The Cardinal's Sin Read online

  THE

  CARDINAL’S

  SIN

  Also by Robert Lane

  The Second Letter

  Cooler Than Blood

  THE

  CARDINAL’S

  SIN

  ROBERT LANE

  © 2015 Robert Lane

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 0692356517

  ISBN 13: 9780692356517

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014960162

  Mason Alley Publishing, St. Pete Beach, FL

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any print or electronic form without permission.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, localities, businesses, companies, organizations, and events is entirely coincidental.

  Sticks and stones will break my bones,

  But words will never harm me.

  Children’s rhyme

  THE

  CARDINAL’S

  SIN

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  PRAISE FOR ROBERT LANE’S JAKE TRAVIS NOVELS

  CHAPTER 1

  I killed a man in London who did not die.

  “Forgive me my sin,” he said as I towered over him with my gun. It was an odd request from a cardinal.

  “Your sins, you pompous ass,” I corrected him.

  We were in Kensington Gardens by the Peter Pan statue. It was thirty-five minutes before sunrise, and I was eager to finish my assignment before the light gave birth to more joggers. It wasn’t a location I would have chosen, but I carried no vote. Nor was it how I envisioned spending the final morning of my European vacation with Kathleen.

  The cardinal wasn’t really a man of the cloth. He was an international assassin with numerous disguises, including this ridiculous cardinal caricature. He’d recently been tied to several deaths in the United States. Instead of targeting his victims, who were current and former members of special ops—the latter a card that I carry—he assassinated members of their families: the elderly parents of one, the girlfriend of another, and a sister of a third. Action was required. He had to go. It was my assignment to make the world a better place. Vacation or not.

  I had stalked him for ten minutes and then, from the shadows, called his name. He hesitated and turned. I shot him.

  “Please,” he said. The strength of his voice surprised me. The first bullet had to be within inches of his heart. It was hard to believe he was still functioning. “Forgive…forgive me my sin.”

  His last-ditch effort for clemency—from me, of all people—didn’t particularly strike me as unusual. Death, when it arrives with no escape clause, brings out strange spirits in people, but I expected something harder in his soul. His eyes were seeing the last of the world. Such eyes do not take in but allow everything out. Even in the waning dark, I didn’t like the desperate pleading of his eyes, as if instead of fearing or challenging me, he was trying to communicate something with childlike innocence. It didn’t seem right. Screw it. I was on a tight schedule and dismissed my intuition. I was paid to kill, not to hear deathbed confessions or spout my opinions on the metaphysical.

  He lay on the ground, wrapped in his vestments of a black cassock and scarlet fascia. His right hand clasped a piece of paper. He muttered some final words, some mumbo jumbo about the pope and his guardian. Staying in his role until the end. What was the point? He brought up his right arm, his outstretched, closed hand yearning for me. I reciprocated by leveling my gun.

  “Forgive me my—”

  “Save it for never-never land.”

  I squeezed the trigger.

  CHAPTER 2

  I jogged at a leisurely pace toward my rented flat on Green Street and ducked into a parking spot just past Dunraven Street, where the designated Dumpster was. I stripped off my outer T-shirt, snatched off my baseball cap with the fake ponytail, and stuffed them—along with my latex gloves—into a plastic bag half-full of garbage and teeming with maggots. The gun and clear glasses were next. I knotted the drawstring on the bag and, reaching into my pocket, took out the scrap of paper that had been in the cardinal’s outstretched hand. Did he want me to have it? I hadn’t been able to resist prying his fingers open and now was unsure what to make of it: a faded graduation photo of a young woman, brunette, the colors barely hanging in. Creased and worn by years. Who was she? A daughter? Lost lover? It went back in my pocket.

  At the Starbucks on the corner of Green and Park Streets, I purchased a French Roast Grande. A tipsy, round table by the window served as a perfect place to read the Times. A few minutes later, a lorry with wood sides and an exposed bed rumbled down Green and swung right onto Park. A hodgepodge of old tires, discarded lumber, and garbage bags was in the back. My bag was there. It would be incinerated within the hour. When it was light enough outside to read, I relocated to a table squeezed between the building and the curb. The table was level, solid like a rock.

  Kathleen was upstairs in the flat and had another hour to go before she entered the new day. We were flying back to Tampa and had a comfortable schedule except for one issue: the time Kathleen requires to pack is directly correlated with the time allotted to accomplish the task. She’s in a rush whether we leave at 6:00 a.m. or p.m.

  I got my phone out of my shorts pocket and sent a text to the colonel:

  the bird is dead

  Sirens screamed from Oxford Street, two blocks away. They kept going. I went inside and purchased a banana and a lemon pastry that negated all the calories I’d burned during the last half mile of my run. When I returned outside, a man was three feet from my table and closing. We made eye contact. I shook my head. He moved on.

