The Caravaggio Conspiracy (25 page)

When Dempsey woke up, he saw a face gazing down at him. A woman’s face. But he didn’t recognize her. He screwed up his eyes and brought her into focus.

‘Where am I?’ he said.

‘
Sono spiacente. Non capisco
,’ she said.

‘What?’

She looked at him inquiringly. Then he remembered he was in Rome and repeated the question in Italian.

‘You are in the Ospedale di San Spirito,’ she told him, relieved that he wasn’t going to be a problem patient.

Ah! She was a nurse. That explained the white hat she was wearing.

‘A police car nearly ran you down in the middle of the Lungotevere dei Tebaldi. You lost a lot of blood, but we have treated you and you should make a full recovery. You are a lucky man.’

Lucky? Dempsey offered her a lopsided grin. He had been accused of theft by the Vatican and threatened by the police. His home had been burgled. Now he had been stabbed by a mystery assassin. If this was luck, give him war every time. But she was right. The knife wound, she explained, had missed vital veins and arteries, so that an emergency transfusion, twenty-eight stitches and a course of antibiotics were all that was needed to promote recovery. But as a precaution he was being kept in overnight.

‘Thank you,’ he whispered. His eyes were heavy. It was difficult to stay awake.

‘Sleep now,’ she said. She was smiling.

Later, still aching but alert, he gave an account of what happened to a uniformed officer from the city police. A little after that, he was visited by a scruffily dressed detective from the office of his uncle’s friend Ispettore Superiore Aprea, who told him that it was agreed now that he had real enemies, who obviously wanted him dead. In between, he spoke on the phone with O’Malley and explained what had happened.

The priest was shocked. He had called Demspey’s apartment earlier that morning and then tried him on his mobile. But the home phone just rang and rang and the mobile was switched off. ‘I feel terrible,’ he said, ‘exposing you to all this danger. What must you think of me?’

Dempsey drew a deep breath. ‘Don’t worry about it, Uncle Declan. You weren’t to know. And I’m going to be fine.’

‘Thank God for that. But have you talked to Maya? She’ll be worried

sick.’

‘Maybe you could call her for me?’ He gave him the number.

‘I’ll do that. You can expect the pair of us within the hour.’

They turned up forty minutes later. Maya was distraught and struggled to maintain her composure. He should drop the whole wretched business, she told him, and concentrate on getting well. O’Malley agreed. It was up to the police now. Aprea had opened an urgent investigation into the assault, with its background of burglary and the loss of historical documents from the Secret Archive. Dempsey’s detailed description of his assailant would be put through the computer database, and a search was under way for any witnesses who might have seen a man acting suspiciously in the run-up to the attack. The problem was that the would-be killer was almost certainly a professional and would most likely not turn up on the files.

Later that day, after he and Maya had delivered Dempsey by taxi to his
apartment
– newly fitted with state-of-the-art locks and a sophisticated alarm system – O’Malley continued with his inquiries. The argument that Cardinal Battista was a secret Muslim in the time of Caravaggio was persuasive. Was it possible, he asked himself, that such a figure could exist in the modern age? Maya’s argument, however paranoid it appeared, was at least consistent with the facts. O’Malley himself had watched Bosani recoil from a glass of wine like a vampire from a crucifix. He had also noted the sudden removal of a valuable portrait of Battista from the Camerlengo’s inner sanctum. Finally, there was the fact that both Cardinal Rüttgers and Liam had witnessed Bosani in conversation with a known Islamist – a man wanted by the police of at least three Western countries.

But was it enough? Who would believe him? Bosani was one of the most powerful voices in the Church. Not only that, millions of ordinary Italians and other Europeans would prefer to believe that he was one of them – a Christian patriot. 

