Father Elijah

by Michael D. O'Brien

  “If the Father would care to telephone Monsignor’s home, he might be able to leave a message there”, replied the clerk and hung up.

  He succeeded only in reaching the answering machine at Billy’s apartment.

  “Lo, guvs,” said the metallic voice, “I’m out of town on a spot of business. Home by Tuesday. Please leave a message after the beep and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”

  Tuesday came and went.

  On Wednesday morning, Elijah phoned the secretariat and was told by the clerk that, unfortunately, Monsignor Stangsby had suffered an automobile accident and was recovering at Gemelli Hospital.

  Elijah received permission from the prior to visit him at once, and took the next city bus.

  He was informed by the nursing desk that Monsignor Stangsby was in the intensive care unit and could not receive visitors. No, regrettably, there could be no exceptions. The monsignor was not yet out of danger. Father should wait a week and inquire again.

  Frustrated, Elijah walked back to the bus stop. He observed the arrival and departure of his bus. He stared down at the pavement. Then, thanking God for his experience as a ghetto rat, he returned to the hospital, searched for a service entrance, and worked his way through the hospital until he found the back door to the ICU.

  He waited for a moment of distraction at the ward desk, then went swiftly and silently into the unit. He found Billy in a curtained alcove. He was identifiable only by the nameplate in the slot at the foot of the bed. His face was heavily bandaged, his arms in casts, and one leg held high in traction. There were purple bruises on the patches of exposed flesh. He was wired and tubed.

  “Billy”, Elijah whispered.

  Billy’s eyes opened, swam sideways, then returned to center.

  He focused on the face of the priest, and a groan came from his swollen lips.

  “Dawwee?”

  “What happened, my friend?”

  “Caw! Blowuff. Fie! Blubby twoob ut.”

  He thrashed weakly and gestured toward his face.

  “Twoob. Ut!”

  “Should I really take the tube out? You probably need it.”

  “Juh suk.”

  “I’m sorry Billy, I don’t understand. It might be dangerous to remove that tube. We’ll talk another day, when you are better.”

  “Nah baddah. Nah nahddah deh. Now!”

  Billy glared and began to thrash wildly. Elijah nervously removed the tube, intending to replace it at the first sign of distress.

  “There! Thank God!” gasped Billy in a hoarse voice. “It’s just a suck tube. Blasted thing! Keeps the bloody mouth clear. Gah!”

  He spit blood and mucous.

  “What happened to you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Were you hit on the street?”

  “I was dozing off in my apartment. I’d just popped some candy that came in the mail and fell asleep. I was really tired. Just got back from Helsinki. Next thing I know there’s a mob o’ bleedin’ medics wheeling me away from the ruins of the Jaguar. It was burning and looked like a crumpled accordion. ‘This is cloud coo-coo land, boys’, I told them. ‘I’m not here’, I said. I’m havin’ a nap and you lot are a bad dream.’ But they didn’t pay any attention to poor old Billy.”

  “Do you remember getting into the car?”

  “No! Not a flicker of a memory.”

  “Driving?”

  “No, no, no! Nothing! Look, this is crazy, Davy. One minute I’m getting drowsy at the apartment, and the next thing I know I’m in the ambulance, bashed up, in a hell of a lot of pain, and the car’s on fire. Worse than that, these louts are breathing garlic on my face.”

  “What could have happened?”

  “I’ve got my suspicions.”

  “Tell me.”

  “The candy. I think somebody wanted me to have a nasty car accident—permanent-like.”

  “What do the police say?”

  “They say I was drunk.”

  “Were you?”

  Billy gave him a fierce look.

  “No bloody way”, he said in a tone that made Elijah want to apologize.

  “But what would make them conclude that the accident was related to alcohol?”

  “There were empty bottles of booze in the car, and my clothing was soaked in gin. Which is sufficient evidence for me to conclude that it was a rigged job.”

  Elijah looked perplexed.

