‘Once at seventy million Euros, twice at seventy million Euros...’
From the back of the room a first-time phone bidder emerged, stamping his authority with a loud call of one hundred million. All previous bidders shut their phones and Cardinal Grasso raised a finger by his head to up the bid by one million Euros. Elvis acknowledged the Cardinal as ‘Eminence’ thus alerting everyone to his presence.
The phone bidder, now with a Christie’s official at his side, put two fingers in the air and mouthed two hundred.
‘Is that two hundred million? Elvis said, receiving an affirmative nod.
Cardinal Grasso’s collar tightened.
‘Two hundred and one million,’ he bid in a soft voice with a finger in front of his chest.
‘Three hundred million,’ was the immediate reply. Cardinal Grasso wished he could deflect the glare of media spotlights. His bright red robe drew attention like ants to a honey pot, the stares from those seated behind him burning into his back, the T-shirt under his vestments soaked in sweat. The whole world would soon know the Catholic Church was bidding for the Sword of Golgotha, the stratospheric sums of money involved coming under heavy moral scrutiny. Reticently he raised his hand.
‘Three hundred and one million.’
Four hundred million was the instant riposte. Cardinal Grasso tried to reassure himself. His orders were clear and unambiguous. Return the sword to the Vatican at any cost.
‘Four hundred and one million.’
Uncontrollable forces were leading the Cardinal like a lamb to the slaughter. He waited for the counter-bid, closed his eyes, hoping against it, but it flew across the room, a brick to the back of his head.
‘Five hundred million.’
Elvis confirmed the amount with a more sobering description, ‘Half a billion Euros, ladies and gentleman.’
The noise in the room grew, the crowd witnessing an historical event, the sword about to become the most expensive lot ever sold at auction.
Cardinal Grasso’s heart rate hit one hundred and seventy beats per minute, dangerously high for a man of sixty-six years. His collar tightened further as his blood pressure spiked.
‘And one million.’
The stress was crushing him. He dreaded the return-bid that thankfully never came.
The phone bidder walked to a corner of the room to avoid the maelstrom of whirring cameras and flashlights. He faced the wall while the female voice on the line spoke calmly to him. ‘Can you see the Cardinal’s face?’
‘No ma’am,’ the man said.
‘If only you could. He’s verging on a coronary. Cardinal Grasso has suffered enough today. Close your phone and leave immediately. Talk to no one. There is a key in the safe-deposit box with instructions for its use.’
The line disconnected. The woman tossed her cell phone into the fireplace where it crackled to a molten blob.
Unbearable suspense engulfed the auction room. The phone bidder spun away from the corner and headed for the exit, ignoring the Christies assistant at his elbow, barging through confounded onlookers. He hurried from the Great Room into the foyer and down the steps to the footpath, taking a cab from King Street toward St James Square.
Elvis continued high on adrenalin. ‘Five hundred and one million, once... five hundred and one million, twice... five hundred and one million Euros for the third and last time...’
The gavel hovered at Elvis’ shoulder. Cardinal Grasso watched it descend and hit the rostrum like thunder in a canyon, and his heart skipped a beat.
‘Sold!’
Cardinal Grasso’s anguish was compounded by the spontaneous applause that continued unabated for a full minute.
‘Congratulations, Eminence,’ Elvis said as the applause finally faded.
Inside, the Cardinal was ill with what he had done. Reporters poured down the aisles flanking the Great Room, filling their cameras with snaps of him drained of energy. News of the auction spread quickly around the world as Cardinal Grasso prepared for the psychological crucifixion to follow.
The monk rotated the blade, tip pointed at the ceiling then he marched off the stage accompanied by the black-and-chrome guards.
Cardinal Grasso was ushered into a small room replete with French provincial furniture. A woman in a smart grey business suit sat behind a desk, laptop screen reflecting in her half-rim designer spectacles. She motioned the Cardinal to a chair, his wet undergarments now chilling him to the bone.
