The Last Pope (24 page)

“Were they the ones who killed him?”

“It’s not known. I believe they were morally responsible for the crime, just as guilty as whoever killed him.”

“Who was?”

“Licio Gelli, Roberto Calvi, and Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, along with Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot. Of course, someone inside the Vatican had to facilitate the actual killer’s entry, and then destroy all the clues. His Holiness was found dead at four thirty in the morning, and by six in the afternoon his private quarters were already cleaned and sealed, with the key under Villot’s control. And in a little over twelve hours, every vestige of Albino Luciani’s presence in the Apostolic Palace had been erased.”

“That’s efficient.”

“That’s really being in a hurry. At five thirty in the morning the same day, forty-five minutes after the pope was declared dead, the embalmers were already in the Vatican. With all that had to be done, it was suspicious that the Signoracci brothers were there so soon. Especially if we consider that Italian law permits embalming only twenty-four hours after death.”

Sarah shook her head.

“At six in the afternoon that same day, John Paul I was already embalmed. It was a flagrant violation of the law.”

“But what kind of poison would fool the doctors?”

“The pope wasn’t poisoned.”

“He wasn’t?”

“No. And no doctor was fooled.”

“Then—”

“Even a moron could see there was something fishy. A simple heart attack would never have made the pope’s enemies act so foolishly or hastily. When Paul VI died, barely a month earlier, the Vatican behaved in a completely different way.”

“And who exactly killed him?”

“Nobody knows his name. But I think he’s the man on our trail.”

“Then he’s got to be connected with the P2.”

“Yes. The one who killed John Paul I was, and is, a member of the P2.”

“And you don’t know his name?”

“Only his initials: J.C.”

“And where do I come into all this?” Sarah asked for the umpteenth time, hoping her father would finally make it clear.

“Where do you come into all this?” the captain repeated out loud, sighing as he tried to arrange his thoughts and make them understandable to others. “Valdemar Firenzi, who’s an old member of the P2, like me, found the famous vanished papers. He spent many years pursuing leads and gathering evidence, and finally, when he had already given up, he found them in the least likely place.”

“Where?”

“In the Vatican’s Secret Archives.”

“How would they end up there?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. You’ll have to ask J.C.,” Raul answered. “After the people connected with the case started to die off, I think he felt more secure. It really wouldn’t have been at all wise for him to keep the papers.”

“Agreed. It doesn’t matter. Firenzi found the documents, and then?”

“A short time earlier, Pietro Saviotti had reopened the case of the death of John Paul I in the District of Rome, and those papers acquired a tremendous importance as evidence. Aware of their value, and of the fact that many people would rather have them disappear, Firenzi decided to take them out of the Vatican and send them to people nobody knew, intending to save them. But since the walls of the Holy See have ears, he felt threatened. So what did he do? He sent a photo of Benedict XVI to Felipe Aragón and to Pablo Rincón, with a message intended to be understood only by them. And something happened, I don’t know what, that made him send the list to you.”

“But why me?”

“Because you’re his goddaughter. Don’t you remember our talking about him when you were little? He moved to Rome a long time ago, that’s why you don’t know him.

“He needed someone that didn’t belong to the organization, and figured that, after seeing my name on the list, you would get in touch with me and I would understand right away. The worst that could happen was that you wouldn’t pay any attention. He wasn’t thinking that he’d be captured. But he was, and somehow they found out about practically everything.”

“And now?”

“Now he must be dead,” her father said, his voice choked up.

Thinking about it, Sarah grew very serious.

“I didn’t remember that I had an Italian godfather.”

“Don’t let the name fool you. Firenzi was of solid Portuguese stock.”

“All the same, he endangered everybody.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s the truth. He stuck his nose into something that was just fine as it was. What did he expect to accomplish?”

“To bring the truth to light.”

“That truth was fine as it was, locked away.”

Rafael looked for something inside the pocket of his jacket, pulling out a sheet of paper and a photo of Benedict XVI.

“What’s that?” Sarah asked.

“What Father Felipe received in Madrid.”

He handed the letter to her. Although she didn’t speak Spanish, the language was so similar to Portugese that she understood nearly everything.

 

“The Spanish authorities gave this to me when I went to arrange for Felipe’s funeral. My good friend Felipe.”

“And they didn’t find the content strange?”

“They didn’t put two and two together. And luckily, I arrived before anybody from the organization could get hold of the letter. In Buenos Aires that wasn’t possible, and not only did they kill Pablo, but they also took the photo.”

“What’s special about the photo?”

Raul took out a small pocket flashlight with ultraviolet light.

“Come closer.”

Hesitant at first, Sarah moved closer to her father, driven by curiosity. Rafael took an occasional glance, without neglecting his driving. They saw, under the application of the black light, how the face of Benedict XVI disappeared, and there was instead the face of an old man, skillfully traced with thousands of fluorescent filaments.

“Who is it?” Sarah asked.

“I don’t know,” her father answered.

“A double portrait,” Rafael said.

Raul removed the magical light, and immediately the image of Benedict XVI reappeared.

“I’m confused.”

“I don’t know who it is, but they must know already. I suppose,” Raul added, “right now it’s the man who has the papers.”

“And that brings us to the two other elements that Sarah received,” Rafael said.

“Which?” Raul asked.

“A code—”

“That your friend swallowed, for better or worse,” Sarah noted.

“And the key.”

“That’s right, the key.” Sarah had completely forgotten about this. She retrieved it from her pants pocket and showed it to her father. A very small key to a padlock.

“Where could it be from?” Raul asked, studying it. “What would it open?”

