The Fifth Gospel (51 page)

He gives the clamshell back to his partner. “Rog, show him how it works.”

“Leo . . .” I say, wondering how he could've sat beside me in the Casa, listening to everything I said about Ugo's death, without mentioning this. How he could've kept this to himself even if Simon told him to keep it quiet.

But his eyes are begging me to wait. Begging me not to ask in front of his fellow soldier.

Grudgingly Roger points to numbered cylinders built into the front of the case. “Combination lock,” he says.

Then he turns the clamshell around and points to a reinforced steel tube running along the back. “For the chain,” he adds.

“What chain?”

He points down toward the foot well. There, beneath the splitting upholstery of his seat cushion, are the metal sleds that hold the seat to the car frame. Wrapped around them is a sleek black cable thinner than a bicycle chain. It has its own lock, opened by a key.

“The cable ties the case to the seat,” Leo says.

Roger demonstrates by chaining it back in place.

“The key removes the chain,” Leo says. “But the only way to open the case is with the combination. And if you're not opening it regularly, it's easy to forget the combo. Especially after you've had a few drinks.”

I study the dimensions. “You're sure a 6.35-millimeter gun would fit in here?”

Roger snorts.

“Our service piece,” Leo says, “is a nine millimeter. Which fits snug in that model. I happen to know it's the same case Simon bought for Nogara.”

I lower my voice. “So let's say a stranger didn't have the combination. How could he pry this open?”

Roger smiles. “Try it, Father.”

I make a halfhearted attempt to pry it open with my fingers, knowing this is what he wants to see. Then I draw my Casa key from my cassock. I force the edge of the metal fob into the narrow channel between the clamshell's lips. It fits perfectly, but the case doesn't budge. When I press the metal sharply downward, the fob begins to whiten and bend. It would break exactly like the piece I found under Ugo's seat.

“Without the combination,” Roger says, “it's impossible.”

So this is another oddity about Ugo's death. Ugo was killed by a weapon that—according to the chipped metal on the floor—was never successfully removed from its case.

Leo signals to Roger that his help is no longer needed. The giant locks up his car and lumbers off.

“Listen,” Leo whispers, “I'm sorry. I told myself—I was
sure
—it wasn't this gun that killed him. Alex, you've got to understand. That caliber is almost the weakest there is. That's the whole reason I recommended it. And someone would need a crowbar to open Roger's model of gun case without the combo. Nobody could've done that. I still don't believe it.”

I recognize his tone of voice. He isn't telling. He's confessing.

“Simon and I were trying to save his life,” he says, “by getting him that gun.”

I can't stomach this right now. “Did Simon know the combination?” I ask.

“I don't know.” He hesitates, then repeats, “Alex, I'm sorry.”

But time is running out. The court's recess ends in three minutes.

“You should've told me,” I say. “But what happened to Ugo wasn't your fault.”

I GET BACK TO
the courtroom just as the gendarmes begin to close the doors. At the defense table, Mignatto hasn't unpacked his briefcase. There's no legal pad or pen between us. He stares blankly at the photo of John Paul on the wall.

The witness table is empty. The TV cart is gone. Inspector Falcone must be needed elsewhere; security for the exhibit will be tight. When I ask Mignatto if we're finished for the day, he continues peering at John Paul and says, “We'll know soon enough.”

The doors open to admit Archbishop Nowak. For a second I wonder if he's our final witness. But instead he takes his usual seat.

I wonder why he's here. Why, with Simon under arrest in John Paul's own apartments, he bothers to come at all, hanging on the words of witnesses who don't know what happened any better than he does. Simon must still be refusing to talk. John Paul could've stopped this trial with a word—could've prevented it from ever beginning—but in two hours the Orthodox will be standing in the museums, waiting to see what Ugo discovered, and the Holy Father needs answers. If that's our timetable, then this final witness is our last chance.

I pull Ugo's letter from my cassock, looking again at the pattern of gospel verses. Trying to imagine what triggered his discovery. Just three
weeks earlier, he'd been tracking the Shroud out of Jerusalem in the hands of Doubting Thomas. What could've changed?

But I can't keep my eyes on the page. What troubles me most is the final quarter-hour of Ugo's life. In my bones I know Simon is hiding more than Ugo's discovery. There must be a reason he lied about hearing the gunshot.

The gendarmes open the courtroom door. Mignatto turns to look. His face wears an expression of dull foreboding. His unease makes me turn as well.

The judges have taken their seats. From behind us, I hear one of them say, “The next witness may enter.”

