Read The Caravaggio Conspiracy Online
Authors: Walter Ellis
Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Thriller, #Historical
The Caravaggio Conspiracy (30 page)
O’Malley sipped from a glass of water set next to his notes, then resumed his sermon.
‘Later, I will have more to say on this most dangerous and devious enemy of Christ – a man who, until recently, kept an unlisted portrait of Battista in his private office. He knows who he is. There may well be those, perhaps here tonight, who can guess at his identity. But for now, until the final proof is laid, I implore those cardinals who tomorrow will be locked into the seclusion of the Sistine Chapel to vote not for the end of history, but for an open future, in which freedom is protected and our faith can go forward. I beg them to elect a candidate whose faith in Jesus Christ and all His saints is as sure and certain as that of the Muslims for Allah and the Prophet. Only as equals, worshipping the one God, eschewing all perversion of the divine will, can believers in these two great faiths hope to live in amity and undestanding. Your Eminences … do not vote for war. Vote for peace and brotherhood and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. Vote for the best hope of the universal Church.’
As soon as O’Malley turned to move away from the lectern, one of his
adjutants
general, Father Joaquin Casado y Moncada, from St Ignatius’ hometown of Azpeitia in Navarre, rose to lead the congregation in prayer, then raised his right hand to give the cruciform blessing: ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.’ As he spoke, several cardinals and lesser prelates, led by Archbishop Von Stiegel, walked out in protest, followed by their retinues. But as Casado declared the Mass ended and bade worshippers to go in peace, the rest of the congregation burst into wild applause.
39
*
Conclave
It was shortly after dawn on the morning of the papal election that a bus driver on his way to work found the body of Father Cesare Visco outside the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Built in 1941, the church was less than half a kilometre from Visco’s home on the Via Venticinque. The priest had apparently slit his throat and died with his bloody hands groping up the church steps, indicating to witnesses and the Church communications department his wish to be closer to God.
Cardinal Bosani called an immediate news conference and revealed his shock and horror at his discovery that Visco, his personal secretary, was in fact a closet Muslim. He read out an email, sent to his personal inbox, that he said was Visco’s suicide note. In this, the late priest confessed his plan to pervert Bosani’s
pro-Catholic
, pro-European campaign in advance of the conclave into a message of hate that would ultimately benefit the Islamic cause. He was obviously a fanatic, the Camerlengo told journalists, the balance of his mind disturbed by goodness knew what episode in his past.
What Bosani did not reveal to his audience was that he had called Franco, who was about to board a train for Genoa, and asked for one last favour. Visco, he told him, was a traitor to the church and in the pay of the Muslim Brotherhood. He could not be allowed to work against Christ’s interests at this critical time. Franco, Bosani said, would be absolved in full and assured of his place in heaven if he now dealt with the problem, then resumed his journey north.
‘While I weep for poor Visco and pray for the repose of his soul,’ the Camerlengo told journalists, ‘I point to his treachery as proof of my contention that there are evil forces at work, directed against us from the East. These forces must be
countered
by a new pope whose holy mission will be to restore the Catholic Church to its historic pre-eminence in this, its continental homeland.’
Bosani denied all knowledge of Visco’s activities and set out systematically to blacken O’Malley’s name by suggesting that it was he, the Superior General of the Jesuits, who was determined to divide Catholicism and set brother against brother. He ended the press briefing by confessing his own naivety and accepted
responsibility
for hiring Visco in the first place. ‘But now, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to defer all further questions until after the cardinal electors have discharged their duty and elected a new pope to the Throne of Peter. I ask you to pray for me, for poor deluded Father Visco and for all those whose task it is to restore peace in the world.’
The entries from the Secret Archive had been kept in Bosani’s safe for twenty years. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t destroyed them long ago. All he knew was that when he had tried once to burn the two sets of papers, setting light to them with the flame from a candle, he had been unable to do so. Perhaps, he thought, as he once again smoothed out the 400-year-old documents, they served as a necessary corrective, demonstrating how even the best-laid plans could come to grief if one was not eternally vigilant. But there was also his wish that, in the fullness of time, Battista’s heroism should at last be recognized. He deserved no less.
The words on the principle document were seared into his head, but he could never resist the Italian text. The author was Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga, later Duke of Mantua, appointed to the Sacred College by Pope Paul V at the consistory of 10 December 1607.
