The Fifth Gospel (61 page)

I step forward.

“Fathers Andreou?” says the man at the door.

A layman in a black suit. I recognize him. John Paul's private messenger. The cursore.

He holds out two envelopes. One is engraved with my name. The other with Simon's.

I hand Simon's to him, and he closes his eyes. Mona stands and walks over to us.

I have dreamt of this, and lived in dread of it, but at this moment my fears are silent. I am filled with an unfamiliar stillness.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart. In all your ways submit to Him. He will make your paths straight.

My brother, though, has never looked so frightened. Mona reaches out an arm and says, “Simon . . .”

Peter stares at the messenger. Then he rises, walks toward Simon, and places his head on his uncle's hip, wrapping his arms around his uncle's waist. With the might of Samson, he squeezes.

I open my envelope first. The words inside are not what I imagined. I turn back to the cursore.

He waits.

“Simon,” Mona whispers, “open it.”

My brother's hand is unsteady as he unseals the envelope. I watch
him scan the lines. Looking up at the cursore he says, in a thin voice, “Right now?”

The cursore nods. “Yes, Fathers. Follow me. The car is waiting.”

Simon shakes his head. He backs away.

Mona glances over Simon's shoulder at the paper in his hand. Something flickers in her eyes. She says, “Simon, go.”

I stare at her.

“Trust me,” she whispers. Her expression is electric. “Go.”

IT IS THE SAME
black sedan as before. Signor Gugel opens the rear door with the same impersonal expression. The cursore sits in the front passenger seat. I can hear Simon breathing beside me.

Gugel and the messenger don't speak. High above us, in the windows of the top floor of the Belvedere Palace, Peter is staring down. I watch him until the window disappears from sight.

The streets are empty. The offices dark. Earlier tonight, when Mona and Peter and I walked home from ice-skating, huge flocks of starlings threw themselves across the sky like a net being cast over Rome. Cast, and drawn back, and cast again. But now there are only the stars. Simon's fingers touch his throat, plucking at the band of his Roman collar.

The car reaches the palace entrance. Then continues past it.

“Where are we going?” Simon says.

Silently we sweep across the road that cuts behind the basilica. The Palace of the Tribunal comes into view. It, too, disappears into the dark.

The courtyard of wet cobblestones looks like black glass, like the Tiber on a choppy night. Simon is leaning forward, placing his hands on the front seats. My phone buzzes. A text from Mona.

Are you at SP?

I type:
Almost. Why?

The car slows. Gugel cuts the engine and steps out, opening an umbrella. “Fathers,” the cursore says, “follow me.”

To the south is the gate separating us from Saint Peter's Square. Out in the rain are the hundreds of faithful who would stand here on Christmas Eve even if the sky were falling, the world ending.

The cursore leads us through the side entrance. In the sacristy, a few old priests are vesting frantically. My own pre-seminary boys are here, dressed in red cassocks and white surplices, helping the old-timers into
their robes. Two of them come rushing toward us, pushing a clothes rack on wheels. “For you,” one of them says to Simon.

It's a choir cassock, the kind worn by a priest attending another priest's Mass.

Simon stares at it. “No,” he says.

My heart is thudding. The robe is purple. The choir cassock of a bishop.

My phone buzzes. Mona's answer.

Special homily tonight.

I signal to my boys not to listen to Simon. To do their jobs. They can vest a priest faster than any altar boys on earth. And though Simon begins to protest, he must sense what's about to happen. If he stays in his black cassock, then he is about to be mistaken for a bishop in mourning. And on this day, the day of our Lord's birth, there can be no mourning.

Simon lowers his head. He takes a deep breath. Then he extends his arms. The boys strip off his black cassock and slip on the purple one, the white rochet, and the capelike purple mozzetta. On top goes a pectoral cross.

“This way,” the cursore says, moving faster now.

The passage looks like the marble doorway to a sepulcher. I glance over my shoulder. One of my boys lifts a hand in the air as if bidding us good-bye.

In the passageway, the air is changing. Growing warmer. Vibrating with noise. My skin tingles. We travel through another doorway—and suddenly we've arrived.

The ceiling vanishes. The walls rise infinitely to the basilica roof. The vibration has become a deep, cosmic murmur.

“This way,” the cursore says.

The sight stops me short. All my life I have attended a Greek church that can hold two hundred people. Tonight, from the high altar over the bones of Saint Peter to the stone disc near the entrance where Charlemagne was once crowned, this basilica holds ten thousand Christian souls. The nave is so full that laymen have given up searching for seats and have begun crowding the side aisles. The congregation bristles and pulses, spilling to the edges of sight and beyond.

