protect this man, and not merely because it was her job and she was sworn to the duty. Not even only because he was a great man, a beacon of hope to mankind, and deserving of the ultimate protection, but because she loved him like he was her own dear gentle grandfather.

  She’d told him once that’s how she’d felt about him. That’s who he’d been to her as a child.

  The Pope released his arms from hers and put a hand to her face. Joe noticed the large papal ring, the Ring of the Fisherman, gold and decorated with a depiction of St. Peter in a boat casting his net, with Pope Luke Paul’s name surrounding it. Joe was surprised he hadn’t noticed it before.

  “Ariana, dear one, I understand how you feel. It is how I feel whenever you risk your safety for mine. But I know you must do this and you know what I must do. We do this together because it is best this way.” He turned to Joe. “And now we have Joe to help us. To give me comfort for our safety as well.”

  The Pope stared into his eyes for a beat then and took a breath with his nod. “You understand, Joe.”

  He understood. Pope Luke Paul wanted him to protect Ariana from harm. It was the Pope himself who had brought him to this mission.

  3

  While Pope Luke Paul went into the private chambers off the altar of the main cathedral to change his garments with the assistance of the cardinal, Joe waited with Ariana in the anteroom.

  “You should be in there with him.” She paced a small circle. He knew it was her anxiety talking. They both knew he was safe with the cardinal. No one else—not even his double—knew he was there.

  “I’m standing in front of the door. He’ll be out in a few minutes.” He wanted to say that he was where he should be, watching her. That he’d rather watch her.

  The self-admission rippled through him, mixed with his adrenaline.

  “We’ll be with him when it counts.”

  She stopped and folded her arms across her chest. She wore a black suit with a slim pencil skirt that showed off her curvy hips and shapely legs. She’d always reminded him of a WWII pinup girl. All she needed was the glamorous make-up. But as it was, she was a head-turning beauty with long golden hair and compelling angel-blue eyes, no matter how well she tried to disguise herself in the conservative trappings of security garb. His fingers itched to pull the pins that secured her hair in a knot at the back of her head.

  She might have guessed at his thoughts judging by the wary look she gave him.

  “I want you to know that it was his decision, not mine.” She paused a beat. “I tried to talk him out of it.”

  “Did you tell him why?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “You already know. So does His Holiness, I’m afraid.” She turned away.

  “You didn’t do something foolish and go confessing anything to him, did you?”

  “No. But he doesn’t need to be told things to know them.” Keeping her hands folded, she pivoted back to face him again. “Kind of like you.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “Don’t give me that false modesty. You know you have excellent instincts.”

  “Maybe. But I’m not in the same universe with Pope Luke Paul. Literally. He has otherworldly help.”

  “Maybe.”

  The slight dimple reflected a faint glow on her face. Not something he saw often. He hoped for her sake she glowed with that joie de vivre more when he wasn’t around. It didn’t sit well that he might be a damper on her life.

  “How’ve you been?”

  “Keeping busy. I beat Luke Paul in chess once two months ago. Your tutoring helped.”

  He wished he could read that pensive look of hers and see what her thoughts were, specifically what she thought of him. How she felt about him.

  As if he knew, because he probably did, Pope Luke Paul intervened by opening the door, saving Joe from getting into trouble, from making the same mistake twice. An unforgivable thing in his business. In his life.

  Now Luke Paul looked like the Pope.

  Ariana went to his side, making a call on her cell phone. Then she pulled a small two-way from her bag.

  “Do you want to carry the Papal ferula?” Ariana pointed to a staff topped by a crucifix.

  “No, my child. I have you and Joe to lean on.”

  She smiled, but without that faint dimple.

  “Let’s roll.” She glided forward with a skater’s grace, conveying His Holiness with familiar ease.

