God's Spy

July 1999

Father Selznick awoke in the middle of the night to find a fish knife pressed against his throat. Victor Karosky had come into possession of the knife by mysterious means, and had made use of the endless nights spent in solitary confinement to sharpen it on the edge of a tile he had pried loose from the floor of his cell.

This was the second time he had successfully squeezed out of his wretched six-by-ten-foot cell, freeing himself from the chain that fastened him to the wall with the cartridge of a ball point pen.

Selznick had insulted him and he had to pay.
‘Don’t try to talk, Peter.’
Karosky’s firm, gentle hand covered Selznick’s mouth while his

knife caressed the fresh stubble on the face of the other priest. Up and down it went in a macabre parody of shaving. Selznick watched him, paralysed with terror, his eyes wide open, his fingers clutching the edge of the sheet, feeling the other man’s weight pressing upon him.

‘You know why I’m here, don’t you, Peter? Blink once for yes and twice for no.’
At first Selznick didn’t react, but then he saw the fish knife stop in mid-air. He blinked twice.
‘Your ignorance is the only thing I find more infuriating than your lack of manners, Peter. I have come to hear your confession.’ A faint glimmer of relief passed over Selznick’s face.
‘Do you repent of your abuse of innocent children?’
Selznick blinked once.
‘Do you repent of the stain you laid on the ministry?‘
A single blink.
‘Do you repent of having caused offence to so many souls, defrauding our Holy Mother Church?’
Another blink.
‘And last but not least, do you repent of having interrupted me during group therapy three weeks ago, an act that has considerably set back my social reintegration and my eventual return to the service of God?’
A strong, fervent blink.
‘I am happy to see you repent. For the first three sins, your penance is six Our Fathers and six Hail Marys. For the last sin . . .’ The expression in Karosky’s cold, grey eyes was unwavering as he lifted the knife and inserted it between the lips of his terrified victim. ‘You have no idea how much I’m going to enjoy this.’
Selznick took almost forty-five minutes to die, and he did so without making a single sound. Even the guards who stood only a hundred feet away never heard a thing.
Karosky let himself back into his cell and shut the door. This was where the Institute’s petrified director found him sitting the next morning, covered in dried blood. But that wasn’t what disturbed the elderly priest the most. What he found completely terrifying was the absolute, icy indifference with which Karosky asked for a towel and a washbasin. ‘I’ve spilled something on myself,‘ was all he said.

Priests
anthony fowler, former intelligence officer in US Air Force victor karosky, priest and serial killer
canice conroy, former director of the Saint Matthew Institute

(deceased)

Senior Civilian Officials in the Vatican
Joaquín Balcells, Vatican spokesman gianluigi varone, the sole judge in Vatican City

Cardinals

Eduardo González Samalo, the Pope’s chamberlain (camerlengo)
Francis Casey
Emilio Robayra
Enrico Portini
Geraldo Cardoso
The 0 other cardinals present for the Conclave

Members of Religious Orders
Brother Francesco Toma, Carmelite. Parish of Santa Maria in Traspontina
Sister Helena Tobina, director of Saint Martha’s House

Corpo di Vigilanza, the Vatican police
Camilo Cirin, Inspector General Fabio Dante, Superintendent

Italian Police

Unità di Analisi del Crimine Violento (UACV, or Department for the Analysis of Violent Crime)
Paola Dicanti, inspector and psychiatrist. Head of the Laboratorio per l’Analisi del Comportamento (LAC, or Laboratory for Behavioral Analysis)
Carlo Troi, Director General of UACV; Paola Dicanti’s boss
Maurizio Pontiero, detective
Angelo Biffi, forensic sculptor and digital image expert

Civilians

Andrea Otero, freelance reporter writing for El Globo, a Spanish daily newspaper
Giuseppe Bastina, courier for Tevere Express

Some Pertinent Facts about Vatican City (taken from The CIA World Factbook)

