New Rome Rising

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New Rome Rising Page 21

by Rene Fomby


  “The Italian finance minister, signora. He said it was very urgent that he meet with you immediately.”

  “Very well. Please have some coffee and tea cakes brought to us as soon as possible.” Carlo Rossi? What in the world is he doing here? She smoothed out the few wrinkles on her linen slacks that she had picked up during the taxi ride and strode briskly toward the parlor. The doors were closed, so she threw them open dramatically and stepped inside without a pause. “Carlo! Mio vecchio amico! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  59

  Vatican City

  Cardinal Brindisi burst through the door of the pope’s private chamber, a small clutch of papers held tightly in his right hand.

  “Your Holiness, this is insane!”

  pope Peter II looked up, a scowl set deeply across his face.

  “Brindisi! How dare you burst in like this! What is the meaning of this behavior?”

  “I—Holy Father, I—you can’t release this!” Brindisi bent over, gasping for air. The long jog from his office to the papal chambers would have been taxing for a much younger man, and at eighty-five his feeble heart was struggling to catch up.

  “I am your pope. The Vicar of Christ. Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot do?” The pope rose, indignant at the cardinal’s intrusion, and even more indignant at his presumption that the pope’s decision on this point was open to debate.

  “I—” Cardinal Brindisi took a moment to catch his breath and calm his thoughts. Finally he straightened up. “Most Holy Father, look around you. Surely you can see it? Italy, most of Europe, everything’s coming apart. There are bloody riots just outside our walls, and the smoke, you can barely breathe outside it’s so thick. Now is not the time to pour gasoline on the flames of hatred out there. We need to give them words of peace, remind them of the importance of our Christian brotherhood. Instead, we have our entire community, our entire flock, tearing itself apart. Whole families are at each other’s throats.”

  The pope shook his head slowly. “Have you not heard? Have you not been listening? As it was foretold in the Gospel of Mark, ‘Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. Everyone will hate you because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.’ This is the plan, God’s plan for us. These are the signs that Jesus warned us about, the signs that signal His return to earth to drive out the forces of Satan and establish His everlasting Kingdom, here in this world.”

  Brindisi could scarcely believe what he was hearing. “Are you mad? Remember, according to Mark, Jesus said that those standing before him would still be alive when the promised war began. And did that happen? No! That generation did not see the promised war, and neither did the hundred generations that followed. That theological debate has long been settled, Holy Father. There isn’t going to be a holy war, there never was going to be a holy war. It’s all just a metaphor. You can’t take Mark literally—”

  “Heresy! Heresy, I tell you!” The pope punched a button on his desk. “Guards! Get this man out of here!”

  A Vatican Guard raced into the room, looking around wildly for some type of intruder, but all he saw was the kindly old cardinal and the pope. “Who?” he asked, completely confused by the situation.

  The pope pointed a long, bony finger at the cardinal. “This man! Get him out of my sight! Lock him up in the dungeon!”

  “Your Holiness?” The guard looked from the pope to Brindisi, still unsure of what he should do.

  “You heard me! The dungeon!” The pope’s face had turned a bright shade of red, and his own heart was thumping loudly in his chest. “Now!”

  As gently as possible, the guard took Brindisi by one elbow and led him outside. “I’m sorry, but—”

  “No need to apologize, my son,” the cardinal explained. “Please, help me to my chambers. I promise to stay there until all of this blows over and our Most Holy Father returns to his senses.”

  “Yes, of course.” The guard offered an arm for Brindisi to lean against as they shuffled down the corridor, the cardinal still clutching the proposed papal bull tightly in his right fist.

  60

  Venice

  Sam tried to keep her annoyance from showing, but Rossi’s sudden appearance at her house after everything she had done to keep her location a top secret was more than a little disturbing.

  “So how did you find me?” she asked. “Other than the staff on the boat, there were only three people in the universe who knew I was headed for Venice, and none of them would have spilled the beans.”

  “Yes, well, no one spilled any—how did you say it? Beans?” Rossi was as well-dressed and handsome as always. Under ordinary circumstances, Sam might have felt herself attracted to him. But someone else held those particular reins at the moment. Besides, Rossi’s future was indelibly tied to Italy, while her own future lay somewhere else entirely.

  Sam had her hands on her hips, facing him indignantly. “Okay, out with it. What did you do? Call up the Italian version of the CIA or something?”

  “No, nothing that complicated. I called your office, but they told me you had been out of contact with them for several days. So then I tried you on your cell phone for several hours, but it went immediately to voice mail each and every time. From my experience, you never leave your phone off for very long, so I figured you were off on one of your secret missions, probably up in the air out of range of any cell towers. I had my people check with the aviation authorities to see if any of your family’s jets were missing, but all of them were parked safely in their hangars, and all they could come up with was a short flight from Rome to Bari on Saturday, returning back to Siena immediately afterwards. That left me stumped, until someone on my staff thought to check on whether any of your family yachts were out at sea, and il successo! We were able to trace the Isabella from Rome to Messina, then south through the Strait. Finally, I ran a trace of the transponders on your yacht, and located you steaming straight toward Venice. So I flew out immediately. When I knocked on your front door, your butler informed me that you wouldn’t be home for at least an hour or two. I—convinced him to let me in, and here we are.”

