The Fifth Gospel (45 page)

“How is that possible?” the presiding judge asks.

Very few Italians own guns like these.

“Italian permits are overwhelmingly for hunting weapons,” Corvi says, lifting a second page. “Nogara's permit was for a self-defense handgun. That's another reason the identification is fairly sure.”

I think of the notation in Ugo's medical file.
Fears being followed, harmed
. I jot a note on the legal pad in front of Mignatto:
Can you ask when he applied for the permit?

Before Mignatto can respond, the lead judge reads my mind.

“The date on the application,” Corvi replies, “is July twenty-fifth.”

Michael was beaten up in the airport only one week earlier. Ugo must've decided to arm himself after finding the photo of Michael in his mailbox.

“So you're suggesting,” the young judge says, “that someone took Nogara's handgun, killed him with it, and then did what with the weapon?”

Corvi raises his hands in the air. “That's for your police to establish. All I can tell you is the forensic analysis and the database results.”

Mignatto is moving sheets of paper across the defense table. When he finds the list of deponents, he scans the column of names again, as if to reassure himself that no gendarmes will be called today.

“You mentioned a second piece of evidence you were called to analyze,” the lead judge says, glancing down at his own notes. “What was it?”

Corvi nods. “Your police found a human hair in the deceased's car. They sent it to us for identification.”

Mignatto begins to object. Simon was in Ugo's car many times. The hair proves nothing. But for once, the judges ignore him. The car tugs at their imaginations. Ugo wouldn't have carried a gun into a meeting of priests at Castel Gandolfo, so the car's broken window looms larger.

“Where was the hair found?” the judge asks.

“By the driver's seat.”

This is odd. Ugo didn't let anyone else drive his car.

“The hair was Father Andreou's?” the judge asks.

“It was.”

Yet there's an odd hitch in the way he says it. And in that hitch, a dark intuition slips through me. I have made an immense mistake.

Corvi stares at the lab report. “We were able to match it to a blood sample given at Rebibbia Prison three years ago.”

Dread falls over me like a shadow.

“The name on the blood sample,” Corvi says, “is Alexander Andreou.”

Mignatto's brow pinches. He looks up, registering what he believes is an error. Then he turns on me, ashen.

I'm mute. The judges are staring.

“A recess,” Mignatto coughs out. He turns to the judges. “Please, Monsignors. I need a brief recess.”

IN THE COURTYARD, MIGNATTO
paces silently. Glaring down from the niches of Saint Peter's are marble saints taller than two-story buildings.

“Monsignor, I needed to see the car,” I say. “I didn't know—”

“You broke into the impound garage?” he says, still pacing.

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

I won't drag Gianni into this. “Yes.”

Mignatto chops the air with his hand, dividing each moment into particles of time. “When you were there, you took Nogara's phone from his car?”

“No.”

He stops. “Then where did it come from?”

“Health Services.”

He's nearly speechless. “What have you done?”

“I thought—”

“You thought what? That no one would notice?”

“I was trying to help Simon.”

“Enough! Was this your plan all along? You and your uncle? To decide the outcome of this trial yourselves?”

“Of course not.”

He steps closer. “Do you understand what the promoter of justice is doing to us in there?”

I don't know what he means. The prosecution got nothing out of Guido and Gino Pei.

When I say as much, though, Mignatto explodes.

“Don't be naïve! He got exactly he wanted out of Canali. And what he did with the driver was ingenious.”

“What are you talking about?”

“
Who ordered the drivers not to keep their logs?
Who would've put drivers under oath?
Well, who else? The car service reports to your uncle.”

“You're reading too much into this.”

“Then tell me: what was the point of Guido Canali's testimony? Canali saw nothing. He never laid eyes on your brother or Nogara or the crime scene. So why call him as a witness?”

“I don't know.”