The gendarme stands at attention. He calls out, “His Eminence Lucio Cardinal Ciferri.”

I watch as my uncle steps into the courtroom.

C
HAPTER
35

A
LL THREE JUDGES
stand in respect. Every gendarme bows. The promoter of justice and the notary rise. Mignatto follows, motioning for me to do the same. Even Archbishop Nowak comes to his feet.

Lucio no longer wears his customary black. He has changed from his priest suit into a simar, the cassock of a cardinal. Like the skullcap on his head, its buttons and trim and sash are scarlet, a color that even bishops and archbishops are forbidden to wear. On top he wears a sweeping scarlet cape reserved for occasions of high formality, and over his heart hangs a baroque pectoral cross. The fourth finger of his right hand glints with the giant golden ring given to cardinals by the pope. This is a clerical show of force. No one here, not even Nowak, can match it.

At the door, a bowing gendarme offers to help Lucio to his table. My uncle refuses. He refuses Archbishop Nowak, too, who offers him the arm that supports the pope. I am awed to see that he glowers at Nowak, evincing a fearsome superiority. Gone is any sign of Lucio's physical weakness. He moves with old-fashioned dignity, erect and chin cocked, with eyes peering downward. It steals my breath because this tall, gaunt specter resembles no one so much as Simon.

Lucio lowers himself into his chair. But everyone else remains ­standing.

“You may be seated,” Lucio says.

The presiding judge says, “Your Eminence, according to the law, your
right is to be deposed at a place of your choosing. If you prefer a place other than this aula, tell us your wishes.”

My uncle waves his hand. “You may begin,” he says.

The judge clears his throat. “You're aware, Eminence, that you may decline our questions? If you fear your testimony might cause harm to you or your family, you have the right to refuse to answer.”

“I have no fear,” Lucio says.

“Then we ask you to submit to two oaths. One of truthfulness and one of secrecy.”

“I will take the first oath,” Lucio says. “But not the second.”

I glance at Mignatto, wondering what this means. But the monsignor is watching Lucio with dire attention.

“As the law requires, we will hear your testimony anyway,” the presiding judge says, sounding concerned. “And since you requested this deposition yourself, Eminence, would you please tell the tribunal the subject you intend to discuss?”

“Am I correct,” Lucio asks, “that witnesses have been forbidden to mention my nephew's travels this summer?”

“Correct, Eminence.”

“That is the subject I will be discussing.”

I'm tense in my seat. The judges glance at each other.

“Eminence . . .” the lead judge says.

“In particular,” Lucio says, “I will be discussing how ungrateful my nephew's incarceration seems to me, when he has placed his own career and priesthood in jeopardy, and even refuses to speak in his own defense, all in order to serve the Holy Father, who in return treats him as a criminal.”

I'm frozen. Mignatto stares at the table, unable to watch. This is suicide. Lucio came here to wage war on the pope.

In a quiet but firm voice, Nowak says, “Eminence, please reconsider your words.”

Lucio responds with a stunning insult: keeping his back turned to Archbishop Nowak, he addresses him.

“You deny it?” he says.

“Eminence,” Nowak replies, “we would not be here if your nephew would tell us the truth.”

Finally Lucio turns. They sit almost face-to-face, cardinal at the wit
ness table, archbishop in the first seat. In his princely scarlet, sitting at his full height, Lucio leaves no doubt who is the cock and who is the hen.

“You made him a papal emissary,” my uncle says. “You consecrated him a bishop in secret. And this is how you allow him to be treated? You abandon him to
this
?”

A knot forms in my throat. A bishop. In secret. My brother: a bishop.

“My nephew, by himself,” Lucio continues, “accomplished what your entire Secretariat couldn't. And for that you prosecute him?”

Archbishop Nowak's voice never changes. Never rises in pitch or volume. He has navigated the shoals with every cardinal on earth. His answer is only five words: “Did your nephew kill Nogara?”

“No,” Lucio croaks.

“Are you sure?”

My uncle raises a hand in the air and jabs an accusing finger. His voice tightens. Suddenly I understand that everything is not as clear as I imagined.

“If he
did
kill him,” Lucio seethes, “it was for
you
.”

Behind me, Mignatto makes a sound of disbelief.

Nowak is as calm as a priest hearing confession. “To hide what No-gara discovered?”

Lucio is so gripped with emotion, he can't find the words to answer.

“Please,” Nowak says, “tell me about the Shroud.”

Lucio shakes his head. “Not until my nephew is free and these charges are dropped.”

