The Caravaggio Conspiracy (20 page)

Caravaggio offered his condolences, which were deeply felt, then took the letter and immediately retired to his cell to read it. It was dated 30 July.

The letter threw Caravaggio into a deep and abiding depression. Don Marzio was a good man and a loyal friend and it pained him greatly that he should have been responsible, however unintentionally, for his death. He would write to Franceso at once and express his most deeply felt condolences. But there were also clear implication for his own safety. He planned to leave Valletta within the month, following the feast day of St John. He had produced five paintings, intended as gifts for St Peter’s and the papal apartments, and drafted an application to the Pope seeking formal pardon for the death of Ranuccio, while at the same time pledging himself, as a Knight of Malta, to the Christian cause. Now he felt sure that Battista would be waiting for him, ready to strike his head from his shoulders. Beyond that, he was convinced that, upon his death, the Camerlengo would feel emboldened to strike at the Holy Father himself.

Over the next weeks, Caravaggio spent long hours in the taverns by the Grand Harbour, where his argumentative nature, brawls and other noisy encounters did not go unnoticed. De Wignacourt was aware of what was happening but put it down to a surfeit of grief for his great patron, Don Marzio.

Luis de Fonseca had not, meanwhile, forgotten his undertaking to Battista that Caravaggio would not leave Malta alive. On a hot evening, towards the end of August, knowing the artist to be drunk, he deliberately barged into him on the steps leading down from the Knights’ refectory. Complaining in an outraged voice that Caravaggio had almost knocked him him over, he demanded an
immediate
apology. Caravaggio refused, insisting that it was Fonseca who had knocked into him. The lofty Hospitaller, known for his piety and nobility, then accused the newcomer of behaviour unbecoming a Knight. He accused him of public
drunkenness
and required him, in the hearing of several fellow Hospitallers, to deny that he was on his way into the town to pick up a whore. At this, provoked beyond reason, Caravaggio began to draw his sword and lunged forward. Fonseca, an
experienced
combatant, easily sidestepped the approach and called on his colleagues, as witnesses, to arrest his assailant.

At a preliminary hearing next morning, Fonseca recounted how Caravaggio, drunk, deliberately lurched into him on the step, then, when challenged about the affront, as well as his flagrantly immoral behaviour, tried to run him through with his sword. Witnesses, all associates of the lofty Cavaliere di Giustizia, were happy to confirm the substance of the accusation. Mortified, de Wignacourt was left with no option but to place his newest recruit under arrest pending a court martial.

There were several cells in the fortress of Sant’Angelo that would hold a brother securely without undue humiliation. Fonseca, newly returned as an ambassador of both the Grand Master and the Pope, insisted that the accused be thrown into the deepest dungeon, a pitch-black, underground hell-hole, known as the
guva
,
accessible
only from above. With the
banda capitale
already in effect, the Spaniard was confident of a swift conviction followed by the condemned man’s execution. But he would take no chances. Should it begin to look as if Caravaggio might win his freedom, his secondary plan was to poison the painter in his cell and attribute the death either to suicide or God’s will.

On the third night of his incarceration, plagued by bad dreams and shivering with cold, Caravaggio was visited by his accuser, who descended into the pit by rope, carrying a blazing torch to light his passage. The Knight drew his sword, which he thrust against the throat of the weakened painter, calling on him in a loud voice to confess his crimes. ‘If you admit to your error and deceit,’ he said, ‘a simple beheading awaits you. If not, you will be stretched on the rack and your tongue cut out before you are hanged, drawn and quartered. The choice is yours.’

Caravaggio, his eyes half blinded by the flames of the torch, summoned up just enough strength to spit into the Knight’s face. At this, Fonseca flicked the point of his blade so that it nicked the prisoner’s neck. ‘The scent of blood always attracts the rats, Merisi,’ he hissed.
Sotto voce
, he added: ‘In the name of Allah the beneficent and Mohammad His Prophet – peace be upon Him – I wish you eternal peace.’

Hearing these words spoken, Caravaggio recoiled in panic. No! It couldn’t be true. Fonseca as well! Now truly he was doomed. Falling back onto the cold stone of his cell, he put his hands up to his face and felt the warm tears stream through his fingers.

