The Last Pope

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  Rafael thought for a moment.

  “Yes. But can I copy it on a piece of paper?”

  “Of course.”

  Intrigued, Sarah walked up to Rafael.

  “Where are we going now?”

  “Do you know how to get out?” Dr. Margulies asked.

  “Yes, don’t worry. As soon as you find something, call me at this number.”

  When he finished copying the mysterious words and digits, he handed Margulies a note with his phone number. Then he walked toward the exit, followed by Sarah.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To cut our hair.”

  “What? At this hour?”

  They walked back along the long corridor leading to the door, and then to the front entrance. It was about fifty yards from there to the big gate and the sentry box, where the guard was watching a black-and-white monitor. Soon they were out on Great Russell Street.

  “If we can visit a prestigious professor at the British Museum at two thirty in the morning, we can also wake up a hairdresser a little after three.”

  “But do we have to?”

  “It’s not my hair we’re talking about, my dear. It’s yours. It’s definitely too long.”

  23

  Some meetings were meant to occur sooner or later. Human beings aren’t always masters of their fate.

  A man of advanced age walked confidently amid a crowd of strangers, though he may not have been a total stranger to all of them. He hadn’t realized yet that, among so many people, someone was following him. Of course, that man was very competent. They had both come out of the Hilton Theater, where they saw an excellent musical, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and then walked south, down Sixth Avenue. After turning on Thirty-eighth Street, the old man went into a residential building. A uniformed doorman greeted him.

  The pursuer watched from a distance. He looked at the number above the door and compared it with his notes, confirming that it was the old man’s address.

  He made a call as soon as the old man disappeared into the building. A few moments later, a black van stopped beside him and he climbed in. The vehicle remained parked. One had to be patient.

  “He lives here?” the driver of the van asked in some East European language, perhaps Polish, and then he whistled, admiring the luxury of the place.

  The man in the black coat just nodded, his eyes fixed on the entrance of the posh residence.

  “The London situation turned out negative?” the driver asked.

  “Yeah, it did.”

  “Tell me something, then. Why can’t we go in and rub that guy out, once and for all?”

  The man took his time answering, as if considering several possibilities. “Because he is the key.”

  He kept watching a while longer. Finally, he asked the Polish man to keep an eye on the entrance, while he pulled a photo out of his pocket. It was the familiar picture of the present pope, Benedict XVI. Then he took out a small black-light lamp and aimed it at the photo. Thousands of filaments neatly depicted the image of the old man they were shadowing, while the photo of the pope seemed to fade out. When the ultraviolet light was turned off, the concealed image vanished, as with bank bills, and the original image came back, again showing the smiling pope, greeting the faithful with a wave of his hand.

  “Yes, he is the key.”

  24

  ALDO MORO MAY 9, 1978

  Aldo Moro was writing a letter to his family. It was one more among many he’d sent already, including those addressed to Pope Paul VI and to the main leaders of his party, during the fifty-five days he had been a prisoner of the Red Brigades.

  By his looks, one would think he was a beggar, but this serene and peaceful man had been prime minister of Italy five times. The government, headed by Giulio Andreotti, would not negotiate with a terrorist organization such as the Red Brigades, which demanded that a number of prisoners be freed. Since that was not negotiable and the prime minister argued that the hostage himself opposed any engagement with these outlaws, it was difficult to anticipate what would happen to Aldo Moro, leader of the Christian Democracy at the moment of his kidnapping, on March 16 of that same year, 1978.

  Since then, Moro hadn’t seen or spoken with anyone except Mario, his keeper, guard, and kidnapper. At first, Mario treated him as if he wanted to make him endure harsh interrogation, and Aldo Moro thought that his guard was trying to get certain information, but soon their meetings became long face-to-face conversations. As Mario saw it, Moro proved to be an admirable man who, in spite of the situation, had gained his respect.

  The position taken by the administration and by the militants of Moro’s own party, however, deeply disappointed the prisoner. Nobody lifted a finger to help him, and in spite of the fact that in the letters he sent he had pointed out that the government had an obligation to put people’s lives first, most of the members of the Christian Democracy, and those in government, including the prime minister, believed that Moro had been forced to write those letters and that they therefore didn’t reflect his actual thinking. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Mario, as leader of the Red Brigades, could abandon his claims and demands, but he also could make a show of force and kill Moro in order to ensure the success of any future kidnapping. Or perhaps this young man was only a pawn in a chess game, a pawn who would never have any power to do or decide anything. Perhaps he just followed orders. Regardless, Moro was totally convinced he wouldn’t get out of there alive.

  In another room of the same flat on Via Gradoli where Aldo Moro was writing his letter, Mario answered a phone call. Three other men were with him. Two were watching TV and the other was reading the newspaper.

  “Hello.”

  “Today,” said a male voice at the other end of the line. “Carry on as planned.”

  “Okay,” Mario agreed.

  “I’ll call you again in an hour. The American wants this taken care of as soon as possible.”

  “Okay,” Mario repeated, and hung up. “We’re going to finish this,” he announced to his comrades.