“Eminence, you know that is impossible. The Holy Father needs to know the truth.”

“
The truth?
” Lucio roars, raising his hands. “You swear my drivers to secrecy. You forbid testimony. You let swaths of evidence be suppressed. That is a search for truth?”

Stolidly, Nowak says, “Without these precautions, tonight's exhibit would have been impossible. You know the difficult situation we find ourselves in.”

“Because of the Orthodox
you
invited here!”

For the first time, a ripple of anxiety crosses Archbishop Nowak's features. “This is the Holy Father's dying wish. His intentions are the very best.”

Lucio lowers his voice almost to a growl. It is a cold, threatening
sound I've never heard come out of him before. “If Simon killed that man—
if
he did—then it's because, at every turn, you told him to keep his work secret. You silenced everyone who found out about Nogara's exhibit. And now you act as if you can't see your own reflection in this, when he's accused of doing only what he saw you do, and what you trained him to believe you wanted.”

Lucio collects himself. He looks stronger. He will do anything, even destroy his own career, for Simon. Never in my life have I felt so grateful to him.

“Now,” Lucio says to Nowak, “I offer you a choice. Free my nephew and dismiss the charges, and I will privately tell you what you want to know. But if you continue to treat him as a criminal, then it will be war between us. The secret you don't want anyone to know, I will put on the front page of every newspaper in Rome. I will stand in front of the Orthodox tonight and tell them everything. I will punish
you
for punishing
him
.”

The silence now is unlike any other. No man in this room can remember someone ever speaking this way to a pope or his representative. No man, except me. It is how the Orthodox spoke to John Paul when he visited Greece. The fury that John Paul accepted and shouldered as his own burden. As I wait for Archbishop Nowak to say something, I pray he has the same wisdom as his master.

His Grace stands. His right arm stretches forward, hand hovering in the air. His voice doesn't rise or falter. But in his sad, dark eyes is something new. Something I don't recognize.

“By the authority of the Holy Father,” Nowak says, “I end this deposition. I suspend the trial of Father Andreou. And I transfer this matter to the adjudication of the Holy Father.”

He bows to the judges on the bench. “The tribunal is thanked for its efforts. This court is now dismissed.”

C
HAPTER
36

T
HE AIR TIGHTENS
around me. Every sound in the room is choked to silence. The judges rise. They mill around, then drift ghostlike out of the courtroom. The notary stands and then sits again, pecks at his keyboard, seeming to await further orders. After staring at Mignatto in disbelief, the promoter of justice packs his briefcase. At last the gendarmes instruct everyone, by order of the Holy Father, to leave.

Mignatto hunches over the defense table, emptied of strength. Only Lucio sits upright, disregarding everything else—gendarmes, notary, wreckage of order. He stares at the crucifix over the bench, crosses himself, and murmurs, “Grazie, Dio.”

I hear a familiar voice behind me.

“Eminence, your car is waiting.”

Don Diego brushes past me.

“Uncle,” I say, “what's going to happen to Simon? What's going to happen at the exhibit?”

But Lucio's focus is elsewhere. When Diego offers to assist him out of the palace, my uncle redirects him toward Mignatto. “Help the monsignor to our car. Give him anything he needs.”

The last thing Mignatto says to Lucio before leaving is, “Eminence, you have to be prepared. The Holy Father could resume proceedings as soon as the exhibit is over.”

Lucio merely nods. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Today, he is victorious.

“Please, Uncle,” I say when Diego and Mignatto are gone. “What's happening?”

He places a hand on my head. The physical weakness is returning. His hand shakes. “We'll know more tonight,” he says. “After the exhibit.”

He turns and walks away. I begin to ask another question, but he never looks back.

WHEN LUCIO'S SEDAN SLIDES
away from the tribunal, I stand outside in the courtyard, trying to orient myself in a world that has changed since I left it. All around me, laymen are walking out of their offices, sent home early to empty the country before Ugo's exhibit. Cars are lined up at the border gates to leave. Black sedans wait near the doors of the Casa. Through the glass hotel doors I see Orthodox priests milling in the lobby. I hear, just faintly, frenzied nuns calling messages in different languages. Orthodox clergy are checking out their valuables from the hotel safe—jeweled crosses and golden rings and diamond-fretted medallions—and I feel like an altar boy watching priests vest in the sacristy, feeling the mystery of the Church gather in the presence of outward signs. My body vibrates with anxious energy. I try to keep myself in this outer world. But inside, everything is raging.

