The Parchment (37 page)

In a moment, a man came on the line. “How can I help you, Giorgio? You never call just to say hello.”

“Ira, I need a quick search done. In the last week, have there been any major bank transfers from Durban, South Africa, to any accounts in Rome?”

“How big is major?”

“More than a million dollars U.S.”

“That should be easy enough. I'll call you back in a couple of hours.”

Later that day, a police officer handed the phone to Cameri. “It's for you, Sir. I think it's from Interpol.”

“Cameri, this is Ira. I have the information you wanted. During the past week, there's been no transfer of more than a million from any Durban account.”

“Damn it. I was sure there would be.”

“Wait, I'm not finished. There has been lots of traffic out of Durban, but in amounts under $500,000 — $300,000 to an account in Turin, $420,000 to one in Palermo. As of yesterday, the transfers totaled more than $2 million. What drew my attention to them were the transferee bank accounts — they're all on Interpol's watch list — suspected of being controlled by the Mafia.”

“Thanks, Ira. I owe you one.”

Barbo was exhausted as he unlocked his apartment door. The death of Michellini, the visit to Galliardin's bedside, the meeting with Cameri had all left him emotionally drained. As he took off his cassock, he noticed the message light on his phone was flashing. He pressed the button. It was a message from Cameri.

“Your Eminence, there has been an interesting series of bank transfers from Durban to Italian accounts. By the way, Gemelli thinks Professor Michellini died from minute amounts of cyanide injected into her IV. We're looking into it.”

As he listened to the message, Barbo noticed that his housekeeper had left a FedEx packet on his desk. The return address was Castel Gondolfo. When he opened the envelope, he found a one-page letter from Benedict written in his own hand.

Barbo's heart jumped a beat when he read it. He quickly rang his office. “Enrico, arrange for a car to Castel Gondolfo. I must leave immediately.”

“You sound upset, Your Eminence. Is Pope Benedict alright?”

“Have the car at my apartment in ten minutes.”

EXTRA
MNES

T
HE OPENING DAY
of the conclave dawned cold and blustery—an inauspicious beginning for so momentous an occasion. Days before, the news media had staked out places in St. Peter's Square to film the cardinals as they processed from the Apostolic Palace to the basilica to celebrate the Mass of the Holy Spirit. Curious bystanders watched as cardinals arrived in limousines from their lodgings throughout Rome. Vatican staff removed suitcases and garment bags from the car trunks and carried them into the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the Vatican hotel that would be used for the first time.

At precisely 9:00
A.M
., the door of the Apostolic Palace opened and a contingent of Swiss Guards paraded into the square. A large crowd of onlookers cheered as Cardinal Marini, the camerlengo, appeared in the doorway. The rest of the Sacred College followed behind him in order of ecclesiastical rank—cardinal bishops ahead of cardinal priests, and cardinal priests ahead of cardinal deacons. Loud applause erupted when Cardinal Chavez, the most senior cardinal priest, walked out into the square. Smiling, he waved to the crowds and blessed a group of Mexican tourists who held up a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The loudest applause, however, met the Archbishop of Tokyo, Misho Cardinal Yapok. Yapok had suffered a stroke several months before and had to be taken into the basilica in a wheelchair. Drums began to sound when the six-foot-five Archbishop of Kinshasa, Uganda, Aloysius Cardinal Muramba, processed across the square. As if embodying the confidence of the African continent, Muramba wore his tribal dashiki over his cardinal's robes.

The only disturbance occurred when Cardinal Diefenbacher appeared in the square. A woman pulled out a placard from under
her raincoat. “The Archbishop of Durban is the Anti-Christ.” Luckily for an embarrassed Diefenbacher, the message was written in Afrikaans, understood by few of those watching the procession. Swiss Guards wasted no time in escorting the woman out of St. Peter's Square. As he processed across the square, Cardinal Barbo looked tired and preoccupied. He barely responded to the applause of his staff, watching the procession from their office windows.