After completing the necessary documentation, Cardinal Grasso walked back through the Great Room into the foyer now empty of people. He pushed out the doors into the rain, squinting through a barrage of flashlights as abuse came at him from every angle.
Cardinal Grasso started down the stairs through thrusting microphones. A long boom dropped in his face and he pushed it aside, eyeing the cab at the curb that seemed unreachable. The cameras were unrelenting.
‘How many starving children could the Vatican feed for half a billion Euros, Cardinal Grasso?’
‘Have you bought your place in heaven, Eminence?’
‘Are you next in line for the papacy?’
‘Do you expect more money in Sunday collections to pay for the sword?’
Cardinal Grasso said nothing, heading for the cab as the rain got heavier. A ghetto blaster played Del Amitri’s Nothing Ever Happens but its relevance escaped him.
‘Have you bankrupted the Catholic Church?’
‘The wages of sin are death, Cardinal Grasso.’
The insults came thick and fast. Safely in the cab he left for the Hilton Hotel, flashes exploding in his wake, dull yellow headlights staring into the puddling road ahead.
29
‘Let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord.’ Father Stephen blessed the congregation, signing a cross in the air.
St Michael’s Catholic Church perched high above the valley floor. Patches of snow covered its shale roof and icicles hanging from the gutters dripped away in the sunlight. Father Stephen greeted the parishioners as they filed out of Mass; humble peasants, salt-of-the-earth people. He was one of them, born in the village, and by virtue of his priesthood they adored him. He blessed and kept them safe and they were honoured to have him in their midst.
Cloaked in purple vestments, Father Stephen walked with his mother and father to their house. He stopped along the way, talking with villagers, the short stroll turning to half an hour of pure delight.
Father Stephen changed into jeans, T-shirt and a thick wool sweater. Ugg boots took the chill from his feet. The sweet smell of coffee wafted through the kitchen and his heart rested easy. He sat down at a green laminate table whose steel legs had worn shallow wells in the clay-tiled floor.
His father placed a copy of the Corriere della Sera on the table, confronting Father Stephen with a full-page picture of Cardinal Grasso on the steps of Christies. He read the detailed report on the auction and then leant back on his chair to finish his coffee. He smoked a cigar on the front veranda, rolling the rich flavour around his mouth to help organise the thoughts filling his head. A crisis gripped the Church. The controversy about the sword was volatile as a bomb and he understood the public outrage at its unjustifiable expense.
Global internet petitions demanded withholding monies from collection plates to deprive the upkeep of priests and the Church. Some proposed the boycott of Masses.
The Vatican’s guilt was only magnified by its refusal to comment.
Cardinal Miles Gaby protested vehemently from his New York diocese without rebuff. His simple solution to the disaster was to resell the sword and direct the proceeds to the poor and underprivileged. He promised to renounce the Church if the Vatican did not act quickly.
The auction evolved into the largest public relations nightmare since the British Petroleum oil fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico. Christies revelled in the infamy of the sale; the envy of every rival auction house.
Father Stephen stared across the mist filled valley. In two days’ time, he must return to the Va
tican to prepare an exhibition of religious artefacts and icons. For a fleeting moment, he imagined the Sword of Golgotha forming the centrepiece of the collection, then abandoned the thought to pour more coffee.
30
Between 9:30 and 10 p.m., three arrivals crossed the borders of Vatican City.
Cardinal Grasso sped into St Peter’s Square at 9:33. A convoy of reporters had hounded him during the drive from Leonardo da Vinci Airport, a storm of camera flashes punching through the dark windows of his Mercedes. The Swiss Guard halted the pursuit allowing the Cardinal to finally slow and park.
At 9:37, Father Stephen arrived sedately in a white taxi from the Rome Termini, showing his identification to security guards who knew him by sight as did all five hundred and fifty-eight permanent residents of the Vatican.
At 9:59, a small motor whirred into action in the city’s boundary wall. A double-leafed gate clad in thick iron sheets rolled into the recess of an arched entrance. A special battery-driven engine moved quietly under the arch, stopping on a short section of track beside a goods platform. A man alighted carrying a narrow pine box and handed it to a figure waiting in the shadows of the unlit station. As quickly as the train arrived it departed back through the archway, the heavy iron gates closing behind it. Silently, under cover of a moonless night, it traced the track back to the Rome Termini.