  “Do you think this is the best thing to do?” the one reading the paper interjected with some hesitation.

  “It’s not for us to decide. We can’t turn back.”

  “I still think it would be better to free him. We’ve gone too far already, further than we ever imagined. They’ve gotten our message and they’ve understood it. Now they know there is no safety for them,” the terrorist said, folding his newspaper.

  “It’s not our battle, Mario. We didn’t want this,” one of the comrades watching TV confessed, seemingly with conviction.

  “When we started, we knew this could happen. And we accepted,” Mario pointed out.

  “Don’t count on me to pull the trigger.”

  “Don’t count on me, either,” the one sharing the sofa with him, still watching TV, warned. He’d been silent until then.

  “We should free him. We don’t have to answer to anybody.”

  “Don’t even think about it. We have to finish this today. We are not going to back down,” Mario asserted, trying to convince himself that it all was a political decision. He wasn’t even willing to consider that Aldo Moro’s life could depend on him. Moro’s fate had already been decided on March 16. It was just a matter of time. And the time had come to do what they had to do.

  Mario walked to the bedroom and turned the key in the lock. Aldo Moro was sitting, still writing a letter to his loved ones.

  “Get up. We are leaving,” the leader of the Red Brigades ordered, trying to hide his nervousness.

  “Where to?” the abducted man asked as he tried to finish his letter in a hurry.

  “We’re taking you somewhere else,” Mario answered, folding a blanket and avoiding his victim’s eyes.

  “Would you mind mailing this letter for me?”

  “It’ll be done,” Mario said as he took the letter and the blanket under his arm.

  The two men looked at each other for a few mom
ents. Mario couldn’t stand to meet Moro’s frank gaze, and was the first to avert his eyes. No words were needed. The prisoner knew exactly what was going to happen next.

  They went down to get the car in the garage. Moro, blindfolded, was walking ahead, guided by Mario. The three other men followed uncomfortably, repulsed by a decision that was not even in agreement with the political principles of the Red Brigades. When they got to the garage, they ordered Moro to get into the trunk of a red Renault 4.

  “Cover yourself with this,” his guardian ordered.

  Aldo Moro covered himself with the blanket he was handed. Mario kept his eyes closed for a few moments that seemed to last an eternity. The terrorist was attempting to convince his conscience that this was inevitable. There was no other way. It was not up to him.

  Mario pulled out his gun and shot into the blanket eleven times. None of the others pulled the trigger.

  The plan had been carried out.

  25

  In a hotel room Rafael himself cut Sarah’s hair. She looked like another woman, sitting at the edge of the bed and sighing. It showed her anxiety, her tiredness, her despair, her frustration. And all because an unknown and sinister organization had done away with any remnant of normalcy in her life, including the length of her hair.

  “I think I’m more confused now than when I didn’t know anything.”

  This made Rafael smile.

  “That’s natural.”

  There was a silence for a few moments. Rafael and Sarah respected their implicit agreement of not talking about personal matters. They had too many things to think about, particularly Sarah. Strange and familiar names, political and religious figures, stories badly told, horrible revelations, Masonic lodges, grand masters, assassinations. And at the center of everything, her father. What kind of world was this, where not even those who were supposed to protect our faith could be trusted? And they were mean liars who killed one another.

  “It’s obvious. That man Pecorelli sent the list to the pope, and that’s why the pope was murdered.”

  “Don’t let your journalistic inclinations dominate you. That spoils everything. I never said that he died because of the list.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  That was true. Rafael had never said that John Paul I was murdered because he was in possession of a list that, basically, was almost common knowledge. The only thing he had said was that the list had been in his hands when he died. It was the consequences of that list that took the pontiff to his death.

  “Misleading assumptions are at the root of most problems,” Rafael said cryptically.

  The organizations connected with the P2, and the lodge itself, knew that Pecorelli had revealed the names on the list or that, at least, such actions had been attributed to him. There was no doubt that Pecorelli had tried to blackmail Gelli, and in fact, that was a very dangerous game to play with Gelli.

  In March 1979, the body of the journalist was found, shot twice in the mouth. It was relatively easy to think of Gelli as his assassin, but that would be very difficult to prove. Besides, it would be very complicated to find the real capo behind that murder. Rafael could only suggest that behind the whole thing there was an ex-prime minister.

  “A prime minister?” Sarah exclaimed in astonishment. “From what kind of country?”

  “A country like any other,” Rafael said. “If you knew just half of what happens in yours, or anywhere else in the world, you’d be horrified. The P2 listings are not dangerous in themselves,” Rafael went on, “except for what they reveal or suggest, or what they prove, in connection with politics in Italy, in Europe, or the rest of the world during the past thirty years.

  “Anyway, it seemed that Pecorelli knew too much. For instance, he knew that this obscure prime minister was involved in Operation Gladio, a paramilitary and terrorist organization created by the CIA and the MI6 after World War II, with the objective to prepare for the eventual invasion of Europe by the USSR. Later, during the sixties, the organization focused on preventing Communist and Socialist parties from taking power in Western Europe and South America. For many years this network was sustained and financed by the CIA, NATO, the British secret services, and other Western institutions.