Surface area:
7 square miles (the smallest country in the world)
Borders:
.99 miles (with Italy)
Lowest point of elevation:
Saint Peter’s Square, 6. feet above sea

level
Highest point:
Vatican gardens, 6.06 feet above sea level
Climate:
Moderate, rainy winters from September to mid-May; hot,

dry summers from May to September
Land use:
00% urban. Cultivated land, 0%
Natural Resources:
None
Population:
9 citizens with passport; ,000 daily workers
System of government:
Ecclesiastic, absolute monarchy
Rate of birth:
0%. No births at any time in the course of its history
Economy:
Based on charitable donations and the sale of stamps,

postcards, prints and the management of its banks and finances

Communications:
,00 phone lines, 7 radio stations, television channel
Annual income:
$,000,000 (US dollars)
Annual expenditure
: $7,000,000 (US dollars)
Legal system:
Based on the Code of Canon Law. Although it has not been officially applied since 868, the death penalty remains in effect.
Special considerations:
The Holy Father has great influence over the lives of more than ,086,000,000 believers around the world.

Saturday, 2 April 2005, 9.37 p.m.

The man in the bed was no longer breathing. His personal secretary, Monsignor Stanislaw Dwisicz, who had spent the last thirty-six hours clinging to the dying man’s right hand, burst into tears. The doctors on duty had to use force to pull Dwisicz away, then spent the next hour trying to bring the old man back to life. Their efforts went above and beyond the call of duty. As they undertook each successive attempt to preserve the man’s life, the doctors knew they had to do everything in their power, if only for the sake of their consciences.

The Supreme Pontiff’s private apartment would have been a surprise to the uninformed observer. The ruler before whom world leaders respectfully bowed their heads lived in conditions of utter simplicity. His private quarters were austere, the walls bare except for a crucifix, the furniture no more than a chair, a table and the hospital roll-away that, in the last few months of his illness had replaced the dark wooden bed. Stationed around it, the doctors were now doing everything they could to revive him, shedding large drops of sweat on to the immaculate white sheets, which four Polish nuns changed three times a day.

Doctor Silvio Renato, the Pope’s personal physician, put an end to their futile efforts. He gestured to the nurses to cover the timeworn face with a white veil and then asked everyone to leave apart from Dwisicz. He drafted the death certificate then and there. The cause of death was obvious: the man’s heart had collapsed, as had his circulatory system, both aggravated further by inflammation of the larynx. Renato hesitated for a moment when it came to filling in the elderly man’s name, although in the end, to avoid confusion, he chose the one he had been given at birth.

Once he had filled out and signed the document, the doctor handed it over to Cardinal Samalo, who had just entered the room. The cardinal, dressed in his red robes, had the distressing task of officially certifying the death.

‘Thank you, doctor. With your permission, I’ll proceed.’ ‘It’s all yours, Your Eminence.’
‘No, doctor. From here on, God is in charge.’
Samalo slowly approached the deceased’s bed. At 78 years of age

he had prayed to God many times to be spared this scene. He was a calm and peaceful man, but was well aware of the heavy load, the numerous responsibilities and duties, that now descended upon his shoulders.

He examined the body carefully. The man had reached 8 years of age, in the course of which he had overcome a bullet to the chest, a tumor in his colon and a complicated case of appendicitis. Parkinson’s had gradually worn him down, a little more each day, eventually leaving him so weak that his heart had given out.

From the third-floor window of the Palace, the cardinal could see nearly two hundred thousand people swelling Saint Peter’s Square. The rooftops of the surrounding buildings overflowed with antennae and television cameras. ‘In just a short time there will be even more,’ Samalo thought to himself. ‘What’s coming will overwhelm us. The people adored him; they admired the sacrifices he made, his iron will. This will be a blow to them, even if we’ve all been expecting it since January . . . and more than a few people actually wanted it to happen. And then there’s the other business we must deal with . . .’

A noise came from the other side of the door, and the Vatican’s head of security, Camilo Cirin, walked into the room ahead of the three cardinals who were charged with certifying the Pope’s death. Worry and lack of sleep were etched on their faces as they drew close to the bed.

‘Let’s begin,’ said Samalo.
Dwisicz held a small, open case at Samalo’s side.
The chamberlain lifted the white veil that covered the face of the deceased and opened a tiny phial containing holy oils. He began to recite the millenniary ritual in Latin:

‘ Si vives, ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.’ Samalo made the sign of the cross over the man’s forehead and continued. ‘Per istam sanctam unctionem, indulgeat tibi Dominum quidquid . . . Amen.’ With a solemn gesture, he invoked the apostolic benediction. ‘By the power invested in me by the Holy See, I hereby grant you full forgiveness for and remission of all sins, and I bless you. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.’

