Papal Decree

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  ‘Your Eminence,’ the doctor called, shutting a first-aid kit that had been of no use. He had cleaned the wound a little so that the dead priest would be at least slightly more presentable for the secretary of state. He would not remove the fatal bone for legal reasons.

  Tarcisio didn’t hear him. He was absorbed in his prayer.

  ‘Your Eminence,’ he called again.

  ‘Yes, Lorenzo?’

  ‘Do you want me to inform the family?’ the doctor asked politely.

  ‘No, thank you. Father Ursino had no living relatives,’ the secretary informed him in a weak, sorrowful voice.

  At that moment he noticed the trace of blood that had dripped from Ursino’s eye to the floor next to the desk. He tried to avoid vomiting as he imagined the sordid scene that had unfolded there. A sacrilege. William and Schmidt continued to watch over the corpse, whispering prayers to the All-Powerful Father to receive their brother in His merciful arms.

  ‘Clean up that blood as soon as possible, please,’ Tarcisio ordered, pointing at the dark red stain.

  ‘Certainly,’ the doctor answered. He looked around for one of the paramedics. ‘Tomaso, clean up this blood –’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea, Your Eminence,’ Daniel, the commander of the Swiss Guard, interrupted. ‘It’s evidence.’

  Tomaso waited while they decided, bent over the spot, ready to make it disappear. The secretary of state gestured to continue, a decision that did not make Daniel happy, but he swallowed silently and said nothing.

  Lorenzo cleared his throat before speaking. The subject bothered him. ‘What about the body, Your Eminence?’

  ‘He will be buried in the German cemetery.’

  That seemed strange to both Lorenzo and William. Schmidt laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder. He knew how difficult this was for him.

  ‘I’m sorry to ask, but the law requires an autopsy –’

  ‘The law requires nothing, Lorenzo,’ Tarcisio interrupted with irritation. ‘You’re confusing Italian law with the law of the Vatican. Italian law requires, Vatican law recommends. There will be no autopsy. According to the will of the Holy Father.’

  ‘I’ll comply with that, Your Eminence.’ Lorenzo cleared his throat again. Another question remained, and he wasn’t happy to ask it. His conscience demanded that he do so. ‘Cause of death?’

  Tarcisio reflected a few moments. His reply would determine how history would hear about this death. It would be the first murder within the high walls of the hill of the Vatican since the nineteenth century, if it were officially deemed murder. There was no other option.

  ‘An accidental cerebral hemorrhage,’ William proposed. ‘The cause of death was a stroke.’

  Lorenzo looked at the secretary for confirmation. Only he was able to give it. A nod of his head sealed Ursino’s cause of death, wounded in the right eye by a bone, a fact that would be suppressed in the official records. No murder had occurred within the walls of the Vatican, according to any record.

  Lorenzo left the Relics Room, leaving the leaders of the church to contemplate the corpse, Tomaso to clean up the blood, and Daniel with two Swiss Guards to protect the prelates.

  ‘He is at peace,’ Schmidt affirmed.

  ‘Yes. Surely looking down on us from the Almighty’s side,’ William added.

  Tarcisio said nothing. He didn’t know any words appropriate for a moment like this. Human life was sacred. The disrespect for it by some, capable of taking it, as if killing a chicken or a cow, lives that God disposed for our nourishment. To take away God’s greatest gift was like renouncing Him.

  While Tomaso cleaned up, his colleagues approached with the stretcher. ‘Can we remove the body, Your Eminence?’ one of them asked.

  Tarcisio made the sign of the cross with his hand pointed at Ursino and wondered whether to cover his face with the sheet. Only then did he authorize them to carry the body off. As soon as the stretcher left the room, the atmosphere became lighter and more breathable. At last …

  ‘Now what?’ Schmidt asked.

  ‘I’m going to make the funeral arrangements,’ Tarcisio said. ‘But first … a meeting with Adolph.’

  ‘Do you need me?’ William asked helpfully.

  ‘Maybe later.’

  ‘I’m going to try to get some rest,’ Schmidt said. ‘I’m feeling the effects of all this.’

  ‘Of course, my good friend. You deserve it. I’ll ask Trevor to speak with the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul to prepare a room for you in the Domus Sanctae Marthae,’ he offered.

