The Vatican Secret

by Peter Hogenkamp

Genres: Military Thrillers

Synopsis

There is a nuclear weapon in the hands of the Vatican City's deadliest enemy. And time is running out to stop an attack...Marco Venetti, the only man the Pope trusts, is on the hunt for a traitor. He is willing to do anything to protect the church, and the man at its heart. Even if it means getting blood on his hands... But when Marco finds him, the traitor reveals terrifying new information: the name of a Russian mafioso with a grudge against the Vatican and possession of a nuclear bomb. If Marco doesn't work with him, the consequences will be deadly. Inside the stone walls of an ancient castle in Portugal, surrounded by high mountains, Marco waits to ambush his target. But a double-cross ruins everything and he must flee, alone and without backup, leaving a trail of death and destruction behind. For the first time in his life, he doubts his calling, and fears for his faith. Yet an attack is imminent. And to prevent it, Marco must enter a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that will take him across the continent, on land and by sea. With time running out, he will stop at nothing to uncover the truth. Because the secrets inside the Vatican may be the deadliest threat of all. And only Marco can restore honor to the church, by any means necessary... The Vatican Secret is an explosive thriller full of treachery, international conspiracy and non-stop action. Fans of Joel C. Rosenberg, Tom Clancy and Steven Konkoly will be completely gripped. Praise for the Marco Venetti series:"Grabs you on the first page and is powered by non-stop action and a taut, emotional narrative... A real page turner!" Goodreads reviewer, "Riveting... I was completely engrossed... A tonne of action, plenty of twists and turns, and enough drama to keep you feverishly turning the pages." Readers Retreat"How on earth did I miss book 1? What a travesty!... Mix of priest & James Bond... Fast paced, tightly crafted, great characters." Nikki's Book Nook.-

Release date: April 15, 2021

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

Pope John Paul III towered over the small wooden podium in the center of the square outside the Memorial House of Mother Teresa in Skopje, one large brown eye fixed on the television crews that would transmit the event to every corner of the earth, the other watching the small crowd gathered in front of him. Next to him, dressed all in white just as he was, stood the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Alexy III, the 270th successor of Andrew the Apostle. The crowd, mostly Macedonians, with a smattering of journalists thrown in for good measure, looked back at him in anticipation and curiosity. The event had been cobbled together in a hurry, with very little advance notice. He hated the melodrama that this lack of directness had created, but Oberst Jaecks, the commander of the Swiss Guard—which had been protecting popes for over five hundred years—had insisted upon it. Less than two months since the failed assassination attempt in St. Peter’s Square, Kommandant Jaecks was taking no chances; in addition to their ceremonial halberds, which pointed sharply toward the overcast Macedonian sky, the guardsmen were all carrying automatic weapons in plain view.

“Brother and sisters …”

They spoke in unison, the pope in Italian and the patriarch, the first among equals among the heads of the Orthodox churches, in Russian. Behind them, a screen had been erected, displaying their words in three languages: Macedonian, English and Greek.

“Christ is not divided, and yet, since 1054, our two great churches have remained apart; a separation that was the work of men, not God. Today, on this sacred ground commemorating one of the greatest Christians of all eternity, we gather to announce the formation of a series of ecumenical councils that will lead to the reunification of the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches.”

They paused. The pope used the time to gauge the reaction of the crowd. The Macedonians were staring at the screen behind him, reading the words as they were typed, disbelief dawning on their faces. The Swiss Guard stood, as always, tall and proud; their faces calm but alert. The journalists and media, however, were anything but calm: hands jumped into the air, even though the question-and-answer session was yet to begin; necks craned, heads swiveled, and jaws dropped; thumbs tapped away on phones, shooting texts and emails to TV networks and newspapers around the globe.

As they had agreed earlier in a meeting inside the Memorial House, Patriarch Alexy III started speaking again, delineating the nuts and bolts of the process that would lead to the end of the break in communion between the two churches after nearly a millennium.