21 December 1610
Most Holy Father,
Your Holiness will recall that following the disappearance and likely death of the artist Michelangelo Merisi, known as Caravaggio, you asked me to investigate what truth, if any, might lie behind claims made by the late Prince Marzio Colonna concerning the religious and political
allegiance
of His Eminence Cardinal Battista, lately Camerlengo of the Roman Church.
It is with the utmost regret that I must inform Your Holiness of my conclusion, that Battista was indeed a Muslim and had been so for many years. It is further my opinion that, in pursuit of his conspiracy with the Ottoman court, by way of the Safiye Sultan, mother of Sultan Mehmed III, he caused to have murdered not only Prince Marzio, but Caravaggio also.
In accordance with Your Holiness’s instructions, I put several men on whom I have in the past placed reliance in positions in which they could observe the cardinal’s behaviour. Additionally, I travelled myself, with others, to the Prince’s palazzo in Zagarola, south of Rome, where I
interrogated
members of the household of Duke Marzio, as well as to Porto Ercole, where I spoke with the parish priest of the church of Sant’Erasmus, Father Salviati, about the mysterious disappearance of Merisi.
Servants of the late Prince informed me that their master had dined unexpectedly with the Camerlengo days before his death, while on a visit to Rome. They added that the first signs of what was subsequently said to be the plague had appeared two days thereafter, both in the Prince and in his immediate entourage. Yet no others became infected. One servant, whom I had to assure of the Church’s protection in this matter, went so far as to say that Don Marzio had blamed Battista for ‘poisoning’ him.
In Porto Ercole, the priest, Salviati, told me that on a hot afternoon in July of this year of Our Lord he chanced on a stranger, possibly answering to the description of Merisi, lying on the floor of his church, appearing ill and, so he thought, affected with pestilence. Upon leaving San’Erasmus to secure help, he was halted by three riders, one of them a Monsignor, bearing the arms of the papal household, the crossed keys and the triple tiara; the others two brothers of the Order of St John the Beheaded. The Monsignor, said to be of stocky build, aged in his forties, told the priest that they, not he, would take care of the stranger. They then warned him most solemnly to inform no one of their visit. He did not see the three again and when he re-entered the church found only a bloodstain near the front of the church, closest to the altar.
In the meantime, my spies in Rome reported to me that Battista and his secretary, while in the cardinal’s quarters in the Sacred College, did on two occasions prostrate themselves in the Muslim fashion, worshipping in what they understood to be Arabic. Prior to these prayers, they washed their faces, hands and feet and touched the tips of their fingers to their foreheads, mouths and hearts.
Knowing of Your Holiness’s deep concern in this matter, I took
immediate
steps to secure the arrest and interrogation of the Camerlengo. I must now report to you that Battista, having been put to the question and tortured for four hours with irons, confessed to his crimes, which he said were committed in the name of Allah, to whom he bore his true allegiance following time spent in Constantinople, now Istanbul, in service of the Church.
Your Holiness commanded that should I find Battista guilty as charged, I should first ascertain which accomplices, if any, he had retained in this affair and then have him put to death both quickly and secretly lest his crimes become known to the wider community to the detriment of Your Holiness and the Universal Church.
Three names were revealed under torture: that of a senior Knight of the Order of St John, Fra’Luis de Fonseca; also that of Battista’s intimate secretary, Father Scaglia; and that of the Monsignor seen in Porto Ercole, Father Domenico Bellarmino, employed in the office of the Camerlengo. It is my hope that I shall secure the names of the Brothers assisting Bellarmino by the end of this week, at which time I will inform Your Holiness further. Each of these men will be dealt with by your order – secretly. Fonseca will die, by your instruction, at the hands of Fabrizio Colonna, whose uncle, Don Marzio, was a victim of this conspiracy and who most nobly rescued Caravaggio from his unjust incarceration in Valletta. None of those who die shall know of the stain they leave.
You will wish to know that Battista was beheaded in a dungeon of the Castel Sant’Angelo. His body, by your express wish, was burned, without ceremony, in the adjacent grounds and his dust scattered in the Tiber. His last words, I must regretfully report to Your Holiness, as the axe fell, were ‘Allahu Akbar’.
I pray to Jesus and His Holy Mother that this matter is now concluded.
I have the honour to profess myself with the utmost respect, Your Holiness’s most obedient and humble servant.
