God's Spy (17 page)

‘Which is why we have to know what his next step will be.’
‘Clearly, he’s going to kill again. Most likely he’ll invent a new identity for himself or he’s already chosen one. But it won’t be as well rehearsed as that of Brother Francesco, because he worked on that for several years. Maybe Father Fowler can lend us a hand here?’
The priest nodded his head, preoccupied. ‘Everything I know is in the file I gave you, dottoressa. But there is something I want to show you.’
A pitcher of water sat on a side table along with some glasses. Fowler filled one of them halfway up and dropped his pencil into it.
‘It’s a tremendous effort for me to think like he does. Look at this glass. It’s as clear as the water, but when I drop an apparently straight pencil into it, the pencil looks like it’s broken in two. In the same way, his monolithic attitude shifts at crucial moments, like a straight line that splits off and ends up somewhere unknown.’
‘The point where it splits off is the key.’
‘Perhaps. I don’t envy your work, Dicanti. Karosky is a man who rails against iniquity one minute, only to commit greater iniquities himself the next. What I do know is that we should search for him wherever the cardinals are. He’ll try to kill again, and he won’t wait long. The Conclave is getting closer and closer.’

The group headed back down to Angelo’s laboratory in a somewhat confused state. The young technician was introduced to Dante, who ignored him. Paola couldn’t help but notice his rudeness. Dante was a very attractive man but, at heart, he was rotten. His bitter jokes didn’t conceal a thing; they were simply the best thing about him.

Angelo was waiting with the promised results. He hit the keyboard and three-dimensional images, conjured out of thin green threads on a black background, popped up on two screens.

‘How about fleshing them out?’
‘Certainly. Now they’ll have skin – rudimentary, but skin.’ The monitor on the left displayed a three-dimensional model of

Karosky’s head as it had been in 99, the screen on the right the upper half of the head as photographed at Santa Maria in Traspontina.

‘I haven’t modelled the lower half because it’s impossible with the beard. You can’t see the eyes too well either. In the photo they gave me he was walking with his shoulders stooped.’

‘Can you copy the jaw from the first model and impose it on the new head?’
Angelo responded with a rapid flurry of keystrokes and clicks. In less than two minutes Fowler’s request had been carried out.
‘Tell me, Angelo: how faithful do you judge this second model to be?’ the priest asked.
The young technician was momentarily flustered. ‘Well, you see . . . without assessing whether there was adequate lighting at the place—’
‘We’ve already covered that, Angelo,’ Troi interjected.
Paola spoke slowly and calmly. ‘Listen, Angelo, nobody here is judging whether or not you’ve made a good model. We only want to know to what degree we can trust it.’
‘Well, it’s somewhere between seventy-five and eighty-five per cent faithful – no more.’
Fowler looked at the screen carefully. The two faces were very different. Too different. The nose was wider, the cheekbones stronger. But were they the subject’s natural features or only make-up?
‘Angelo, could you rotate both images on a horizontal plane and make a measurement of the cheekbones. Like that. Yes, that’s it . . . That’s what I was afraid of.’
The other four looked at him, holding their breath.
‘What is it?’
‘That isn’t the face of Victor Karosky. An amateur applying makeup couldn’t come up with differences like that in the size of the cheekbones. Maybe a Hollywood professional could pull it off with latex moulds, but it would be completely obvious to anyone who saw him close up. He wouldn’t be able to maintain the deception for very long.’
‘Which means . . .?’
‘There’s only one explanation: Karosky has been treated by a surgeon and undergone a complete facial reconstruction. The man we’re looking for is a ghost.’

May 1998
Transcript of Interview Number 14 between Patient Number 3643 and Doctor Fowler

Dr Fowler: Good afternoon, Father Karosky. May I enter? No. 6: Come in, Father Fowler.
Dr Fowler: Did you enjoy the book I lent you?
No. 6: Yes, of course. The Confessions of Saint Augustine. I’ve