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘I insist. I won’t accept a refusal,’ Tarcisio said, closing the subject. ‘Trevor, go with Father Schmidt and get a room prepared for him. He is our guest,’ he ordered.

  Trevor complied immediately.

  ‘Tonight you’ll be notified of a new date to hear the sentence of your hearing,’ William informed Schmidt solemnly.

  ‘This is not the time for that, William,’ Tarcisio admonished him, and then looked at Trevor. ‘Go with Father Schmidt and make sure he has everything he needs.’

  Trevor and Schmidt left the Relics Room. Daniel ordered one of the guards to go with them.

  ‘Commander,’ Tarcisio called.

  ‘Your Eminence.’ Daniel was ready to hear his orders.

  ‘Order this room sealed. Until a new curator is appointed, no one must enter this space.’

  ‘I’ll do so, Your Eminence.’

  ‘Is the investigation concluded?’

  ‘According to your wishes, Your Eminence.’

  ‘Let’s go, then. We can’t keep people waiting,’ the secretary said, looking one last time at the room that guarded the sacred relics of the church. Someone else would be chosen to continue Ursino’s work and take care of this almost immeasurable treasure with the respect and devotion it deserved. Tomaso had finished cleaning and disappeared, like the blood that had stained the floor. Now all that remained was to try to forget. He looked at William. ‘I’m at your service.’

  The two men left the room, escorted by Daniel and the other guard. William looked at Tarcisio with an open smile, which the secretary returned.

  ‘I’m really in need of good news,’ Tarcisio said.

  53

  The noise was deafening. Vehicles of all kinds circled the runway in an ordered chaos typical of a big city at rush hour. The jet waited for Sarah, ready for departure.

  They arrived in a black SUV with tinted windows, driven by one of Garvis’s agents, who sat in the backseat with Sarah and Jean-Paul.

  Sarah carried only a simple leather folder pressed between her hands. Inside it contained the most important parchments in Christianity, and Sarah was deathly afraid of losing them. Her nervousness made it hard to breathe. The sickness threatened to return. She should never have agreed to do this. Who did she think was judging her? Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was ever ready to resolve the problems the church got into? Friendly couples like the Isaacs? How she longed for a normal life, without thousand-year-old secrets, or any secrets, without the human cruelty that prevailed everywhere, especially on the highest levels. God was said to have created man in His own image, but she knew this was a lie and, worse, the terrible truth that contradicted that affirmation. It was man’s fault. It was he who created God in his own image – cruel, intolerant, spoiled, punishing, greedy, fearful. How could billions of people believe in an all-powerful, omnipresent, moral being with so many faults and such a bad temper?

  ‘Thanks again for cooperating, Sarah,’ Garvis said in a baritone voice with a West Country accent.

  Sarah hadn’t noticed his voice before. It was curious how concentrating so hard on one thing could block out everything else. Sarah would not make a good detective. Sometimes the obvious escaped her, even though, as a journalist, a certain nose for things was essential.

  ‘What will the procedure be?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ Jean-Paul ask
ed worriedly.

  ‘Yes. Everything’s okay. A little weak, maybe,’ she excused herself. She didn’t want to admit that she was nervous, even if it was obvious.

  ‘You can eat on board. Don’t be nervous, Sarah,’ Garvis instructed.

  The limo followed an unidentified vehicle, a kind of low tractor with a fork in front. Several identical ones were busily working the runway. Their function was to move the planes from the gate to the taxiway, ready to follow them to the runway, since planes can only move forward on their own.

  They stopped at a kind of crosswalk, though nothing Sarah could see identified it as such. Across the way she noticed a fleet of four private planes. One of them would carry her to her destination, and then … who knew? She felt as if she might not survive.

  ‘Aren’t you going with us, Inspector Garvis?’ she asked, to hide her discomfort.

  ‘No, Sarah. Relax. You’re in good hands. Inspector Gavache’s team is first-class. Too many people just get in the way.’

  She had no more questions. In this case they would know the international protocols better than she.

  Leaving behind the crosswalk, the limo drove a few hundred feet to a Cessna that awaited them. Garvis was the first to open the door and let Sarah and Jean-Paul out. The noise of the engines was deafening.