Another week went by, during which Caravaggio remained in the
guva
. A tribunal was meanwhile announced, to open in three days’ time, during which the accused would be permitted to enter a plea of guilt or innocence. By now, Fabrizio Colonna was convinced that his friend’s case was hopeless. Many of the Knights, the Germans especially, were intensely jealous of their new comrade-
in-arms
, believing him to have secured membership of the order without the proper pedigree or proof of valour. They pointed to the fact that he drank too much and spent time in the company of whores.

‘Unlike you, you mean?’ Fabrizio had said to one of these, a bone-headed brute from Swabia. ‘You are obsessed with your lineage – as if the fact that your
antecedents
in all four lines never had to soil their hands with honest work absolved you from every obligation of truth and charity. But be sure, my friend, when the war comes, you shall stand with me in the front line. We shall see then how deep lies your nobility.’

The next thing that happened was that Battista, alerted by Fonseca, sent word to de Wignacourt upholding the
banda capitale
in relation to the murder in Rome. Fabrizio, in response, wrote to Mario, younger brother of the late Ranuccio Tomassoni, begging him to tell the truth of what had happened in the Campo Marzio. The letter was put on a felucca bound for Rome the following day. Mario, said Fabrizio, was a man of honour. He would surely testify that Ranuccio had engaged freely in a duel, possibly over the honour of the girl he hoped to marry.

De Wignacourt, unsure how to proceed, consented to this, so that the case brought by Fonseca was placed in abeyance. Caravaggio, however, was to remain in his cell, where he could reflect on his behaviour.

Before taking action on his own account, Fabrizio made one final appeal to Fonseca.

‘You know this man,’ he said. ‘You know that the balance of his mind is disturbed. But he is a genius, who has brought glory to our order and will continue to do so if given the chance. I beg you, do not condemn him to a felon’s grave on a mere point of Knightly etiquette.’

Fonseca sneered. ‘Well, Colonna,’ he said, ‘I cannot deny that you know wherof you speak. You yourself stand before me as a murderer. Now you beg
leniency
for another of your kind.’

‘So you will not withdraw your charges?’

‘I will see him hanged first.’

As he replied, Fabrizio gazed deep into the eyes of the Knight of Justice. ‘And having done so, sir,’ he said, ‘you will answer to me.’

Shortly after his encounter with Fonseca, Fabrizio visited his friend, bringing food and clean water, and told him to be ready to escape the following night. ‘Listen for me,’ he said. ‘I will tap three times on the metal cover of your cell. As soon as you hear my signal, you must summon up all your strength and be ready to leave.’

Twenty-four hours later, having sent drugged wine to the one overnight guard, so that he dozed at his post, Colonna, accompanied by Bernardo Cenci, banged three times on the metal cover of the guva with the hilt of his sword. The noise below was unmistakable. Then he drew the cover aside and lowered a rope down into the dungeon. The artist was weak from the meagre prison diet and shivering with cold. Yet somehow, with Colonna and Cenci hauling at the rope and Caravaggio hanging on for dear life, the ascent was made. Next, having replaced the cover, Colonna lowered his friend from a window down the sheer walls of the fortress towards the rocks and sea at its base. Here, a small boat lay waiting, which picked up the fugitive and conveyed him to Colonna’s galley, tied up in the Grand Harbour.

The next morning at dawn, before Caravaggio was even missed, Colonna set sail for Sicily. The voyage was properly scheduled and aroused no suspicion. Six hours later, in the middle of the afternoon, they arrived off Syracuse. Fabrizio had undertaken to have his personal possessions, including three paintings, conveyed from the port to the house of his friend, the artist Mario Minniti. He would also, he said, send word of what had happened to his mother, the Marchesa, and his uncle Luigi, in Naples. In the meantime, he urged the two-time fugitive to remain hidden in Syracuse and under no circumstances to draw attention to himself. Newly fed and clothed, armed with a sword and pistol and provided with ready cash, he was disembarked into the same small boat in which he had escaped to the Grand Harbour. The oars were taken by Bernardo Cenci, to whom the artist made a solemn vow that he would do all in his power upon his return to Rome to re-establish the good name of his family. Cenci shrugged. It was clear that he did not believe in miracles. As he pushed off towards the shore, the galley continued into the harbour to pick up wine and Turkish slaves intended for the Grand Master’s service.