Gonzaga
Bosani gazed at the familiar letter for several long seconds. Even after all this time, he could feel the sense of injustice burning within him. Battista was a hero of Islam, a martyr in the cause of Muhammad – peace be upon Him. A fragment of his ashes, recovered from a charnel house in Trastevere, had been deposited in the foundations of the mosque of al-Malika Safiyya, in Cairo, on the orders of Safiye Sultan herself. It was his only memorial. But his death would not go unavenged. More than four hundred years had passed since that terrible day in the confines of Castel Sant’Angelo. Bosani, though, did not forget, and neither would the world. Offering a short prayer, he flicked open his mobile phone and pressed the now familiar numbers.
Watching Bosani’s press conference on the television, O’Malley recognized a masterful performance. ‘The fellow could have been a Jesuit,’ he told his nephew. ‘But now we need to find out what impact all this business may have on the conclave. After Mass, the cardinals go into purdah and we will have no further chance of reaching them. Let’s see what we can do in the few hours remaining.’
O’Malley called a news conference of his own, in which he repeated, in modest terms, the accusation he had made in his sermon in the Gesù. He asked journalists not simply to assume that Visco killed himself. ‘Instead, ask yourselves who benefits from his death. Not Visco, obviously. Not me, I submit. The man whom I suggest most gains from the poor wretch’s demise is in fact Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, who as he vanishes into the conclave would have us believe he is in mourning – a visionary, cruelly duped by a traitor, whose stern, even heroic, warning against the coming predations of the Islamic world rings truer today than ever.’
The Italian press had splashed that morning with O’Malley’s doom-laden sermon. Now, following the two news conferences, the internet was awash with sensational claims and fresh ‘revelations’. Television stations, geared up for the spectacle of a papal election, not realizing that the vote could be rigged, began to explore every aspect of the bitter quarrel between the Camerlengo and the Superior General of the Society of Jesus.
Dempsey turned to his uncle. ‘Why did Visco do it?’ he wanted to know.
‘Don’t be stupid, Liam. Visco didn’t kill himself. He was murdered.’
The younger man looked shocked. ‘But why? He couldn’t be sure that Maya had pictures of him praying. All he knew was that someone had been spying at his door. It could easily have been a child.’
‘Quite possibly,’ said O’Malley. ‘But by telling Bosani of his fears, he was signing his own death warrant. Bosani already knew his plot had been exposed. Any properly organized investigation was bound to lead to his door. Even though I didn’t mention his name, it was plain as day that I was on to him. He needed a scapegoat – someone against whom there was genuine evidence – who would make it look as if I had fingered the wrong man. Visco fitted the bill perfectly. He had also failed his master and deserved his fate. Maya’s film footage, once handed to the media, would have shown to the world that he was a practising Muslim. From that moment on, it was a question of damage limitation, and fair play to Bosani, he almost succeeded in turning Visco’s death to his advantage. I’m not saying the Camerlengo wielded the knife personally. That wouldn’t be his style. But he will certainly have given the order.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ said Dempsey. ‘No wonder I gave up religion.’
High Mass on the morning of the papal election was celebrated in St Peter’s Basilica. To indicate the global nature of the occasion, the officiating priests were drawn from Uganda, Hong Kong, the United States and Peru. The dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Urbano della Chiesa, who would later preside over the conclave, next to the Camerlengo, then gave an address. Della Chiesa was as straightforward a cleric as Bosani was scheming. Due to pressure of business, he had been unable to attend the previous night’s Mass at the Gèsu, but had watched it afterwards on television. O’Malley’s comments had caused him grave concern. Never in his
lifetime
had a Superior General of the Jesuits intervened in such a fashion in the matter of a papal election. But the dean had worked with the Camerlengo for several years and had long sensed that something was not quite right about him. In his address – intended less as a sermon than a speech of welcome to the cardinal electors – he urged his 121 voting colleagues not to be swayed by rumour but to focus on the need to proclaim a new pastor for a troubled Church.
‘You will have read and heard much in the last day about conspiracies and clandestine plots to subvert the will of God. But I tell you, those who seek to divert the Almighty from His divine purpose are surely doomed to fail. Our duty in the conclave that will shortly begin is to elect from the ranks of the Sacred College a priest of God to sit on the Throne of Peter. Our new pope, whoever he may be, will face grave challenges. He must therefore be both strong and humble, able to resist the impulses that at times affect us all and proclaim the mystery of faith and the certainty of Christ’s return. On Earth, he must be a pastor – the Good Shepherd. Within the Church, he should be a leader, but also the Servant of the Servants of God. Let us pray that today and in the days ahead we shall each of us do our duty and find a pope who will so light the path ahead that all of us in this world can find our way. I ask this in the name of Jesus and His Holy Mother. Amen.’