  ‘All ready?’ he shouted at a worker in a fluorescent jacket and ear protectors.

  ‘Everything’s ready, sir,’ he answered respectfully, loud enough to be heard, and gave a thumbs-up.

  Then Garvis shook hands with a man in a suit. ‘Garvis, Metropolitan Police,’ he introduced himself. ‘Are you the one I have to thank for the plane?’

  ‘Not me, but the American people,’ the other answered, maintaining his grip in a firm, courteous way. ‘David Barry, FBI,’ he lied.

  ‘Sarah, once again, thanks for all you’re doing,’ Garvis said to the journalist. ‘And don’t worry. They’ll defend you with their lives if necessary.’

  Sarah got most of what was screamed at her. The noise was immense. A plane started to take off on a runway next to them, lifting off with a roar that filled the surroundings. Sarah acknowledged Garvis with a nod, but Garvis kissed the back of her hand. A gentleman. Then a handshake for Jean-Paul.

  ‘Bon voyage.’

  ‘Merci.’

  Sarah gripped the folder securely and followed Jean-Paul to the steps of the plane.

  ‘Oh, and, Sarah?’ Garvis shouted seconds before another plane took off nearby.

  Sarah looked at him from the door.

  ‘Greet him for me,’ Garvis asked.

  ‘Who?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘You know who,’ Garvis said, getting in the front door of the limo, smiling slightly, leaving behind the confused noise and vehicles.

  Jean-Paul disappeared inside the plane when his phone began to ring. The American was the last to enter.

  A pretty flight attendant and steward with everything in its proper place greeted the passengers.

  Jean-Paul exchanged some words in French, of which Sarah barely understood half, not enough to connect with the conversation.

  ‘It was Inspector Gavache. He’s on his way to the airport, but he has to take a short detour. We’ll have to wait a few minutes.’

  ‘That’s all right. We have time,’ Barry said.

  Sarah didn’t care. She wasn’t in charge of anything. Her purpose was only one, to hand over the documents and hope for the best. How idiotic to play the role of Saint Sarah.

  Jean-Paul led her to her seat. The backs were very comfortable, but Sarah was already familiar with the perks that money, public or private, can buy.

  ‘Hello,’ an older man greeted her, who Sarah thought must be a French agent, seated with a half-open newspaper on his lap. ‘You must be Sarah Monteiro,’ he said, taking her hand and kissing it. ‘Nice to meet you.’ He snatched the folder with the parchments out of her hand without even asking. ‘Let me take this weight off your hands.’

  If circumstances had been different she might have enjoyed this gallantry, but unfortunately they weren’t.

  ‘And you are?’ Sarah asked suspiciously.

  ‘Jacopo Sebastiani,’ he said, lowering his head humbly. ‘At your service.’

  54

  Disorder, disquiet, disillusion, affliction. This was the state in which Gavache had left Ben Isaac in his mansion in one of the richest neighborhoods of London after Ben Isaac had revealed a completely different story of the life of Jesus Christ. Even though Gavache was not a believer, the account had left him troubled. Something of the disquiet and disillusion had followed him from the house and stayed with him in the police car assigned for his use.

  Ben Isaac had begun the story without hurry and confusion, except the two interruptions when Gavache received phone calls.

  According to the Gospel of Jesus, which Ben Isaac uttered from memory with a tremor in his voice, Yeshua was born a year before the death of Herod the Great, during the Jewish month of Tishri in the year 3755 on the first day of Sukkot in Bethanya, a small village a mile and a half to the east of Jerusalem, at the foot of the Mount of Olives.

  ‘Do you think I have any idea what you’re talking about?’ Gavache interrupted.

  A discouraged Ben Isaac frowned. ‘September 14, 5 B.C. A Saturday. The first day of the Feast of Tabernacles.’

  What the fuck. Gavache didn’t need precise dates. He forced himself to keep his mouth shut and not show his skepticism.