already finished it. A very interesting book. It’s unbelievable just how far innate optimism can take you.
Dr Fowler: I don’t understand.
No. 6: But you’re the only person in this whole place who is capable of understanding me. The only person who doesn’t call me by my first name in an attempt to achieve a vulgar, unnecessary familiarity that denigrates the dignity of both parties.
Dr Fowler: You are speaking of Father Conroy.
No. 6: Yes, that man. The one who maintains, time after time, that I am a normal patient in need of a cure. I am a priest just as he is, yet he seems to forget this constantly, when he insists I call him doctor.
Dr Fowler: I believe that point was already clarified for you last week, Father Karosky. It’s better that your relationship with Conroy remains that of doctor and patient, and nothing else. You need help in overcoming a number of psychological problems that stem from the suffering you endured in the past.
No. 6: I suffered? I suffered at whose hands? Perhaps you too want to put my love for my saintly mother to the test? I beg you not to follow the same route as Father Conroy. He even announced that he would make me listen to some recordings that would leave me in no doubt.
Dr Fowler: Some recordings.
No. 6: That’s what he said.
Dr Fowler: I don’t think you should hear those tapes, Father Karosky. It wouldn’t be good for you. I’ll speak to Father Conroy about it.
No. 6: As you see fit. But I’m not afraid.
Dr Fowler: Listen, father: I want us to get as much out of this session as possible, and there’s something you said a little earlier that interests me very much. About Saint Augustine’s optimism in The Confessions. What were you referring to?
No. 6: “And even if I appear laughable in your sight, you will come back to me full of mercy.”
Dr Fowler: I don’t understand what strikes you as optimistic in that passage. Don’t you believe in the goodness and infinite mercy of God?
No. 6: The merciful God is an invention of the twentieth century, Father Fowler.
Dr Fowler: Saint Augustine lived in the fourth century.
No. 6: Saint Augustine was horrified by his own sinful past, and set out to write a string of optimistic lies.
Dr Fowler: But father, it’s the basis of our faith! – that God pardons us.
No. 6: Not always. Some people go to confession like they go to wash their cars . . . Pah! They make me sick.
Dr Fowler: That’s what you feel when you administer confession? – nauseated?
No. 6: I feel repugnance. Many times I vomited inside the confessional, from the bile the person on the other side of the screen stirred up in me. Lies. Fornication. Adultery. Pornography. Violence. Theft. All of them, sneaking into this small space, contaminating it with their filth. They pour it all out until I’m drowning in it.
Dr Fowler: But, father, they aren’t confessing their sins to us. They are confessing them to God. We are merely the transmitters. When we put on the priest’s stole, we represent Christ.
No. 6: They throw everything at us. They arrive filthy and believe that they leave clean. ‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned: I’ve stolen ten thousand dollars from my business partner.’ ‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned: I raped my younger sister.’ ‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned: I took photos of my son and posted them on the Internet.’ ‘Bless me, father, for I have sinned: I put bleach in my husband’s food so he’ll stop bothering me about his conjugal rights because I’m sick of the way he reeks of onions and sweat.’ Just like that, day after day.
Dr Fowler: But confession is a marvellous thing, Father Karosky, when there is true repentance and an honest attempt to change one’s behaviour.
No. 6: Something that never happens. They always, always pile their sins on my shoulders. They abandon me, leave me alone before God’s impassive face. I am the only one standing between their iniquities and God’s vengeance.
Dr Fowler: Do you really see God as a vengeful being?
No. 6: ‘His heart is as firm as a stone; yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone. The sword of him that layeth at him cannot hold: the spear, the dart, nor the harbergeon. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot: he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment. He surveys all with pride; he rules over the fierce!’
Dr Fowler: I have to admit that your intimacy with the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, always impresses me. But the Book of Job was rendered obsolete by the truth that Jesus gives us in the scriptures.
No. 6: Jesus Christ is merely the Son; it is the Father who renders judgement. And the Father has a face of stone.
Dr Fowler: I’m very sorry to see that you climb so high in the tower of your convictions. The fall from such a perch could be fatal, Father Karosky. And if you listen to Father Conroy’s tapes, there’s no question that that’s what will happen.

Thursday, 7 April 2005, 2.45 p.m.

