The Fifth Gospel (28 page)

There's a note on the back, in the same handwriting.

Tell us what Nogara was hiding.

Below is a phone number.

I lurch toward the door and open it.

“Agent Martelli!”

Distantly I hear a sound. An elevator opening. When I turn to look, I see the tail of a black robe entering the car. A priest, leaving.

I turn back. “
Martelli!
”

But this end of the hall is empty. Martelli is gone.

A knot of Eastern priests stands by the elevator bank. They stare at me with concern.

I feel Peter behind me, tugging at my cassock. Without a word I lift him in my arms and run to the nearest stairwell.

“What's wrong?” he cries.

“Nothing. Everything's okay.”

I pull the handle to the stairwell door, but it doesn't budge. The door is locked.

We return to the room and bolt the door. I call Simon's mobile, but there must be no reception at the museums. I dial gendarme headquarters instead.

“Pronto. Gendarmeria.”

“Officer,” I blurt, “this is Father Andreou. I was assigned a security escort, but he's disappeared. I need help.”

“Yes, Father. Of course. One moment.”

But when he returns to the line, he says, “I'm sorry. There's no escort under your name.”

“That's a mistake. I—I need a way to find Agent Martelli.”

“Martelli's right here. Please hold.”

I'm stunned. The voice that comes on the line is unmistakable. “This is Martelli.”

“Agent,” I fumble, “it's Father Andreou. Where are you?”

“At my desk,” he says gruffly. “Your escort was canceled.”

“I don't understand. Something's happening. We need your help. Please come back to the Casa.”

“Sorry, Father. You'll have to call security there like all the other guests do.”

Then the line goes dead.

PETER WATCHES IN A
frantic state as I gather our belongings.

“Babbo, where are we going?”

“To Prozio Lucio.”

I've called Lucio's apartments. Don Diego is on his way. He will escort us back to the penthouse of my uncle's palace.

“What's wrong?” Peter asks, clutching my arm.

“I don't know. Just help me finish packing.”

Ten long minutes later, the knock comes. Glancing through the peephole, I see Diego standing beside an unfamiliar Swiss Guard. I unbolt the door.

“Father Alex,” Diego says, “this is Captain Furrer.”

“Father, what happened?” Furrer asks.

“Someone left this message under my door.”

He shakes his head. “Impossible. Access to this floor is restricted.”

I show him the envelope, but he disregards it.

“The stairwells are secured,” he says, “and the elevator attendants won't bring anyone to this floor without a room key.”

So this is what the nun meant yesterday about the precautions the sisters have taken.

“I saw a priest in a cassock getting into the elevator,” I say.

“There must be another explanation,” Furrer says. “We'll straighten it out downstairs.”

Diego extends his hands, offering to take our bags. Peter, misunderstanding the gesture, runs into his arms for a hug. Over his shoulder, Diego gives me a quizzical look, asking where our gendarme escort is. Down the hall, the Eastern priests continue to stare.

THE NUN AT THE
front desk is wearing a black habit.

“
I
brought up the envelope,” she says. “What's the matter?”

“Where did it come from?” I demand.

“It was with the incoming mail.”

But there's no postage or address on it. Someone dropped it here by hand. I wonder if that was after they tried delivering it themselves.

I notice the lobby is dead. The dining hall has closed early, and a sign says the rear chapel is closed, too. Cordons block the way.

“What's happening?” I ask the nun at the desk.

“Repairs,” she says.

Another sign announces that the top floor, where Peter and I were staying, can be reached only by the secondary elevator.

“Sister, did you tell anyone where we were staying?” I ask.

The nun looks concerned. “Of course not. We're under strictest orders. There must be a misunderstanding.”

But I reach into my cassock and fish out our room key. The Casa's initials are raised on the fob, and engraved beside them, our room number. I wonder if this was my mistake. If someone saw this key. It's an advertisement of where Peter and I have been staying.

“Will you be checking out, Father?” the nun asks, offering to take back the key.