  Jesus was prepared from an early age to assume an important role. He was a descendant of Abraham, David, and Solomon, who had ordered the building of the Temple. He was expected to restore the glorious time before the exile, the glory of Israel. But the Jerusalem that Jesus knew was not the Jerusalem of the Old Testament. That city had fallen under the yoke of Babylonia, which razed the city and destroyed the Jewish Temple. The Ark of the Covenant had been lost forever in the sixth century B.C. The Jerusalem of Jesus’s time was reconstructed from scratch by the Jewish rulers of the Hasmonean dynasty in the second century B.C., and the Temple was reconstructed by Herod the Great a year before Jesus’s birth.

  Herod wanted Him dead, not because he was a lunatic, but because Jesus was a noble Jew who had been proscribed with all His family. Herod had to eliminate any possible challenge to his throne.

  ‘For the Jews the word Messiah didn’t mean the chosen one or the one sent by God. Messiah simply referred to the heir from the house of David. Joseph was also an heir, and Jacob before him,’ Ben Isaac continued.

  ‘But why Jesus? Did He know he was an heir to the throne?’ Gavache didn’t understand.

  It wasn’t difficult to find the answer in the Bible. The accounts place the family of Jesus in Bethlehem, later in Egypt, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Caesarea, Cafarnaum, Jericho, Betabara, Enom, Betsaida, throughout the Jordon valley and along the Sea of Galilee, among many other places. Jesus’s family, a royal family, was in permanent flight. In one place His father was a carpenter, in another a stonemason, an artisan – always manual crafts, which those sent by Herod never paid attention to. Joseph never stayed in one place too long. Of course, this information was not explicitly mentioned in Holy Scripture, since the authors of the gospels wanted to emphasize the importance of the virgin birth, of conception without sin. From the beginning the intention was to emphasize Jesus as the Son of Man, the Messiah, a man greater than all other men who could perform miracles as if He were the Son of God Himself. Everything else was history.

  ‘In the middle of the night, without warning, Father awakened us. It was time to leave again,’ Ben Isaac quoted.

  ‘Is that in the Bible?’ Gavache asked.

  Ben Isaac shook his head no. It wasn’t necessary to cite the source of the quotation. For Gavache it was a completely different picture of Jesus from what he knew.

  The life of Jesus bounced back and forth until his adult years. He became a renowned and respected rabbi because of His humility and wisdom until … John the Baptist. Gavache frowned and redoub
led his attention at this point in the account.

  John the Baptist was Jewish, the son of the priest Zacarias and Elizabeth. He was born on the outskirts of Jerusalem in Ein Kerem, six months before Jesus, and began his Nazarite education at the age of fourteen in Ein Gedi.

  ‘Nazarite education?’ Gavache asked.

  ‘Yes, the consecration of someone to God. It involved some physical sacrifices, never cutting one’s hair, never drinking wine, never touching a corpse, never eating meat. One had to maintain a purified state against all temptations,’ Ben Isaac explained, with the patience of Job. ‘Jesus was also a Nazarite.’

  ‘Jesus the Nazarite, as opposed to Jesus from Nazareth, the Nazarene,’ Gavache deduced, absorbed in the story. ‘A Messiah consecrated to God?’

  ‘See how it all connects,’ Ben Isaac tossed out.

  Jesus was fascinated by John the Baptist for his abnegation, but even more for his personality. He saw a wandering preacher who advocated baptism instead of fanatical extremism. Like all the Jews of his time, John had a preoccupation with purification by water. Even today archaeologists are constantly discovering the basins for ritual baths, the Jewish miqwa’ot. Practically every Jewish house had one, and any traveling Jew that entered one had to be purified. They had to dip themselves in a pool, which was filled with spring water, but, before going in, they had to wash their hands and feet, especially the lower limbs, which were the source of impurity. After dipping, their feet and head were rubbed with purifying oil. The woman who anointed Jesus in the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany two days before the Crucifixion, according to the canonical gospels, was just performing a Jewish ritual with ancient roots.

  ‘Okay, they took a lot of baths. What does that have to do with anything?’ Gavache asked.

  ‘The baths were Jewish rituals. John the Baptist performed the same ritual in the Jordan River, but for gentiles,’ Ben Isaac explained.

  ‘And baptized Jesus,’ Gavache added.

  ‘But this didn’t have the enormous outcry that the apostles and His followers claimed it did. The majority didn’t understand what had happened. Not even John understood.’