As the cardinal electors entered the great basilica for Mass, no one would predict how long the conclave would last. Three names continued to be mentioned as successors to Pope Benedict: Cardinals Barbo, Chavez, and Diefenbacher—the “B, C, D candidates” as one newspaper humorously referred to them. The consensus among experienced Vatican watchers was that, in the end, Diefenbacher or Barbo would win. Diefenbacher either did or did not have the necessary votes, which would become apparent early in the balloting. If he did not have the votes of eighty-three electors, the cardinals would most likely turn to a centrist member of the Curia like Barbo rather than to an archconservative member of Opus Dei like Chavez. Rome's influential daily,
II Messaggero
, however, disagreed. Chavez knew the members of the Curia from the days when he worked in Rome. His charm and sense of humor made him a popular figure among liberals and conservatives alike. In the end, many cardinals might choose to overlook his conservatism and vote for his humanity. The fact that he was seventy-nine years of age was also a positive factor. If Chavez turned out to be a mistake, his advanced age might at least limit the damage. Rome's odds makers seemed to agree with
II Messaggero
. In the
Totopapa
, the daily betting pool on the papal election, the odds were three to two for Chavez, and five to one each for Diefenbacher and Barbo. No one seemed to care that betting on a papal election could result in excommunication from the Church.

The master of ceremonies stood in the center aisle of the basilica. As each cardinal elector approached, the master of ceremonies bowed and escorted him to his seat in front of the high altar. Following tradition, the Mass opening the conclave, the Missa Pro Eligendo Papa, was concelebrated by the oldest cardinal elector from each of the three cardinatial ranks — in this case, Cardinal Bishop Bernardo Filistrini from Albano, Italy, Cardinal
Priest Stephen Verebrand from Munich, and Cardinal Deacon Agostino Marini, the camerlengo.

As Cardinal Barbo was ushered to his seat by the master of ceremonies, he thought of last night's sudden trip to visit Pope Benedict at Castel Gondolfo. He hardly heard the camerlengo's homily on the significance of what was about to take place. The sound of communion bells jolted Barbo out of his reveries. He received the Eucharist from Cardinal Filistrini and returned to his pre-dieu. The three concelebrants intoned the closing words
Ite Missa Est
—“Go forth, the Mass is ended.” Barbo rose from his seat and processed with the other electors to the rear of St Peter's, where a corridor connected the basilica to the Apostolic Palace, where the conclave would take place. Once the cardinal electors had entered the Apostolic Palace, the area would be cordoned off from the rest of the world.

There was a pause in the procession while the camerlengo consulted with the captain of the Swiss Guard about some remaining security issues before the cardinal electors entered the conclave.

Cardinal Muñoz walked over to where Barbo stood in the line. “You look tired, Francesco. Are you ill?”

“Thank you for your concern, Ignacio. I visited the Holy Father at Castel Gondolfo last night and returned later than I expected.”

Muñoz shook his head. “Poor Benedict. I pray for him every day.”

“So do I.”

“This conclave will be very different from the one that elected Benedict. Eighteen years ago, there were sixty-one electors — today there are one hundred twenty-three — double Benedict's number. European cardinals, even if they voted as a bloc, could no longer muster the necessary two-thirds-plus-one majority. They'd still be five votes short.”

“Yes, to receive the necessary eighty-three votes, a candidate will need wide geographical support.”

“Let's be frank, Francesco.” Muñoz pulled Barbo aside. “Chavez and Diefenbacher will both have strong backing in the early ballots. But some of Diefenbacher's votes are soft. He will have to win
quickly—probably on the first or second ballot. If not, his support will quickly erode.”

Barbo did not respond. If Diefenbacher had indeed bought the parchment from Visconti, Cardinal Muñoz's conventional wisdom would be sorely tested. Releasing the manuscript might cause a sudden groundswell of support for Diefenbacher. Many cardinals might see the South African as the best candidate to deal with the issues of priestly celibacy and the status of women in the Church that the parchment raised.