“No,” I say, slipping it back into my cassock. I doubt we're coming back, but there's no need to advertise that, too.

Diego takes our bags and gestures toward the door. “Your sedan is waiting,” he says.

Our sedan. It would take five minutes to walk to Lucio's palace. Yet never in my life have I been more grateful to take a car.

ONLY THE NUNS ARE
home when we arrive.

“His Eminence and your brother are still working on the exhibit,” Diego explains. He shakes his head as if a new circle of hell is being excavated down at the museums. “So what happened?”

I hand him the photo in the envelope. When he reads the message on the back, he frowns. “And your escort?”

“The gendarme agent said it was called off.”

Diego growls. “We'll see about that.”

Before he can reach for the phone on his desk, I say, “Diego, do you know anything about that?” I point to the message on the photo. “A discovery Ugo made?”

“The Diatessaron?”

“No. Something more than that.”

He turns the photo over. “That's what this is about?”

“Michael Black mentioned something like it, too.”

He frowns, not recognizing Michael's name. Few clerics below the grade of bishop can get their business onto my uncle's desk. “First I've heard of it. But I'll see what the chief of gendarmes says.”

I wave him off. “Let me talk to Simon and my uncle first.”

“You're sure?”

I'm not sure I can trust the gendarmes now.

Diego looks me squarely in the eye. “Alex, you're safe here. That's a promise.”

“I appreciate that.”

Peter says, “Can I have a fruit punch, Diego?”

Diego smiles. “Three fruit punches, coming up,” he says, winking at me. He makes a good Negroni.

But just for a second, he hesitates. Under his breath he adds, “I ought to tell you that we have a visitor coming tonight.”

“I know.”

“Will you be joining us?”

“Yes.”

Something about the idea makes him frown again. But he continues on toward the kitchen.

WHEN PETER HAS HAD
time to settle in, I tell him I need to unpack our bags. Diego takes the hint and distracts Peter so I can be alone in the bedroom.

Sliding the photo out of the envelope again, I look at the phone number on the back. It's a landline somewhere inside these walls. Vatican numbers have the same area code as Rome but begin with 698. For a few euros, the owner of this number could've bought a nearly anonymous SIM card in Rome. Doing this instead sends a message.

I dial the switchboard and ask the nun to do a reverse lookup.

“Father,” she says politely, “we have a policy against that.”

I thank her for her time and hang up. There are a dozen nuns at the switchboard, so I know I won't get the same one twice. When I call back, I explain that I'm an electrician in the maintenance department. Someone has called for a repair, but all I have is this callback number, no name or address.

“It's an unregistered line,” she says helpfully. “In the Palazzo di ­Niccolò III. Third floor. That's all it says here.”

“Thank you, Sister.”

I close my eyes. The papal palace is a heap of smaller palaces built one on top of another by successive popes centuries ago. The Palace of Pope Nicholas III is its nucleus, more than seven hundred years old. It contains the most powerful organism in the Holy See. The Secretariat of State.

My stomach churns. The Secretariat is faceless. Its men come and go. They are recruited, sent abroad, replaced. There's only one way to know whose phone this is.

When I dial the number, the line rings and rings. Finally an answering machine picks up. But there's no voice. No message. Just silence, followed by a beep.

I haven't prepared anything to say. But it comes out.

“Whatever you want from me, I don't have it. I don't know anything. Nogara never told me any secret. Please. Leave me and my son alone.”

I hesitate, then hang up. In the adjacent room, through the crack
in the door, I see Peter playing a game on Diego's computer. Fishing. I watch him cast his line and wait. Cast his line and wait.

THE AFTERNOON FADES AWAY.
From the windows of the penthouse I can see everything that happens in this country. Anyone coming from any direction will be visible; nothing can take us by surprise. This helps the panic to drain, replacing it with weary vigilance. Diego finds a deck of cards and introduces Peter to scopa, the game I played with Mona in the hospital after he was born. It's just past six when Lucio and Simon return from the exhibit. My uncle immediately demands to know what happened, why Peter and I no longer have our security escort. Rather than belabor everything in front of Peter, I let the topic go. The nuns have finished preparing dinner and setting the places, so with a sense of expedition I don't quite understand, we all sit down to eat. Lucio begins the blessing from the head of the table. We all say it together, four priests and a boy. To the extent that we've ever felt like a normal family, we feel like one now.

