The Fifth Gospel (58 page)

The time shown on the surveillance video.

Nowak waits.

“I found Doctor Nogara at his car,” I say. “We got into an argument.”

Here is the darkness I've spent my priesthood trying to stamp out of myself. The emotions no good man should even feign. But my performance doesn't need to be perfect. Nowak knows these feelings even less well than I do.

He raises a hand to interrupt. “Wait, Father. We need someone else here.”

My breathing is shallow. My lungs feel tight. With a notary, it will become official.

Archbishop Nowak lifts the phone and says something in Polish to someone on the other end. A moment later, the second secretary, Monsignor Mietek, opens the door. But the man he ushers inside is the last person I want to see.

“Inspector Falcone,” says Nowak, “the Holy Father would like you to hear the testimony that is being given. It seems Father Andreou is about to confess to the murder of Doctor Nogara.”

C
HAPTER
42

N
OWAK OFFERS THE
gendarme chief a chair and explains what I've said. Then he instructs me to proceed.

I don't know where to begin again. With Falcone here, I have to keep meticulous track of every detail.

“My brother,” I say, “must've come out of the villa looking for Nogara and me. He saw us standing by Nogara's car.”

4:50 on the surveillance video. Simon passes by.

“Where was the car parked?” Falcone asks.

He's testing me.

“In the small parking lot south of the villa,” I say, “just inside the gate.”

“But
why
?” Archbishop Nowak says, impatient at the interruption.

The lies come more and more easily. “All I could think of was my father,” I say. “He never recovered from his humiliation in front of the Orthodox. I couldn't let that happen to Simon.”

Falcone interrupts again. “How did you know about the presence of the gun?”

I had hoped to rush through this part of the story. Even now, I can't square this circle. Simon must've had keys to the chain of the gun case. Yet he didn't have the keys to the car. He must've known the combination but had to break the window with his fist. There's something here that, even now, I don't understand.

“Nogara came back to his car,” I say, “to get his lecture notes. While he was pulling them out of his glove compartment, I saw the gun case under his seat. It didn't look like it was closed all the way. I don't know why I did it. The sight of that case just changed something in me.”

John Paul's lips are parted. He breathes through his mouth. I am disgusted with myself.

But Falcone is relentless. “So you took the gun out of the open car?”

“No. Ugo closed the door and walked away. We were arguing with each other. He didn't care what would happen when the Orthodox found out. He thought the exhibit was destroyed. I . . . I told him I wasn't going to let him do it. I threatened him. That's when I went back to his car for the gun.”

Archbishop Nowak nods. He must see it on one of the pages in front of him: my hair found in the foot well of Ugo's car.

But nothing distracts Falcone. The human conflict is irrelevant. All that matters to him is the gun. “You knew the combination to the case?”

“No. As I told you, it wasn't completely shut.”

“Then how did you remove the chain?”

“I didn't. Not until I needed to hide it later. Then I used Nogara's keys.”

Falcone scowls. “From his dead body?”

I can't hold his stare. I simply nod.

“Go on,” Nowak says.

“I caught up to Ugo when he was walking back into the gardens. I only meant to scare him. But he wouldn't turn around to look at me, so I had to come right up to him. He saw the gun. He put up one of his hands to protect himself. When his hand hit the gun, the gun went off.”

I watch Falcone, certain he will remember that the autopsy found gunshot residue on one of Ugo's hands. A single bullet wound at close range.

“Where was your brother as this happened?” he says.

“When Simon heard the gunshot, he came running. He got down on his knees and tried to revive Doctor Nogara, but it was too late.”

I haven't invented this last detail. I believe it's the explanation for the mud on Simon's cassock.

“I didn't know what to do,” I continue. “I begged him to help me.”

Archbishop Nowak glances up from the pages in front of him.

“Your Grace,” I say, “my brother would do anything for me.”

John Paul suddenly lurches to one side, wincing, as if these final words have dealt him a blow. Nowak rises to help him.

But Falcone never takes his eyes off me. In his low, almost inaudible voice, he asks, “What exactly did your brother do for you?”