They were silent for a few seconds, each analyzing possible theories about the key, the photo, and Raul’s most recent revelations.

“You mentioned a code.”

“Yes, but it’s gone,” Sarah pointed out.

“The original disappeared, but I have a copy,” Rafael announced, holding a piece of paper he’d removed from his pocket. It was the paper on which he’d copied the code, before having Margulies try to decipher it.

Raul looked at it, paying close attention to the code.

 

18, 15-34, H, 2, 23, V, 11
Dio bisogno e IO fare lo. Suo augurio Y mio comando
GCT (15)-9, 30-31, 15, 16, 2, 21, 6-14, 11, 16, 16, 2, 20

 

“Did your friend manage to decipher it?” he finally asked.

“He didn’t have time,” the young woman explained. “They killed him first.”

“Then it’s going to take us a few hours.”

“Wait,” Rafael said, thinking, trying to remember something. “He looked at me before he died.”

“Who?” Sarah asked, wondering.

“Margulies. He looked at me before he died, and told me to count the letters.”

Raul stopped listening. He set the paper in his lap, meanwhile scribbling with his mechanical pencil, and counting on his fingers. In a very short time, he straightened up.

“Now I’ve got it.”

 

L, A—C, H, I, A, V, E
Dio bisogno e IO fare lo. Suo augurio Y mio comando
GCT (DI)—N, Y—M, A, R, I, U, S—F, E, R, R, I, S

 

“
La chiave
—the key?” Sarah exclaimed. “Marius Ferris? Who is Marius Ferris?”

“It must be the man in the double photo,” her father guessed.

“If you’ll permit me, Captain, I think we can interpret it two ways. Either the key is Marius Ferris, or else the key opens something in New York.”

“New York?” Sarah wondered why he referred to New York.

“Yes. NY must be New York.”

“And GCT?” Raúl asked.

“GCT,” Rafael repeated, thinking, but nothing came to him. “And the two letters in parentheses? It’s not so simple.”

“Is it correctly decoded?” Sarah asked.

“I think so,” her father affirmed. “Notice the first words:
la chiave.
They leave no doubt. Marius Ferris could be the man we need to find. We just have to decipher GCT and the letters in parentheses.”

“Let’s look at that during the trip, Captain.”

“You’re right.”

“You’re exactly sure where we’re going?” Sarah asked, noticing the lights of Lisbon in the distance. “And what if we go to a hotel, for a decent night’s sleep?”

“Don’t even think about it. We’ve got a lot of miles to go to get to Madrid.”

“Madrid?”

“What’s your itinerary, my friend?” Raul asked, trying to reassure his daughter.

“By car to Madrid and then by plane to New York.”

“New York?” Sarah was intrigued. “And we’re not even sure the code is sending us there.”

“Yes,” Rafael declared, totally confident. “Burn the code, Captain. I already know what it says.”

49

Finally the long-awaited moment came. The one he had anticipated for many years. Including, if he really thought about it, even going back to the times when he held his father’s hand in the streets of old Gdansk.

His father, a metallurgist by profession and an active member of Solidarity, cherished the deeply rooted ideal of a free Poland. He hated the dictatorship in his country, but was blind to the one that he imposed on the boy’s mother, who never lost her cheerfulness, despite the physical and psychological hardships she had to face. It touched her to see how the boy managed to keep in his mind a fixed, happy image of his father and mother together, on the bank of the Motława, when his father’s most noteworthy traits were violence and prolonged absences from his family, as a result of his unequal battle against a totalitarian government. In that area, at least, one had to give him credit for his steadfast commitment to his cause. It was too bad that he failed to establish those same hard-won freedoms in his home. For instance, he very easily could have granted the boy’s mother freedom of expression. The image of the river could well be the happy picture taken by a happy mother. But no. That in no way represented reality. That photo never existed, was never taken. What did exist was fear, the everyday terror of hearing the key turn in the lock to make way for the devil. After a long absence, it was the end of peace. Once again there was the black suitcase full of dollars for the cause. “It’s from the Americans,” he said, wolfing down the dinner prepared by his wife, so pure-hearted that she never once thought to season it with rat poison. That’s what he would have done. “It’s from the Vatican,” his father continued. “This time we will finish them.” And he laughed like a child on the verge of seeing his dreams come true. He said they couldn’t talk to anybody about the source of the money. Should its existence become known, they would all deny it. Besides, it was dirty money, obtained at other people’s expense—from drugs, from trafficking in poorly guarded secrets. Dirty money to finance noble ideals, of equality, justice, and liberty. Foreigners, prying eyes, and naturally enemies couldn’t learn the source of the money. It was from the Americans and the Vatican, his father said, without specifying the twists and turns those bills had taken, the hands through which they had passed, the shadow enterprises, the administrators of corrupt banks. No one would ever know.

The younger man remembered, as if it were yesterday, the day he came home and saw her. Her eyes open, glassy, inert, their vision gone. The blood that ran down her neck into a puddle on the floor. One could barely discern that the original color of her blouse was white. His father was seated on the floor, leaning against the wall, drunk, cursing, trying to explain how she had failed to respect him. Before he knew it, the damage was done. “Now there’s just the two of us, son,” his father said, inebriated and maudlin. “Come here, boy. Give your father a hug.” It wasn’t a plea but an order, obeyed by the boy, who hugged his father with his body, and his mother with his mind. The knife went deep into his body, up to the handle, while the boy kept hugging his father tightly, with great love, eyes closed. When he finally died, his son drew away from him, and looked for the last time at his mother’s body.