The Canary List: A Novel

by Sigmund Brouwer

  O’Hare pushed his chair away from the table. He thought it might be best to be out of Crockett’s reach in case speaking again would be considered an interruption.

  “Finished?” O’Hare said mildly. “Because I have no intention of interrupting if you are not. I really don’t want you to punch me in the mouth.”

  Crockett took a deep breath. He looked spent. “Not much more I want to say to you.”

  “Wait here then,” O’Hare said. “I need to make a phone call.”

  O’Hare returned ten minutes later and sat. He sipped the espresso, which Crockett knew had to be cold and becoming acidic.

  He spoke to Crockett without any preamble. “It has been decided that I can make you an offer of sorts.”

  “I thought I was pretty clear about not accepting payment for silence.” Crockett’s rush of anger had washed away, but he was resolute. If they killed him, Mickey would be safe.

  “This offer does not involve compensation,” O’Hare said. “Instead, you will learn the truth. All of it. Then you can judge for yourself if silence is the better or worse of your choices.”

  Crockett gave it some thought, wondering what deception this offer might involve. How much worse could it be than a Satanist cardinal assassinated by the Vatican’s spy agency before he could become pope?

  “Sounds too simple,” Crockett said.

  “It’s not,” O’Hare said. “There are things no man should bear the burden of knowing. My advice is to decide you are better off trusting that the matter needs to be buried.”

  “You know my response to that.”

  “Then there is only one thing I need from you before we continue. The name of Jaimie’s real mother.”

  “I’ve learned you guys don’t play nice. There’s nothing to stop you from pushing me off a balcony once I tell you.”

  “We can go in circles all day,” O’Hare said. “There’s nothing to stop you from lying to me about the name. You’re all the way in. Or you’re not.”

  “Start then, by telling me why it’s so important.”

  “Satanic ceremonies have taken place within the Vatican. They must be stopped from happening again.”

  “Not just Saxon?” Crockett said.

  “You’re all the way in. Or you’re not. Tell me the mother’s name, and you’ll get the truth.”

  “You’ll never convince me that demons exist.” But that was a lie. Crockett no longer had that certainty.

  O’Hare took a bite of his pastry and swallowed it before speaking again. “If, as you strongly feel, demons don’t exist, it doesn’t make any difference to how Jaimie sees the world with this heightened sensitivity to electromagnetism. Poor child. Imagine her life if it had never been explained to her. Feeling that Evil was hunting her, as she describes it, whenever she’s around mentally disturbed people. It’s very likely that sooner or later, it would literally drive her crazy. Think she’s the only person to have this genetic anomaly?”

  “You didn’t discover this through Mackenzie’s genealogy research. You were tracing a family tree that didn’t belong to Jaimie’s biological mother.”

  “A fact of which I’m keenly aware,” O’Hare said. “You’re holding the knowledge of her real mother as leverage, and it’s something I desperately need. She’s the proof I need to take to the College of Cardinals before the next pope is elected. Her family tree will confirm it.”

  “Why do you need that proof? Saxon is gone.”

  “Last chance,” O’Hare said. “We can leave this table and go back to the villa with your promise that Saxon’s death will always be seen as a suicide. Or you can tell me who Jaimie’s mother was and follow me to the Vatican archives and learn about the canary list. Because the truth starts there.”

  Seventy-Two

  t wasn’t until he saw the metal shelving and ponderous brown spines of bindings with handwritten markings that Crockett fully comprehended the vastness of the Vatican Secret Archives.

  The aisles of the shelving were barely wide enough for two people and seemed to stretch for a hundred yards in front of him. Crossway aisles intersected every two steps. Stacks of ancient documents, with equally ancient bindings, were packed six high.

  “Unreal,” Crockett said to O’Hare. He reached and pressed the palm of his right hand against the cool metal of the shelf nearest him. Yeah, it was real.

  O’Hare needed both hands to pull a book off the shelf beside Crockett. It was twice the thickness of a New York City phone book.