Patriarch Alexy III continued, but the pope wasn’t listening; having co-written the text, he knew every word by heart. Instead, he focused on being in the moment, breathing in the slightly damp air that smelled of diesel smoke and the garbage that had been piling up due to a recent strike, feeling the caress of the light breeze on his face, and watching the excitement bubble up as if from the very earth itself, imbuing the faces of the people in the crowd with its energy. It had begun, here, now, in this moment, and he wanted to stay in it forever. The devil would be in the detail—both the devil and the detail would follow in droves in short order—but he shunted the negativity away from his mind. Licking his lips, he tasted the moment, which was sweet, like the roasted coconut he used to steal from the street vendors as a child in Nigeria. The shock wave of their announcement, which had not been leaked or hinted at in any way, pealed like thunder in the air; he could feel its power course through him, giving him strength, driving him forward.

It had begun …

Nicolai Orlov paced back and forth in the private gallery of his apartment on the top floor of Schloss Rheinstein. Pausing for a minute, he crossed himself beneath the painting of Our Lady of Kazan, then returned to his pacing, glancing at his watch every now and again. Close to the top of the hour, he genuflected one last time in front of the icon of the Holy Protectress of Russia—the original, which had been stolen in 1904 and was thought to be lost forever—and passed into his spacious living room, closing and locking the door behind him. The room overlooked the Rhine, which snaked into the northern horizon like a large anaconda. He picked up a remote control from the arm of the leather sofa, punched a few buttons, and a large flat-screen TV burst into life on a side wall. Grabbing a bottle of Beluga vodka and a crystal tumbler, he stood in front of the television, pouring himself a generous measure as he waited for the program to begin.

It was three in the afternoon in Germany, early to be drinking, but he had a bad feeling he was going to need a glass of vodka—and perhaps a few more—to get through the day. The first indication that his premonition was right was the breaking news banner that scrolled across the bottom of the screen. The next was the sight of Patriarch Alexy III, wearing the traditional white koukoulion topped by a gold cross, standing next to Pope John Paul III. The last and final clue were the words of the patriarch himself, spoken in his native Russian, confirming Orlov’s greatest fear: that the two men were aiming to unify the two great churches. He watched in morbid fascination, unable to look away, similar to the way a passer-by cannot stop from staring at a bus crash with many casualties.

When the program was over, he clicked the screen off, grabbed his glass, and passed through the sliding door onto the veranda. It was cloudy and cool, although Orlov, who had been born in St. Petersburg and often swam in the Baltic until October, didn’t bother bringing his jacket. The vodka was making him warm anyway, and he had plenty of it. He took his phone out and made a call.

“Hello,” Anatoly Gerashchenko said without enthusiasm.

“Did you see them?”

“See who?”

“Patriarch Alexy and Pope John Paul III.”

“No.”

There were occasions when Orlov got the feeling that his most trusted lieutenant did not share many of his passions. This was one of those times.

“I warned them, Anatoly, you know that.”

Gerashchenko grunted some kind of response.

“There will be severe consequences.”

“How severe?”

“Very severe. That’s why I’m calling.”

Gerashchenko said nothing. Orlov watched one of the barges of the shipping line he had just purchased chug past on its way to Cologne.

“The packages are ready?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. It’s time we taught the bastards a lesson they will never forget.”

“How do you want to do that? Ever since the Saudis botched things so badly, the whole place is locked up tighter than a drum.”

It had only been six weeks since a cell of terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Nigeria had tried to kill the pope and raze St. Peter’s Basilica. In the aftermath of the failed attack—an attack that had been blamed on a Saudi prince, but which Orlov had actually sponsored—the Vatican Security Office had set up checkpoints well outside the confines of Vatican City.

“But we have …” Orlov almost said “nuclear weapons”, but wisely held his tongue. It was true, though: two Chinese-made DH-10 nuclear warheads, which he had acquired in indirect fashion, were waiting to be deployed against the Vatican. And now, with Patriarch Alexy III firmly under Rome’s influence, he had no choice but to proceed. There was nothing he could tolerate less than his beloved Orthodox Church under the pope’s thumb.

