The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

A bishop met them, an Irishman named Shamus O'Toole whose thick red hair clashed
horribly with his clothing. Ryan was first out of the car, and his first thought
was a question: was he supposed to kiss O'Toole's ring or not? He didn't know.
He hadn't met a real bishop since his confirmation – and it had been a long time
since sixth grade in Baltimore. O'Toole deftly solved that problem by grasping
Ryan's hand in a bearish grip.
'So many Irishmen in the world!' he said with a wide grin.
'Somebody has to keep things straight, Excellency.'
'Indeed, indeed!' O'Toole greeted Adler next. Scott was Jewish and had no
intentions to kiss anyone's ring. 'Would you come with me, gentlemen?'
Bishop O'Toole led them into a building whose history might have justified three
scholarly volumes, plus a picture book for its art and architecture. Jack barely
noticed the two metal detectors they passed through on the third floor. Leonardo
da Vinci might have done the job, so skillfully were they concealed in
doorframes. Just like the White House. The Swiss guards didn't all wear
uniforms. Some of the people prowling the halls in soft clothes were too young
and too fit to be bureaucrats, but for all that the overall impression was a
cross between visiting an old art museum and a cloister. The clerics wore
cassocks, and the nuns – they were here in profusion also – were not wearing the
semi-civilian attire adopted by their American counterparts. Ryan and Adler were
parked briefly in a waiting room, more to appreciate the surroundings than to
inconvenience them, Jack was sure. A Titian madonna adorned the opposite wall,
and Ryan admired it while Bishop O'Toole announced the visitors.
'God, I wonder if he ever did a small painting?' Ryan muttered. Adler chuckled.
'He did know how to capture a face and a look and a moment, didn't he? Ready?'
'Yeah,' Ryan said. He felt oddly confident.
'Gentlemen!' O'Toole said from the open door. 'Will you come this way, please?'
They walked through yet another anteroom. This one had two secretarial desks,
both unoccupied, and another set of doors that looked fourteen feet tall.
The office of Giovanni Cardinal D'Antonio would have been used in America for
balls or formal occasions of state. The ceiling was frescoed, the walls covered
with blue silk, and the floor in ancient hardwood accented with rugs large
enough for an average living room. The furniture was probably the most recent in
manufacture, and that looked to be at least two hundred years old, brocaded
fabric taut over the cushions and gold leaf on the curved wooden legs. A silver
coffee service told Ryan where to sit.
The cardinal came towards them from his desk smiling in the way that a king
might have done a few centuries earlier to greet a favored minister. D'Antonio
was a man of short stature, and clearly one who enjoyed good food. He must have
been a good forty pounds overweight. The room air reported that he was a man who
smoked, something he ought to have stopped, since he was rapidly approaching
seventy years of age. The old, pudgy face had an earthy dignity to it. The son
of a Sicilian fisherman, D'Antonio had mischievous brown eyes to suggest a
roughness of character that fifty years of service to the church had not wholly
erased. Ryan knew his background and could easily see him pulling in nets at his
father's side, back a very long time ago. The earthiness was also a useful
disguise for a diplomat, and that's what D'Antonio was by profession, whatever