Gallo seemed firmly implanted into the latter category.
The boat slowed to a cruise.
Luke climbed from the bow, past the tanned driver, and hopped up on the stern platform, sitting on a low bench. A second crewman handed him a skimpy nylon harness, which he stepped into. As a Ranger he’d leaped from airplanes at all altitudes, several times into combat situations, twice into open ocean. Heights were not a problem, but the thought of dangling from a parachute at the end of three hundred feet of tow rope, held aloft only by narrow webs of nylon, bothered him. Like he always said, if flying was so safe, why’d they call the airport a terminal?
He slipped on the contraption.
The attendant checked the harness, tugging at places to make sure all was secure and tightening the straps around his chest. Stainless-steel D-clips were snapped onto metal rings, mating him to the chute.
“Sit back. Try not to hang,” the guy yelled. “Don’t hold on to anything and enjoy the ride.”
He gave a thumbs-up.
The boat’s engine revved.
The bow rose to a throbbing pulse, dividing the water with a milky-white wake. The brightly colored canopy above him, flapping in the stiff wind, caught air. Suspension lines drew taut. The tips of his tennis shoes swung freely as he rose from the stern. A thick nylon line unraveled from a hydraulic spool as he kept climbing.
Slow and steady.
He grabbed his bearings, about a quarter mile off the north shore.
Malta sat in the center of a narrow channel, 60 miles from Sicily, less than 200 miles north of Africa, an island in the Mediterranean of a mere 120 square miles, rising no more than eight hundred feet at its highest point. The Romans called it Melita, meaning “honey,” after the rich local variety. Location had forged its history. The Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese, Hospitallers, French, and British all had claimed it at one time or another. Now it was an independent democratic republic, a member of the United Nations, the European Union, and the British Commonwealth. A barren rock devoid of water, arid in summer, drenched in winter, constantly raided through the centuries by one invader after another. The south shore loomed impregnable, mainly towering serrated cliffs, streaky hills, and jagged ridges, impossible to breach. But here, on the north shore, long bays jutted inland like fjords, creating marvelous harbors.
At the hotel last night he’d read a short history from one of the tourist books in the room. Since ancient times the native Maltese had always lived away from the coast to avoid weather, pirates, and slavers. The Sovereign Knights of Rhodes, though, had been a sea power. Once they arrived in the 16th century and became the Knights of Malta, to combat the threat of invasion and secure their hold on the island, they ringed the coast with watchtowers, built of local orange-brown limestone, positioned apart at strategic distances so they could signal one another in succession. Some were small, others mini fortresses. The one he was staring at now from three hundred feet above the towboat had been erected in 1658, still solid and serviceable.
Madliena Tower.
He’d learned about it yesterday during a quick on-site visit, including that it had served as an artillery battery during World War II. He’d climbed its spiral staircase to a parapet and stared out at the sea to exactly where he was now. Like its siblings, Madliena occupied a bare rocky promontory. Zero cover. Wide open. Making any type of meaningful surveillance from land impossible.
So he’d improvised.
He checked his watch.
10:00 A.M.
Shortly Cardinal Gallo should be standing on the parapet of the Madliena Tower.
Which in and of itself raised questions.
The pope had died thirteen days ago. The Apostolic Constitution mandated that the body must be buried within four to six days. Then a nine-day mourning period, the novemdiales, occurred. A conclave was required to be convened fifteen days after the date of death. But with less than a day left until it began, Cardinal Gallo had suddenly fled Rome for Malta. That act had caught the attention of Washington and Luke had been dispatched to monitor Gallo’s activities. Why? That was above his pay grade.
He’d just been told to get there and watch.
He was now high enough that all sound had vanished. A warm, stiff wind played across his face. Foamed breakers smashed against the rocky shoreline. He was no longer a Magellan Billet rookie, or a Frat Boy as Cotton Malone liked to call