The Fifth Gospel (36 page)

“You're sure? You don't want to go somewhere else?”

He shakes his head. “I want to play cards with Diego.”

He wraps his arms around my hips and squeezes.

“All right. Then that's where we'll go.”

He collects his soccer ball from under a bush to bring it home. Like all his toys, he has written his name all over it, for fear of losing it. He has no idea the confusion I feel. The inversion of everything I've known for so long. Mona so close by, and Simon so far.

“Let's go,” I say, pointing to Lucio's palace on the hill. “I'll race you there.”

C
HAPTER
21

T
HE WONDERS OF
a child's mind. Once Peter is engrossed in a game of scopa with Diego, Giorgio becomes a distant memory.

“Where is Simon really, Babbo?” he asks, just once, never moving his eyes from his cards.

“Talking to some people about Mister Nogara's exhibit,” I say.

Peter nods as if this sounds important. “Diego,” he says, “can you deal again?”

While they play, I call Leo to see if he's heard anything about Simon. There's something in his voice when he answers, “Give me an hour. I think we're onto something.” While I wait, an idea comes to me. I decide to slip inside Simon's bedroom and see what he left behind.

The room is almost bare. The dresser and desktop are empty. His wallet and mobile phone were probably on him when he was taken away. Father's old garment bag hangs alone in the closet. A note pinned to it in Diego's hand tells Simon that he left it in the car-service sedan that drove him from the airport. My brother doesn't seem to have touched it, but in one of the small outer pockets of the bag, I find a little brown booklet with a golden emblem of the papal tiara and keys. Below are the words
PASSEPORT D
IPLOMATIQUE
. I open the cover.

On the right-hand page is a passport photo of Simon in his cassock. Stamped in red are the words
SEGRETERIA DI STATO—RAPPORTI CON GLI STATI
.
Secretariat of State—Relations with States
. My eyes skip to the handwritten calligraphy in Latin.

The Reverend Simon Andreou, Secretary
Second Class, Secretariat of State
.
This passport is valid for five years until the day June 1, 2005
.

The bottom is signed by the Secretary of State:
D. Card. Boia
.

I fan the pages forward to the visa section, the entry and exit stamps. No surprises here. Bulgaria, Turkey, and Italy. Nowhere else. Even the dates match up to visits I recall.

I keep fishing. Zipped into one of the inner plastic pockets of the garment bag is Simon's day planner. Tucked inside it is an envelope addressed to Simon in familiar handwriting. The postmark is three weeks ago. Ugo mailed this to Simon at the nunciature just a few days before he wrote his final e-mail to me.

The letter is written on a sheet of homily paper—stationery with an empty column on the left side, where a priest can record the gospel passages he's preaching on. I gave Ugo a sheaf of this paper as a tool for comparing verses, and this particular sheet appears to have been used for that purpose, leaving the impression that Ugo was writing in a rush and grabbed the first thing at hand. I wonder why.

The echo of Ugo's voice leaves a dull throb at the bottom of my throat. He's alive in this letter. Excitable; eager; full of anticipation. The final e-mail he sent me was full of urgency and worry, but almost none of that is present here. Simon seems to have removed the proof Ugo mentioned, but what he left behind is enough.

So it's true: Ugo made a dramatic discovery. Oddly, this letter credits it to a combination of my lessons with him and the work Ugo did on the Diatessaron, even though I never knew of any discovery arising from either. Surely what he found was our theft of the Shroud in 1204—though I can't imagine how he ever stumbled across that by comparing gospel verses on sheets of homily paper. Nor does Ugo seem to realize how devastating 1204 would be to his audience, how his enthusiasm for proving the Shroud to be older than the carbon-dating range was coming at the cost of resurrecting a poisonous ancient hatred. I don't have to guess how my brother would've reacted to the news. No wonder Ugo's proof isn't in this envelope anymore. In Simon's shoes I might've been tempted to dispose of it, too. Maybe this is why Ugo sounded so upset in his final e-mail to me, sent only four days later: Simon had just explained to him what a bombshell 1204 was and what a storm it would create if he mounted his discovery. Maybe Ugo wanted a second opinion from an Eastern priest like me.

There are bigger surprises in this letter, too. Michael Black was right: Simon has been inviting Orthodox clergy to Rome. Ugo seems to have been very aware of it—he refers to the trips Simon was taking and the gesture that should be made toward the Orthodox at an upcoming meeting. Strangest of all, there's even a hint in the final lines that he and Simon were joined by Michael in the work they did together. The only contributor to Ugo's exhibit who seems not to have known of these other
arrangements was me.