“Yes, I know. But the checkpoints are over a kilometer away from the basilica.”

“Isn’t that close enough to flatten the place?”

“No, too far.”

The DH-10 was not a strategic weapon, meant to take out cities; it was a tactical nuclear weapon, intended to destroy a specific target without causing widespread damage and radioactive fallout.

“Any ideas?” Orlov asked.

“Yes.”

He finished the still ample contents of the glass in one swallow. Among the many vodkas he enjoyed drinking, Beluga was at the top of the list for the sweet hint of honey in the finish.

“Are you going to tell me?”

“No, I’ll take care of it.”

Orlov didn’t like being spoken to in this fashion, but he let it go for one reason and one reason only. Gerashchenko had never failed him, and in exchange for his reliability, Orlov had always afforded him some latitude.

“Okay, then. Get it done—and quickly. I don’t want this unification effort to gain any momentum.”

At first glance, it was a typical Cretan farmhouse—a rectangle of sandstone covered by a terracotta roof, surrounded by a gravel courtyard dotted with fig and olive trees. What passed for the barn was out back, a low stone hut with a flat roof. In less modern times, Marco could picture it filled with donkeys and the wicker baskets used to carry olives; currently it housed an antiquated Steyr truck that he hoped to use as a getaway vehicle. A well-kept garden lined the south side of the house; a stone wall in dire need of a mason guarded the cucumbers and tomatoes from the multitudes of goats that wandered the hillsides.

All in all, it looked like the kind of place a banker might take his family on holiday, rather than the hideout of Giampaolo Benedetto, the former Vatican Inspector General who had conspired to kill Pope John Paul III. But that was what it was, at least if Vatican City Secretary of State Cardinal Lucci could be believed.

He’s there, Marco, I’m sure of it.

What makes you so sure?

I just have a hunch about it.

Marco’s last conversation with Cardinal Lucci, which had occurred the night before he had boarded the Bel Amica for his trip to Crete, flitted through his head as he waited for yet another herd of goats to wander off; he hoped Lucci was right, or he was going to add breaking and entering to his growing list of crimes. But some crimes were unavoidable, and finding the man who knew the identity of il traditore, the true traitor inside the Vatican, seemed well worth the penance of a few misdemeanors, and perhaps a felony or two. He passed over the target with the infrared binoculars one last time; the only heat signature he could find belonged to the cat that stalked the vineyard on the other side of the rutted driveway. When the tinkling of the goat bells was lost to the whisper of the breeze through the cypress trees, he climbed down from the rock shelf he had been using for a vantage point and made his way down the slope, dodging lemon trees and thickets of oleander.

He walked past the iron gate flanking the walkway that led to the back of the house—he knew from his past two nights’ surveillance that it creaked terribly—and hopped over the stone wall at its lowest point. The breeze sparked up, carrying the minty aroma of the wild marjoram that bloomed on the hillsides and—to his dismay—ripping the cloudy cover off the thin crescent of moon that hung low in the September sky. He flattened himself along the wall, hoping that the man inside the house hadn’t heard the slight crunch of gravel underneath his boots.

When the welcome darkness returned, and he could be as sure as possible that he hadn’t been detected, he walked around to the front of the house and used a lock pick to open the heavy oaken door. Prior to this past August, he had never walked through a closed door without knocking, much less picked a lock, but in comparison to killing a half-dozen men, it seemed hardly worth noting, although note it he did, a habit after ten years as a priest.

He passed inside, leaving the door open, and found himself in the kitchen, positioned in the front of the house to take best advantage of the view of the valley. A wooden staircase led up from the adjacent dining area to the dark second floor; he untied his boots and removed his backpack, leaving them on the doormat, then ascended the stairs. Somewhere about the fourth or fifth step, the gun with which he had killed three terrorists materialized in his hand. He had wanted to bring a Beretta along—the weapon the former Italian paratrooper Pietro Ferraro had taught him to use—but the CZ 75 belonged to a now dead member of the Boko Haram terrorist group and was untraceable. He had also successfully used it against its former owner, a run of good luck he hoped to keep going.

