God's Spy (14 page)

Thursday, 7 April 2005, 8.15 a.m.
‘Don’t trust Fowler, Dicanti. He’s a killer.’

Paola looked up from the Karosky dossier with puffy eyes. She’d only had a few hours’ sleep before returning to her desk at daybreak. It wasn’t the way she usually did things: Paola liked to enjoy a long breakfast followed by a stroll to work, ready to soldier on well into the night. Pontiero had always pestered her about it: You are letting the glorious Roman morning pass you by. And here she was, at her desk, not exactly enjoying the dawn, but paying respect to her friend in her own fashion. In fact, from where she sat, the dawn was indeed beautiful: the sun sliding over the Roman hills at a leisurely pace, the rays of sunlight lingering on each building and cornice, saluting the art and beauty of the Eternal City. Each of the day’s shapes and colours made its appearance with such delicacy they seemed to be knocking at the door to ask permission to come in. Then who should walk into Dicanti’s office without even asking, with an unnerving accusation on his lips, but Fabio Dante. The superintendent had turned up half an hour before the agreed time – with a Manilla envelope in his hand and a mouth full of serpents.

‘Dante, have you been drinking?’
‘Nothing of the sort. I’m telling you he’s a killer. Remember I told you not to trust him? His name set off alarm bells in my head – a memory lodged somewhere at the back of my mind. So I did a little investigating about our supposed military man.’
Paola took a sip of coffee but it was nearly cold. She was intrigued. ‘He isn’t in the military?’
‘Of course he is: a military chaplain. But he’s not in the Air Force; he’s in the CIA.’
‘The CIA? You’re joking.’
‘No, Dicanti. Your Fowler isn’t a man to be taken lightly. Listen to this. He was born in 9, into a wealthy family. His father owned a pharmaceutical company or something like that. He studied psychology at Princeton. He finished his degree at twenty years old, magna cum laude.’
‘Magna cum laude. The best grade possible. So he lied to me. He told me he wasn’t an especially brilliant student.’
‘He lied to you about that and many other things. He didn’t pick up his university degree. It seems he argued with his father and enlisted in 97. A volunteer, smack in the middle of the Vietnam War. Five months of basic training in Virginia and ten months in Vietnam, with the rank of lieutenant.’
‘Wasn’t he a little young to be a lieutenant?’
‘Are you joking? A volunteer with a university degree? I’m sure they were planning on making him a general. I don’t know what was going on in his head during those years, but he didn’t return to the United States after the war. He studied in a seminary in West Germany, and was ordained as a priest in 977. Later on he left traces of his presence everywhere: Cambodia, Afghanistan, Romania. We know that he went to China for a visit, but then he had to leave at top speed.’
‘All of this doesn’t prove he’s a CIA agent.’
‘Dicanti, it’s all here.’ While he was talking, Dante started showing Paola photographs, most of them in black and white. She saw a curiously young Fowler progressively losing his hair as the pictures came closer to the present day; Fowler sitting on top of a pile of sandbags, surrounded by soldiers, wearing a lieutenant’s stripes; Fowler in a hospital with a smiling soldier; and, on the day of his ordination, receiving the sacrament in Rome from none other than Paul VI; Fowler on an enormous runway, with planes in the background, dressed in his clergyman’s garb, surrounded by younger soldiers . . .
‘When is this one from?’
Dante consulted his notes. ‘Nineteen seventy-seven. After his ordination Fowler returned to Germany, to the air base at Spangdahlem. As a military chaplain.’
‘Then his story is correct.’
‘Almost – but not in every respect. A report that shouldn’t be in the file, but is, says that “John Anthony Fowler, son of Marcus and Daphne Fowler, lieutenant in the United States Air Force, received a raise in rank and salary after successfully completing field training in counterespionage.” In East Germany. Right in the middle of the Cold War.’
Paola shrugged. She still couldn’t picture it.
‘Wait, Dicanti; that’s not everything. As I said before, he travelled extensively. In 98 he disappeared for several months. The last person who saw him was a priest in Virginia.’
Paola began to lose heart. A military man who disappears for several months in Virginia has only one place to go: CIA headquarters in Langley.
‘Go on, Dante.’
‘In 98 Fowler turns up again, briefly, in Boston. His mother and father are killed in a car accident in July. He attends the reading of the will, where he instructs the lawyers to divide all his money and possessions among various charities. He signs the necessary papers and takes off. According to his lawyer, the sum total from his parents’ properties and the pharmaceutical company was in excess of eighty million dollars.’
Dicanti let out a whistle of pure astonishment. ‘That’s a lot of money, even more so in 98.’
‘Well, he gave everything away. A pity you didn’t know him back then, eh, Dicanti?’
‘What are you insinuating?’
‘Nothing, nothing. All right then, to finish it off: Fowler takes off from Mexico and from there he goes to Honduras. He’s appointed as chaplain at the military base in El Aguacate, now with the rank of major. And that’s where he became a killer.’
Paola looked at the next group of photographs and froze: rows of human bodies in dusty common graves; workers with pitchforks and face masks that failed to hide the horror on their faces; disinterred bodies, rotting in the sun; men, women and children.
‘My God, what is this?’