  “You see, old boy, I hate gin. I absolutely never, and I mean never, drink it. I used to when I was a dedicated booze-artist, but I haven’t been able to choke the vile stuff down for decades. The smell of a juniper bush makes me nauseous. I take a sip of wine now and then, as you well know, or a tankard of ale. . .”

  “Or grappa?”

  “All right, all right, all right! But gin—never!”

  “So, are you saying someone has tried to kill you?”

  “Right. And made it look like an accident.”

  “It is a miracle you survived.”

  “I expect so.”

  He spat more blood.

  “I lost a few back teeth. Don’t ask me why the front ones are still in my gums. And I got a big tear in my mouth, but don’t ask me where that came from. The whole thing’s pretty bloody mysterious.”

  “Has anything unusual happened that might have brought this upon you?”

  “Gad! Any number of things. My whole life’s unusual. Everything we deal with at the office is unusual. Ask me another question.”

  “Have you discussed Cardinal Vettore with the Secretary or the the Holy Father?”

  “Not yet. I intended to, but a storm of crises broke out the morning after the African Mass.”

  Billy cleared his throat and spat into a basin.

  “That’s enough. Don’t talk any more”, said Elijah.

  “Try to stop me!”

  “No, no. You must rest.”

  “Talking’s my chief pleasure in life, and it’s been denied me since I got tubed.”

  “I’ll call a nurse.”

  “Don’t do that, Davy. Listen to me. There are things you need to know.”

  “What things?”

  “I kept waiting for a chance to get alone with the boss, but we had Great Britain arriving that morning, and hot on the heels of that, we had Russia protesting the large number of conversions our missionaries are making. Stato kept saying, Later, William, whatever it is it can wait. I wish he wouldn’t call me William all the time. By nightfall he had to rush off to meet with the Pope and then on to a meeting with other foreign ministers to discuss papers they’re giving at The Club of Rome. The next morning I had to leave for Helsinki. Stato was scheduled to leave for an emergency meeting at the U.N. I went home late, but before going to bed, I made a voice memo of our conversation about Vettore, intending to have my secretary put it on paper. I meant to send the cassette by courier early the next morning and have it hand-delivered to Stato as soon as he got back from New York. But I overslept and had to rush out to the airport. When I got back from Helsinki it was late, and Stato had gone home to his place, leaving instructions that he wasn’t to be disturbed. His secretary said he’d caught a bad flu. I almost drove over there and rousted him out of bed. I’d learned something big in Finland, so big that I should have ignored everything to get it to him. But then I decided I didn’t want him to grump at me for disturbing his beauty sleep. And besides, I knew I’d see him at the office in the morning. What a crazy sequence of events. So I went home and opened my mailbox. There was the packet of chocolate mints—my favorite. I chewed a few as I dictated a memo about Helsinki into the cassette. The rest is history.”

  “Who sent you the candy?”

  “Some nuns in London. Friends of Mum.”

  “Do you have the mailing package?”

  “I suppose it’s still there on the coffee table.”

  “And the cassette?”

  “Sitting in the machine probably.”

  “If it’s not there, what will w
e do?”

  “Just get Stato in to see me pronto.”

  “It must be very urgent.”

  “It’s big. Very big.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s all on the tape. Look, I don’t understand why the boss hasn’t been in to see me. Can you ask him what’s going on?”

  “I will. Can you tell me about Helsinki?”

  “I’m coming to that. Let me catch my breath.”

  “Billy, what information could be so important that someone would try to kill you? Certainly not the Vettore connection.”

  “I don’t think this has anything to do with him. Not as far as I know. At least not directly. Which is probably why they haven’t arranged a little accident for you too. After all, we both know about Capri, right?”

  “Correct. But it is merely my word against the cardinal’s.”

  “Right.”

  “One does not do this sort of thing to stop a rumor about a cardinal.”

  “Vettore is ambitious and blind as a bat. But he’s not a killer. I think they’re using him somehow. I don’t think he even begins to understand what they’re up to.”

  “Who are they?”

  “His masters? I have a few names, but it’s much bigger than that.”