I've always imagined that my father died in agony. When his heart stopped, the pain killed him before the lack of oxygen. He wasn't found in his chair or bed, but on the bedroom floor, having pulled the Greek cross off his own neck. Mona told me I was wrong. She said he suffered, but not the way I thought. Yet I still keep his cross in a box deep in my closet, never to be touched. And to this day, no image frightens me more than of my father on that floor.

The gospel of John says the final words of Jesus on the cross were triumphant:
It is finished.
His mission, completed. But only the theological Jesus could've spoken those words. The earthly Jesus suffered horribly. Mark's description has always shattered me:
Jesus shouted in a loud voice, “Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Gospel scholars call this the cry of dereliction. It expresses a suffering so total that God the Son felt abandoned by God the Father. Ugo told me once that crucifixion is like a heart attack prolonged to hours or days. The heart slowly fails. The lungs slowly collapse. The ancient Romans, who set Christians on fire to use them
as torches, and carted them into stadiums to watch wild animals devour them, considered crucifixion the worst punishment of all.

These are the two deaths Simon knows best. Our father's and our Lord's. So to say he killed another man is to say he was willing to inflict on another living creature an experience he believed to be the sum of torment. This, from the boy who found his father dead on the bedroom floor. In my heart, I will never believe it.

Yet for a moment at the witness table, Lucio seemed to consider it possible. And even now, thoughts creep into my mind. Ugo seemed so angry in the voice message he left Simon. So hurt. He had probably been drinking shortly before he died, since a man who would take the Diatessaron out of the museum to show it to the Orthodox wasn't acting reasonably. I don't know what really happened in those final minutes, when only God was watching. And though I tell myself there must've been someone else at Castel Gandolfo besides Simon and Ugo—two men were sleeping in that Casa room, and only one man broke into my apartment—the truth is that Lucio's doubt has left a deep impression.

As I walk home, the Belvedere Courtyard is almost empty. No more work trucks, no more commuter cars. Even the jeeps and engines of the fire department are parked in tight formation to leave more room for tonight's visitors. It's coming. Whatever Simon orchestrated for tonight, it's coming.

Peter is so happy to see me. He claps with glee, as if he's waited patiently through this five-act day just to see his favorite actor take the stage. I have more than enough experience in hiding dark feelings from him. I bow as he claps. Brother Samuel looks relieved. Eleven hours with a five-year-old is saintly work for a man his age. He'll have Peter again in an hour, when I leave for the exhibit, but even a saint deserves a break.

“He's been asking all day when you'll be back,” Samuel whispers. “He says he gets to see his mother now.”

Samuel smiles. But the smile fades when he sees the expression on my face.

“Peter,” I say, “please thank Brother Samuel, and let's go home.”

Peter pumps his fist in the air. He grins at Samuel, who gives me the most pathetic look, as if to say,
You would really deprive him of this?

Once we're back inside our apartment, I find myself watching the clock. Without a word, Peter starts tidying his room and putting his toys in piles just so. He lays out his toothbrush and toothpaste. He finds
Pinocchio
and opens it to the last page Mona read. I have to stop this.

“Peter,” I say, “come here. I need to tell you something.”

He hops into the chair, then hops out of it. He collects the phone from its station on the countertop, then places it on the table in front of him. He sits in his chair and waits.

“We can't call Mamma tonight,” I say.

His head stops bobbing.

“When I promised you we could call her, I'd forgotten I needed to be somewhere important tonight.”

His eyes grow fat and pearly. Their rims go red. The tears are coming.

“No!” he says.

“I'm sorry.”

“You're a liar!”

“I promise, we'll call her tomorrow—”

“No, you promised
tonight
!”

“Tonight is impossible.”

He abandons himself to sobs, and now the tears come rushing out.

It will end, though. As every other tantrum has. Inside that five-year-old body is an older soul, accepting of compromise, unsurprised by disappointment.

“We'll find something special for you to do with Brother Samuel instead,” I say. “What do you suggest?”

He'll settle for something, I'm sure. Ice cream. A later bedtime. A movie.

Tonight, though, he refuses them all.

“I don't want that! I want Mamma!”

Maybe I've underestimated. Maybe this is not like every other time. I take out my wallet and start to count bills. The next hill over from the Vatican has a park with a video-game arcade, a puppet theater, a carousel. If I don't do something to stop this crying, I know I'll say something I regret. Something about what's really on my mind.

“You can go to the Gianicolo,” I say. “Play video games. Ride the merry-go-round.”

To show him how serious I am, I pull out the whole stack of bills, reserving only five euros for myself. When I close the wallet, though, something slips out and flutters to the floor.

