“Don’t underestimate my intelligence. For the last time, spill it, or your father will be without a daughter.”
“You’re risking too much,” Sarah challenged in desperation. “If you think killing me will solve the problem, you’re very mistaken. You’ll create another, bigger problem.”
“Shut up.” The man was incensed. “One of you is going to talk. There’s always someone who ends up talking.”
“Stop,” said a voice behind them, catching everybody’s attention. The assistant turned toward the doorway, where the Master had called out the order. He leaned on his usual cane and was carrying a black briefcase.
“Sir,” the assistant began, removing the weapon from Sarah’s head.
“Silence,” the Master answered. “Would you like to talk with me?” he asked Sarah.
“If you’re J.C., then yes,” the young woman answered, her eyes wide, as though she were confused by the turn of events.
The old man turned around and walked away.
“Bring her along.”
“But, sir,” the assistant mumbled.
“Bring her over here,” the old man repeated, now from the hallway. His tone allowed no rebuttal. “And leave the others alone until further notice.”
55
For Geoffrey Barnes, one of New York’s greatest advantages was the food. For the first time in several days, he enjoyed a first-rate lunch in a good restaurant. He was now much calmer, and understood that the whole business with Jack was part of the job. A game, which Jack had played masterfully, making him lose his head. It was apparent that if Barnes had been able to dispose of Jack at will, he would have handled the matter differently. That bastard, that sly fox, realized this, and knew how and when to take advantage of him.
To hell with the Italian, or whatever he might be. The fact that he spoke the language didn’t necessarily mean he was from that country. The man had said categorically, “Nobody dies without my authorization.” And when the boss spoke, everybody bowed their heads and obeyed. In that moment of confusion, he lost track of his orders. He got caught in the trap Jack set for him. It wasn’t easy to avoid. It was a mistake to have lost his temper.
But it was better not to think about it anymore. He devoted himself to enjoying the rest of his meal, his eyes already set on the dessert. And then his cell phone rang, the damned cell phone that robbed him of marvelous moments like this. He fished it out of his pocket without paying attention to who was calling.
“Barnes.”
During the next moments, Geoffrey Barnes confined himself to listening and answering with a few monosyllables. “Yes.” “No.” “Done.” One could readily infer he wasn’t talking to a subordinate, since whatever he was hearing made him shift restlessly in his chair. A few more monosyllables followed, and then a good-bye.
When he hung up, his expression was changed. Small beads of sweat trickled down his forehead. He put down the fork, still in his hand. The shit had just hit the fan, and if he didn’t act immediately, it wouldn’t take long to splatter everything. He left his money on top of the check on the table, and quickly headed for the door. He pressed some numbers on the cell phone and, now out on the street, brought it to his ear. His pace was fast and steady.
“Staughton, it’s Barnes. Don’t let them do anything till I get there.” The exertion affected the sound of his voice. He was walking very fast as he talked, but even so, his was a firm, emphatic voice. “Nothing about anything. Don’t explain why, just say I’ll clear everything up when I get there.” Barnes listened for a few seconds and then spoke again. “Not even Payne or anybody. They shouldn’t touch anything, or even move. And tell the rest to do the same, or else this is going to blow up.” He crossed the street without looking. Cars grazed past him, but he kept talking. “The reason? I’ll tell you, and you only, understood? But you can’t talk to anyone, Staughton.” The subordinate assented, on an office phone in the heart of Manhattan. “I’ve just received a call from the top levels of the Vatican.” He sighed. “The girl has tricked us.”
56
How did you kill John Paul I?” Sarah asked without preamble as she sat on the chair, in the same room where Rafael had been with Barnes. She rested her hands on the table to appear relaxed.
The Master stayed on his feet, his back to her, in a thoughtful pose. On hearing the question, he turned to Sarah and smiled.
“You’re not here to ask questions, Miss Sarah Monteiro. You demanded my assistant allow you to tell me personally all that you know. That’s why you’re here.” It was an old man’s voice, hoarse and cracked, but also definitive.
“It will be a small exchange of information. You’ll tell me what I asked you, and I’ll give you what you want so much. You know I wouldn’t be able to use anything against you that you tell me.”
“Don’t underestimate me, miss. I’m no cheap-movie villain. I’m flesh and blood, very real.”
“I don’t understand why you’re telling me this.” The old man’s answer had confused her.
“Forget it. It’s a digression,” J.C. explained, taking his seat in the chair across the table. “Actually, it wasn’t meant for you.”
“How did the pope die?”
There was a silence that Sarah found disturbing.
“The official version is that he died of a myocardial infarction,” the old man finally answered.
“We both know that’s not what happened.”
“We do?” J.C. said. “Do we really know that? Are you trying to contradict an official truth?”
“An official truth doesn’t have to be true. In the past few days I’ve learned that we’re all victims of deceit,” Sarah answered, with an insolence she never would have thought herself capable of.
J.C. let out a throaty but real guffaw.
“What does a girl know about all this?”
“Do you admit that the official truth is false?”
“False or not, it’s the only one we have.” His tone of voice still seemed normal. The old man never lost his cool, never said anything he would later regret.
