Chapter 9

4.17 A.M.

ST. PETER'S SQUARE.

Amara pulls up in a rental car and a Swiss guard directs her to a vacant space in the parking lot. A tall looking guard emerges as she is coming out of her car. He is dressed on an overall with vertical stripes of yellow, red and dark purple. His socks and loafers are all of the same colors just like the other Swiss Guards. Even in the dim lit of the parking lot, they could be easily distinguished.

Meeting the famed Vatican soldiers had been one of the adventurous things she had hoped to experience in Rome. According to her researches about them, they came into being in the early 16th century when Pope Julius II recruited Swiss mercenary soldiers to guard the Vatican City which had been on a struggle to gain her independence as a state from Italy. It was not until 1929 that the famous Lateran Treaty was signed by the Italian.