Rain sprinkled onto the square. A solitary light burned inside the Pope’s quarters.
The Holy Father sensed the sword within the city.
31
The vault lay deep beneath the Sistine Chapel. Excavated during the reign of Pope Sixtus V, it housed a marble altar. An electric light bulb dangled from the ceiling, illuminating the freshly plastered walls. The vault had remained empty for nearly five hundred years, a repository in waiting for the most anticipated relic in history.
A Swiss Guard stood in the stone tunnel outside the vault. Inside, three men in black cassocks placed their hands on the altar and genuflected in unison. There, in a pine box was a bubble-wrapped object immersed in a bed of pea-sized foam balls. Cutting away the packaging exposed a purple cloth which one man folded back to reveal the relic.
The Church was now complete.
The man crossed himself and turned to Cardinal Grasso.
‘Giovanni, it is done. Your burden is heavy but your service here is beyond earthly comprehension. Fear not my friend. Let not the opinion of this world tear at your soul. They know nothing of the sword’s true value. Have faith, for its secret is mine. The wrath of man will pass and the Church will be strengthened, its resolve hardened by the baptism of fire it must endure in Christ Jesus’ name. Bless you, Giovanni.’
Cardinal Grasso knelt, kissing the gold ring on the man’s finger.
‘Pray for me, Holy Father, I beseech you.’
The Vicar of Christ turned to Father Stephen. ‘Stephen, I entrust the sword to your study for five days beginning tomorrow. It will remain in this vault, never to be lost again.’
‘Your will and His be done, Your Holiness.’
Father Stephen bowed his head. The Pope placed a hand upon him and whispered a blessing, then lifted his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Brothers, let us pray together.’
The three men of God faced the altar. The Pope touched the sword’s pommel and an indescribable peace flooding his being. Cardinal Grasso took a set of ivory rosary beads from around his neck to lead the recitation of the fifth decade of the Sorrowful Mysteries, reflecting on the Crucifixion and the desired Fruit of the Mystery: Perseverance.
‘Our Father who art in heaven...’
From the comfort of a leather recliner in his office behind the Vatican Library, Cardinal Venti watched the three men on a closed-circuit monitor via a tiny camera hidden in the sprinkler fixed to the ceiling above the altar.
When he heard a knock at his door, Cardinal Venti hit a key on his laptop, blackening the screen.
‘Please come in.’
Sister Dorothea brought coffee and a slice of his favourite banana cake. Cardinal Venti thanked her and she left without a word. He reactivated his computer but the light in the vault had extinguished.
The sword lay on the altar shrouded in darkness. The fourteen-digit electronic code for the vault’s locks changed hourly, accessible only by direct authority of the Pope. Cardinal Venti tried unsuccessfully to intercept the transmissions, concluding the numbers were protected by secure phone lines and voice-recognition software.
He longed to touch the sword, to feel its weight, imagining the scene of the crucifixion, the blade spearing into the tortured flesh of his Lord and Saviour. The thought quickened his pulse. He took a mouthful of coffee and stood to stretch his legs. The woman was late, making him nervous.
32
Father Stephen rose at 5 a.m. From his window, Saint Peter’s Square was in morning shadow. He dressed, prayed briefly beneath a statue of The Virgin Mary, picked up his briefcase and left the room.
He was admitted to the Pope’s chamber at 5:30 a.m. His Holiness, dressed in a simple white cassock, was seated at his desk. The Pontiff spoke two words into a cell phone, scribbled fourteen numbers across a sheet of paper and wordlessly handed it to Father Stephen who bowed reverently, then accompanied by a Swiss Guard, descended into the bowels of the Vatican.
Father Stephen punched the code into the wall pad, aligning the locks. He opened the door and turned on the light. The relic’s aura filled the vault.
