When she heard the car pull out of the garage, she walked to the front window. She was surprised to see the Ferrari pulling away. He hated that car and had only bought it to impress his wealthy patients, whose riches helped finance the real love in his life, the free clinic he ran for the poor.
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His nurse and receptionist were surprised to see Doctor Giovanni show up at his private offices only a few blocks from the Vatican, but he sloughed off their unspoken demands for an explanation about his presence.
Inside his office, he called a young doctor who owed him a favor and arranged for the other doctor to handle the patients at Giovanni's free clinic.
Next he dialed the number of the Russian embassy. When he mentioned his name, the call was transferred directly into the Russian ambassador's office.
"Doctor Giovanni, how are you?" the ambassador said in guttural Italian. He managed to make the musical language sound like German.
"I'm fine," Giovanni said. "But I have to talk to you."
"Oh? What's wrong?"
"Your blood tests just came back," the doctor said, "and we must discuss them."
"Is something wrong?"
"Not on the telephone, Ambassador. Please."
"I will be right there."
While he waited, Doctor Giovanni took something from his office safe and put it into the bottom of the leather medical bag. Then he folded his hands on his desk and rested his head on them.
The ambassador was there in less than ten minutes, accompanied by his ever-present bodyguard, a hawk-faced man who viewed everyone and everything with suspicion. Parking meters, restaurant checks, street peddlers, he watched
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them all as if each were capable of overturning the glorious Communist revolution. He followed the ambassador into Doctor Giovanni's office.
"Can he wait outside, please?" the doctor said.
The ambassador nodded. With obvious reluctance, the bodyguard went into the waiting room where he leaned against the wall next to the door to the doctor's private consulting room.
The receptionist glared at him. He stared back blankly, until he forced her to turn her eyes away.
"I know what it is," the ambassador said. "The saintly doctor has decided to defect to Mother Russia." He was smiling but there was a faint film of nervous perspiration on his forehead.
Giovanni smiled back. "Not just yet," he said.
"Ah, but someday," the ambassador said. "You and your free clinic. Your modest life. You are the most communistic of all."
"And that is why I could not live in Mother Russia," Doctor Giovanni said. "Please sit here."
He pulled out a chair and sat the ambassador on it, facing an X-ray display board. Onto the glass screen, he put two large chest X-rays.
He flicked on the switch for the display panel and turned off the office light.
"These are your most recent X-rays," he said. "They were taken when you had that slight chest cough during the winter." As he spoke, Doctor Giovanni walked behind the ambassador toward his desk.
"You'll notice the slight darkish spots at the bottom of each lung," he said. He opened the brown leather bag and reached into the bottom.
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"Yes. I see them. What does that mean?" the ambassador asked nervously.
Doctor Giovanni's hand closed on the butt of a pistol.
He walked up behind the ambassador.
"Nothing," he said. "Absolutely nothing." Then he put a bullet into the Russian's skull from behind the left ear.
Doctor Rocco Giovanni was glad the gun had worked after all these years.
The report of the pistol resounded through the small consultation room. Outside, the nurse and receptionist looked up at the unusual loud sound.
The Russian bodyguard reached under his jacket for his gun and pushed through the unlocked door into the inner office.
But before he could do anything, Doctor Rocco Giovanni raised the pistol to his own right temple and squeezed the trigger.
The gun worked again.
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CHAPTER FOUR
When Admiral Wingate Stantington came through the private entrance to his office, his secretary intercepted him.
"Here it is," she said, holding out her hand. There was a shiny brass key on it.
"All right," he said. "And you've got the other one?"
"Yes, sir."
"You put it in a safe place?"
"Yes, sir."
"Better tell me where it is, in case I lose this one and something happens to you."
"It is in my top left desk drawer, in the back, behind my box of Tootsie Rolls."
"It'll be safe there?"
"Yes, sir. Nobody goes in my desk."