‘How much do you know about history? I’m terrible myself. I had to poke around on the Internet to find out what the whole damned thing was about. It seems that in Nicaragua the Sandinistas had a revolution. The counter-revolution, called the Nicaraguan Contra, wanted to put a right-wing government back in power. Ronald Reagan’s government supported the rebel guerrillas under the table – guerrillas who in many cases would have been better classed as terrorists.’
Paola was starting to connect the dots.
‘According to the Washington Post, El Aguacate was “a clandestine centre for detention and torture, more like a concentration camp than a military base in a democratic country”. Those lovely, graphic photos I showed you were taken ten years ago. There were one hundred and eighty-five men, women and children in those unmarked graves. And it is believed that there are still an indeterminate number of bodies – as many as three hundred – buried out in the mountains.’
‘Jesus, this is terrible beyond belief.’ Nevertheless, the photos didn’t stop Paola from giving Fowler the benefit of the doubt. ‘But it doesn’t prove anything.’
‘He was there. He was the chaplain at a torture camp, for God’s sake! Who do you think attended to the condemned prisoners before they died? How could he not have known?
Dicanti looked at Dante without saying a word.
‘All right, ispettore, you want more? Here’s the material from the envelope: a report from the Sant’Uffizio, the Holy Office. In 99 Fowler was called to Rome to give testimony regarding the assassination of thirty-two nuns seven years earlier. They had fled from Nicaragua and ended up at El Aguacate. They were raped, taken for a ride in a helicopter and, then ka-blam! – nun pancake. In the process he also testified about twelve Catholic missionaries who had disappeared. The root of the accusation was that he knew exactly what was going on but never denounced these flagrant cases of the violation of human rights – in which case he was as guilty as if he had piloted the helicopter himself. Something which, by the way, he does in fact know how to do.’
‘And what did the Holy Office decide?’
‘Well, there wasn’t sufficient proof to charge him, so he got off by the skin of his teeth and left the CIA of his own free will, I’m pretty sure. For a while he was at a loose end, and then he turned up at the Saint Matthew Institute.’
Paola spent a good while looking at the pictures.
‘Dante, I am going to ask you a very serious question. As a citizen of the Vatican, would you say that the Holy Office is a careless institution?’
‘No.’
‘Could it be said that it maintains its independence?’
Dante nodded reluctantly. Now he saw where Paola was headed.
‘Taking all of that into account, the most rigorous institution in the Vatican has been unable to find proof of Fowler’s guilt, and you come into my office shouting that he’s a killer, and advising me not to trust him in the slightest?’
Dante leapt to his feet, furious. He leaned over Dicanti’s desk. ‘You listen to me, my pretty little girl. Don’t think for an instant I don’t see the way you’re looking at that pseudo-priest. Because of an unfortunate twist of fate we’re obliged to hunt for a fucking monster under his orders, and I don’t want you thinking with your skirt. You’ve already lost one co-worker, and I don’t want that American covering my back when we’re face to face with Karosky. Then you’ll see how he reacts. From all appearances, he’s very loyal to his country and, when it comes down to it, he might even take the side of a fellow American.’
Paola stood up and, without losing her composure, smacked Dante across the face twice. Two slaps, absolutely on target, the kind that set the ears ringing. Dante just stood there, so completely surprised and humiliated he didn’t know how to react. He was transfixed, his mouth hanging open and his cheeks on fire.
‘It’s your turn to listen to me, Dante. If the three of us are joined at the hip for this fucking investigation, it’s because your church doesn’t want anyone to find out about this monster, a man who raped children and who was then castrated in one of its secret backwaters, a man who is now killing cardinals only ten days before they elect the next big shot. That and that alone is the reason why Pontiero is dead. I remind you that it was your people who came to ask for our help. It seems that your organisation functions enormously well when it has to get its hands on information about a priest working in a Third World jungle, but it doesn’t quite measure up when it comes to controlling a sexual delinquent who relapses dozens of times over the course of ten years, in full view of his superiors, in a democratic country. Since that’s the case, get your pathetic little mug out of here before I start to think that your problem is that you’re jealous of Fowler. And don’t come back until you’re ready to work as a team. Is that understood?’
Dante recovered his composure long enough to take a deep breath and turn around. Fowler walked into the office at exactly the same moment, and the Vatican superintendent let out his frustration by flinging the photographs in his hand at the priest’s face. Dante was so furious he stormed away without even remembering to slam the door behind him.
But Dicanti actually felt better, for two reasons: first, for having had the chance to do what she had imagined doing so many times; and second, for having done it in private. If the identical situation had presented itself when someone else had been present, or in the middle of the street, Dante would never have forgotten being smacked down in public. No man would. There were still ways of getting the situation back on track and creating a semblance of harmony. She glanced up at Fowler. He stood in the doorway, mesmerised by the photographs littering the floor of the office.
Paola sat down, took a sip of coffee and, without raising her head from the Karosky dossier, said, ‘I think you have some explaining to do, padre.’

