"No," her mouth said, but her eyes were dark and guarded. "We've been keeping our dealings with the Italians to a minimum, you know that."
I laughed. "He'd prefer to be called 'Roman.' "
"A Vatican agent?" Rebeckah scoffed, jumping to a conclusion I hadn't even considered. "Thanks to that hotheaded ex-partner of yours we haven't had contact with Vatican City in over a year."
I started to chide her for being so public about her business, when the full impact of what she'd implied struck me. In a conspiratorial tone, I whispered, "Your people had a Papal connection?"
She laughed. "Don't look so horrified, Deidre. Historically, your popes have made questionable alliances with nastier folks."
"No, no, that's not what surprised me," I said. Picking at the crumbs on my plate, I tried to piece things together. "The Pope ... he was, er, sympathetic to your cause?"
"To our methods, no," Rebeckah admitted quietly. "But our aims ..." She shrugged.
"Your aims?"
"We've always been Free Staters. Even though America is a theocratic republic, at least there's still a pretense of the representational government model. Christendom is a badly disguised oligarchy."
"But isn't the Pope the leader of Christendom?" Rebeckah's political jargon made my head ache again.
"He is now. Innocent had a plan to decentralize his power and give it back to the people."
"I'll be hanged," I said. Putting my hands on the countertop, I leaned back on the stool. This information was a big hole in the case against Daniel. At the time, everyone claimed Danny had been motivated partly out of fear a presidential alliance with the Pope would bring Christendom to America.
Rebeckah nudged me on the arm. "I
hate to cut this short because it's been a long time, but I have to go." Jerking her chin in the direction of the window, she frowned. "Seems like you were followed here, Dee. I can't risk another arrest right now. I've been compromised enough lately."
"Wait," I begged. "If you do hear something about Angelucci, will you contact me?"
Her eyes flicked about nervously, but she paused long enough for me to press my card into her palm. Glancing down at it absently, she sighed.
"Sure." She squeezed my shoulder tenderly. Reaching up absently, I placed my hand over hers for a second. Too preoccupied to make a more formal or proper goodbye, she headed for the door. My eyes were riveted to where she'd gestured out the window. I scanned the crowd for a suspicious or familiar face. When I found none, I found myself looking up at the evening sky searching for dark wings raven's wings, or angel's.
I laughed under my breath. Rebeckah's paranoia was rubbing off on me. No doubt it was just some sleazy reporter or a remote cam; they were forever darting in and out of my peripheral vision. All the same, I decided to err on the side of caution. I relinquished my precious window seat to an anxious patron and headed for the bathroom.
The toilets, the sign indicated, were located down a narrow, dingy hallway. Instead of choosing the door clearly labeled, women, I took a detour. I boldly entered the one marked employees only and found myself in a tiny kitchen. A half wall separated the cashier from the kitchen, but the noise from the deli could only barely be heard over the humming of several industrial-looking refrigerator units that flanked the wall closest to me. Vat-grown lettuce and other vegetable matter were strewn across a low metal table. Soy-salami and other meats hung in disarray on the far wall. Then, I saw what I was looking for. Over the head of a surprised chef glowed an exit sign.
Rapping the edge of the counter as I passed him, I said, "By the way, excellent knishes. Best I've ever had." My offhand compliment must have taken the poor man by surprise, because I was already at the door when I heard him shout in protest.
As the door closed behind me, I found myself in an old abandoned trade-way. Most restaurants and stores were connected by a set of delivery tunnels. As respectable businesses moved closer and closer to the top floors of the skyscrapers and began using roof access for delivery, the money for upkeep of the tunnels disappeared. Some places still used the trade-ways, but the farther from city center you got, the more likely that gangs of Gorgons had taken them over as private thoroughfares.
This one was clearly not in use. The smell of urine was close in the stale air. Graffiti dotted the walls. Some of the scrawl appeared to be a phonetic approximation of English, but mostly the colors bled together into a kind of urban artistic expression.
Someone was illegally siphoning electricity to power Christmas lights duct-taped haphazardly across the ceiling. The track of lights closely followed the strip where the train used to run. Apparently following someone's internal sense of aesthetics, the Christmas lights occasionally abandoned the linear and burst into starlike patterns. As I looked down the tunnel, I noticed the designs seemed to happen at regular intervals.