by Tom Fox
Swiss Guard, my academic ass.
None of it made sense. Not these men, and not . . .
The man continued to explain himself – or lie about himself, as the case might be – but Angelina involuntarily let his voice fade into the background. Her mind was drawn more powerfully to the face of the man who sat bound in the chair next to her. She knew she didn’t know her captors, whoever they might actually be, but from the first instant she’d set her eyes on this other man, she’d known she’d met him before. As she lingered on his features, terrified as they were, she gradually remembered where.
Nineteen months ago
Despite all the setbacks she had faced in her life, Angelina had never wholly given up hope in her future. Though, after forty-three job applications since the conclusion of her PhD, the need to acknowledge failure was starting to weigh upon her. Forty fucking three. She let profanities swirl through her thoughts with a bluntness she generally managed to prevent in her speech. Twenty-seven interviews. No results. Angelina Calla the professor of ancient history, or even the assistant researcher in ancient history – hell, she’d have taken junior typist in a university office that dealt with anything remotely related to ancient history – they were dreams that simply weren’t transforming into reality.
Her fellow man was trying his best to strip her hope from her. Or, in a much more direct sense, not her fellow man, but males. There was no point in glossing over the fact. A round face with just the right number of fashionable freckles, accompanied by good tits and a perky backside – Angelina had been well equipped from birth for just about anything in life except a career that demanded the respect of men rather than their condescending fancy. And the one field she’d always desired, academia, was as male-dominated in Italy as could continue to be the case in the modern world. It was a realm that still managed to remain more or less closed off to those Italian human beings who failed to pass the ‘your penis must be this long to go on this ride’ mark.
Angelina had faced the other sex’s domination of her field gallantly, despite the challenges. Each time she was ready to give up, she reminded herself that she hadn’t hit rock bottom yet. She wasn’t homeless, hadn’t yet spent a night in a gutter. But then, Angelina never really thought such lows were realistic pitfalls on her horizon. It was mediocrity she had always feared slipping into, not oblivion. An excess of success, or of failure, had the ring of merit to it – one had to be terrifically good or terrifically bad to get to either extreme. But to be stuck in the middle required nothing and offered nothing. And there Angelina was, squarely between two poles, which as the days passed felt more and more like nowhere. Like nothing at all.
Only one experience in her litany of frustrations had been in any way inspiring. A month and a half ago she’d applied for an entry-level research position in the Vatican Archives. Junior. Archival. Assistant. Bile re-entered Angelina’s mouth as she remembered the demeaningly low rank of the post, for which she’d been vastly overqualified and yet for which she’d ‘somehow’ still managed to be rejected. But by then she’d been at the point of applying for anything and everything in the field, however debasing its rank on paper, without discrimination. She could always work her way up. Could always take the basest of starting points and make it the launching pad to greatness. Or, that had been the plan. In the end, things had gone rather differently.
‘We’ve all been deeply impressed with your work, Ms Calla.’ The head of the interview panel, the well-known senior Cardinal Archivist, Edoardo Oberti – who, Angelina noted, went through the entire day’s proceedings without ever using the title ‘Doctor’ to which he knew full well she was entitled – had spoken with polite formality and pomp.
‘You seem to have an adept mind, and every recommendation we’ve received indicates you’ve a powerful intellect inside a commanding personality.’ That remark had come from another member of the panel, Angelina could no longer remember precisely who. They were all the same, clones of each other’s senior-looking faces, greying hair and wrinkled suits. And all male, of course. ‘This is the kind of job that rewards such qualifications,’ one of the lookalike copies had uttered. ‘There’s only one way a junior scholar can go in this kind of post, and that’s up.’
The words had been delivered with a kind of grandfatherly encouragement that Angelina would have found intolerably condescending if she hadn’t been so used to it by then. Instead, she simply smiled, inclining her head slightly, feigning gratitude at what amounted to little more than veiled insults gift-wrapped in arrogance.
By then she had lost faith in all of them. All, save one. A senior archivist called Ben Verdyx had been assigned as her liaison for the day-long visit, showing her around the Archives, describing the work the various internal teams undertook on a day-to-day basis and the key projects currently ongoing. He had struck Angelina as a genuinely nice man, perhaps seven or eight years her senior but with a quality that made him seem both older in wisdom and, paradoxically, younger in character than his years should allow. He was a man absorbed in his work, entirely at home in library stacks and rooms filled with filing boxes, at his most vibrant and alive when walking slightly in front of her – presumably to make him less aware of her presence, as he seemed overwhelmingly shy – describing random pieces of historical data. Angelina loved to see that familiar quality in another person. And there had seemed to be something genuinely kind about Ben’s words to Angelina throughout the day. ‘Let me tell you, you’d love this work,’ didn’t sound condescending when it came from his lips, and his ‘I really wish you the best,’ didn’t feel duplicitous.
But in the end the interview process had gone just like all the others. Polite smiles and handshakes ended the day with promises of a decision being sent in short order – promises that belied the fact that no one in the room actually believed Angelina had any chance of being offered the post. That had been confirmed two days later by a letter which had probably been printed before she’d ever walked into the interview. Another rejection to add to the stack.