As he pointed the gun around the landing at the top of the stairs, his heart hammered in his chest, loud enough to be heard over the faint hum of a late-night flight descending toward Daskalogiannis airport in Chania. A puff of breeze flapped the curtains of an open window—Benedetto was famously fond of fresh air—and carried in the bleating of the goats. When he left this island, assuming he survived, Marco was never going near another goat. The bedroom door at the end of the corridor was unlocked; he twisted the handle and pushed it inward.

A log fire burned slowly in the hearth along the outside wall, bathing the massive four-poster bed in the corner of the room in its red glow. The ceiling fan twirled overhead, ruffling the thin draping hanging down from the crown of the empty bed. Something hard pressed against the back of his head—and even with a priest’s optimism, Marco knew it was the barrel of a gun. Irritation washed over him at its feel, hard and final against his skull, and anger bubbled up from deep in his core; he had failed in his mission, putting many people, the pope included, in jeopardy.

“Welcome to Crete, Father Venetti.”

“It’s good to be here, Benedetto.”

Benedetto’s hand closed over Marco’s gun and released it from his grasp. The floor lamp flickered on, throwing shadows on the pine floorboards.

“Won’t you sit down?”

Marco sank onto the simple wooden chair next to the bay window that overlooked the valley.

“Took your sweet time getting here, didn’t you?” Benedetto moved over to the pine desk across from Marco’s chair and sat down behind it. “Your boat left Palermo a week ago. How long can it take to cross the Mediterranean?”

Marco shrugged nonchalantly.

“Let me see. There’s about a thousand kilometers of sea between Sicily and Crete, roughly five hundred and fifty nautical miles, correct?”

“How should I know?”

“We both know your father was a navy captain, Marco.” Benedetto picked up the glass resting on the desk and sipped from it. Marco would have bet his modest pension it was filled with a particular white wine from Tuscany.

“The top speed of the Ferretti 550 is around twenty-five knots, give or take. Your boat should have arrived—in fact, did arrive—five days ago.”

He was right, of course, but Marco wasn’t about to tell him that. Il Bel Amica II, the motor yacht Lucci had obtained for Elena in more than generous compensation for the loss of Il Bel Amica, her antiquated fishing trawler, had dropped anchor off the western coast of Crete, just southwest of Livadia, on Tuesday, exactly five days ago.

“A night-time drop-off to a stretch of coastline due west of here; that old girlfriend of yours, Elena, brought you, didn’t she?”

Elena had indeed ferried him over in the skiff carried by Il Bel Amica II, a Zodiac Yachtline with an engine no louder than a hummingbird.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Benedetto.”

“Sure you do, but I think it’s darling that you’re playing your part right to the end.”

“What part is that?”

Benedetto stroked his neatly trimmed beard as he considered his answer. “The part in Lucci’s play, the tragedy in which the faithful Vatican servant doing the Secretariat’s dirty work ends up in a shallow grave on a lonely Cretan hillside.” He pointed out the window. “You’re looking right at it, the grave, that is. I had the caretaker dig it for me yesterday—I told him I wanted to plant a strawberry tree there.”

“I could think of worse places for my eternal rest.”

Benedetto didn’t offer a rebuttal. Keeping Marco in the sights of his pearl-handled Beretta 92 9mm Parabellum, he hopped off his chair and made a quick return trip to the wine refrigerator standing next to the chest of drawers. Sitting down again, he refilled his glass, then tilted the bottle in Marco’s direction.

“A last drink, Father Marco?”

Marco shook his head. “I’m not a fan of the Avignonesi Vin Santo di Montepulciano; too sweet.”

“Come on, now, it’s Saturday night. Loosen up!”

Marco shook his head. “I don’t think so. The 1983 vintage is especially cloying, don’t you think?”