  “Wow. All that just to track me down? Quite impressive, I must say. So, what in the world is so important that you needed to jump through all those hoops for little old me?”

  Rossi had been standing, and he motioned for them to sit down. “Mrs. Tulley, I am afraid my country is in a great deal of trouble. I don’t know how much the staff at your bank may have shared with you, but you have been at sea for several days, and much has happened in the meantime …”

  “No, I’m afraid I’m completely ignorant about any of that. I had all of the yacht crew’s cell phones locked away for the duration of the trip, to keep anyone from figuring out where we were headed—fat lot of good that did us—so I’ve been out of touch since we boarded the boat on Saturday. What’s going on?”

  Rossi stared down at his hands. “The first time we met, in my office in Rome, you warned me about the Lega Nord, remember?”

  “Yes, and now they’re just calling themselves Lega. Dropped the north part, so their focus is now on all of Italy.”

  “Right, and along with the Five Star Movement they managed to take command of Italy’s political situation almost overnight, just as you had warned me. The government has completely collapsed, and my position as head of the finance ministry is now mostly just a fiction.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Carlo. If anything, you’ve been one of the few stabilizing influences in all of Italy over the last few years. One of the few leaders who has managed to keep things on track.”

  “Well, yes, I have tried. But now it appears that train is now completely off the track. In fact, I don’t think there are any tracks left anywhere in Italy right about now.”

  “What do you mean?” The coffee and tea cakes had arrived, and Sam poured a cup for herself and then for Rossi, and placed it down on
the coffee table in front of him.

  Rossi took a small sip of coffee and set the cup back down. “I take it you heard about the pope’s speech on Friday?”

  “Yes, but just the highlights. I was busy—visiting a friend in the hospital in Rome, and then caught that flight out to Bari immediately afterwards. What about it?”

  “Hmm. Where do I start?” Rossi stared off at a distant corner of the room, collecting his thoughts. “Ever since the plane crashed into the Vatican, I’ve been working with our foreign minister and many of our colleagues in Europe to try and pour some cold water on all the vitriol that has sprung up almost overnight towards Turkey and the rest of the Muslim world. It seems pretty clear that Turkey’s president was directly involved in the attack, and we learned through an anonymous source—probably the CIA—that many of the other Islamic countries were complicit, as well. Even Saudi Arabia. So that’s a major problem. You Americans had your 9/11, and it led to two major wars that still have no real end in sight. This is much bigger. A scale of magnitude bigger, at least in Europe. I read once where the Muslims in your country stuck little American flags all over their front yards after the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, hoping to deflect some of the righteous anger your countrymen felt toward them. I—I don’t think little flags are going to do the trick here. In fact, the events of the past two days have made it painfully clear that they won’t.”

  Sam had grown increasingly alarmed, watching Rossi’s fidgety body language across the table. “Events? What events?”

  “Samantha. May I call you Samantha?”

  She nodded yes. “Sam’s fine.”

  “Yes, well, Italy, my country, is now a war zone. Nobody is going to work, everyone is out in the streets. Muslims are being rounded up, and many of them are being shot dead in cold blood, falling where they stand. I’d be surprised if there is a single undamaged mosque left standing in all of Italy right now.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yes, except that God has very little to do with it. Or rather, he’s right at the dead center of it all. My God versus your God, a fight to the death and may the best God win.”

  Sam was shocked to the core. Stuck out on the Adriatic Sea for just two days, and the entire world had unraveled around her while she calmly sipped white wine on the lido deck. She noticed that her hand was shaking, and she set her coffee cup down before she spilled all of it into her lap.

  “I—I don’t know what to say, Carlo. I had no idea—” She pressed her palms down firmly against the couch on either side of her, trying to center her thoughts. After a moment, she finally felt she was steady enough to continue. “Okay, so all of hell and half of heaven has broken loose all over Italy. What can I do to help?”

  Rossi smiled at her grimly. “Not just Italy, I’m afraid to say. All of Southern Europe is in flames, and the troubles are spreading north. England is a bloodbath, I’m told, all of those skinheads finally having an excuse to attack anyone and everyone around them. And the police throughout Europe are pretty much useless, unable to keep any kind of lid on the rioting, so the prime minister has mobilized the Italian army to take control of the country. But the soldiers, they’re pretty much paralyzed themselves, not really all that comfortable aiming their weapons at fellow Italians. And now I’ve learned that several large militia groups have sprung up around the middle of the Italian peninsula and are building a giant wall across Italy, separating the north from the south.”

  “A wall?” Sam asked, now completely shaken by what she was hearing. “What kind of wall? And how could anything like that be built in such a short time?”

  “Construction cranes have been moved into place along a line stretching roughly from just north of Rome to Pescara, on the eastern coast. Junked cars and other discarded material are being trucked in as we speak, and the cranes are stacking them up, one on top of the other, blocking any kind of passage from north to south. And the Muslims, they’re being forced through well-guarded gaps in the wall, driven south. Rome itself is in total chaos, with half of the population out in the streets and the other half hunkering down in their homes, afraid to go outside for fear they’ll be killed. Or the women raped, right out in the open.”