  Joe flanked Pope Luke Paul on the left and the cardinal followed. The small party departed along the same path as when they’d arrived twenty minutes earlier. The Mercedes had been replaced by a limousine and it wasn’t alone. A cavalcade had been assembled in the tight quarters of the streets of Boston. Ariana opened the door of the papal limo adorned by the gold-and-white papal flag with the insignia consisting of Simon Peter’s crossed keys. She slid into the back seat, followed by the Pope dressed in a simple version of papal regalia. He wore his skullcap or zucchetto on his head and a green chasuble over his long white cassock.

  Joe slid in next to Pope Luke Paul and Ariana raised her hand to signal the driver. Several men standing around the limo stepped back, raising their com devices to their ears. The devices looked like mini walkie-talkies of the kind Joe had played with as a kid, but he knew these had a range of miles rather than feet and none of the official-sounding static he remembered. Joe pulled the heavy armored door of the car closed behind them, encasing them in churchlike silence. The limo rolled forward at no more than five miles an hour.

  “What’s our ETA?”

  “Thirty minutes. We’re expecting crowds along the way. This is a public appearance starting now.” Ariana kept her phone in hand and looked past Joe out the window.

  “I miss driving in an open car,” Pope Luke said. But as the limo turned the first corner past a heavily barricaded street, people appeared as if they’d been paid extras on cue in a Hollywood production. Pope Luke raised his hand and leaned forward past Joe to wave and smile at the people as best as he could.

  It was no exaggeration to say that Joe felt the energy radiating from the man as he reached out to the crowd in spite of the closed window. He was thankful for the police lining the street and doubly grateful that they were not in an open car. As it was, Joe’s heart thudded like a frog on speed in his throat. He slid his eyes towards Ariana. She watched the crowd and kept the phone to her ear, speaking in a quiet, staccato voice. Joe guessed whoever was on the other end of the line was at their destination, City Hall Plaza.

  As useless as he’d been up until now, hardly having done a thing that Ariana couldn’t have handled, he knew he’d earn his pay once they arrived at the security nightmare of that open plaza. There the Pope would be on a raised platform in front of tens of thousands of people with very little to protect him save his special Kevlar undervest—and Ariana and him.

  Of course, there w
ould be hundreds of special-detail police and hundreds more undercover from all walks of law enforcement, including the Pope’s own security.

  “Where will the Swiss Guard detail be deployed?” he asked Ariana, tearing her attention away from the window and the phone.

  “Excuse me,” she said into the phone, then covered it with her hand. “They’ll be with us on the platform and immediately surrounding it.”

  Joe nodded and it occurred to him that they might be wondering why the hell he was flanking the Pope and not one of them. He knew why, but there was no way anyone else would guess.

  Not even Ariana guessed that the Pope wanted Joe to protect her, to be her bodyguard while she guarded the Pope. It was a hell of a thing to wrap his mind around, but he’d never been more committed to an assignment in his life. Couldn’t think of higher stakes than protecting Pope Luke Paul—the most kind, courageous and revered Pope in a half a century—from a real and verified threat, and saving Ariana, the love of his life, from herself.

  “I should have an earbud,” he said.

  She slid her eyes to his. He knew this would be a point of contention, that she wanted to be in control and giving him communications access would threaten her control.

  “You’ll be within sight and sound at all times.”

  “You know the protocol.” He stared her down. She shuttered her eyes. The protocol called for him to be on the same line of com as she was. She knew the reason. In case she went down, he would take over. He didn’t bother saying it out loud in front of Pope Luke Paul.

  Not that His Holiness hadn’t already figured all this out—because if he hadn’t realized the danger, he wouldn’t have asked for Joe to be there, would he?

  She reached into an inside pocket of her dark suit jacket, revealing the lush contour of her breasts as she did, and removed an unusually small pair of ear buds, holding them in her palm. He reached forward to retrieve them.

  “Excuse me, Your Eminence.”

  The Pope turned to him, bestowing a brief smile and with it a flash of understanding. The holy man’s face expressed volumes in the blink of acknowledgment. A wash of emotion went through Joe as he engaged the earbuds. Energy surged with a renewed sense of mission and he turned to the window and the crowds of people. Their closeness heightened the sense of vulnerability so that he reminded himself of the limo’s state-of-the-art bulletproofing.