"The Last Pope" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rocha Luis Miguel)

23

Some meetings were meant to occur sooner or later. Human beings aren’t always masters of their fate.

A man of advanced age walked confidently amid a crowd of strangers, though he may not have been a total stranger to all of them. He hadn’t realized yet that, among so many people, someone was following him. Of course, that man was very competent. They had both come out of the Hilton Theater, where they saw an excellent musical, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and then walked south, down Sixth Avenue. After turning on Thirty-eighth Street, the old man went into a residential building. A uniformed doorman greeted him.

The pursuer watched from a distance. He looked at the number above the door and compared it with his notes, confirming that it was the old man’s address.

He made a call as soon as the old man disappeared into the building. A few moments later, a black van stopped beside him and he climbed in. The vehicle remained parked. One had to be patient.

“He lives here?” the driver of the van asked in some East European language, perhaps Polish, and then he whistled, admiring the luxury of the place.

The man in the black coat just nodded, his eyes fixed on the entrance of the posh residence.

“The London situation turned out negative?” the driver asked.

“Yeah, it did.”

“Tell me something, then. Why can’t we go in and rub that guy out, once and for all?”

The man took his time answering, as if considering several possibilities. “Because he is the key.”

He kept watching a while longer. Finally, he asked the Polish man to keep an eye on the entrance, while he pulled a photo out of his pocket. It was the familiar picture of the present pope, Benedict XVI. Then he took out a small black-light lamp and aimed it at the photo. Thousands of filaments neatly depicted the image of the old man they were shadowing, while the photo of the pope seemed to fade out. When the ultraviolet light was turned off, the concealed image vanished, as with bank bills, and the original image came back, again showing the smiling pope, greeting the faithful with a wave of his hand.

“Yes, he is the key.”