April 1997
Transcript of Interview Number 11 between Patient Number 3643 and Doctor Fowler

Dr Fowler: Good afternoon, Father Karosky.
No. 6: Come in, come in.
Dr Fowler: I’ve come to see you because you have refused to speak

to Father Conroy.
No. 6: His attitude was insulting. In fact, I asked him to leave. Dr Fowler: What exactly was insulting about his attitude? No. 6: Father Conroy questions certain unchanging truths of our

faith.
Dr Fowler: Such as . . .?
No. 6: He says that the Devil is an overvalued concept! It will be

very amusing to watch when this concept sticks its pitchfork into his rear end.
Dr Fowler: Do you think you’ll be there to see it?
No. 6: In a manner of speaking.
Dr Fowler: You believe in Hell, yes?
No. 6: With every bone in my body.
Dr Fowler: Do you think you deserve to go there?
No. 6: I am a soldier of Christ.
Dr Fowler: That doesn’t tell me anything.
No. 6: Why is that?
Dr Fowler: Because there’s no guarantee whether a soldier of Christ will go to Heaven or Hell.
No. 6: If he is a good soldier, he’ll go to Heaven.
Dr Fowler: Father, I want to give you a book that I believe will be a great help to you. It was written by Saint Augustine. It is a book that speaks about humility and our inner struggle.
No. 6: I’ll be happy to read it.
Dr Fowler: You believe that you’ll go to heaven when you die?
No. 6: I’m sure of it.
Dr Fowler: Well, then you know more than I do.
No. 6: . . .
Dr Fowler: Let me give you a hypothesis. Let’s assume we meet at the Pearly Gates. God weighs your good acts and your bad acts, and the scale is evenly balanced. And so he asks you to call on anyone you like to help him settle the question. Who would you call on?
No. 6: I’m not sure.
Dr Fowler: Let me suggest a few names: Ryan, Jamie, Lewis, Arthur . . .
No. 6: Those names don’t mean anything to me.
Dr Fowler: Harry, Michael, John, Grant . . .
No. 6: Shut up!
Dr Fowler: Paul, Sammy, Patrick . . .
No. 6: Shut up! I’m warning you!
Dr Fowler: Jonathan, Aaron, Samuel . . .
No. 6: Enough!

[The sound of a brief, confused struggle between the two men can be heard on tape.]

Dr Fowler: The part of your body I’m squeezing between my thumb and forefinger is your trachea, Father Karosky. It goes without saying that it will be even more painful if you don’t calm down. Signal with your left hand if you understand me. Good. Do it again when you’ve calmed down a little. We can wait as long as necessary. Already? Good. Here, take a drink of water.

No. 6: Thank you.
Dr Fowler: Sit down, please.
No. 6: I’m better now. I don’t know what came over me. Dr Fowler: Both of us know what just happened – just as both of us know that the young boys on the list I read will not exactly testify to your good character when you stand before the Almighty.