“Francesco, we Latin American cardinals will support Chavez, of course, but the loss of Obregon has been a terrible blow to Chavez. If he cannot attract the necessary votes, then we must look elsewhere. We will not support Diefenbacher. Fie's your typical Jesuit intellectual who thinks he's smarter than everyone else. Worse still, I don't think he knows how to cry. Many of my colleagues talk about you as our next Holy Father.”

“Ignacio, you are being frank with me, so I'll be frank with you. Many of my views would not sit well with Opus Dei.”

Muñoz smiled. “Opus Dei is not some diabolical force. It is a movement infused with Spanish mysticism — the mysticism of John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila. If we went through a list of issues, one by one, you might be surprised. We would probably see eye-to-eye on most of them.”

“And on the others?”

“We would agree to disagree. Members of Opus Dei do not believe that just because you disagree with us you also disagree with God. I understand that this was the attitude of the Order of the Temple, but it's not ours.”

“I didn't know you were an expert on the Templars, Ignacio.”

“Your dissertation became required reading for many of us.”

“Think of what I have said, Francesco.” Muñoz returned to his place in the line.

Out of one corner of his eye, Barbo saw Martin Fellows in animated conversation with a Swiss Guard. Somehow Fellows had gained entrance to the basilica, and the Swiss Guard was insisting that he leave immediately.

Barbo hurried over to the door of the church. “Officer, it is all right. This man works in the Vatican Library. He can stay for a moment.”

“Eminence, my orders are to allow no one into the church. You saw the woman with the placard earlier today.”

“Please, Francesco, I must speak with you. I tried calling you on your cell phone but there was no answer.”

“Cell phones are not allowed in the conclave. Why must you speak to me?”

“It's about the parchment.”

“The parchment? You told me that it was authentic.”

“It is, but....”

“But what?”

“Please, Your Eminence, I have something to tell you.”

“Officer, excuse us for a moment.”

Barbo and Fellows walked over to the doors of the basilica. “The parchment's a forgery, Your Eminence—at least a forgery of sorts.”

“What do you mean, Martin, ‘a forgery of sorts?’ You told me earlier today that carbon dating showed the manuscript to be from the time of Christ.”

“It is from the time of Christ, Your Eminence, but that's not the point.”

“Martin, stop the riddle right now. It either is or is not a forgery.”

“Your Eminence, when I translated the document, I noticed one of the letters in the name Jesus looked different.”

“Different?”

“Yes, different. I can't describe it better than that. Call it a hunch, an intuition, call it what you like. But I looked at the manuscript under ultraviolet light. I could see that the name Jesus had been superimposed over another name.”

“What name was under ‘Jesus’?”

“It was the name ‘John’.”

Barbo was puzzled. “Why would someone blot out ‘John’ and write ‘Jesus’ over it? It makes no sense.”

“But it does.”

“What do you mean? Why would a forger try to convince the world that Jesus was the father of these two children?”

“Perhaps we're looking at this from the wrong angle. Remember Herod Antipas beheaded John the Baptizer. If I recall my New Testament correctly, John was preaching against Herod, condemning his adulterous marriage to his brother's wife. At a deeper level, however, John was challenging Herod's legitimacy to rule.”

“True, but....”

“If Herod Antipas knew that John had two children, he most likely would have tried to arrest and kill them. Substituting Jesus as their father in the Jewish census records would help keep them safe. You know that early on Jesus was a disciple of John. Wouldn't he have agreed to help protect his mentor's family?”

“So it was John the Baptizer who married the Magdalene. After John was beheaded, she became a disciple of Jesus.”

“Yes, that's what must have happened.”

“God works in strange ways. I had long since given up hope, but now you've brought me the miracle I prayed for.”

“There's one thing more, Eminence. Baldini doesn't know about my ultraviolet test of the manuscript. He was out of the room when I did it.”