That was it. The last straw, the wisp of chaff to snap the camel’s spine – whatever cliché worked. She’d had enough. It was time to admit defeat, and start to look for something else.
As the man in the chair to her left had the ties around his wrists cut free, Angelina knew for certain that his pale, frightened features belonged to the same Ben Verdyx she’d met those long months before. He’d appeared kind then; he looked terrified now.
‘I presume you recognise each other,’ the monotone voice of the one who’d called himself Major Hans Heinrich broke through her thoughts. ‘Our records show you’ve met.’
Angelina returned her attention to him. ‘Your records . . . your ranks . . . kidnapping for our “protection”.’ She shook her head in angry disbelief, then pointed at Ben. ‘Yes, I’ve met that man before, but I’m not going to sit here and discuss the pleasantries of my past until you explain what the hell is actually going on. And no more nonsense about the Swiss Guard or “necessary circumstances”. Either kill us and get it over with, or start telling the goddamned truth.’
The last comment took all the boldness Angelina could muster, and the words had barely left her lips before the terror of what she’d possibly just asked for shifted her back into mute silence.
Damn it, woman, do you really need to speak every single thought that comes into your head?
Once again, Heinrich responded to the vulgarity – this time what religious folk would call blasphemy – with a look of genuine discomfort.
‘Dr Calla, I have not lied to you yet, and I don’t plan to do so in the future,’ he said, reclaiming his form. ‘I have every intention of explaining this situation to you, for my own interests as well as yours. Because though Dr Verdyx knows more about our present circumstances than you do, neither of you, it seems, knows as much about it as we previously thought.’
Angelina looked again to Ben, whose features, still pallid, were now screwed up in confusion. He glanced in
voluntarily in her direction, their eyes meeting for the first time. She saw only bewilderment.
‘If you’re going to explain, explain,’ Angelina spat, turning back to the Major.
He pulled up a chair and sat stiffly in front of her.
‘It begins with how much you know about a certain tablet.’
13
Quartiere Prenestino-Labicano, eastern Rome
Church of St Paul of the Cross
Charismatic Catholic community headquarters
The sanctuary was almost empty. The young man noticed that first of all. He normally didn’t come here apart from the services, though he made almost all of those, and thus he had never seen the broad, modern space other than filled with people. The angled rows of pews seemed strangely barren with only a few individuals scattered here and there, sparse inhabitants calling in off the streets for a moment of private comfort in the midst of the day. They looked out of place, eyes closed, kneeling in ancient postures of prayer in a sanctuary that was utterly contemporary and designed for crowds rather than casual visitors.
It was enough to be unsettling, and he was unsettled already.
The parish church of St Paul of the Cross, one of the few parishes of the Roman Catholic Church’s relatively little-known charismatic movement to exist in a city that was far more comfortable with liturgical rites that were still formal and ritualised, even if they were no longer Tridentine or Latin, was an aberration in style as much as in tradition. Its exterior was boxy, red-brick and plain, and its interior bore more in common with Baptist or Evangelical houses of worship than the Catholic churches to be found everywhere else in the city. Its walls were unadorned, white plasterboard with matt paint, floors carpeted in a commercial-grade soft maroon rather than marbled. There were no pillars or carved altarpieces, and the high windows were of a clear glass rather than stained. Only an oblong, wooden altar at the far end, covered in a plain green cloth, together with row after row of identical pews, marked the interior space out as a church at all, though this stark appearance did not stop throngs of faithful from coming each Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday to seek out a glorious refuge from the world and the enlightenment of spirit. St Paul’s worship services always packed the building to capacity.
On any other day, the plain interior would have inspired the young man who now moved hastily down the carpeted central aisle – the simplicity of style drawing out the joy within his heart rather than crowding it out with overbearing pomp and display. This building was all but his second home.
Today, however, even home wasn’t comforting. Outside, sirens hadn’t stopped sounding throughout the city since reports of gunfire were lodged in two separate locations, and the whole of Rome was on edge.
But that wasn’t the main reason for his discomfort.
As he reached the front of the aisle he made a rushed genuflection before the simple altar, which stood separated from the main space of the church by a low communion rail. He should pause, he knew. Should stop and comport himself. He should say a prayer and take the time to open his heart to God as he entered into his holy house. All this was second nature to him – but he couldn’t follow nature now, either. The news he bore within him was too monumental. He ignored it all, sweat glistening on his brow, his heavy breathing echoing in the otherwise quiet space.
He approached an elderly custodian pushing a mechanical sweeper across the carpeting behind the altar.
‘I need to see Father Alberto.’ The statement came out between deep breaths, his shoulders rising and dropping in metre with his clipped speech.
‘Father is resting.’ Denial. The janitor paused, gave his old shoulders a shrug. The two men knew each other well. Most members of the parish did, unusual as the community was. The janitor, whose name was Laurence, was a newer recruit to their number, but it never took long to integrate once it became clear that a seeker’s intentions were genuine.