He doesn't realize that my story, from this point forward, is almost watertight.

“He got rid of the wallet and watch,” I say, “while I got rid of the gun.”

“Whose idea was it to create the impression of a robbery?”

“Mine. I only found out later what my brother's idea was.”

Falcone is waiting to pounce. Waiting, but failing to see an opportunity.

“The last thing he told me,” I say, “was to get my car. Drive down the mountain and wait until everyone from the meeting had left. Then call my friend Guido and tell him I'd just arrived from Rome. Simon said he needed to go back to the meeting, but then he would meet me again in the gardens.”

“There is no evidence to suggest,” Falcone says, “that your brother returned to the meeting.”

He doesn't see that this is the crux of my story.

“He lied to me,” I say. “He never intended to go back.”

Falcone looks bemused.

But Archbishop Nowak seems to understand. He thinks like a priest. He must see that there's finally a reason at hand for my brother's silence. Me.

His sad Slavic eyes study me, neither disgusted nor compassionate. They convey only that Middle European familiarity with tragedy. His hands organize the papers on his master's desk.

Falcone, though, isn't satisfied. “What did you do with the gun?” he demands.

I am, like the serpent, victorious. Reaching inside my cassock, I remove the plastic bag containing the gun case. The proof that silences all doubt.

As Falcone stares at it, I see a slow transformation in his eyes. The pieces are finally arranging themselves. The only fact he cares about is finally in evidence.

“Your brother,” he says, without any hint of feeling, “has been protecting you?”

But before I can answer, Falcone's head suddenly turns. He's on alert, as if he's seen something out of the corner of his eye.

Then I see it, too.

The Holy Father is moving. His right hand—his good one—is bobbing in the air, signaling to Archbishop Nowak.

His Grace lowers himself beside John Paul's ear. Then a voice comes out of the ancient body. A husky, faint voice too hoarse for me to hear.

Nowak glances at me. There's a change in his face. Something tumbles through his eyes. He whispers something back to John Paul, but I can't understand their Polish. Finally the pope's head nods. I'm frozen in my seat.

Falcone watches warily as Nowak takes the handles of the wheelchair. The chair rolls forward. Around the desk it comes. Past Falcone. Toward me.

The eyes are fixed on mine. A hypnotic Mediterranean color, a pelagic blue. They swim with life. He has missed nothing.

My body tightens. My backbone curves. He sees through me. I'm a faceless priest to him, one of tens of thousands, but he can recognize a lie as surely as he can sense the change of weather in his bones. The pain in his face tells me that he
feels
it.

When he's inches away, he signals for Archbishop Nowak to stop.

I don't know what else to do. I crawl out of my chair and lower myself. It's customary to kiss the pope's ring or bend down to kiss his shoe, to make a gesture of abasement, and I would make myself invisible if I could, to hide myself from him. Nothing is beneath me.

Nowak reaches down and touches me on the ribs. “His Holiness wishes to speak to you.”

John Paul's arm moves. For an instant the white sleeve brushes electrically against the bare flesh of my hand. Then he reaches out and puts his heavy palm down on my cheek. Over my beard.

I feel him shaking. Rhythmically, incessantly. The cadence of his disease. Under the tremulous hand he transmits a pure, sweating heat. With this one gesture, he tells me he has seen enough. He is about to speak his mind. He opens his mouth and croaks something.

I can't make out the words. I glance at Archbishop Nowak.

But John Paul strains and raises his voice.

“Ioannis,” he says, pressing his hand deeper into my beard.

I stare up at him, frozen. Wondering if I heard right. But Nowak warns me not to say a word. The Holy Father is not to be interrupted.

“Ioannis Andreou,” John Paul says.

He is confused. In the darkness of his mind, he looks at me and sees the man he remembers from more than fifteen years ago.

Then he finds the strength to finish.

“Was your father.”

The breath catches in my lungs. I dig my fingers into my palms, trying not to show any emotion.

“You,” he says in an almost inarticulate voice, “are the priest with the son.”