“Because he saw
you
, Father. Because he could testify that your brother's first reaction wasn't to call the police but to call his family. The incident report says the gendarmes thought you
both
called for help, because you arrived before they did. You bribed Canali using tickets from your uncle. Don't you see the scenario the promoter has begun to paint?”

I'm speechless.

“What's the only question the judges are asking themselves? The security footage is missing. The carpool logs are gone. Witnesses are under oath not to speak. The salient fact of the trial is the
silence
. The judges want to know where the pressure is coming from, and that's exactly what the promoter of justice is answering for them. Your brother called you for help. Your hair in the car suggests you helped him clean it out. Your uncle swore all his drivers to secrecy, then let your brother edit Nogara's exhibit as he saw fit. The exhibit is no longer permissible as a topic of testimony. Where do the silences point, Father? What does it say when your brother refuses to testify? Our possession of Nogara's mobile phone only confirms everything the prosecution is hinting at.”

“Monsignor . . . I'm sorry.”

He extends an arm in the air. “Enough. Go.”

“Go where?”

“Do you really think,” he snaps, “that I'm going to let you sit beside me while the tribunal considers the evidence of your own complicity? You've put me in the position of having to tell the court, in bad faith, that the hair is probably from some other time you drove with Nogara in his car. I have to invent excuses for the phone call, the bribe, the exhibit, the mobile phone. Get out of my sight! The only reason I'm letting you stay on as procurator is that I can't risk having you testify.”

“Monsignor, I don't know what to say. I—”

But he swings his briefcase up and gives me his back as he walks away.

In the doorway to the palace stands the promoter of justice. He's too far away to have overheard anything, but he sizes me up. Mignatto passes him, and they exchange no words. But the prosecutor continues to stare.

C
HAPTER
29

I
WAIT. LONG AFTER
Mignatto and the promoter have returned inside the palace, I stay in the courtyard. Pacing. Hovering in sight of the courtroom doors. No one comes out. I don't expect them to. But the illusion that I'm waiting for something is all that keeps this reckless feeling in check. This angry, anxious tension that shouts for me to
do
something.

I start making calls. Michael Black doesn't answer. So I try again, then a third time. He's ignoring me, but I'll wear him down.

On the sixth try I leave a rambling message.

“Michael, pick up your phone.
Pick up your phone.
If you're too scared to come to Rome, then you need to talk to Simon's lawyer. He has to know what happened in that airport.”

As I talk, I stare down the road to the papal palace, looking for Simon. In vain.

Twenty minutes later, Corvi, the forensic analyst, emerges. A gendarme escorts him to the border and out the gate into Rome. Still no sign of Simon.

Then a sedan with tinted windows pulls up in front of the courthouse. I jump to my feet. When the driver gets out to open the rear door, I hurry over.

The back seat is empty. The driver motions me away, but I sidestep him to look into the passenger seat. Empty, too.

A moment later, the courthouse doors open. Archbishop Nowak exits the palace and shuffles to the open car door. I step back.

Nowak's eyes are downcast. He doesn't even look at my face. But he extends an arm in front of him to let me pass by first. “Please,” he says.

“Your Grace.”

He repeats the gesture with his arm, waiting for me to pass.

“Your Grace, may I speak to you?”

He's a large, stooped man, several inches taller than I am. His cassock is untailored. In his face is a faraway sadness, an abstraction that prevents him from looking up and recognizing me as a familiar face from the courtroom. People say that his father, a police officer in Poland, was killed by an oncoming truck at a traffic stop when he was a boy. Now he's driving home to a second dying father in John Paul. It seems impossible to bring up Simon's plight with a man who considers suffering a fact of life, but I have to do something.

“Please, Your Grace,” I say. “It's important.”

Nowak doesn't move. He says, “Yes, I know, Father Andreou.” And one last time, he makes the gesture, extending his arm.

Finally I understand. He's inviting me into his car.