I open the bedroom door and ask Diego if he can look up something for me.

“Daily schedules from the past few weeks,” I say. “For the Casina.”

The Casina, mentioned in this letter, where Ugo was preparing to deliver a keynote to visiting Orthodox, is a summer house in the middle of the Vatican gardens, a ten-minute walk from my apartment. It was built in the Renaissance as a papal retreat from the Vatican palace, but John Paul rarely uses it, and the building stays vacant other than the occasional meetings of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. That connection may be a clue about the meeting Ugo is discussing here. The Pontifical Academy is a group of eighty international researchers and theoreticians, including dozens of Nobel laureates, whose stamp of approval on Ugo's exhibit might erase the radiocarbon stigma for good. No one would be better qualified to send the message that today's science has overthrown yesterday's. I could envision Simon inviting Orthodox priests to a meeting of the academy just as reassurance that my father's Turin fiasco was not about to be repeated.

While I wait for Diego to return, I riffle through Simon's day planner. Most of what I see is familiar. Simon's trips to Rome are marked off with black Xs, over which he's written
Alex and Peter!
in red. Michael emphasized Simon's habit of disappearing over the weekends, and sure enough there are weekend meetings penciled here. But the notations tell me nothing. Written slapdash in pencil on the third Saturday in July is
RM—10 AM
. I presume
RM
means “Reverendissimo”—archbishop. But there's no name, no location. The next weekend says
SER 8:45 AM
, which probably means “Sua Eccellenza Reverendissima”—a bishop—but again, no name or place.

Still, one thing gives me pause. At the beginning of the planner, in the directory of my brother's contacts, I find a listing for the nameless archbishop:
RM
it says again. His phone number is odd. It has too many digits to be Turkish. It looks more like an international line.

I punch it into my mobile and wait for someone to answer.

“Bună ziua,” comes a man's voice. “Palatul Patriarhiei.”

I've spoken to many Turks on the phone. This is not Turkish.

“Parla Italiano?” I say.

No answer.

“Do you speak English?”

“Small. Little.”

“What country am I calling right now? Can you tell me where you're located?”

He pauses, and seems about to hang up, when I say, “
Where are you?
”

“Bucureşti.”

“Thank you,” I fumble.

I stare at the letters Simon has written in the book:
RM
. They don't mean “Reverendissimo.” They mean “Romania.” My brother has been doing business with someone in Bucharest.

So
SER
can't be “Sua Eccellenza Reverendissima.” It must be—

“Belgrade,” says the man who answers the second number I call.

Serbia.

I can't believe my ears. Romania and Serbia are Orthodox countries. Simon has been reaching out to Orthodox clergy on a scale I didn't imagine. From Turkey and Bulgaria to Romania and Serbia, he has paved a wide path toward Italy that travels through half of Orthodox Eastern Europe. If he has invited a few priests from each of these countries, then he has begun to create a symbolic bridge between the capital cities of our two Churches.

I pull out my wallet and stare at the photo of bloody Michael Black. Just visible behind him is the airport sign I noticed before.
PRELUARE BAGAJE
. I wonder.

Calling the main offices of Vatican Radio, I ask for a translator on the Slavic Languages desk. An ancient-sounding Jesuit answers. When I explain the situation, he chuckles. “Those words are Romanian, Father. They mean ‘baggage claim.' ”

So Michael was in Romania. It seems impossible that he could've been helping Simon, and yet the casual way Ugo invokes his name in the final lines—
send my best to Michael
—suggests the three of them were closer than I imagined.
Your
close follower
, Ugo called him. I was never able to do more than guess at the reasons for Michael's first change of heart. I wonder if Ugo's research on the Shroud was enough to propel him into another.

I find his number in my call log, but when I dial it, no one answers.

“Michael,” I say excitedly into his voice mail. “It's Alex Andreou.
Please call me. I need to talk to you about Romania.” Remembering what Mignatto asked me, I add, “Simon's in trouble. We need your help. Please, call as soon as you can.”

I leave him my number but don't mention that I need him to fly to Rome. It's too soon for that; this is more delicate than I realized. If Michael was working amicably with my brother only weeks ago, then what happened in the airport must've changed everything. Michael seemed so hostile toward Simon on the phone, so quick to point out Simon's responsibility for what the rest of us have suffered since.

Diego returns, holding his laptop like an open book between his hands. “Calendar's up.”

I scan the screen. “This is everything? You're sure?”

He nods.