‘Saint Ambrogio Residence.’
‘Good afternoon. I’d like to speak with Cardinal Robayra,’ said
the young journalist in her very worst Italian.
The voice on the other end of the phone was slightly flustered.
‘May I ask to whom I’m speaking?’
It wasn’t much – the speaker’s tone hardly changed; but it was
enough to send a signal to the journalist.
Andrea Otero had spent four years working at El Globo – four
years in which she’d blazed a trail through third-rate press rooms,
interviewed C-list celebrities and written stories for the back page.
She’d been twenty-four years old when she joined El Globo, and
she’d only got there because of her connections. She had started off
working for the culture pages, but the editor there had never taken
her seriously. She had moved on to the society pages, whose editor
had never trusted her. Now she’d taken up residence in the international pages, whose editor didn’t think she was up to the job. But
she was. It wasn’t all about grades, or the courses you’d taken. There
was also common sense, intuition, the journalist’s nose for a story;
and if Andrea Otero had even a tenth of what she thought she had
in terms of these qualities, she’d be a journalist worthy of a Pulitzer.
She didn’t lack confidence in herself, in her five foot eight inches
of height, in her angelic features, her blonde hair or her blue eyes.
Behind these features was a woman of resolve and intelligence. So
when her colleague who was to cover the death of the Pope tripped
on the stairs of her apartment building – on the way out to the cab that was supposed to take her to the airport – and ended up with a broken leg, Andrea hadn’t baulked at her boss’s proposal that she go instead. She’d caught the plane with only moments to spare, a
laptop her only luggage.
Happily the streets around her hotel in the Piazza Navona were
full of little stores selling the basic necessities. So Andrea Otero purchased several serviceable outfits and some underwear, along with a
mobile phone, all of which she naturally charged to the newspaper.
The last item was what she was using to call the Saint Ambrogio
Residence in order to set up an interview with papal candidate
Cardinal Robayra.
‘This is Andrea Otero, of El Globo. The cardinal promised me an
interview today, but he’s not answering his mobile phone. Would
you be so kind as to put me through to his room, please.’ ‘Signorina Otero, I’m sorry to say we cannot put you through to
his room because the cardinal hasn’t arrived.’
‘And when will he arrive?’
‘He isn’t coming.’
‘He’s staying somewhere else?’
‘I don’t think so. I mean, I suppose he will.’
‘And to whom am I speaking?’
‘I have to go.’
The dialling tone on the other end of the line told her two things:
the conversation was over, and the person she had spoken with was
exceptionally nervous. Also, she had been lying – Andrea was sure
of that. She was too much of a liar herself not to recognise someone
in her own class.
There was no time to lose. It didn’t take her more than ten minutes
to get hold of the telephone number of the cardinal’s private office
in Buenos Aires. It was almost ten in the morning there, a good time
to call. She smiled at the thought of the phone bill the newspaper
was going to receive. They were paying her the absolute minimum,
so at least she’d screwed them with expenses.
The telephone rang for a minute and then the line went dead.
Strange that no one was there. She tried the line again. Nothing.
She tried the number of the main office. A woman’s voice answered
immediately. ‘Archbishop’s office, good morning.’
‘I’d like to speak with Cardinal Robayra, please.’
‘I’m sorry, he’s already left.’
‘Left for where?’
‘He’s gone to the Conclave, miss – to Rome.’
‘Do you now where he’s staying?’
‘No, señorita. I’ll connect you to Father Serafín, his secretary.’ ‘Thank you.’
The Beatles played while she was on hold. How appropriate. Andrea decided to lie a bit just to keep things interesting. The car
dinal had family in Spain. She wanted to see if she could pull it off. ‘Hello?’
‘Hi, I’d like to speak to the cardinal. It’s his niece Asunción – the
one from Spain.’
‘Asunción, it’s a pleasure. I’m Father Serafín, the cardinal’s secretary. His Eminence never told me about you. Are you Angustia’s
daughter, or Remedios’s?’
She sensed a trap. Andrea crossed her fingers. A fifty per cent
chance of making a false move. She was an expert in false moves,
too: she had a long history of putting her foot in her mouth. ‘Remedios.’
‘Of course, how stupid of me. Angustia doesn’t have any children
– I remember that now. I’m sorry, but the cardinal isn’t here.’ ‘When can I speak to him?’
Silence. The priest’s voice became cautious. Andrea could almost
see him on the other end of the line, gripping the receiver and twisting the cord around his index finger.
‘What did you want to speak to him about?’
‘Well, I’ve been living in Rome for years, and he promised me
that the next time he was here he would visit me.’
The voice on the other end became even more apprehensive. He
was speaking slowly, as if he were afraid of making a mistake. ‘He
has gone to Cordoba to take care of pressing matters in the diocese
there. He won’t be able to attend the Conclave.’
‘But the main office told me that the Cardinal had already left for
Rome.’
‘Ah, yes, there’s a new girl there, and she’s still unacquainted with
how the archbishopric works,’ Serafín fired back. He’d obviously
made that one up on the spot. ‘Please forgive me.’
‘You’re forgiven. Will you tell my uncle that I called?’ ‘Of course. Could you give me your telephone number, Asunción?
I want to put it on the cardinal’s agenda. We might have to get in
touch with you.’
‘He already has it. I’m sorry, but my husband is on the other line.
Goodbye.’
She hung up on the secretary before he’d even finished speaking. Now she was sure that something wasn’t right. But she had to
confirm it. Luckily for her there was an Internet connection in the
hotel. It took her all of six minutes to find the phone number for the
three main Argentine airlines. She struck gold first time. ‘Aerolineas Argentinas.’
She made an effort to give her Madrid accent a passable Argentine
stamp. It wasn’t so bad. Her Italian was much worse.
‘Buenos días. I’m calling you from the archbishopric of Buenos
Aires. With whom am I speaking?’
‘My name is Verona.’
‘Verona, my name is Asunción. I am calling to confirm Cardinal
Robayra’s return flight to Buenos Aires.’
‘On what date?’
‘He’ll be returning on the nineteenth of the coming month.’ ‘His full name?’
‘Emilio Robayra.’
‘Please wait while I check.’
Andrea chewed the end of her ballpoint pen nervously, checked
the state of her hair in the mirror, threw herself on to the bed and
wiggled her toes.
‘Hello? My colleagues have advised me that you bought only a
one-way ticket. The cardinal has already travelled, but you can buy
a ticket for the return flight at ten per cent off. It’s a special price for
April. Do you have his frequent-flyer number handy?’
‘One moment, let me check.’
She hung up, barely containing her laughter. But the hilarity quickly changed into a euphoric feeling of triumph. Cardinal
Robayra had indeed got on a plane headed for Rome. But he hadn’t
made an appearance at his guest house. He could have decided
to stay somewhere else. Yet, if that were the case, why had Saint
Ambrogio and the Cardinal’s office lied to her?
‘Either I’m crazy, or there’s a good story here – a fucking brilliant
story,’ she said to her reflection in the mirror.
The selection of the next man to sit on the throne of Saint Peter
was only a few days away. And the great candidate of the poor, the
champion of the Third World, the man who openly flirted with
Liberation Theology, had disappeared.