The cursore leads us forward. The altar is surrounded by ring after ring of the faithful, rising in dignity as they approach. First the laymen,
then the nuns and seminarians. We reach the monks and priests, and I stop, knowing my place. I see other Eastern Catholic priests here, and some of them, recognizing me, make room.

But Simon won't leave my side. The cursore gestures for him to continue, yet my brother stops as well. “Alex,” he whispers, “I can't.”

“It's not your choice anymore,” I say, forcing him forward.

The cursore leads him through rows of ambassadors and royalty, chests glittering with medals. They reach the priests of the Secretariat, and I watch Simon hesitate before stepping in. But the cursore touches him gently on the back. Not here. Continue walking.

They come to the rows of the bishops. Men far older than Simon, some twice his age. The cursore stands back, as if this is as far as his kind may come, but Simon only stands and stares like an altar boy. The bishops, seeing one of their own, begin to part. Two of them reach out, clapping hands on Simon's back. My brother takes a step forward. Beyond them, in the innermost circle, a cardinal in white and gold—the colors of tonight, of hope and exultation—turns to watch. I can see the emotion in Uncle Lucio's eyes.

The cantor starts to sing. The Mass has begun. Simon's head is bent down, not looking at John Paul. He seems to be sunk in some private battle. His body shudders. I see him cover his face in his hands. Then a sound rises. Voices. The Sistine Chapel Choir.

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us.

A procession of children brings flowers to a statue of the baby Jesus. They smile and giggle. The sound lifts Simon's head. As the homily draws nearer, I pray that Mona was right.

The book of gospels is brought to John Paul, and he kisses it, making the sign of the cross. Ten thousand people go utterly silent. The clicking of cameras stops. There is not even a cough. Here is the only pope many of us have ever known. We all surely know, in our bones, that this will be the last time we see our Papa at this high altar. Through this man, God has made miracles. I pray He will do it one more time.

John Paul's voice is low and slurred.

“Tonight, a child is born to us. The Christ child, who offers us a new beginning.”

I watch Simon. His eyes are fixed on the Holy Father.

“The evangelist John writes that ‘to those who did accept the Lord, he gave power to become children of God.' But what does this mean? How are
we
to become children, like the Christ child, we who are heavy with sin?”

Simon flinches. His shoulders sag again, and he leans forward as if to grip the rail in front of him.

“It is possible only because the child who comes in darkness brings a message of hope: no matter how we have sinned, our Redeemer comes to bear those sins. He comes to
forgive us
.”

For a moment, my gaze is drawn upward to the pier where the basilica's relics are kept. I think of the Shroud. I wonder if it is hidden in the reliquary between those walls of stone. If, for now, Ugo was right. Saint Peter's is the Shroud's new home.

“We cannot serve the Lord without first welcoming His forgiveness. Tonight, the Christ child offers us all a new beginning. Let us take it.”

The microphone is moved away from John Paul's mouth. The same perfect silence falls. Something has changed in Simon's posture. His head isn't hanging on his neck. The Creed comes, then the prayers of the faithful. When the Holy Father raises the host for consecration, a bell tolls and ten thousand voices sing,
Lamb of God, you take away the sins of the world. Have mercy on us
.

On all sides, priests begin to offer communion. Seats empty, forming lines to receive it.
Adeste fideles
, sings the Sistine Chapel Choir.
O come, all ye faithful.
Simon watches the other bishops around him. Yet as their ranks thin, he can't seem to pry his hands from the rail. Can't take a step forward. An archbishop in front of him turns and shakes his head, as if to say Simon mustn't receive communion here.

Nowak.

His Grace takes Simon by the hand and leads him away. They weave through the other bishops, toward the aisle that leads back to me. But instead of turning in my direction, Nowak brings Simon toward the high altar.

My brother shakes his head. They stop. For a moment, at the foot of the stairs that lead down toward the bones of Saint Peter, or up toward Pope John Paul, they are motionless. Nowak says something to my brother. I will never know what it is. I will always prefer to keep this moment a mystery.

When the words are spoken, His Grace puts both hands on Simon's shoulders, and my brother stands at his full height. He looks up the stairs. In the Holy Father's hand is the host. Far above us all, in the windows of the dome, is the veil of heaven, torn by the stars. Simon makes a small prayer, crosses himself, then takes the first step.

I watch my brother rise.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

THIS BOOK TOOK
ten years to write. The following people helped me finish it—and helped prevent it from finishing me.