  “Papal correspondence, 1792,” O’Hare said, letting Crockett heft the volume. “Interested in a year’s worth of light reading?”

  Crockett handed it back. The question didn’t need any other answer than that.

  The hush of the archives, the overwhelming amount of documents, and the sense of history, of being inside the heart of the Vatican, filled Crockett with reverence, a sensation he didn’t feel often. It was as if the centuries pressed upon him, and he finally understood how fleeting a man’s life was.

  O’Hare had told him as they first entered the archives that there were 35,000 volumes of cataloguing, with material dating from the eighth century. At first Crockett thought O’Hare had made a mistake and meant 35,000 volumes. Now he understood. Thirty-five thousand volumes of just the cataloguing for all the other volumes.

  “I’m told this gallery holds over thirteen thousand linear yards of documents,” O’Hare said. “Best estimate so far is that the Vatican Secret Archives total fifty-two miles of shelving.”

  “Easy to keep a secret hidden in here,” Crockett said.

  “Ah,” O’Hare said. “That comment alone shows the difficulty a layman like you would have in searching for answers in here. That word secret in the title is not meant in the modern sense. Instead, it refers to the fact that these archives are the pope’s own, not belonging to the Curia Romana.”

  “Curia Romana?”

  “The Curia is the central governing body of the entire Catholic Church. Here, all of this belongs to the pope. Documents in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Italian, French. You get the picture.”

  “The vastness seems almost supernatural,” Crockett said. He pressed his palm against the shelving again.

  “In a sense, I would argue it is,” O’Hare said. “Writing sets us apart from every other creature on earth, a gift given to us by the Creator. What you see is time frozen, centuries of knowledge, of correspondence, state papers, and papal account books. We have the privilege of being able to dip in and out of time, just as does our Creator.”

  “You succeeded in impressing me with the archives, as you promised,” Crockett said. “What does this have to do with Saxon?”

  “We will join Jaimie in an hour, when she is scheduled to meet with another cardinal. Until then, we become tourists, wandering St. Peter’s Square. There I can speak to you freely about what was found down one of these endless aisles.”

  With the immense columns of the basilica behind them, O’Hare began his explanation. Their shadows fell in front of them as they walked.

  “It reached me by accident,” O’Hare said. “A researcher stumbled across it in the archives, and because it dealt with demons and exorcisms, he thought it was curious enough to bring it to me. I immediately dismissed it as medieval quaintness to the researcher, and thus effectively eliminated the danger of any public attention to it. But over the last few years, I did my own research and found more and more within the archives to support this. To best explain, I need to use a metaphor. Canaries in a coal mine.”

  “Early warning system.”

  “Exactly,” O’Hare said. “Canaries are far more fragile than humans. In the old coal mines, they would die before humans did, giving warning to coal miners. The miners knew to stay away until the air was clear. But here, we need warning about the perfectly possessed, the infiltrating of the Vatican.”

  O’Hare held up a forefinger, lecturing in a classic sense. “However, calling it the canary list is an anachronism. The list was
in existence long before the coal mines of the Industrial age. As the first chief exorcist in centuries to rediscover the list, I gave it the name that I believe is so apt.”

  “I can see how something could be lost for centuries in those archives. That’s what you wanted, right?”

  “Actually not lost, but deliberately erased. Until it disappeared, the canary list guided exorcists who helped guard the Holy See against demonic infiltration. Men in my position would cultivate relationships with bishops to ensure that girls like Jaimie would enter convents, and then arrange for the sisters to be transferred to Rome. The reasons would be kept confidential—the bishops themselves would not even know. It was crucial that the list remain unknown, so that candidates for cardinals would be screened for demon possession without their knowledge. Simple enough to bring one of the sisters into his presence and gauge the reaction. Candidates for cardinal who were discovered to be perfectly possessed would be publicly diagnosed as having any one of many different maladies, and be classified as not suitable for appointment.”