  “In Italy, Gladio carried out a far-reaching operation, the so-called strategy of tension. Basically, it financed leftist terrorist groups so that democratic Communist and Socialist parties became the recipients of citizens’ hate. In this strategy of tension, Gladio supported, financed, and carried out the attacks on Piazza Fontana in 1969 and on Peteano in 1972.

  “And as far as its European structure was concerned, Gladio operated in Greece, Turkey, Spain, Argentina, France, and Germany, among many other places. The objective was always the same: to spread supposedly Communist-sponsored terror, and thus to create a favorable environment for conservatism and the extreme Right.

  “Giulio Andreotti discovered this plot in 1990, when it was judged. It was revealed during the trials that the P2 was heavily involved in that plot. It made sense. The P2 and Gladio shared the same fascist roots.

  “One of the dangerous details that Pecorelli knew was about the connection among Gladio, the P2, the Red Brigades, and the assassination of Aldo Moro, prime minister of Italy and a member of the Christian Democrats. According to Pecorelli, the Red Brigades were indeed a leftist terrorist group, but manipulated—even created—by Gladio and the P2. Some people thought it was heavily infiltrated by CIA agents. All these organizations, according to their strategic plans, promoted the kidnapping of Aldo Moro in 1978.”

  Sarah sat again at the edge of the bed, overwhelmed by the intricate network of conspiracy, corruption, and manipulation her roommate was describing for her. Nonplussed, she looked at Rafael, nervously wringing her hands.

  “Could you bring me something to drink?”

  “Of course.”

  Rafael got up and went to the minibar by the door. He returned with a bottle of water and a soda.

  “If the P2 took part in Operation Gladio, in addition to the CIA and all the others”—Sarah was trying to make the right connections—“that means that the world intelligence services not only knew about the existence of the P2, but had some relations with it, right?”

  “Exactly. Except that it’s ‘have,’ and not ‘had.’ To give you an idea, the CIA hands the P2 eleven million dollars every month. They still spend a lot of dough on them.”

  “Even right now?”

  “Yes, now. This whole network of lies and manipulations stemmed from World War II. Right after the end of the war, a period of total mistrust developed. The old Soviet Union sealed itself off and became isolated, together with its satellite countries of the Warsaw Pact, always fearful of some destabilizing action from the West. On the other side, the democratic countries were afraid of tricks by the KGB and other Soviet secret services.

  “The Soviet Union and its own or closely related agencies used to spend a lot of money to finance Communist parties and even terrorist groups in the West. The secret services of the United States, Great Britain, and other democratic countries maintained a similar campaign to prevent leftist parties from gaining power and, to do that, didn’t hesitate to form alliances with Masonic lodges, violent groups, fascist associations, whatever they needed.”

  “Masonic lodges, the military, secret services . . . Who is actually governing us?”

  “In theory, we are free citizens.”

  “Yes, but who’s in charge? The governments we vote to elect are manipulated by secret organizations.”

  “That’s a pretty good assessment.”

  “It was meant to be a question.”

  “A question, yes, but also an answer.”

  “This is terrifying.”

  “Then don’t think about it.”

  “As if it were easy not to think about it.”

  “It is,” Rafael asserted. “Try to think about less worrisome things.”

  Sarah put down the bottle of soda an
d wrung her hands impatiently. “What an incredible amount of lies! This is terrifying,” she said again. “What’re we going to do now?”

  “We’re going to see your father.”

  “Where? Is he in London?”

  Rafael got up and pulled his cell from the pocket of his jacket. He dialed a number and waited. When someone answered, he spoke in fluent German. “Hallo. Ich benötige einige Pässe. Ich bin dort in fünf Minuten.”

  26

  Who were you just calling?” Sarah asked, back in the Jaguar, sitting beside the driver.

  “A German guy who’s going to make you a passport.”

  “Just me?”

  “Yes. I’ve got several.”

  “Can he be trusted?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that—he can’t be trusted. These counterfeiters work for money. That’s what keeps them in business. He’ll do anything for money.”

  “But—”

  “But he’ll only talk for money, too. If you’re worried he’ll go running out to report us, that’s not going to happen. You can relax.”

  “Oh, yes, I feel much more relaxed now,” Sarah answered sarcastically.

  “You should.”

  It was a short trip, less than five minutes, including the time it took to park in front of a crowded, noisy pub. Next to it, a door was ajar. They climbed to the third floor, where Rafael rang the bell. The door opened instantly.

  “Hello, how are you?” the German greeted them effusively.

  “Terrific. And you?”

  “Wonderful. Come in.”

  “You’re the best,” Rafael said, stepping in and winking at the German.

  Hans was a young man, barely in his twenties. His forgeries, besides being fast, were clean, and hadn’t drawn attention at any border post so far.

  “So, old chap, tell me what you need.”