‘I’m aware this is his time for personal retreat,’ the young man persisted, perhaps too testily, ‘but I must see him all the same. Please.’ Pleading strained his voice. ‘Go to his room, Laurence. Tell him I’m here. He’ll understand.’
He has to understand.
The custodian’s expression changed, and at last he looked up from his sweeping. Deep lines of age grooved his face and made canyons of his fading eyes, but even the trails of so many years couldn’t conceal a look of surprise.
Thomás didn’t normally behave like this.
‘Is everything all right, young man?’
He considered answering. He could say so many things – things that resonated with the deep faith both of them had. With their expectations, with all their experiences. His lips parted, he was so tempted; but after a moment’s contemplation he clamped his jaw closed again and shook his head.
‘Just . . . go, tell Father.’ Thomás nodded towards the sanctuary’s side door. ‘Please.’
The janitor held his gaze a moment longer, then set the sweeper aside. He walked out of the sanctuary without another word.
To speak with Father Alberto Alvarez was always a spiritual experience. Just to be in the man’s presence was enough to change a person’s soul, Thomás had often reflected, and men and women were attracted from all over the city and beyond for precisely that reason. To stand in his company, to experience something wholly different from the usual encounters of their day-to-day lives. To be inspired, changed.
In the four years of his discipleship at the Charismatic Catholic Church of St Paul of the Cross, Thomás Nascimbeni had never once been in a room with the holy priest, whether it be this sanctuary or any other, without feeling the same sense of overwhelming awe that had first drawn him to the parish and its sidelined traditions. On his first visit, walking through the strange glass doors that felt more like the entrance to a shopping mall than to a church, into a room he’d have sworn was a Presbyterian prayer hall if a tiny plaque outside hadn’t indicated the place was, at least formally, part of the Roman Catholic communion, Thomás had felt something. Deep within him, far beyond the confines of intellectual faith or the rational consolation of belief he’d associated within his religion throughout his twenty-two years of life, he’d felt . . . it had been hard to put it into words, then. Even now, it remained difficult to describe. He’d experienced the immanence, and closeness, of the divine. Unlike any other church he’d ever visited, this one was lacking madonnas and pietás, it had only the plainest and most basic of crosses mounted on a single wall. There was no glorious organ lining the apse and the customary clerical chasubles and copes were nowhere to be seen, the clergy robed in simple white with an unadorned stole around their necks. And yet Thomás had felt, in the midst of all this, this plainness, that his heart had suddenly surged into life. He’d sensed, in a way that surpassed anything he could have intellectually determined, that there was nothing worldly here for him to see, and so he’d closed his eyes and seen the face of God.
He’d never gone to another church since.
In the years that had passed since then, he’d become a devoted disciple of the Catholic Charismatic Movement. He’d known nothing about that group before his first visit, nothing about the way its similarities to Evangelical Pentecostalism – with its emphases on mystical experience, charismatic gifts and personal inspiration – had led to its being marginalised by mainstream Catholics the world over, especially here in the capital city of its religious empire. Gradually, the pieces of its history had become known to him, including the barely concealed disdain in evidence in the faces of his pious family and friends when he mentioned his new-found affiliation. But for Thomás, the movement’s dismissal by so many rank-and-file religious only reinforced the truth of its message. Since childhood he’d known only dry services mired in formulaic ritual and the institutionalised shape of church governance. At last he’d found a place where the living, beating heart of faith was still alive. Where hope would speak, and God could move.
And Thomás had never known him to move more force
fully, and yet more gracefully and tenderly, than in the person of Father Alberto. In a world where priests had become businessmen and bishops politicians, he had found a good pastor who was a true mystic. Father Alberto had no ulterior motives. He wanted only to be, in his typically poetic words, ‘clay in the hands of a loving God, ready to be shaped by him according to his will’. And so he had been. And was.
He was a man worthy of being followed, and a man who absolutely needed to know what Thomás had seen.
Only the slightest of creaks, wood rubbing against wood, announced motion from the side door. All Thomás’s emotion halted at the sound. He realised that he was holding his breath, that he could hear his pulse pounding through his ears. If the kindly but stern janitor reappeared and said anything other than ‘Father is ready to see you,’ Thomás thought his soul might burst.
He turned towards the sound, but the janitor was not there – and then Thomás’s heart went from thrashing to what felt like a dead halt. Before him stood Father Alberto himself.
Thomás’s emotions swelled back into life. He was elated that the priest had come out at his request – this was more than he had expected. Father Alberto’s curling hair, once a dark black but now spiced with bold locks of grey that were almost white, was trimmed short but otherwise untended, and his greyer beard reached down to his upper chest. His face was not so much wrinkled as pockmarked by age, with caverns and hills that made smooth places rough and gave him the natural appearance of an outcast, of one who’d been scarred by the world. And yet, it was a face of serenity. Thomás had gazed into it so many times before, into Father Alberto’s alarmingly blue eyes, and felt that there was something far more than just the priest staring back at him.