  More sirens, now on Bond. Like everyone else, I kept my head down when they passed. They did pass. I didn’t like what I had just done. The deed didn’t bother me, but it had been hastily arranged, and Kensington Gardens was far too public a place. More important, it had been the intention of Kathleen and mine four-week European vacation to spend time together without the vagaries of my lifestyle interrupting us. So much for that. Wherever I go, I follow.

  The target, tentative time, and location had been communicated to me in Paris. It came while we shared a raspberry parfait over glasses of Chablis at Les Deux Magots. We watched a man with a cane—the Caned Man, Kathleen dubbed him—navigate the scurry of shoppers, tourists, and workers that swamped Boulevard Saint-Germain. We clanked our glasses to his success, and Kathleen won
dered if he lived alone. I thought it an idle question; she seemed to truly care. The waiter palmed me a note.

  The next day we picnicked by the tower with a baguette, Mimolette Cheddar, and a bottle of Château du Terte. Our lunch lasted for three hours, and the longer we stayed, the smaller the world became, as all I saw was her smile. When I think of the City of Light, I think of that smile.

  In Rome she insisted on dragging me to a nightclub across from the Hotel Cosmopolita, where we were staying. There was no sign over the single metal door on the side of the nondescript, faded-yellow brick building. At midnight the door opened. She filled the room and the night with her laugh. It was nearly dawn before we left. The next day I missed my early-morning run through the narrow streets.

  That afternoon, on the left side of the Spanish Steps between the wall and the concrete divider, a woman wearing a white dress and holding a green parasol brushed past me. She handed me a folded piece of stationery. Her fingers felt chafed, and I didn’t expect that. The stationery held the name I would use when I registered for my flat on Green Street. I was assured that my previous registration had been erased. The people I work for like that word. Erase. It’s simple. Effective. On a good day, they can spell it. I sat on the steps and burned the piece of paper.

  When I think of Rome, I hear her laugh. I also recall the day I didn’t run. It wasn’t worth giving up for the nightclub, but I’ll never tell her that.

  When we arrived in London, I wanted to shield her from knowing that I was using an alias. Before our contact arrived to open our flat, I dispatched her to the store for grapefruit juice and beer, insisting she go immediately.

  Small things mask great deceits.

  Kathleen knew that my partner, Garrett Demarcus, and I did contract work for our former army colonel, but this was different. This was our vacation. I wasn’t searching for a kidnapped young woman or shutting down a sex-slave import business while retrieving a stolen Cold War letter—a pair of previous undertakings. I wasn’t sure how she would react, so I opted to not give her a choice. It wasn’t a well-thought-out decision, but it was an easy one—a classic example of how I seek the path of least resistance. Harp on me all you want, but we all do it.

  From London we took a train north to York to escape the mass of civilized international humanity. The northern England weather was waiting for us, and she bought a gold scarf. She circled it around her neck so her head sprouted out like a spring flower pushing through winter ground. She was the sexiest damn thing in Yorkshire County. Ever. And it’s an old county. She was cold and wrapped in the scarf when we stumbled into an eighteenth-century tavern with a seven-foot ceiling and fortress walls. It was small and warm. We were looking for a quick dinner before we caught the train back to Paddington. We took a room upstairs. Dinner was quick; everything else slow. I insisted she keep the scarf wrapped around her neck. We missed our train.

  My final confirmation of place and location came the next day along with the dinner check at La Genova. I was glad I didn’t have to extend my stay and make up some bullshit excuse for Kathleen. Why would that bother me? I’d been deceiving her since Paris.

  I checked my watch. Time to scoot. I took my coffee up to the second-floor flat. Kathleen was in the living room, shoving clothes into a stubborn and argumentative suitcase.

  “Ready to fly?” I said.

  “Next time we travel, I’m bringing a steamer trunk.”

  “You could buy less.”

  “No.” She gave a huff and looked up from her task. Her hair was somewhere between tied back and unbridled freedom, like a country in the midst of a revolution. She wore tight jeans and a white, untucked shirt buttoned halfway up. No shoes. The black, wood dining table behind her was strewn with newspapers, souvenirs, euros, and maps of colored tube routes that looked like an ant farm someone had poured dye into.

  “That has nothing to do with it. How was your run?”

  “Uneventful.” I gave her a good-morning peck. That wouldn’t do. No way.

  “Car comes at eight thirty, right?”

  I went to the eight-foot patio doors and swung them open. The bustle of a summer morning in London filled the flat. I turned around and pulled off my shirt.

  “What are you—”

  I was on her and kissed her savagely. My adrenaline had gotten no release, no satisfaction, from killing the cardinal. My instincts and body had been prepping for battle for over two weeks, but an assassination is a passive act—like hitting the mute button on a person’s life. I crumbled us onto the floor and tore into her clothes, both acts absent of any delicate consideration.

  She pulled away. “Slow down, stranger. Do you even need me?”