MY HEART DRUMS AS
I crawl inside. My cassock is unwieldy. I pull it tight around me and slide to the far edge of the back seat to leave room for His Grace. The driver offers him a hand. I remember when my father would grab me by the shoulder and point out Nowak as he passed us on the village streets. The archbishop was almost as young then as Simon is today. Now he is sixty-five. His body has the same leaden heaviness as John Paul's, the barrel-like neck and cumbrous volume about the face, the eyes that haven't surrendered but have somehow retreated. He still smiles, but there's a sadness even in those smiles.

He says nothing as the driver closes the door after him. Nothing as the car gets under way. Just for an instant I see Mignatto leaving the courtroom. His eyes meet mine through the windshield as the sedan pulls away, and I see his mouth open.

“I remember you,” Nowak says at last, in a fatherly voice. “As a boy.”

I try my best not to be awed, not to feel like a child again.

“Thank you, Your Grace.”

“I remember your brother, too.”

“Why are you helping him?”

He leans over slightly, lessening the distance between us. His drooping eyes follow mine as I speak, showing me that he is listening.

“Your brother did something extraordinary,” Archbishop Nowak says, inflecting this last word, this un-Polish word, with his accent. “The Holy Father is grateful.”

So Nowak knows about the exhibit. About the Orthodox.

“Your Grace, do you know where my brother's being held?”

This is a more emotional question than I mean to ask. But he seems so solicitous, so invested in what I feel.

“Yes,” Nowak says with a downturn of his eyes, acknowledging that this must be a painful subject for me.

“Can't you set him free? Can't you stop the trial?”

As we pass through the first entrance of the papal palace, the Swiss Guards stand and salute.

“The trial has a purpose,” Nowak says. “To find the truth.”

“But you
know
the truth. You know he invited Orthodox here, and you know why. The trial is just Cardinal Boia's way of pressuring Simon for answers about the exhibit.”

One by one we slip past the security checkpoints. The sedan never slows.

“Father,” Nowak says quietly, “before the exhibit opens tomorrow, it is important that we know the truth about why Doctor Nogara was killed.”

As if to underscore the importance of this question, he asks the driver to stop the car. The final branch of the palace—John Paul's and Boia's—is before us. We are idling in the courtyard of the Secretariat.

“My brother didn't kill anyone, Your Grace.”

“You know this for certain, because you were at Castel Gandolfo?”

“I just know my brother.”

A pair of Swiss Guards marches up, sensing something amiss, but the driver waves them off.

“If I could set him free from house arrest,” Archbishop Nowak says, “would you tell me the reason Doctor Nogara was killed?”

I understand now. He forbade discussion of the exhibit because he doesn't want Boia finding out about the visiting Orthodox—but without that testimony, Nowak has no idea why Ugo was killed either and can only guess who had a reason to kill him. Simon has kept everyone in
the dark about 1204. Even the man who signed the papers bringing the Shroud here from Turin.

“Your Grace,” I say, “Ugo Nogara discovered that Catholic knights stole the Shroud from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. The Shroud doesn't belong to us. It belongs to the Orthodox.”

Nowak studies me. A pinch of something registers in his eyes. Surprise. Maybe disappointment.

“Yes,” he says. “That is correct.”

“You already knew?”

“But there is something more?” he says. “Something in addition to this?”

“No. Of course not.”

The archbishop reaches out and takes my hand. “You are very unlike your brother.”

Never taking his eyes off me, he taps the seat twice with his hand. The driver opens his door and steps out of the car. A moment later, the door beside me opens.

“I don't understand,” I say. “Are you going to make Cardinal Boia let Simon go?”

I feel the driver's hand on my shoulder, instructing me to step out.

“Father, I am sorry,” Nowak says. “It is not as simple as you believe. Your brother has not told you the whole truth.”

He reaches out and squeezes my hand, the way John Paul used to do in Saint Peter's Square when comforting perfect strangers. As if I've come all this way for something I don't really understand.

A Swiss Guard behind me says, “Father.” Nothing more.

Nowak's hand lets go of mine as I slide out. Even then, he continues to watch me.