Peter stares at it. His face changes. His lips curl back.

I look down. It's the picture of Michael with his nose broken and eye blackened. The sight makes Peter start crying all over again. I grit my teeth and push the photo back into my wallet.

“It's okay,” I say, pulling him closer to me and staring over his shoulder at my watch. The exhibit begins in forty minutes. “That man,” I lie, “just has a bloody nose.”

But Peter's body is stiff. It trembles fiercely.

“Babbo,” he whispers, crowding himself deeper into my arms. “That's
him
.”

“What?”

He digs his face into my shoulder, trying to shield himself completely with my body. In a muffled voice I hear him cry, “That's the man in our apartment.”

I FEEL HOT TEARS
wetting my cassock. I feel Peter trying to climb into my lap, trying to envelop himself in my robes. But all I can think is:
Michael.

I have to tell someone. I have to do something.

I stand, but Peter clings to me. He has fistfuls of my cassock. He won't let me put him down.

I reach the phone on the table and call Mignatto, then Lucio. There's no answer.

“Peter, let go. I need to bring you back to Brother Samuel.”

He roars hysterically. When I pull him off me, he battles my outstretched arms, lunging at me. His face is sheer panic. I'm abandoning him.

I close my eyes. Calm myself. Kneel.

“Come here,” I say.

He runs into my arms with so much force that it almost knocks me over.

“You're safe. Babbo's here. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

I stroke his hair. I squeeze him. I let him cry. But it doesn't pass. He's never been so inconsolable. At the tips of my fingers, even as I hold
him, I feel the tattoo of my racing pulse. Every passing minute brings the exhibit closer. Michael will be there. I can't stay here. If I don't hurry, I'm going to be late.

I look down at the phone in my hand and can think of only one solution.

MONA ARRIVES TWENTY MINUTES
later. Peter is still breathing hard. Only the promise of seeing her has made any change in him.

“Mamma,” he squeaks, and goes to her for a hug.

Her first instinct is the right one: to sit down on the floor and let him fold himself into her lap.

“Brother Samuel's going to come over, too,” I tell her.

She nods.

“Go to Samuel's if you want, but please don't go anywhere else.”

She nods again.

Just seeing him in her arms fills me with guilt. But she doesn't ask why I would leave our crying son behind. She doesn't doubt.

“I don't know when I'll be back,” I say.

“Alex,” she says softly, “it's okay. Samuel and I are going to take good care of him. Just go.”

MY HEART THRUMS. TIME
is wasting. I'm late.

Gendarmes are posted at the entrance to the Belvedere Courtyard. Over their shoulders I see dozens of black sedans parked inside.

“Which way?” I say.

The gendarmes point north, toward Ugo's old office. “Head that way, Father. You'll see it.”

If Michael broke into my apartment, then he didn't fly here for the trial. Everything he said was a lie. He was in Rome all along.

I dial Leo. He doesn't answer. I leave a message warning him to look out for Michael. Finally I see a private entrance unlocked in the museum wall. Inside, printed programs are left curled up on the floor.

He's the one who must've called the apartment, the night before he broke in.
Which means he's one of the men who was staying in that room at the Casa.

I pick up one of the programs. In large red letters, a note on the first page says:

WE ASK OUR GUESTS
TO FOLLOW THE GUIDED TOUR OF THE EXHIBIT.

A map shows the route: from here down to the Sistine Chapel, a corridor one quarter of a mile long has been cleared for the exhibit. As I run to catch up, the history of the Shroud flashes by in reverse. 2004: radiocarbon tests refuted. 1983: Italian royal family gives Shroud to John Paul. 1814: Shroud exhibited to celebrate downfall of Napoleon. 1578: Shroud first arrives in Turin. 1355: first known Catholic exhibition of the Holy Shroud. The path runs unstoppably toward the Fourth Crusade. Toward 1204.

That's why Michael sent me to use the pay phone behind the Casa. Because he could watch me from his hotel window.

When I reach the gallery with Constantinople painted on the wall, I stop in surprise. No one's here either. And no part of the exhibit has been removed in the three days since I saw it.

I hesitate, disbelieving. So it's already happened. The Orthodox have learned that we stole the Shroud from them.

There are shoe prints on the marble floor. Body heat still hangs in the air. Then I see them. On the other side of a display case, almost invisible in the darkness, are two Orthodox in black cassocks. They stand in the corner, weeping. Across the glass, one of them meets my stare. His beard is spangled with tears.