“I must say I greatly underestimated Lucci, much though I despise him. How clever of him to track me down by following the shipments of my favorite wine. I’ll have to be more careful next time.”

“You know what they say, Benedetto: loose lips sink ships.”

Benedetto consulted his watch, a wide smile appearing on his face. “That they do, Marco, that they do.” He pulled a cell phone out of the breast pocket of his suit jacket—Marco could not remember a time when the man wasn’t dressed to the hilt—and tapped out a quick text. Then he picked up the gun he had taken from Marco and looked it over carefully.

“Since when do Jesuit priests carry CZ 75 semi-automatics?”

“Ever since the Inspector General of the Security Office thought it was a good idea to let five vanloads of armed terrorists into Vatican City. I suppose they never told you they planned on blowing up the basilica, did they?”

There had been enough Semtex in the vans to reduce St. Peter’s to nothing more than ten thousand yards of rubble; almost every night Marco watched the basilica crumble in his dreams, which played in high definition and ultra slow motion, accompanied by a full-body sweat that soaked his sheets and chilled him to the marrow. Only he knew how close he had come to walking away from the whole affair, a decision that would have cost the pope his life and the Church its icon. But it was a decision he forced himself to remember, to keep himself from walking away this time and rendering moot all the sacrifices he had already made.

Benedetto shrugged. “Wouldn’t have mattered if they had, frankly. St. Peter’s can be rebuilt, but nothing can undo the damage this pope will do to the Church. Did you know he’s considering ordaining women?”

“So your betrayal had nothing to do with money? You were just trying to preserve your version of the Church, is that it?”

“I don’t see those two things as mutually exclusive. I get to save the Church from this abomination of a pope, and give myself a comfortable future at the same time.”

“Except that ‘this abomination of a pope’ still lives and breathes.”

“For the moment, Marco. For the moment.”

The fire burned down in the hearth; Marco wrestled with the handcuffs that held him to the table. His captor paced back and forth along the opposite wall, talking quietly into his phone. Marco tried to listen, but Benedetto was speaking in hardly more than a whisper, and anyway his focus was centered on trying to find a way out of this predicament, not so much to save his own life but to save the pope, whom he loved and for whom he had already put his life on the line. But no escape route presented itself, and the rising tide of panic ebbed in his viscera.

Benedetto rang off and returned to the table. The Glock wasn’t in sight but Marco’s Czech made semi-automatic was pointing straight at him.

“It was a shame your friend couldn’t make the trip as well.”

A tawny owl hooted above them—hoo hoo hoo—calling for a mate, perhaps, or just wanting to hear the sound of its own voice.

“What friend are you referring to?”

“The American woman you went to Austria with to kill el-Rayad … the ex-CIA sniper. What’s her name? I can’t recall it at the moment.”

Marco shrugged. “A Mossad hit squad killed the Saudi prince. It was in all the papers.”

“It was very clever of Lucci to throw suspicion on the Israelis. Do you know that he even went so far as to wire the money for the rented farmhouse in Salzburg from a bank in Tel Aviv? The same bank that the Mossad often uses for wire transfers?”

Benedetto toasted Lucci’s machinations with a sip of his favorite wine. Marco didn’t mention that it had been Eduardo Ferraro, the Mafia don married to the youngest of Lucci’s sisters, who had orchestrated the plot.

“But it was all a lie, wasn’t it? Just like that epic fantasy Lucci’s office put out that a member of the Vatican Gendarmerie saved the pope’s life at St. Peter’s Square. The Gendarmerie had nothing to do with it. You were the one, Marco.”

“I’m nothing more than a Jesuit priest from Monterosso. Your information is faulty.”

The owl hooted again, longer this time, more emphatic—perhaps no other owl was responding to its calls.

“Nice try, but my information is spot on.” Benedetto finished his glass and consulted his watch. “And soon you will be dead and I will have to leave Crete. Such a pity; I was looking forward to seeing the oleanders blooming in the spring.”