  “What have you learned?”

  “It’s penetration.”

  “Penetration?”

  “One of their side got cold feet. I won’t say he’s had a conversion to our side, but he’s the sort who has ideals. He’d been doing some soul-searching and decided he couldn’t stand what they’re up to. He phoned me two weeks ago and begged for a secret meeting in Helsinki. I can’t tell you who he is. If his name gets out, he’s a dead man. He told me their whole battle plan for the destruction of the Church.”

  “Who are they?”

  “They’re . . .”

  Billy choked and spat blood.

  “That’s enough for now”, said Elijah. “I’m calling a nurse.”

  “No, no. Look, just go to my apartment. Get that tape and put it into Stato’s hands personally. And ask him to come and see me as soon as possible.”

  “Can I have your apartment keys?”

  “I don’t know where they are. Check the drawer in my bedside table.”

  “Nothing there.”

  “They’re probably locked up at hospital security. No way they’ll give them to you. Just tell the landlord I said it’s okay to let you in.”

  “Will he believe me?”

  “Tell him you need to feed Andy. He’ll know you’re from me.”

  “I pray you will be all right, Billy. God protect you!”

  “Don’t worry. They’ll need an elephant gun to bump off this old peer.”

  “And pray we find the cassette.”

  “Go see Stato yourself. He’ll believe you. I’m sure he’ll take you to the Holy Father.”

  Elijah reinserted the suction tube, blessed Billy, and left.

  * * *

  The apartment was pin-neat. There was no wrapping paper. No candy box. And no cassette. There were no signs of a struggle. But on the kitchen counter there were three empty gin flasks beside the sink.

  Elijah stared at the bottles for some minutes before it struck him that they were lined up like soldiers, or like witnesses standing at attention to give evidence against the sobriety of a certain Billy Stangsby, notorious lush. The neatness bothered Elijah. That alone suggested a “set-up”. Moreover, he knew Billy well enough to believe that he was not lying about the gin. Billy’s confessional nature owned up to anything. In addition, the monsignor was angry, bewildered, and a little frightened—a reaction entirely different from shame.

  He picked up the telephone and dialed the office of the Secretariat of State.

  It rang twice, and when a voice answered he hung up without saying a word. He looked at the ceiling of the apartment, then around at the walls. Then he left.

  Elijah decided to walk directly over to Vatican City. It was a late September afternoon. The day was cool and the sky brilliant blue. The sort of weather that had always elated him. Even as a ghetto-child he had been happy on such days, no matter how hungry he was.

  He walked along the Tiber and crossed over to the west bank on the Sant’Angelo bridge. Then, wanting to enter the Vatican unobtrusively, he walked north and turned west onto the Via Crescenzo.

  If an individual or group of persons had made an attempt on Billy’s life, it must be because he knew something that would endanger their purposes. Why then, in this city of rampant crime, of daily brutal murders, most of them unsolved, did they not simply assassinate him? Lethal poison or a bullet would have been fast and efficient, leaving few openings for detection. Why had the assassins found it necessary to create the appearance of an accident? The only possible explanation was that it was absolutely necessary for them to avoid difficult questions. A murdered monsignor in the Vatican Secretariat of State would have aroused curiosity in many quarters. It would have stimulated some messy inquiries. Almost certainly to be asked would be: What volatile information had recently come to the monsignor?

  Was the “accident” ordered by whoever was overseeing the electronic surveillance of Vatican officials? Was this person or persons an exterior enemy? Or an interior one? It was preposterous to think that someone inside the Vatican had been responsible. There were many kinds of corruption in this world, but ecclesial corruption usually took the form of vice or ideological dissent. Neither of these provided the motivation to kill.

  What, then, were the other scenarios? He had heard not a few alarmists spin elaborate theories of Masonic penetration of the Vatican. Mafia manipulation. Marxist undermining. There was a theory that the latter, before their demise, had planted thousands of agents in seminaries throughout the world and that some of these were now of age to accept appointments to bishoprics and sensitive offices in the administration of the universal Church. He had heard of fascist moles, Satanic moles, eurocommunist moles, invaders from outer space, and even American capitalist moles. Everyone seemed to have “evidence” to support his own conspiracy theory.