He fixes on me with the oceans of those eyes, and suddenly I am reduced to my barest atom.

“Yes,” I say, fighting the tightness in my throat.

John Paul glances at Archbishop Nowak, asking him to finish the thought. The exertion is becoming too much.

“His Holiness sometimes sees you with your pupils,” Nowak says, “when he's driven through the gardens.”

I ache. My shame guts me.

John Paul bobs his hand in the air, gesturing toward himself. “I,” he says. Then he jabs his hand in the air, gesturing at Nowak. “And he.”

Nowak translates, “His Holiness was a seminary teacher, too. He was my moral theology professor.”

It is wrenching to keep his stare, to avoid looking away. John Paul plunges his hand one more time toward his chest. “And,” he says in a rattling whisper, “I had a brother.”

I finally have to close my eyes. I know about this brother. Edmund. Older by fourteen years. A young doctor in Poland. He died of a fever from a hospital patient.

The Holy Father's voice surges with feeling. “We would do anything. For each other.”

There are only two reasons he would say this to me. One is that he believes my testimony. The other is that he knows why I'm lying. When I open my eyes, I will know the answer. So, for an instant, I can't bear to.

Then the silence unnerves me. I look.

The wheelchair is moving away. Archbishop Nowak is pushing it out the door, toward the library. His Grace turns to motion for me to come after him. The last thing I see, before following him out, is the look on Falcone's face. I can't read it. The old policeman doesn't say a word. But he's fingering the gun case and dialing a number on his phone.

“THE CHARGE IS DISMISSED,”
Archbishop Nowak says to the assembled group in the library. “We have heard a confession.”

All around there are looks of shock. I watch the incredulity spread.

But Simon rises.

Every eye turns to look. He is a Mosaic presence, ten ells tall. His black shape pulls electricity from the air like a lightning rod. Nowak pauses, taken aback by his forcefulness. And in that pause, my brother says: “He lies.”

Mignatto and Lucio turn against him, objecting. The promoter of justice watches in disbelief.

“He
lies
,” Simon repeats. “And I can prove it. Ask him what he did with the gun.”

“He has produced the gun case,” Archbishop Nowak explains.

Simon blinks. He cannot imagine the lies I've woven.

But he has one last hope. Turning to me, he says, “Then open it for them.”

Nowak looks as if he's about to cut Simon off. But John Paul rakes his hand through the air, allowing it.

Everyone in the room stares, waiting.

“I don't know the combination,” I repeat to Nowak. “Ugo never shared it.”

Simon peers down at me. And there is such heart-splitting love in that look. Such astonishment. As if I should have known it was impossible for me to succeed at this, but he is amazed, shattered, that I would have tried anyway.

His voice is slow and broken. “Holy Father, you won't find the gun inside that case. I buried it in one of the flower beds in the gardens, where I buried Ugo's wallet, watch, and hotel key. I can show the gendarmes the spot.”

I'm frozen. Before I can say anything, Falcone enters the room. He is carrying the case. And the clamshell is open.

“Your Holiness,” he murmurs in a concerned tone.

When he shows John Paul the contents, I feel Mignatto's eyes on me. Yet I can't take my own eyes off the case.

Simon is right. Where the weapon should be, there is only that cursed, rotted thing. Deathless. Invincible. Its gnarled leather umbilical cord no longer binds the manuscript tight. The stitches that attach the cover flaps together, making the Diatessaron almost waterproof, are open. Had it fallen into a puddle of rainwater that night at Castel Gandolfo, the way it once fell into the Nile, it might've been soaked through. But the gun case has served impeccably. Tucked inside it like a bookmark is a white sheet of paper on which I can see Ugo's handwriting. The notes for his presentation to the Orthodox.

Archbishop Nowak carefully lifts out the manuscript. But it is John Paul who raises his good hand and motions toward the notes. Nowak hands them to him. And for a moment the room is silent as he reads.

Piece by piece, the mask of his face crumbles. He is in anguish. Nowak slowly pries the sheet away. But instead of reading it, he turns to me and says, “What is the meaning of this?”