Cardinal Venti’s computer screen jumped to life. Father Stephen swung his briefcase onto the altar and removed a notebook, pens and pencils. Over two hours, he filled fifteen pages with neat drawings of the sword, including exploded sketches of the jewel-encrusted grip and pommel. He estimated the sword’s value as a bundle of raw materials at twenty thousand Euros, and reflected on the Church’s decision to pay twenty-five thousand times that amount.
After sketching, he took digital photographs from numerous angles, measured every dimension of the sword with a pair of callipers and recorded them in the notebook. At midday, his stomach rebelled at missing breakfast. He threw the purple cloth over the sword and opened the vault door, leaking light into the stone tunnel outside.
The Swiss Guard stood with a low-powered lamp at his feet. Father Stephen insisted he sit and share lunch with him. Propped against opposing walls they ate ham and cheese sandwiches washed down with cans of Coke. Prohibited to discuss Vatican affairs they instead chatted zealously about all-things-football.
Ready to continue, Father Stephen got up and burped into his fist. The guard resumed his watch.
Cardinal Venti stared at the purple cloth lying on the altar. The period of inactivity had dragged eternally and he focused intently when Father Stephen re-entered the vault.
With a magician’s flourish, Father Stephen removed the purple cloth with a flick of his wrist but it caught on the point of the blade, pulling the sword off the altar. It struck the cement floor with a clang that reverberated around the vault. Mortified, he lifted it up, replacing it on the altar. In addition to a shallow graze on the pommel, a stone was missing from the grip. Sweat welled on his forehead. He spotted the bright green stone on the floor against the door. The Tsavorite garnet sparkled like a diamond. He repositioned it under the solitary gold clasp left to hold it in place.
Cardinal Venti watched with great excitement. He reached into his desk-drawer for a bottle of his favourite pills, shook some into his palm and downed them with a shot of whisky. Almost immediately he felt enlightened and invincible.
Father Stephen held a magnifying glass over the green gem and saw where three other clasps once clamped it in place. He removed the gem, sat it on the altar and shone a pen light through the exposed hole onto a tiny rod. He poked the rod with the dull end of a pencil. To his astonishment there was a click and the blade separated from the hilt. On the end of the hilt was now a bronze dagger with blunt edges, its tip covered by a knob of wax.
Cardinal Venti didn’t hear the first knock at his door. When the se
cond knock registered, he acknowledged it without removing his eyes from the computer screen. Sister Dorothea announced his 2 p.m. appointment.
Cardinal Venti let the chemicals do their work. He relaxed, abandoning the screen. He’d make the meeting short.
A tall attractive brunette swept into his office and Cardinal Venti walked around his desk to greet her.
‘Welcome, Maria.’
He kissed her on both cheeks and she smelled whisky on his breath. He expected no special reverence and she saw no reason to offer it. Maria sat down in a comfortable chair opposite the Cardinal.
‘Mamma sends her love and looks forward to seeing you next month. You are well, Uncle Michael?’ Maria said.
‘Maria, I have never felt better,’ he said as the drugs hummed through his veins. ‘And you, how are your studies progressing?’
‘Very well, but I’m looking forward to the last semester and my Christmas holiday in Australia. Uncle Michael, what is your opinion of the Sword of Golgotha?’
‘Maria, I, like most, wonder at the wisdom of such expense. The sword is an important relic but half a billion Euros is too great a cost. However, I remind myself, the Holy Father is a wise man. He, more than anyone, knew the repercussions of obtaining it, so his reasons must be compelling. He is bearing a heavy burden, I’m certain.’
‘Will there be a chance for public veneration, uncle?’
‘The sword is too volatile. I imagine it will be locked away in a secret location known only to the Pontiff.’
‘Uncle Michael, please hear my confession.’
‘Yes, my dear.’
He took his confessional stole from a drawer in his desk to drape around his neck, and slyly tapped a computer key to catch a glimpse of the vault. The sword was no longer on the altar. He prayed out loud and listened to Maria purge her soul.
The Jesus Germ Page 14