While pondering his dilemma, O’Malley was interrupted by a knock on the door. It was Father Amin Haddad, an elderly Jesuit of Maronite extraction, who wanted to talk to him about the state of the Church, which he said was troubling him. O’Malley was at once on his guard. Haddad had always had a kindly aspect to him, but, as the poet MacNeice once observed of ‘ordinary’ people, there was a vagrant in his eyes. The Lebanese had lived the first twenty-five years of his life in Sidon and Muslims were among his oldest friends. He bade the old man take a seat, not wishing to give offence – or perhaps warn Bosani that he was on to him. Haddad mumbled his gratitude. He was concerned, he said, drawing his beard together beneath his chin, that in the present climate of global paranoia a new breed of Catholic was emerging that hated Islam and was determined to stoke up ancient fears. He had even heard, he confided, that members of the Curia could be involved – though with what end in mind he had no idea. O’Malley listened with the best patience he could muster. He, too, feared for the future, he said. For Europe was gripped by fear. All they could do was pray and hope that the spirit of God would descend on the conclave. Haddad looked vaguely annoyed and muttered something about the ‘harsh rhetoric’ of the Camerlengo, but O’Malley refused to be drawn in. ‘We should remember His Eminence in our prayers,’ was all he said. As soon as the priest had gone, O’Malley fell to wondering. Why should Haddad, with whom he had not spoken in months, suddenly turn up in his office like that? It didn’t make sense. When faith and politics were mixed, there was no such thing as coincidence. Returning his thoughts to Battista, whom he felt instinctively held the key to the mystery, he used the internet to download a high-quality
reproduction
of
The Betrayal of Christ
and concentrated on the figure of the fleeing man. Dark thoughts began coursing through his head. He needed help and decided to call his old friend, Cardinal Henry McCarthy, one of those who had attended Bosani’s recent gathering in Rome.

When the phone rang in his study in Dublin, the Archbishop was watching hurling on RTÉ television. ‘Could you call back in half an hour?’ he said
plaintively
. ‘It’s a close game – just a couple of points in it.’

‘Sorry to spoil your evening, Your Eminence,’ said O’Malley, ‘but this is important.’

‘More important than St Pat’s making it through to the second round?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Jesus Christ! Okay.’ Using his remote, he muted the commentary from County Westmeath. ‘What is it? Could it not wait until I arrive tomorrow night for the conclave?”

‘I’m afraid not. It’s about Cardinal Bosani.’

‘The Camerlengo? What about him?’ 

‘Do you trust him?’

‘Do I trust him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Trust in what way?’

‘Is he mad or what?’

‘Mad? What are you driving at, Declan?’

Dear Lord
, O’Malley thought.
If I don’t cut to the chase, it could go on like this all night
. ‘What I’m driving at, Your Eminence …’

‘And cut that “Your Eminence” crap, unless I get to call you “Father General”. I mean, how long have I known you?’

‘Right. Henry it is. Anyway, Henry, what I need to know is this: is the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church trying to provoke a war between Christian Europe and the Muslim world? Yes or no?’

There was a lengthy pause at the other end. O’Malley waited. At length, the familiar voice, with its flat midlands accent, came back on the line. ‘He might be, Declan, he might be. I really don’t know.’

‘What’s your instinct?’

‘Well, if I were a betting man –which I am – I’d say that he wants a pope who isn’t afraid to stand up for what he believes in, even if it means a
confrontation
with Turkey, Egypt, the Saudis, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan – just about any Muslim country you can name – to say nothing of the thirty million or so Muslims of the European Union.’

‘But that’s insane.’

‘That’s what I thought. But then I listened to him and I came to the conclusion that it might be no bad thing for the Vatican to start asserting itself again. Christ! These days the Church is looked on as if it were the spiritual arm of the United Nations instead of a living faith and the basis of Western civilisation for the last two thousand years.’

O’Malley refused to get drawn into this particular argument, which had a tendency to go round and round until it disappeared up its own fundamentals. ‘But what if the result of a new strong man in Rome was an upsurge in terrorism across Europe? What if it led to armed confrontation with the entire Middle East, backed by the Islamic bomb?’

‘Well,’ said the cardinal, ‘obviously that wouldn’t be the ideal outcome.’

‘But you think there’s a middle course?’

‘Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. Listen, old friend, I don’t want to see people lose their lives. I don’t want to see decent Muslim families in Dublin, or anywhere else, being turfed out of their homes or beaten up or intimidated. They’ve made their lives in the West and they’ve the same rights as the rest of us, and anybody who thinks differently will have me to answer to. But I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t want some formal recognition from Muslims that Europe, and the Western world in general, is governed by a Christian ethic. All these immigrants – they say they came for a better life: a job, a decent education for their children, money in their pocket. But then it turns that’s only a part of it. Before you know it, they’re demanding Muslim enclaves, Muslim schools, Muslim marriage customs, even their own legal system, with stoning for adulterous wives and flogging for those that get up to mischief behind the bicycle sheds.’

