The Thirteenth Apostle (5 page)

Had Andrei discovered something in Rome? Something they might have referred to during their many private conversations? Or had he, in Rome, finally ended up talking about the things he should have kept secret?

The gendarme had used the word “crime”. But what could have been the motive? Andrei had no possessions, and lived reclusively in his library, far from the gaze of all others. Of all others, that is, except the Vatican. And yet Nil could not accept the idea of a murder carried out at the behest of Rome. The last time the Pope had deliberately had his own priests assassinated was in Paraguay, in 1760. The political situation of the time had made that collective murder of innocent people expedient: things were different in those days. At the end of the twentieth century, the Pope would not get rid of an inoffensive scholar!

“Rome no longer sheds blood. The Vatican committing a crime? Impossible.”

He remembered the frequent warnings uttered by his friend. The disquiet that had been dwelling in him for some time made his stomach tighten.

He glanced at his watch: four minutes to go before mass; if he didn't go down to the sacristy right now, he'd be late. He opened his desk drawer and pushed the note to the back, under a pile of letters. His fingers ran over the snapshot taken a month earlier in the church of Germigny.
Andrei's last wishes…

He rose, and left his cell.

Before him stretched the dark, chill corridor of the second storey – the “corridor of the Reverend Fathers” – reminding him where he was: in the Abbey. And now he was alone. Never again would the librarian's conspiratorial smile lighten up this corridor.

10

“Take a seat, Monsignor.”

Calfo repressed a grimace, and allowed his plump body to settle back into the soft curves of the armchair, opposite the imposing desk. He didn't like the way Emil Catzinger, the very powerful Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had summoned him to a formal meeting. As everybody knows, the serious business isn't done around a desk, but over a shared pizza, or going for a stroll after a
spaghettata
in a shady garden, with a fine cigar wedged between your index and middle fingers.

Alessandro Calfo had been born in the
quartiere spagnolo
, the working-class heart of Naples, from a lineage that had vegetated in the wretched promiscuity of a single-room flat overlooking the street. Immersed in a populace whose volcanic sensuality was nourished by a generous sun, he very soon perceived that he had an irrepressible need for pleasure. The flesh was there, soft, inviting, quivering, but inaccessible to a poor boy who learnt to dream of his desires and to desire his dreams.

Alessandro was cut out to be a real Neapolitan, obsessed by the cult of the god Eros – the only possible way of forgetting about the poverty of the
quartiere
into which he had been born. But in a patriarchal society, acting out your desires is
even more of a tricky business than proving that the annual miracles promised by San Gennaro have been performed.

It was at this point that his father sent him to the unwelcoming North. There were too many children to feed in this one-room flat: this
figlio
would become a man of the Church, but not just anywhere. His father, a bashful admirer of Mussolini, had heard that
lassù
– up there – real patriots were rebuilding the seminaries in the spirit of Fascism. Since God was a good Italian, there was no question of going anywhere else to train for his service. At the age of ten, Alessandro, now ensconced in the plain of the Po, put on a cassock – he would wear it permanently from now.

But this cassock covered – without being able to contain them – the permanent frustrations of this son of Vesuvius, always on the verge of erupting.

In the seminary, he made his second discovery: comfort and affluence. Mysteriously, funds flowed here along the countless channels of the European extreme right. The poor boy from the
quartiere
learnt the importance of money – money which can do anything.

At seventeen he was sent to learn his faith in the shadow of the Vatican, and in the language of God: Latin. Here he made his third discovery: power. And he saw that wielding power can, more than any obsession with pleasure, fill a life and give it meaning. To be sure, the cult of Eros is one approach to the mysteries of God – but power turns the person who possesses it into the equal of God himself.

His natural inclination towards Fascism meant that, one day, he came across the Society of St Pius V. He realized that his three successive discoveries would find a table ready-laid for them. His appetite for power would grow and flourish in the ideological totalitarianism of the Society. His crimson-hemmed
cassock would remind him of belated spiritual aspirations, while elegantly acting as a cover for the fulfilment of his carnal desires. And finally, money would come flowing into his hands, thanks to the hundreds of files the Society carefully kept up to date – files which spared no one.

Money, power and pleasure: Alessandro was ready. At the age of forty he was promoted to the title of
Monsignor
, and became the rector of the highly mysterious and highly influential Society, a prelature which answered directly to the Pope and was subject to his authority alone. Then the unexpected happened: he conceived a real passion for the mission with which he had been entrusted, and became the fanatical defender of the founding dogmas of a Church to which he owed everything.

He ceased to repress the itch of his senses. But in allowing it to find expression, he gave it a dimension compatible with his priestly office: now he saw it as the quickest way to reach mystical union, by means of carnal transfiguration.

Two people – and two alone – knew that the all-powerful Rector of the Society of St Pius V was this little man with his honeyed tones: the Pope and Cardinal Emil Catzinger. For everyone else,
urbi et orbi
, he was merely one of the humble
minutanti
of the Congregation.

In theory, at least.

“Take a seat. Two questions – one external and one internal.”

This distinction is a habitual one in the inner circles of the Vatican: here “internal questions” are those that crop up in the Church – a friendly, normal, controllable world. And “external questions” refer to what happens on the rest of the planet – a hostile, abnormal world that needs to be controlled as much as possible.

“I've already spoken to you about this rather worrying problem – the French Benedictine Abbey…”

“Yes, you asked me to do the necessary. But we didn't need to take any action, as the unfortunate Father Andrei committed suicide, I think, and we can draw a line under it all.”

His Eminence hated being interrupted: even if Calfo was trying to get him to forget the fact,
he
was in charge here. He would soon put him in his place.

