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rags.
    Murani felt the boy should not have been allowed entrance to Vatican City. He should have been stopped and turned away at once. Anyone could see he was a thief, a pickpocket only now beginning to learn his trade. But there were those who believed that it only took a visit to Vatican City to forever alter the lives of men. So even the vermin from the street, like this specimen, were allowed in. Perhaps, those believers in mercy and access said, they would find God here.
    Murani didn’t count himself among the fools who thought that.
    “Do you know who I am?” he demanded.
    “No,” the boy said.
    “You should learn the name of a man whose pocket you’re about to pick,” Murani went on. “It might direct you in your choice of targets. Since you don’t know me and I don’t know you, your punishment will be swift and light. I’ll break only one of your fingers.”
    Frantic, the boy tried to kick Murani.
    The cardinal dodged to one side so the ragged tennis shoe missed him by inches. And he snapped the boy’s forefinger like a breadstick.
    The boy dropped to the ground and started howling.
    “Don’t ever let me see you again,” Murani told the boy. “If I do, I’ll break more than a finger next time. Do you understand me?” It wasn’t a threat. It was fact, and they both knew it.
    “Yes.”
    “Now get up and get out of here.”
    Without a word, the boy struggled to his feet and lurched through the crowd, cradling his injured hand.
    Murani stood and dusted off his knees, taking his time till he was sure the dark fabric was once more clean. He gazed around at Vatican City, ignoring the stares of the tourists. Those people were nothing, not much more worthy than the young thief he’d released. Gawkers and sheep, they lived in awe and fear of true power. And he was part of that power.
    One day, he believed, he would be all of that power.
    He walked across Saint Peter’s Piazza, his physical presence dwarfed by the massive bulk of Sistine Chapel to the left and the Palace of the Governership behind him. The Excavations Office and the Sacristy and Treasury stood ahead on the right, flanked by the Vatican Post Office and the information booth at the entrance. Michelangelo’s
Pietà
stood before him.
    Gian Lorenzo Bernini had created the overall effect of the plaza in the 1660s, laying the area out in a trapezoid. The fountain designed by Carlo Maderno became a primary focus as people walked through the area, but the huge Doric colonnades stacked four deep seized everyone’s attention immediately. The colonnades created an imperial look, laying out areas for everything, especially the Barberini Gardens. At the very center of the open area, an Egyptian obelisk stood nearly 135 feet tall. The obelisk had been crafted thirteen hundred years before the Blessed Birth, had spent time in the Circus of Nero, and then Domenico Fontana had moved it to the square in 1586.
    Over the centuries, the square had been added to and changed. The cobblestone pathway had been moved. Lines of travertine broke up the look. Circular stones added in 1817 were scattered around the pavement surrounding the obelisk, creating a towering sundial. Even Benito Mussolini had been impressed with the
piazza
and had torn down buildings to provide a new entrance to the area, the
Via della Conciliazione
.
    Murani had first come to Vatican City as a small boy with his mother and father. He’d been filled with a wonderment that never left him. When he told his father that he was going to live in the palace someday, his father had only laughed.
    As his father’s son, Murani could have had his pick of mansions and villas scattered around the world. His father was a wealthy man several times over. As a boy, Murani had been impressed with his father’s millions. People treated his father well and with respect wherever he went, and many of them even feared him. But his father had his own fears as well. Those fears included other men as ruthless as