O’Malley thought about this. He could think of more than a few priests who had ‘got up to mischief’ with children, then escaped all punishment. But that was another question. ‘It wasn’t so long ago,’ he said, ‘that such customs and outlook were the official policy of the Catholic Church.’

‘Ah, but we’ve come a long way since then. Sure look at the changes on
contraception
and gay rights. We’ll have a married clergy before we’re done, you watch. But the point is, that’s for us to decide. It’s not for newcomers of a different faith and outlook to come over here and impose their values on us. If they want to live under sharia law – if that’s what’s important to them – why didn’t they just stay at home in the first place, where it’s already enshrined in statute? What they’re truly after, it seems to me, is revenge for the crusades and five hundred years of failure.’

‘I can’t talk about this now, Henry,’ said O’Malley. ‘But tell me this. The other day, when you were at that meeting with the other senior cardinals – the European ones, that is – did you notice any enmity between Bosani and Rüttgers?’

McCarthy snorted. ‘Lord, yes. The two of them were at it hammer and tongs. Rüttgers – may he rest in peace – was all for integration and moderation and extending the hand of friendship. It could all be worked out, he said. No need for violence. But Bosani wasn’t having any of it. I always thought he was the sort of fella would keep a pearl-handled Derringer up his sleeve. If a gun had sprung into his hand and he’d shot Rüttgers through the heart, it would have seemed entirely in character. Instead, he put him down in that particularly imperious way they teach you in Rome, as if the Curia had an exemption, signed by Jesus himself, from any of the usual requirements of Christian charity. He reminded me of those priests in Joyce preaching forgiveness while reaching for the switch behind their backs. Anyway, a couple of days later, after poor old Rüttgers drowned in his bath, you’d have thought from what Bosani said it was God’s punishment on the man for his error.’

Just listening to McCarthy made O’Malley realize what it was he missed about Ireland. But he wasn’t done yet. ‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘How close would you say Cardinal Bosani is to understanding the Muslim world view? How steeped is he in Islamic thinking?’

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What are you implying?’ 

‘I’m just asking.’

‘Asking for trouble, more like. Okay, make of this what you will – and you’re a Jesuit, so for you it’s a full time job – but just between us, since you raise the question, I’d say Bosani would almost be happier as a Muslim. He’d be at home within its dense regulatory framework, preaching the kind of certainties that the Church seems to have lost hold of it in recent years. I don’t need to tell you that he’s not one to turn the other cheek. If he met Our Lord, I’m pretty sure he’d wanted Him to rethink the notion that the meek shall inherit the Earth. He’d put you in mind of those intellectuals who love the ritual and language of the Church and would be all for the Latin Mass and the pope with his triple tiara, but can’t bring themselves to go to church of a Sunday because, when you come down to it, it’s all piss and wind.’

O’Malley hesitated before he spoke again. ‘And how would you react if that turned out to be an accurate description of Bosani?’ he said at last.

‘What? You mean if the man charged with organizing the election of the next Pope turned out not to be a true Catholic?’

‘Exactly. Or believed in something else. Islam, for example.’

McCarthy gasped in astonishment. ‘Sure if that was true, we’d all be  fucked.’

‘Thank you, Your Eminence. Concisely put, as always. Now bear with me. You will be familiar with Caravaggio’s masterpiece,
The Betrayal of Christ
.’

‘The one in the National Gallery that was lost for centuries? Of course. It’s magnificent. But what about it?’

‘Would you be surprised to learn that the figure of Judas laying hold of Our Lord as he hands him over to the Romans was in fact a representation of the then Camerlengo, Cardinal Orazio Battista?”

‘Is that a fact?’

‘It is. Though I only just discovered as much during a recent trawl through the Secret Archive. And would it further surprise you to learn that the fleeing man on the left of the picture – widely assumed to be St John the Evangelist – was in reality a depiction of a priest who was murdered within hours of discovering Battista offering prayers to Allah?’