A dog barked in the distance. Marco figured it was the Anatolian shepherd he had seen patrolling the hillsides, keeping the goats out of the olive groves and grape vineyards. It was somewhat curious, as he hadn’t heard it bark before.

Benedetto placed the barrel of the gun against Marco’s throat. “Let’s hope the Lord is in a merciful mood this morning.”

The owl vocalized again, more of a begging squawk this time, bringing back a memory. Marco was in the cellar of an ancient barn somewhere in Bavaria; Pietro was trying to extract him and the sniper named Sarah before they were captured by the legions of Bundespolizei combing the hills for them. The owl noises were a form of communication Pietro had taught them; the squawking meant something.

“Arrivederci, Father Venetti.”

As Benedetto’s finger whitened on the trigger, Marco remembered what it was.

When the owl screams, get your ass down in a hole.

Marco threw himself to the side, crashing heavily against the table as the window exploded into a thousand fragments and a spout of blood erupted from the back of Benedetto’s shoulder. The chair came out from underneath him, and he fell to the floor and settled against the former Inspector General, who was squirming in pain and trying to stem the flow of blood from his upper arm.

The gun was lying on the pine boards right next to them. Benedetto was slightly closer to it, and he got there first, grabbing it by the handle. But his weakened hand couldn’t fend off Marco’s, which closed over it and slammed it against the wooden floor. Benedetto grunted in pain and released the weapon, which skittered over the floor and came to rest against the stone hearth. Grimacing against the pain, he levered himself to a sitting position, reaching for the gun, but his hand fell short. He tried to squirm toward it, but failed to move on account of the long arm wrapped around his waist.

There they were, entangled like two wrestlers in a gold medal match, each trying to win the superior position. Marco was the bigger and stronger of the two, but one of his hands was cuffed to the table, giving him a significant disadvantage. Benedetto did manage to slip from his embrace for a moment, but Marco’s flailing arm struck him close to where the bullet had pierced his shoulder, and he howled in pain and went limp; just for a second, but long enough for Marco to gather him in again like the tentacle of a hungry octopus gathers a stunned fish.

Benedetto thrashed around, kicking his legs and beating his arms, bellowing in anger and pain. But Marco held on stubbornly, realizing that whoever had fired the shot that had felled Benedetto—and he had a pretty good idea who that was—was going to arrive any moment now.

After what seemed more like an hour than the ninety seconds it was, the door to the bedroom opened and a very familiar-looking Browning HP poked through the gap. Sarah followed the gun in, looking exactly the way he pictured her in his mind as he lay in bed at night, listening to the lap of the waves against the rocky coastline beneath his rectory, except that her long auburn hair was tied into a ponytail that snaked out the back of her camo shooting cap. In his mind’s eye—and especially in the dreams that tortured him every night—her hair always hung down in long, flowing curls that framed her high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes. She spotted the CZ 75, scooping it up, and grabbed the Beretta from the table on the other side of the room, where it lay next to the keys to the handcuffs.

Marco let go of Benedetto and stood up, almost slipping on a pool of blood. Sarah tossed him the keys, and he released himself. He tore one of the curtains from the window and used it to form a tourniquet above the bullet hole in Benedetto’s shoulder, as Sarah watched with the Browning pointed ominously at Benedetto’s center mass. When he had tightened the fabric enough to stem the bleeding, he helped the wounded man onto the chair and cuffed him to the table.

The bathroom was next door; Marco gathered some supplies from the cabinet and did the best he could to clean and dress Benedetto’s wound while Sarah left to make sure that the commotion hadn’t attracted any unwanted attention.

The smug smile on Benedetto’s face had disappeared, evolving into the notorious snarl with which he used to greet the employees of the Vatican Security Office in the days—now gone for good—when he was its Inspector General.

“It’s Sarah.”

Benedetto’s snarl deepened. “Huh?”

“The woman you were referring to … her name is Sarah.”

Marco fitted a gauze pad into place over the wou. . .