  He had no doubt there were sinners and traitors in the college of cardinals, and among the thousands of bishops in the world—the press delighted in revealing their defections and scandals. He knew that the Church was just what the Lord had said she was, a net cast wide into the sea of humanity, bringing in catches of every kind, some good, some not so good. It had always been that way.

  He wished he could discuss these questions with Don Matteo, The friar would have been able to throw supernatural light upon it.

  Elijah felt exposed, endangered. The world had always presented itself to him as a disaster zone: Warsaw, Cyprus, Israel. But the Church? No. She was built upon rock, a cornerstone, a sure foundation.

  But the Lord, speaking through the cross of San Damiano, had said: “Go, rebuild my Church, which is falling into ruins.” Seven hundred years ago, Francis had picked up one stone and laid it atop another. Then another. And another. He had begun with the literal and moved to the universal. The little poor man of Assisi would have crumbled in dismay if he had foreseen what would happen because of his holy obedience.

  Now the Church was falling again into disarray, but nowhere near as bad as the thirteenth century, or the time of the Borgias, or the Avignon papacy. The dark days of the Nazi occupation of Rome had also been very bad. And during the Soviet era, it had seemed that all Europe teetered on the edge of an invasion that more closely resembled the reign of Antichrist than any other tyranny the Church had faced in her two thousand years of history.

  But that period was now over. Communism and fascism were dead. The world had entered an era of relative peace, though it did continue to boil over in regional conflicts from time to time.

  True, the world powers were secularized, and believers were steadily dwindling in number, but did that mean the worst was indeed happening? Did that mean the Church was in ruins? Did her interior troubles really stem from the activity of
a few secret agents, a few devils in the closet, or a few noisy rebels posturing at heroic dissent?

  Elijah was tempted to laugh bitterly. He had suffered under real tyrants. How could these foolish Western prelates and pampered academic theologians begin to understand the nature of real tyranny! If they were to spend one day in the Gulag, they would instantly abandon their peevish malice toward Rome. They would grow up and quickly come to see their hostility for what it was—an adolescent rebellion. An Inquisitional Church, they called her. But this tyrant, curiously enough, had no police or army, no temporal power, only the voice of truth in the conscience.

  Was that why she was so hated? The voice of truth in the conscience heard as a reproach, and if the guilty could not endure their guilt feelings, they must eventually silence the reproacher.

  But to kill Billy? Billy, who more than anyone else at the Vatican wore his weaknesses on his sleeve and would reproach no one for sin or human frailty, though he had some pithy remarks about men in high places who preached errors. No, clearly the attempt upon his life was of another dimension. Was it purely political? Perhaps it was a shot across the bow, a warning to Stato that a similar fate might await him if he persisted, with that characteristic stubbornness of his, in carrying out certain policies. It might be that the “accident” had nothing to do with Elijah or with Cardinal Vettore whatsoever and was an eruption of complex international moves, the nature of which Elijah could not begin to guess.

  Whatever Billy had learned in Helsinki was obviously the hissing piece in the puzzle. It struck him suddenly that Billy was the only one in the Church who knew what it was. He felt momentarily afraid for him, and regretted that he had not insisted on hearing more. Then he reminded himself that Billy would relate the information directly, and in detail, to Stato.

  Elijah arrived at the entrance to the suite of offices occupied by the Secretariat of State and asked to see the cardinal.

  “An appointment would be necessary”, the priest-clerk told him.

  “It is really rather important”, he replied.

  “The cardinal is restricted by a heavy schedule.”

  “Could you please take a note to him? It is of utmost urgency.”

  The priest-clerk looked dubious, but pushed a writing pad and a pencil toward him. Elijah scribbled his name, his telephone number at the Carmelite House, and the message: “Regarding William. Urgent and sensitive matter.”