Catzinger was an Austrian. He had been chosen by the Pope, who found that his reputation as an enlightened theologian would be useful. But he rapidly revealed himself to be a formidable conservative, and since this was also, deep down, to the taste of St Peter's new successor, the honeymoon between the two men turned into an enduring union.

“Suicide is an abominable sin – God have mercy on his soul! But it seems there's another black sheep in this monastery, where the flock of the faithful really needs to be above reproach. Look at this” – he passed a file over to Calfo – “a denunciation of this person from the Father Abbot. Perhaps it's of no importance: you be the judge, and we'll come back to it. There's no urgency, at least not yet.”

The Cardinal's relation to his own past was fraught. His father had been an officer in the Austrian
Wehrmacht
, the
Anschluss
division. While he had distanced himself from Nazism to the utmost, he had preserved one of its instincts: his conviction of being the sole possessor of a truth that alone was capable of uniting the world, around a Catholic faith that was non-negotiable.

“The internal question concerns you directly, Monsignor…”

Calfo crossed his legs and waited to hear the rest.

“You know the Roman proverb:
una piccola avventura non fa male
– a little adventure does no harm… so long as the prelate
remembers his position and is, above all, properly discreet. Well, I've learnt that a… common whore is threatening to sell her story to the paparazzi in the anti-clerical press, who are promising to pay her a fortune in exchange for her revelations concerning certain… how shall I put it?… certain private conversations you are alleged to have had with her.”

“Spiritual conversations, Your Eminence: we are together making progress along the path of mystical experience.”

“I'm sure you are. But anyway, the sums mentioned are considerable – what do you intend to do?”

“Silence is the first of Christian virtues: Our Lord himself refused to reply to the slanders of the High Priest Caiaphas. So silence has no price – I think that a few hundred dollars…”

“You must be joking! This time you need to add a zero. I'm inclined to help you out, but make this the last time: the Holy Father will not fail to see the paragraph published in
Il Paese
. This is a warning to us. It really is deplorable!”

Emil Catzinger slipped his hand into his crimson cassock and pulled out of the inside pocket a little silver-gilt key. He leant forwards, inserted the key into the bottom drawer of his desk and opened it.

The drawer contained a score of bulging envelopes. From even the smallest parish of the Catholic empire, a tax is gathered for the Apostolic seat. Catzinger directed one of the three congregations which ensured the collection of this manna, as regular and innocent as the fine drizzle of Brittany.

He delicately took hold of the first envelope, opened it and rapidly counted the notes with his fingertips. Then he proffered the envelope to Calfo, who half-opened it. He didn't need to stick his hand in to find out exactly how much it contained: a Neapolitan can count a bundle of banknotes with a glance.

“Your Eminence, I can't say how touched I am. You can rest assured of my gratitude and devotion!”

“I'm sure I can. The Pope and I appreciate your zeal for the most sacred cause there is – touching as it does the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ himself.
Va bene, Monsignore
– calm down this young woman's hankerings for publicity and, from now on, please lead her along the paths of spirituality in a… less demanding way.”

A few hours later, Catzinger found himself in the office overlooking Bernini's colonnade, on the right-hand side, with its window directly onto St Peter's Square. Ever since his election, the Pope had chosen to travel extensively, leaving the management of everyday affairs to the men who live in the shadow of the Vatican. Nobody ever mentions them, but they steer St Peter's vessel in the right direction: that of the restoration of the old order.

His Eminence Emil Catzinger was the man who in secret ruled the Catholic Church – and he ruled it with a rod of iron.

A trembling hand held out to the Cardinal, who was standing respectfully in front of the old man's armchair, a copy of
Il Paese
. He found it difficult to enunciate his words.

“And this story in which the name Calfo appears… ah, er… is it
our
Monsignor Calfo?”

“Yes, Holy Father, it is. I saw him today: he'll do what is necessary to prevent these hateful slanders from spattering the Holy See with mud.”

“And… how can we prevent?…”

“He'll take care of it in person. And you know that, thanks to our Vatican Bank, we control the press group on which
Il Paese
depends.”

“No, I wasn't aware of that. All right, make sure that peace returns,
Eminenza
. Peace – that is what I yearn for, at every moment!”

The Cardinal bowed with a smile. He had learnt to love the old Pontiff, even though his past life meant that he felt different from him in every fibre of his being. Every day, he was moved by the older man's struggle against illness, his courage in suffering.

And he admired the strength of his faith.

11

The Father Abbot was the last to enter the huge refectory, where the monks were waiting respectfully in front of their stools, lined up in impeccable order. In his melodious voice, he began the ritual. After the chant
Edent pauperes
, forty hands laid hold of their stools and slipped them with an identical movement under their habits. Their hands lay folded on the edge of the tables of deal wood, and forty heads bowed to listen in silence to the beginning of the reading.

The midday meal had just begun.

Opposite the prelate, at the far end of the refectory, a whole table was filled by the students of the theological college. Impeccable clerical garb, a few cassocks designating the most traditionalist of them; tense faces with shadows under their eyes: the elite of the future French clergy making ready to pick up the metal soup tureens overflowing with the lettuce that had been picked that very morning by Brother Antoine. The academic year had begun, and would not end until June.

Father Nil liked the start of autumn, when the fruits of the orchard reminded him that he was living in the garden of
France. But for the past few days he had lost his appetite. His theology classes here were taking place in an atmosphere that left him feeling uneasy.

“So it is obvious that the Gospel according to St John is a composite work, and the final result of a long process of literary development. Who was its author? Or rather, who were its authors? The comparisons we have just drawn between different passages of this venerable text display a vocabulary and even a content that are extremely different. The same man cannot have written the vivid scenes, sketched from the life, that he obviously saw with his own eyes,
and
the long discourses in elegant Greek through which we can glimpse the ideology of the Gnostics, those philosophers of the Orient.”