Next, he took a silver hammer out of the case the bishop was holding. Three times he gently tapped the forehead of the dead man, asking each time, ‘Karol Wojtyla, are you alive?’

There was no response. The chamberlain looked at the three cardinals who stood by the bed, all of whom nodded.
‘The Pope is dead. There can be no doubt.’
With his left hand, Samalo removed the Fisherman’s ring – the symbol of the Pope’s authority in this world – from the dead man’s right hand. Using his right hand he once again shrouded the face of John Paul II with the veil.
He took a deep breath, and looked at his three companions. ‘We have a lot of work ahead of us.’

Tuesday, 5 April 2005, 10.41 a.m.

Inspector Paola Dicanti briefly closed her eyes and waited until they were accustomed to the darkness as she stood in the entrance to the building. It had taken her almost half an hour to get to the scene of the crime. If Rome was always in a state of vehicular chaos, after the Holy Father’s death it was transformed into an auto-inferno. Thousands of mourners were arriving every day in the capital of Christendom in order to bid their last farewell to the body lying in state in Saint Peter’s Basilica. This Pope had gone to the next world fêted as a saint, and there were already volunteers moving around the streets collecting signatures to begin the process of beatification. Every hour, eighteen thousand people passed in front of his mortal remains.

‘A huge success for forensic medicine,’ Paola commented to herself with irony.
Her mother had warned her before she left the apartment they shared on the Via della Croce: ‘It will take too long if you go by Cavour. Go up Regina Margherita and down Rienzo,‘ she said as she stirred the semolina porridge she was cooking for her daughter, just as she had done every morning for thirty-three years.
So Paola had of course gone by Cavour, and had lost a good deal of time.
The taste of semolina lingered in her mouth. It was always the first thing she ate every morning. During the year she spent studying at FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, she had missed it so much that it had nearly become an obsession. She had ended up asking her mother to send her a big box of the porridge, which she used to cook in the microwave in the Behavioral Studies Unit. The taste wasn’t the same, but simply having it had made it easier to be so far from home during a year that was both difficult and rewarding. Paola had grown up only two steps from Via Condotti, one of the most exclusive streets in the world, but her family was poor. She hadn’t even known the meaning of the word until she went to the United States, a country with its own measure for everything. She had been overjoyed to return to the city she had hated so fervently when she was growing up.
In Italy, the Department for the Analysis of Violent Crime (the UACV, or Unità di Analisi del Crimine Violento) was created in 99, with a specific focus on serial killers. It seems incredible that, until this date, the country ranked fifth in the world for the number of psychopaths it contained lacked a unit designed to track them down. Inside the UACV there was a special department known as the Laboratory for Behavioural Analysis (LAC, or Laboratorio per l’Analisi del Comportamento) founded by Giovanni Balta, Dicanti’s teacher and mentor. Balta died at the beginning of 00 after a sudden and massive heart attack, at which time Dottoressa Dicanti became Ispettore Dicanti, the head of the LAC’s Rome office. Her FBI training and Balta’s excellent reports on her work were what got her the job. On the supervisor’s death, the LAC found its personnel drastically reduced: Paola became the entire staff. Even so, the department was part of the UACV, and they could count on technical support from one of the most advanced forensic units in Europe.
Nevertheless, as of that moment, they had yet to solve a single case. In Italy there were thirty serial killers running around free, all of them unidentified. Of these, nine were considered ‘hot’ cases, since they were connected to the most recent deaths on record. No new bodies had turned up since Dicanti had become head of the LAC, and the absence of any definitive evidence increased the pressure, so that at times her psychological profiles were the only lead the police had. ‘Castles in the air’, Carlo Troi called them. Troi was a physicist and mathematician by training, a man who spent more time on the phone than in the laboratory. Unfortunately, Troi was the UACV’s Director and Paola’s immediate boss, and every time they passed in the hallway he gave her a sarcastic look. ‘My pretty