  “People are really doing that to each other? Acting like crazy wild animals?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. And it’s only going to get worse. My sources tell me that the pope is planning on releasing a papal bull today calling on the entire Western world to join him in a holy war against all of Islam. When he does that, you can imagine how the Islamic countries are going to respond. Sam, we’ve been engaged in a delicate little dance with the Muslim countries for a great many years, hoping we could find some way to build bridges between our two cultures, find enough commonality to keep the peace between us. But now, instead of a bridge, it looks like we’ve built a wall. Literally.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Sam took several deep breaths. “I think I understand the situation now. I get on a boat for just a few days, and the entire world goes bat shit crazy on me. It seems like I can’t even take a day off work these days.” That earned her a small but grim smile from Rossi. “Okay, I’m back on the job, now. What do you want me to do about all of this? What can I do?”

  “Sam, I didn’t just come to Venice to meet up with you. The government’s being evacuated out of Rome. Venice, given its narrow streets and all the canals, Venice is probably the safest place in Italy right now. No room in the streets for any serious rioting. So we’re taking over the Doge’s Palace as the temporary seat of the Italian government. That’s just for the ministries—the minor governmental functions are being offloaded to Florence and Milan, wherever we can find some space to stack bodies. But we’re being forced to write off Rome entirely for the moment. It just isn’t safe any longer.”

  “And just what exactly is it you want me to do?”

  “You command the largest business empire in all of Italy, if not the entire continent of Europe. Your voice will carry a great deal of sway in helping to calm the banking and business communities until we can get things back under control. Assuming, in fact, we can figure out a way to do so, to get the genie back in the bottle.”

  “Well, as we’ve discussed before, I may hold the strings of the Ricciardelli empire, but I’m still an American, so I don’t know how persuasive I’ll be …”

  “Sam, I’ve watched how you’ve operated over the past few months, and if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that you can move mountains when you want to. I’m told you even struck up a personal friendship with our former pope. And that sort of thing means the world to the people I need you to consult with. Maybe you can even reach out to the new pope, and see if we can somehow reel him in.”

  “Hmm. Yes. Well, all I can do is try.” Sam sat back, teasing a bite of tea cake. “But you said the government is moving here, to Venice? That’s a lot of people to dump on this city at one time. You’re all going to need some place to stay.” She tried another bite, thinking. “Okay, I have a lot of space here, so you’re welcome to any of our guest rooms. And the Italian president? I suppose he’ll be moving here as well?”

  “Yes. He came in on the same plane with me.”

  “Okay. So that means he’ll need some place presidential to set up shop, some kind of presidential palace. Can’t exactly have the president operating out of a hotel room, even if it is the Hotel Danieli. Hmm. You suggested that rioting was unlikely to break out in Venice, but we should still take steps to protect the city and its treasures, just in case. My family owns a museum, the Ca’ Ricciardelli, not far from here. It was originally a palace for the first member of the Ricciardelli clan, an actual Knight Templar, one of the last of their order. I think it might be prudent to move most of the artwork and other valuables out of the museum and into safer storage at my bank. After all, I assume there won’t be much in the way of tourist traffic for the time being, so the museum needs to close down anyway. We can arrange for the palace to be refitted with bedding
and everything else the president will need, and it can serve as his official residence until all of this blows over.”

  “That would be wonderful, Sam! He’ll love it!” Rossi had jumped up off the couch and was now looking a little less frazzled. But just a little. “Look, I know how tired you must be from your long trip—”

  “Most of which was just a matter of watching the sun setting over the coast while sipping on a nice bottle of Pino Grigio …”

  “Yes, well, I know you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you today, catching up on everything that’s happening with all of your business interests. I’m sure everything is in total chaos right now. What isn’t?” Rossi reached down and picked up some papers he had brought with him. “Meanwhile, the prime minister is expecting me back at the Doge’s Palace. He’s got a team of people decommissioning that museum, as well, but we have an emergency cabinet meeting scheduled in less than an hour. So, if you’ll excuse me?”

  “Yes, of course.” Sam showed him to the front door. As they stepped outside, she couldn’t help but notice that the streets of Venice still looked completely serene, completely normal. She could only wonder how long that would last, now that the new pope, the Miracle pope, had launched his holy war upon an unexpecting and unprepared world. And now that even the country of Italy, a country that had stood united ever since the creation of the Kingdom back in 1870, now that country was quite literally being divided by a wall. Of junk. Could all of this craziness possibly be controlled? Could the broken remnants of this world ever be put back together again? Once this torrent of pent-up hatred and bigotry was unleashed, could the evil genie the Turks and the pope had unleashed ever be shoved back inside its little bottle?

  With a sigh, she stepped back inside and gently closed the door, once again shutting out the insanity of the outside world. For now. But as she rested her head for a long quiet moment against the back of the door, one thought popped into her head that suddenly brought all that insanity roaring right back inside. Maddie! She quickly emptied her purse out onto the floor, frantically searching for the phone that was safely nestled in the back pocket of her slacks.

 

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