After dinner comes a lull. Peter watches the evening news with Diego. I find the Vatican yearbook. Almost thirteen hundred pages go by before I find a page titled
VICARIATE OF THE VATICAN CITY-STATE
—the special administrative unit devoted to our tiny country. The name of the judicial vicar will be here.

To my surprise, the post is empty. All decisions are made by our vicar general, a cardinal named Galuppo. And the first words of Cardinal Galuppo's profile ring alarm bells.

Born in the
archdiocese of Turin
.

The man controlling Ugo's trial is from the Shroud's city. I wonder if this can possibly be a coincidence. The other Turin cardinal I know of is Simon's boss, the Cardinal Secretary of State, and he, too, is touched by the shadow of Ugo's death: the phone number on the back of the photo I was sent at the Casa rings a Secretariat phone, and Michael said he suspected Secretariat priests beat him up.

Hometown networks are important in this city, and cardinals are their hubs. John Paul couldn't have removed the Shroud from its chapel without the knowledge of Cardinal Poletto, the archbishop of Turin, and I imagine the first men Poletto might've contacted were his fellow cardinals from the archdiocese.

I wonder if Ugo's death can really boil down to something so petty. The feelings of a few powerful men about the transfer of a relic from their birth city. As the sun sets, the trees below are black with roosting birds and loud with their evening chatter. At half past seven the telephone rings. I hear Diego say, “Send him up.”

Lucio emerges from his bedroom looking grim. He shuffles forward on his four-legged cane as the nuns bring a pitcher of iced water to a table in the next room, then make themselves scarce.

A sharp knock comes at the door. Diego steps forward to answer it, and I see Simon close his eyes and breathe.

The man who enters is an old Roman priest I don't recognize.

“Monsignor,” Diego says, “please come in.”

The old man greets Simon by name, then turns to me and says, “Are you Father Alexander Andreou? Your brother mentioned you would be here.”

He offers a handshake, then spots Lucio down the hall and begins to plod toward him. I glance at Simon, wondering if the monsignor is a Secretariat friend, but he gives no sign.

Lucio sits in his private library, at a long table with a red felt top and a red silk skirt. A poor man's version of the furnishings in the papal palace. At Lucio's invitation, the monsignor takes a chair and puts his briefcase on the table. Simon and I follow him in.

“Diego,” my uncle says, “that will be all. Hold my calls.”

Without a word from me, Diego brings Peter out with him. Now the four of us are alone.

“Alexander,” Lucio says, “this is Monsignor Mignatto, an old friend of mine from seminary. He works at the Rota now. Last night we received some important news, and I've asked him to advise the family about what happens next.”

Mignatto bows his head slightly. My uncle is constantly surrounded by old priests trying to make themselves useful to our family in the hope that Lucio will be their meal ticket. Already I wonder about this man's motives. The title
monsignor
is an honorary promotion only halfway up from priest. In most dioceses it's a badge of pride, but around here, for a man of Mignatto's age, it's a sign of not really having made it. A consolation prize for not having reached bishop. Simon will make monsignor next year, the standard promotion after five years of Secretariat work.

With a hint of lawyerly self-importance, Mignatto places three sheets of paper on the table, one at a time. Then he clicks the briefcase shut. A Rotal advocate ranks far below a cardinal, but Mignatto's cassock is still expensive-looking and tailored, nothing like the ones in the clerical supply catalogs I shop from. Monsignors of his grade have the honor of wearing purple buttons and sashes instead of black, to set them apart from ordinary priests. Though Eastern Catholics consider this finicky—there's no biblical basis for the title of monsignor, let alone for the color of their buttons—it's still daunting to be the only Greek priest in a room of successful Romans.