In Valletta, the escape caused uproar. No one could explain it. Though Fonseca suspected Fabrizio’s hand in the affair, he could prove nothing and was reluctant to make a second charge of Knightly dishonour, especially against a scion of the most powerful family in Italy. The escape was seen at once as an affront to the dignity of the order, which had given sanctuary to the artist and even invested him as a Knight, trusting in his reformed nature. De Wignacourt, humiliated beyond measure, felt he had no choice but to convene a tribunal of inquiry, which promptly came up with nothing. No one knew how the escape was achieved. There was no evidence of struggle and the drugged guard, a trusted man, had awakened at least an hour before the alarm was raised unaware that anything untoward had occurred.

The Grand Master next convened a meeting of the General Council of the Order at which it was agreed unanimously that Caravaggio should be deprived of his Knighthood and habit and declared an outlaw. Fonseca, as head of the Knights of Giustizia, to which Caravaggio, as a Knight of Obedience, was tied, requested permission to hunt him down. Permission was granted. According to the Council’s ruling, the artist was ‘expelled and thrust forth like a rotten and fetid limb from our Order and Community’.

It was after seven in the evening when Maya’s father, Colonel Studer, arrived home from a joint meeting with the Vatican secret service and the GendarmerieaVaticana, the papal police. He was in a stinking mood.

Maya looked up from her laptop on which she was reading a blog from Stuttgart about the death of Cardinal Rüttgers.

Studer got straight to the point. ‘That young man of yours – the Irishman. What does he think he’s up to? The Vatican security service and the Rome police suspect him of stealing historical documents from the papal archives. He has been barred from the library and warned that he is under formal investigation. In the end, I had no alternative but to reveal that my daughter and he are having … an
affair
. Can you imagine how I felt? They didn’t know where to look. I was
hopelessly
compromised – I who have taken an oath to safeguard the Holy Father’s personal security. What must they have thought? I cannot believe that you have allowed this to happen. But this cannot go on. Listen to me, Maya, I don’t want you to see him anymore. Do you hear me? Not while you live under my roof.’

Maya was used to her father’s occasional impersonations of a
nineteenth-century
martinet, which she never took entirely seriously. She drew a deep breath and started to explain what really happened.

Her father – a fair man, but a natural conservative, used to siding with the secular authority – brushed his daughter’s version of events to one side. ‘That’s not what the security service says. And why would they lie?’

‘They are not lying. But they’re wrong. I don’t know what’s happening. But Cardinal Bosani is not what he seems. It wouldn’t be the first time in the history of the Church. Four hundred years ago, there was another Camerlengo, also not what he seems, who was secretly investigated by the Pope. Back in the late seventies, when he first came to Rome, Bosani removed the files relating to this man. These are the same files that the security people and the Rome police now say were stolen by Liam.’

‘But that makes no sense, Maya. What are you saying? That Bosani is … what? Working to destroy the Church? That is the logic of what you are saying. Are you out of your mind? Do you want me to have to resign over this? Think of the disgrace. The first ever colonel of the Swiss Guard to have to surrender his post! It is unthinkable.’

Studer stormed off into his study and Maya was left wondering what on earth she could do to repair the damage. An enemy of the Church? That thought had never occurred to her. But she dismissed it almost as quickly as had her father, and for the same reason. It was preposterous. The truth was almost certainly a lot more prosaic. Bosani was just a misguided hardliner, no different from so many others she had met down the years. After several minutes, she called Dempsey on her mobile. He answered on the third ring.

‘I need you to listen to me,’ she began. ‘I’ve just been talking to my father, who spent much of the afternoon with the Pope’s security people discussing you. He was utterly humiliated. I feel so guilty. I’ve placed him in an impossible position. He’s convinced we’ve got it all wrong. He says Bosani is exactly what he seems and everything else is a product of our imaginations.’

Dempsey interrupted her. ‘I’m sorry about your father,’ he began. ‘I truly am. I had no intention of ever involving him in this mess. It just happened. But there are bigger issues at stake here. What if we’re not wrong? What if we’re right and there really is a conspiracy to undermine the Church?’

This was not what Maya wanted to hear and her voice when she replied was laced with scorn. ‘A
conspiracy
? Is that the next thing? For God’s sake, Liam, listen to yourself. Who are these conspirators? What do they want? Why have they decided to blame everything on you? It makes no sense.’

At the other end of the phone, Dempsey felt himself grow tense. ‘I wish I could tell you, Maya. I wish I knew. My uncle doesn’t know what to think. He’s like your father. His every instinct is to support the Church and protect its doctrines. But what if there’s a Church within a Church? What if there’s something going on that has nothing to do with the last two thousand years of Christian history?’