  “But it only proves what I would argue,” Crockett answered. “That demons are simply a superstition from the Middle Ages. Something like this from the fifteenth century is a natural extension of that.”

  “Pope Leo X, from 1513 to 1521. Pope Clement VII from 1523 to 1534. Are you aware of the nature of their papacies?”

  “If you needed to explain to me what the Curia Romana is, you already know the answer.”

  “Evil men. Literally. If you go through a documented description of their behavior as popes, not a difficult conclusion that each man was perfectly possessed. Under Leo X, even according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, which certainly does not try to cast the popes in a bad light, Christianity assumed a pagan character. He died too quickly to receive last rites. Make of that what you will.”

  “Superstition,” Crockett said.

  “Or not. Shortly after Leo X began his papacy, the canary list disappeared. All my research shows that Leo X was responsible for this, that he wanted the canary list destroyed and all references to it obliterated, so that future generations would never know it existed. Only the vastness of the archives protected the vestiges that came to my attention. I’ve discovered six family trees with women who were on this list. Jaimie’s family will be seven. If Leo X had had his way, Jaimie would never have been born. He wanted all descendants of women on the canary list destroyed. When he took possession of the list, the Holy Inquisition also began specific inquisitions to hunt down the women in the families on this list, essentially in an effort to wipe this genetic anomaly from human existence, lumping these women in with other so-called witches, who also died at the hands of torture.”

  “You have the other six families. Why Jaimie?”

  “The papal election is going to be within days. I don’t have time to get another canary. And she’s the one who can convince the College of Cardinals of the danger they face.”

  Seventy-Three

  tupid dogs, Nathan thought as he lifted a bag of groceries from the trunk of his Taurus. Not much good asleep. Maybe he’d have to replace them.

  He sure wasn’t going to go over and kick them awake. They’d grown more and more vicious over time, so bad that Nathan stayed out of range and just threw them their food. Nathan attributed the viciousness to Abez, who regularly liked to walk up to the dogs and taunt them, something that provided Nathan with a degree of entertainment.

  His mind turned to cooking.

  Oil-poached swordfish, he’d decided, with white corn, guanciale, and chive oil. Nanna would like that. He was happy that the cut on Nanna’s arm was healing so quickly. She had a good appetite and was very appreciative of Nathan’s culinary skills.

  Abez, not so much.

  Abez was still in the backseat. Sulking.

  Things had changed a lot since Nathan had refused to kill the old woman. Abez didn’t quarrel so much but remained an ominous negative presence. Even when Nathan had removed the chains on the old woman—except for one ankle—to let her move more, Abez had given only a token protest.

  Too bad for Abez, Nathan smirked. It probably was because of Nanna’s angel Gabriel that Abez didn’t push Nathan around so much anymore.

  Nathan turned away from the trunk, and there was some guy in front of him. Taller, almost Hispanic-looking, with a mullet. He wore a wife-beater T-shirt, and his arms and shoulders were blue with tattoos.

  The man was holding what looked like a computer hard drive in one hand, and cash and a baggie with weed in the other. A big baggie with weed.

  “Peddle it somewhere else,” Nathan said.

  Not speaking a word, the man tossed the hard drive, the cash, and the baggie in Nathan’s open trunk.

  “Wrong guy to mess with,” Nathan began, but shut his mouth when the mullet guy reached behind his back and pulled out a pistol that he must have had tucked in his belt.

  Nathan struggled with a stupid decision, thinking that if he dropped the bag of groceries to make a defensive move, it would probably break the bottles of chive oil and olive oil and spoil the taste of an excellent cut of swordfish.

  He didn’t struggle with that stupid decision for long.

  Mullet guy pulled the trigger twice, and the shock wave of pain knocked Nathan into the Taurus. He fell, twisting onto his back with the precious swordfish cradled in his arms.

  It didn’t matter. The first bullet had smashed the bottle of olive oil.

  And it didn’t matter because the second bullet tore through Nathan’s lung, narrowly missing his heart.