No one understands Father Alex and his world better than my long-suffering literary agent, Jennifer Joel of ICM, who not only read but marked up four thousand draft pages of
The Fifth Gospel
over the course of a decade, including almost a dozen passes over this final version of the novel. Midstream in that process, catastrophe struck and my initial book contract was scrapped, so Jenn waded into the worst publishing climate in recent memory with nothing but my half-finished manuscript and a determination to fight for my survival. She postponed business trips and canceled family vacations. She traveled hundreds of miles to visit me at my home because she refused to give up on this novel and its maddeningly slow author. I defy anyone to find a literary agent who has given more to a book, ever.

Jofie Ferrari-Adler at Simon & Schuster took me on when I was heartbroken and cynical, eight years into a novel that still wasn't done. He put on no airs and gave me just what I needed: the freedom to do the things I do best, the wisdom to fix the things I don't, and no runaround in between. His infectious love of this business even convinced me, all over again, that the world of books is a joyful place to call home.

Many priests, canonists, and professors made crucial contributions. Surely no institution on earth has better reason to doubt the motives
of novelists than the Catholic Church, but to my surprise I received generous help at every turn: seminary instructors, Church lawyers, and prominent Catholic scholars not only answered my questions in detail but sometimes spoke openly about their experiences at the Vatican. Special thanks go to Father John Custer for many hours of generous assistance helping me understand Eastern Catholicism and the life of an Eastern Catholic priest in Rome; to Margaret Chalmers and Father Jon Chalmers for their guidance on penal cases under canon law, a subject that has not received full justice in these pages but that would have been utterly bungled without their unstinting help; and to John Byron Kuhner, who had already studied with the papal Latinist by the time we were reading Augustine and Ignatius as undergraduates together, and who made short work of correcting my Greek and Latin.

Many newfangled technologies prevented a years-long research process from becoming a decades-long one. Google in particular deserves recognition for the wealth of tools it has placed at the hands of researchers. With a working knowledge of only English and French, I resorted to scanning my own books in other languages and reading them via Google Translate. I made almost daily use of Google Books, mining its stockpiles of scholarship on ancient Christianity, its old Baedeker guides of Italy and the Papal States, and its hard-to-find texts on clerical clothing. Google Maps helped me diagram the layout of the Vatican village in more detail than any of the various books I own on the subject, while letting me keep tabs on the progress of the city-state's endless construction projects. More recently, Google Street View has made it possible to take high-resolution tours around the perimeters of both the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo. Also deserving of great thanks are the many newspapers—above all
The
New York Times
—that during the past ten years bravely digitized their archives. I discovered wonderful and sometimes astonishing things about the Vatican in those old pages.

Jonathan Tze, who seventeen years ago helped hatch the idea behind
The Rule of Four
, became one of the first victims of this novel's endless birth pangs. After long months of helping to research a different storyline, he watched the material lead me in another direction. Years later, though, he generously reprised his inspirational role by helping me imagine
The Fifth Gospe
l
's final scenes. There are few better things
to a writer than creative companionship, but one of them is constant friendship.

Dusty Thomason is this book's godfather. Even before the publication of
The Rule of Four
, he and I spent a week together in Greece researching a follow-up novel we intended to write together, which neither of us envisioned being set at the Vatican. Then life intervened, and we found ourselves working on different projects on different coasts. Still, Dusty helped shepherd me through endless drafts of this manuscript—and through the
selva oscura
they led to. Most importantly, in the eighth year of this process, when the book seemed on the brink of failure and my family was on the verge of a darkness I still cannot contemplate, Dusty refused to let us suffer. He rescued the people I love, simply out of love for me. Not even a thirty-year friendship brimming with acts of inexplicable kindness prepared me to receive a gift like that. No thanks will ever suffice. Just writing these words brings me almost to tears.

The last of these acknowledgments is the hardest. The world is full of writers who believe they are making important sacrifices for their art. But a husband and father who volunteers his family to share in those sacrifices is either heartless or a fool. Beginning in 2006, and continuing in an almost yearly cycle, I believed I was close to finishing this book. Whatever the problem was—the bottomless research, the interweaving of the threads of the plot, the work of getting Alex's voice just right—the solution was always just around the corner. For nine years this is what I put my family through. My wife wouldn't steal from me the optimism I was surviving on, but she knew the truth. And when the worst finally came, and it knocked me on my back, she was the one who lifted me up and carried me to the finish line. Never have I met anyone who cares less about material things or the prospect of losing them. Never have I met anyone who shows by daily proofs that love, truly, is all. I gave this novel everything I had. But she gave it even more. This book begins and ends with Meredith.