The thought of this made Maya’s head spin. ‘I’m sorry, Liam, but this has to stop. My father is right and it’s not fair that he should bear the burden of our arrogance. Good sense and reason seem to have gone out the window. Paranoia has taken over.’ 

Dempsey wasn’t going to let her get away with that. ‘Is it paranoid to think that Rüttgers was murdered? He was a strong, healthy man. He was determined to prevent Bosani from getting his way at the conclave. Or what about me? Was I paranoid to imagine that I had been framed by the Vatican and accused of stealing documents that had in fact been seized by Bosani in the 1970s?’

‘I don’t know, Liam. I don’t have answers to your questions.’ Maya could feel a headache coming on. ‘But it’s obvious that we’re being drawn into an area in which we are powerless. If we carry on like this, we are the ones that will be hurt. My father, too. Is that what you want?’

Dempsey gave up. He didn’t know what to think. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said, lamely. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

‘Don’t bother,’ she said.

On the opposite side of St Peter’s Square to the Swiss army barracks, O’Malley was calling in some favours. It would have been easy for him to go the Vatican library and use his privileged access to make inquiries about Bosani and his sinister predecessor, Battista. But he didn’t want to arouse suspicion or provoke a response. Instead, after a lengthy meeting with the provincial general for Poland, and just as Studer set out for his appointment with the Vatican security service, he called an old friend in the Rome police whose experience of the Vatican went back three decades.

Ispettore Superiore Raffaele Aprea was the sort of man O’Malley found it easy to get along with. He was a lapsed Catholic, wary of the Vatican’s special pleading down the years, but he was also a realist, who knew better than to offend the Curia. They had met fifteen years before when O’Malley was vice-rector of the Irish College. The Irishman had helped him with an investigation into the murder of a paedophile priest, and since his return to Rome as head of the Jesuits they had dined together on the first Tuesday of each month.

At O’Malley’s request, they met for lunch in their usual restaurant off the Via Cavour, next to the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. As soon as they had ordered, Aprea, a large, shambling figure, whose burly physique concealed a mind sharp as a switchblade, invited O’Malley to unburden himself. ‘I’ll consider your penance afterwards,’ he said. When the priest was done, the chief inspector sat back in his chair, hands clasped on his stomach. To begin with, he said, he wasn’t impressed by Dempsey’s
modus operandi
. ‘What did he think he was doing? Did he think the Vatican wouldn’t mind that he was using their computer like that and prying into business that doesn’t concern him?’

O’Malley poured the wine, an expensive Barolo they would each regret ordering as soon as the bill came. ‘I’m not defending my nephew’s way of doing things, Rafi. He’s young and impulsive. But he’s no thief.’ 

Aprea chewed very deliberately on a morsel of osso buco, then put down his fork. ‘And you honestly think he’s on to something?’

‘Yes, I do. Quite what that something is remains to be seen. But I can’t believe the Vatican would be leaning on him like this if they didn’t have something to hide.’

‘In my experience, the Vatican leans on anyone and everyone they don’t like. They way they see it, it’s like a scattergun. If you spread enough shot around, you’re bound to hit something.’

The Irishman pulled at his dog collar, which he still found constricting even after forty-five years. ‘Tell me honestly, Rafi, do you think there are real criminals inside the walls of the Holy See? I mean the sort of people who would stop at nothing.’

‘You tell me, Declan. You’re the Black Pope.’

‘Don’t give me that. Because I have to tell you, it worries me that there may be individuals working right in the bowels of the system – priests, bishops, even cardinals – who consider that a crime committed in God’s name is no crime at all.’

‘Well, of course,’ the policeman replied, ‘it all depends on what is a crime and what is not. The Vatican is a sovereign state, after all. What’s a crime in the Via Cavour may not rate the same definition in the Via del Governatorato. And even if it is a crime, it’s no sin – not if you’ve got your confessor on hand or you believe you have a special line through to God.’

‘Do you have anything in particular in mind?’

‘You know as well as I do that the death of John Paul I was no accident.’

‘I know no such thing.’

The two men looked at each other, each sipping at their wine. Rüttgers’ final, mysterious diary entry had been looping through his head for the last few days:
The question is, who – or what – controls Bosani?
O’Malley pressed his fingertips to his forehead, as if trying to deter a migraine. ‘Even if I agreed with you,’ he said, ‘is there any way to prove it?’