THERE ARE ALREADY THREE
messages on my phone from Mignatto, urgently commanding me to return to the Palace of the Tribunal. I ignore them.

I walk up to the Swiss Guard on duty at the eastern door. He saw me get out of Archbishop Nowak's car.

“It's David?” I say.

“Denis, Father.”

“Denis, I need to see my brother.”

Cardinal Boia's apartments are overhead. Simon is right up there.

“I'll call up for you,” he says.

“No, I'll see myself up.”

I step toward the door, but he blocks my way. “Father, I'll need to call first.”

I push him aside. “Tell Cardinal Boia that Simon Andreou's brother is coming to see him.”

A second guard materializes from thin air.

“Loris,” I say, recognizing him, “I need to get through.”

He puts an arm around me and guides me down the steps. At the bottom he says, “Father, what's wrong?”

I pull away. “I'm going to see Simon.”

“You know you're not allowed to do that.”

“He's up there.”

“I know.”

I stop short. “You've seen him?”

“We're not allowed inside the apartments.”

“Tell me the truth
.
”

He hesitates. “Once,” he says.

The emotion feels like a fist against my throat.

“Is he okay?”

“I don't know.”

“Let me inside.”

“You should go home now.”

I feel his hand on me again. I shake it off. The other Swiss Guard, seeing this, calls into his radio for backup.

“Father,” Loris says, “go. Now.”

I back away. At the top of my lungs I shout at the windows on the second floor, “Cardinal Boia!”

Two more Swiss Guards come running from the direction of the Secretariat.

I take another step back and shout, “Your Eminence, I want to see my brother!”

Their hands are on me. They begin forcing me toward the exit of the courtyard.

“Whatever you want to know, I'll tell you!” I shout. “Just let me see my brother!”

I fight to get my arms free, but they drag me across the cobblestones.

“
Please
,” I beg them. “
I have to see him
.”

But when we reach the perimeter of the courtyard, the two Swiss posted there close a metal gate.

“Leave, Father,” Loris says, pointing down the path that leads back out of the palace complex. “While you still can.”

I stagger back, numb on my own legs.

Your brother has not told you the whole truth
.

I stare through the bars of the iron gate, feeling myself crumple. And there, across the courtyard, I see something. Up in a second-floor window, the curtains have parted. Between them, just for an instant, is Cardinal Boia.

I MOVE NUMBLY AWAY.
When I reach the outer palace gate, Mignatto is waiting. Seeing the look in my eyes, he loops an arm through mine and tells the guards, “I'll take him from here.”

We walk in silence back to the tribunal. I don't know if he heard me shouting. I don't care.

Beside the courtroom is an office. Mignatto carries out an errand without a word to me. An archival aide hands him a folder of papers to sign. More new evidence. More new witnesses.

“Still no surveillance footage?” he asks her.

She shakes her head.

I wonder how he can keep this up. How he can pretend this isn't a travesty.

“These are the ones I requested?” he asks, pointing to a series of photos.

She flips through the pictures, trying to confirm. I see images of familiar evidence bags. The items from Ugo's car. Mignatto dressed me down for breaking into the impound lot, yet now he has requested the evidence I discovered there. I glare at him. He still says nothing to me.

“That's correct, Monsignor,” the aide says.

“Thank you, signora.”

His hand is at my back again, leading me out. Finally he turns.

“Have dinner with me, Father.”

Afternoon has peaked and waned. He holds up a hand as a visor.

“No,” I say.

“Peter is welcome to join us. And it's important that we discuss the voice mail message Nogara left for your brother at the nunciature. The tribunal admitted it.”

“No.”

He takes the visor away, stares at his feet. “I understand what you're feeling, but Father, perhaps it's best for you to take a break from the trial.”

“I'm going to do what I need to do.”

Mignatto squints. “What exactly did Archbishop Nowak say to you?”

“That my brother's been lying to me.”

“About what?”