The Martian Pendant by Patrick Taylor Page B

however, power was being yielded to the native Africans and TANU. The confusion that movement was creating would help obscure what he and his accomplices were planning.
    The question was, what were the Americans actually up to? On the one hand, he had his orders from the Vatican, to monitor, and to control, if possible, any heretical ideas that might arise from the expedition’s findings. That would be the easy part of his mission, he thought. Not alone among his fellow clerics, he was extremely skeptical about any such discoveries that might emerge from the dig. What did they expect to find, the Holy Grail?
    His Mafia commission was the other, more demanding, task. In contrast to the impossibility of squelching spiritual ideas, their plan was literally down-to-earth. If some material discovery of value took place, if they used enough force or guile, it would be theirs. He knew the Americans comprised two groups, paleoanthopologists looking for signs of early man, and the Cartel, bent on finding a possible rich oil strike. Oil was gold, they all knew, and the Mafia Dons were interested mainly in the payoff, directly realized as the yellow metal. Technology revealed by the effort could be an even better source of money, wealth and power.
    It was the implementation of those considerations that was the subject of the meeting in the dimly lit Arab dive. The location was ideal. It would be unlikely that Italian would be understood by any of the few elderly men drinking cardamom-laced coffee or puffing on hookahs. Once there, locating his contact was easy. Guided by the bright red glow of a furiously pulled-upon cigarette, Celestre proceeded to the darkest corner of the smoke-filled room. There he found a squat fellow Sicilian, motioning to the chair across the small table, calling in Arabic for a pot of coffee and two cups. In his local garb, he could easily have been mistaken for an Arab, with his olive skin and curly black hair. His face bore the scars of smallpox, which lent an appearance of toughness that an unblemished face would not have.
    In a gruff voice, he introduced himself curtly. “Carmelo Manzone, your superior.”
    Celestre had to acknowledge that when they shook hands; even with his own appreciable strength, it was as if his hand had been put into a vise. With everything he said, Manzone accentuated the force of his words with his fierce dark eyes and the combative body language he exuded.
    “We’ve infiltrated the digging team as truck drivers, giving us five men with them now, and when the drilling unit arrives, we’ll number over a dozen. As my contract with the Americans states, the management will have to deal with Staltieri, their head driver. And he answers only to me. We’ve a cache of arms there already, ostensibly for use if needed for protection from wild animals and possibly restive natives. But they’re to be used when and if the time comes, for ‘enforcement,’ should there be treasure.”
    Reflecting on his duties as a Vatican spy, Celestre asked how he was to fit into the Mafia’s plan.
    “As a Roman Catholic missionary, you have a short-wave radio for communication with Rome. Use it also to keep our headquarters apprised of any progress, employing, of course, encryption. You’re to use this codebook for the next three months, providing the cypher is not changed. No doubt Catholics will be among the Americans, and as a priest visiting camp each Sunday, you will receive messages from my assistants during confession to send me.” Then he added, “Warn them not to attend confession too frequently. It could arouse suspicion.”
    The sun was a red orb low in the west when Celestre returned to his hotel near the docks, thinking about what he had learned from the Mafioso . He would be acting primarily as a priest and a radio operator. Of course, he would be armed also, with the Beretta automatic he always carried now under his habit or whatever he was wearing. From whom he had to defend