Aprea shook his head. ‘After all these years? No chance. Even if they’d let us in to open an investigation – which they wouldn’t – we’d run straight up against a brick wall. Most of those who knew the answer are dead. The rest are keeping quiet.’

‘
Omerta
?’

‘You said it, not me.’

‘But what if there’s something going on now; something that we could prevent? What if there’s a conspiracy to elect a pope who would provoke war with the Muslim world?’

As he spoke, O’Malley could see his friend draw back in disbelief. Perhaps he hadn’t explained himself properly. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I know what I’m saying must sound like the ravings of an old fool, but I’m really worried.’ 

Aprea leaned back in. ‘Maybe the problem is that you are too close and cannot see the wood for the trees. The way I see it, a pope who stands up for the Catholic Church against Islam may be ill-advised. He may even be crazy. But unless there’s something you’re not telling me, there’s nothing criminal about it.’

This detached appraisal evoked a sigh from O’Malley. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘But there is a background to this. I suppose I’d better tell you everything.’

‘That would be useful.’

Only when O’Malley had finished his explanation did he notice that, between them, he and Aprea had finished off the Barolo.

The chief inspector ran his stubby fingers through his thinning hair. ‘I think we should order two grappas.’ He signalled to the waiter.

‘So, can you help?’ O’Malley asked once the waiter had brought the drinks.

‘I can try. But I’ll tell you this much now. This can’t be true, Declan – it just can’t be. One cardinal murdering another; the Secret Archive framing the nephew of the Father General of the Jesuits; the Camerlengo consorting with a known Islamist extremist; the whole Church being dragged into supporting a lunatic as pope. If that’s the way things really are, the whole world’s in trouble and we’ve got – what? – less than a week to stop it.’

‘Three days, to be accurate,’ O’Malley said.

While they waited for their desserts, Aprea used his secure mobile to ask a colleague in the anti-terrorist police, DIGOS, if there had been any reports recently of Yilmaz Hakura or of Hizb ut-Tahrir operating in Rome. The man called back three minutes later. An undercover officer working in a housing project in the north of the city claimed to have seen him outside a hardline mosque about a month earlier, talking to some of the usual suspects. But he had vanished before backup arrived and the only evidence was a fuzzy photograph taken by the undercover officer using the camera on his mobile phone. Image enhancement suggested that the man might well have been Hakura – which would fit in with the prison protest and the bombing of the Lateran cathedral. But no further sightings had been made and the trail was now cold.

Next, Aprea called an expert from the Polizia Postale division of the Questura, responsible for computer crime. The officer was to join him in an hour’s time at the office of the prefect of the Secret Archive, Monsignor Asproni. Aprea
telephoned
Asproni himself and told him that he and a colleague would be along shortly to continue the investigation of the missing papers case. At 3.35 precisely, the specialist, complete with bag of tricks, sat down at the Monsignor’s desk and logged on. Aprea observed him closely, acutely aware of his own technical limitations. After a couple of minutes, the specialist emitted a satisfied grunt. The ‘file missing’ signal attached to the Battista papers had been overlaid on top of a previous indicator, since deleted. Using software developed by Britain’s MI5, he was able to recall the original message, thus confirming Dempsey’s claim that the Battista file had gone missing years before. Aprea said nothing to the prefect, but later, in Asproni’s office, asked him who in the library had the authority and access to amend computer entries, especially when a file went missing or had maybe been stolen.

The Monsignor took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

‘There could be five or six such people,’ he said, ‘plus myself and the
vice-prefect
. But that’s only the start. Before any substantive change can be made to the record, it is necessary first to inform me or my deputy. And any kind of
investigation
that’s carried out would, needless to say, have to have my personal sanction.’

Pressed to do so, the prefect then drew up a list of the names of those with authority to make online changes.

‘Could a switch be made without your knowledge?’ Aprea asked.

‘Of course,’ the priest replied. ‘But that would be quite irregular and most unethical.’

‘
Assolutamente
,’ Aprea said. He thanked Asproni for being so helpful and told him they’d be in touch.

Outside, he asked the specialist, ‘What do you think?’

‘I think anything’s possible. It’s a clever enough system, but the ones in charge aren’t necessarily the ones who know how it works.’