  In seconds, Nathan was unconscious, groceries spilled from the bag and his limp arms. He didn’t hear the man close the trunk. He didn’t hear the man call 911 from a cell phone.

  He didn’t hear Nanna thanking the police when they helped her out of the trailer within minutes of their arrival.

  And he certainly didn’t hear those same cops going through his trunk, speculating about a drug deal and suggesting that maybe someone in forensics needed to look at the hard drive.

  Seventy-Four

  eep inside Vatican City, Crockett looked across a large, bare desk at one of the two remaining men favored to be the next pope, Cardinal Secretary of State Leonardo Vivaldo. Getting to this room had involved moving through three layers of security, each checkpoint manned by the ubiquitous Swiss Guard.

  O’Hare’s small briefcase had gone through screening without incident, and he held it on his lap, sitting on a chair beside Crockett.

  Physically, Crockett was feeling less jet lag and more himself with every passing hour. Even the Taser shot was just a memory. Physically, it took no effort to sit in this office with O’Hare and Vivaldo.

  Mentally, he felt like he’d been plunked behind a steering wheel in the middle of a Formula One race, able only to react to what he saw directly in front of him. O’Hare had convinced Crockett that a skeptic like him, able to testify to the events of the previous days, would have a better chance of making their case than O’Hare alone, who would be perceived as having a bias.

  So here Crockett was, in that metaphorical race car, sliding through another turn, everything at the sides a blur.

  Crockett focused on Vivaldo, who was heavyset, with jowls the hue and texture of cherries left too long in the sun. Bulldog in appearance, and, as O’Hare had already warned Crockett, a bulldog in tenacity, personality, and social niceties. O’Hare said that Vivaldo’s theology favored the Old Testament God—leaning toward judgment and harsh righteousness, as opposed to the Son whose message of a Father of Love was the foundation of the New Testament.

  “In five minutes, at your previous insistence, I am to meet with Cardinal Ricci and the girl,” Vivaldo said. “If this doesn’t go well, Father O’Hare, you’ve cost yourself.”

  “Cardinal Vivaldo,” O’Hare said, “I’m well aware of the machinations of the Vatican, and I’m equally aware of your standing in the Sacred College of Cardinals. Yet I’m far less concerned about the politics of my career th
an I am about the Holy Catholic Church. It should tell you something about the seriousness of this situation that certain men have agreed to call in favors to ensure you would meet me first, then the girl and Cardinal Ricci.”

  “Nothing was said about another observer.”

  “His name is Crockett Grey. He was there in the catacombs last night when Saxon tried to kill the girl.”

  Vivaldo examined Crockett owlishly.

  “All the more reason,” Vivaldo concluded, “that he does not remain here. Saxon was clearly insane. Perhaps an autopsy will show a tumor of sorts that affected his sense of reality. It would do his memory—and the Vatican—an extreme disservice to air any of Saxon’s beliefs or delusions to the world.”

  “We have tried unsuccessfully to convince Mr. Grey of the same thing,” O’Hare said. “But because he is determined to disagree, it has come down to three choices. He sees and hears everything in our discussion with the girl. Or he tries to take the real reason behind Cardinal Saxon’s death to the public. Or we have to kill him to silence him. If you send him out now, you are sending him to his death.”

  Vivaldo’s eyes bulged briefly. “I will not be bullied, Father.”

  O’Hare said, “Letting you choose of the three is not bullying. I believe you are aware enough of the Saxon situation to understand what’s at stake.”

  “All right then,” Vivaldo said. “Start. Why do I need to see the girl?”

  O’Hare answered by pulling a file folder from the briefcase and handing it across the desk to Vivaldo.

  Vivaldo pulled a pair of reading glasses out of a drawer, unfolded them, put them on, and glanced at the top paper. Then he took a closer look. “Serinus canaria?”

  “Notes on particular family trees of women who, over the centuries, have served exorcists in the Holy See,” O’Hare said. “I’ve called it the canary list. If you are going to be the next pope, you’ll need to know its contents.”