  “One’s a lonely act.”

  “OK. Well, gee, this is one of those times when a little lie comes in handy.”

  “I don’t lie,” I lied.

  “The curtains are open. The buildings are so close they—”

  “Let’s give them something to remember.” I arched her body off the floor.

  “Jake?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t think you ran fast enough this morning.”

  I like making love to Kathleen on a hard surface, but I’m not sure that’s what I did.

  We were putting on the last of our clothes when the cleaning crew, a woman and a man using their own key, came in without knocking. Kathleen, as if someone had smacked the red button, went into travel-mode panic. She dashed to the bedroom and out of earshot.

  The woman was missing her front tooth and had stevedore fingernails. She looked as if she’d spent the last forty years cooking in the galley of a freighter. The young man had a buzz cut. His baggy clothes couldn’t disguise his impressive physique.

  “You’re early,” I said to the man.

  “I’m in charge here,” the sea hag said.

  I turned to her. “You’re early. You know what you’re doing here?”

  “No, honey. I’ve been with the agency since Khrushchev, but I got no bloody idea what I’m doing here.” Her teeth were a testament to nicotine. Her skin was drawn and tight, but her eyes were sharp, as if she’d never known doubt or indecision. She struck me as a remnant from an early le Carré novel.

  “Why the time change?” I demanded.

  “You dump your gear around the corner?”

  “I did. Answer me.”

  “New plans. Your car’s fifteen minutes out. What does she know?”

  “‘New plans’ doesn’t cut it.”

  “All I know. You answer me; what does—”

  “Nothing.”

  “OK.” She turned to the man. “Until she leaves, strictly normal. Start with the kitchen. After they’re gone, wipe it all down. Take all the bedding, bath towels, kitchen towels—even the unused ones—with us. Get to the van the second they’re out of my life, and bring up the new linens, all in that box. Don’t stand there, move.” She pivoted and looked up at me. “You.”

  “Yes?”

  “Shoes?”

  “By the door.” I was glad they were taking my running shoes. The last thing I needed was some zealous Scotland Yard detective inspector tracking me down through my shoes.

  “Don’t make the mistake of putting them—”

  “I won’t. I—”

  “Don’t interrupt me. Anything unusual I should know?”

  My eyes wandered over to the spot on the floor where Kathleen and I had just made love, or whatever that had been. Her eyes followed mine. I asked, “You wipe the floors, right?”

  “When?”

  “Five minutes ago.”

  Her gaze shifted back to me. “A real Don Juan. Any other place?”

  “Just there.”

  “I’ll take care of it. Keep to the bed next time. Women don’t like doing it on the floor, only men. Why are you standing here?”

  She went to the patio doors, closed them, and drew the draperies. The man had already drifted to the kitchen and was loading the dishwasher. I hustled to the bedroom and
closed my suitcase. I had been packed since four thirty that morning. I wondered if her comment about the floor was accurate—and how the hell would she know?

  “Aren’t they early?” Kathleen complained as she rolled an article of clothing into a cavity she’d found in her second suitcase. “I thought you said that—”

  “I forgot I moved our ride up. I did it through the rental agency, so they must have notified the cleaners. Besides,” I wanted to move on and not get into too much detail about the arrangements for the flat, “it’s rush hour. I’d rather be at Gatwick an hour early than sitting in the car, staring at the Tower, and wondering if—”

  “I’m ready.” She popped up triumphantly from her suitcase. “I’m sending the whole pile to the cleaners. No matter how you fold them, they always come out ruined at the other end.” She draped her scarf over her shoulders. Her unbuttoned shirt was tucked in, although I’d seen better jobs.

  “Buttons.”

  “What?”

  I ran my fingers over my chest. She looked down, and her nimble fingers worked her buttons with zipper speed. I picked up her suitcase. “How’d I do?” she asked.

  “We’ll call this one Little Ben.”

  She blew out a puff with a nod indicating that that was my problem. She trudged past me with her carry-on. I lugged Little Ben around the corner to the front hall and nearly plowed her over.

  “We didn’t even use those,” she said to the man in the kitchen. He had emptied all the drawers and placed the clean, unused towels in a box. He froze and looked up from his work. Kathleen gripped the handle of her smaller suitcase in the living room as well as her carry-on. “There’s no need to clean them. We never touched them. And why put them in a box? The unit has a washer.”

  I cut the lady a look. She gave a glance toward the man and then returned my hard look. She turned her attention back to the man. “She’s right. They didn’t use them. You can put those back in.” She pivoted to me. “Have a nice trip, Mr.—”

  “I’m sure we will.” I let go of Little Ben, gently placed my hand on Kathleen’s lower back, and guided her out the door. I retrieved Little Ben and my own suitcase and slung my travel bag over my shoulder. I wanted to get out before the sea hag inadvertently called me by the alias I had checked in with. Little old twit knew better, but I didn’t trust her.