Then he looked for something in his suitcase, which he had left by the table and was now rummaging inside. He finally found what he was looking for, an old piece of paper that he handed to Sarah.
“Read it.”
“What’s this?” She looked at its printed heading: DEATH CERTICATE.
“Read it,” J.C. repeated.
It was the death certificate of Albino Luciani, John Paul I. CAUSE OF DEATH: myocardial infarction. PROBABLE TIME: 23:30, September 28, 1978. An illegible signature, possibly of the Vatican doctor on duty.
“That’s the official truth of the pope’s death,” J.C. declared with a satisfied smile.
Sarah examined the document. How did the Master have this with him? she wondered.
“Let’s move on to what matters,” the old man insisted.
Sarah returned the certificate and looked into his eyes.
“No, not yet. I want to hear your truth.”
“What truth do you have in mind?”
“That certificate was made without any examination of the pope’s body,” Sarah said, remembering the conversation with her father at the Mafra monastery. “Tell me the truth. You know, a simple exchange of facts.”
“I’ve got other means of obtaining what I want from you.”
“I don’t doubt it. But that could take hours, or days, and there’s no guarantee you’ll get it. What I’m proposing is a fair exchange.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“No reason in particular. Just anybody’s normal curiosity after seeing so many long-held beliefs come tumbling down.”
There was a momentary pause in the conversation. The Master was lost in thought. For Sarah it wasn’t just curiosity, though it might have seemed so, but also a way of buying time. Beyond that, she had no idea where she wanted to go.
“Come on. Tell me what happened the night of September 28, 1978.”
The old man too
k some time before he spoke.
“Before even starting, I’d like to clear up one historical error. Albino Luciani died in the hour after midnight, very early on September 29. No need to ask how I know. I was the last man to see him alive and the first one to see him dead. Surely you already know why he died. He had become an unwanted pope, a dangerous enemy, and he had to be eliminated.
“I’m not talking about religion. There was a mistaken evaluation of his character. If we had a sliver of hope after the conclave, we quickly learned it was misplaced. His fragile appearance was just that, an appearance. He intended to clean house right away.
“Archbishop Marcinkus and Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot were going to be the first to fall. The most valuable cards in the deck. And, believe me, many others were going to be running the same risk. With Marcinkus and Villot out, it wouldn’t have taken long to get to Calvi and Gelli, and after that, the collapse would be total. John Paul I was actually digging his own grave. He wasn’t like Paul VI, who stayed focused on religion and faith, and delegated the rest to the Curia and other competent people. John Paul I stuck out. He was going to end the Church as we knew it.”
“How?” Sarah was paying close attention to the Italian’s words.
“Do you think the Church could have survived the housecleaning he intended to do? Of course not. The faithful would have been scandalized by even a hint of the Church’s financial excesses. Even though Paul VI wasn’t to blame for any of it, he would have been seen as a crook ordering his people to launder black market money, and to invest it in enterprises forbidden by the Church, such as the manufacture of condoms, birth-control pills, and weapons. All of this in the attempt to make a lot of money, and to siphon off as much as possible into personal accounts.”
“But this was all found out later, and nothing happened.”
“Exactly. By that time we no longer controlled the information and couldn’t avoid it. Even then, it was done so as to minimize the damages.”
“How can you be so indifferent about the murder of the pope?” Sarah asked.
“The end justified the means, young lady. There was a lot at risk. And I don’t mean just the court trials. Many people, and countries, would have been damaged because of the actions planned by the pontiff.”
“Who was only trying to restore justice.”
“Justice is a very subjective ideal. By now, surely you understood that. Licio Gelli felt obliged to devise a plan that could be executed in a matter of hours, a drastic plan. That’s how I came on the scene as Albino Luciani’s executioner. My job was to stay by the phone and wait. Villot tried to postpone the plan as long as possible. He tried to dissuade the pope, arguing, offering reasonable alternatives. But the pope showed his inflexibility. He sealed his fate on September 28, when he told Villot and the other monsignors about the replacements to be made over the next few days, starting with Marcinkus, effective immediately. When we got wind of the papal decision, we had no choice but to act.”
“The final solution,” Sarah threw in with enraged sarcasm. “The solution to all problems. If he doesn’t serve our purposes, we kill him, and the sooner the better. There are numerous victims of that attitude.”
“You can’t imagine how many. Anyway, the night of the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, I showed up at the Apostolic Palace. One of the monsignors had arranged to keep the entrances open and for me not to be intercepted. And that’s how it happened. He did his job perfectly.”
“Do you mean you were wandering around the Apostolic Palace at midnight?”
“No. I entered the pope’s private quarters directly, by one of the out-of-service stairways. The doors to the lower and third floors were generally locked. As you can imagine, that night was an exception. The Swiss Guard hasn’t been guarding the papal quarters since the times of Pope John XXIII. I didn’t cross paths with anybody on my way in. I had no trouble at all getting into the pope’s private rooms. He was still awake and we exchanged a few words. When I left, I had completed my assignment. The cardinals would have to bury the new pope and elect another one.”
“You talked with the pope? I hope you haven’t forgotten that conversation.”
“That’s irrelevant,” J.C. retorted, now starting to show his impatience. “The next day, the same monsignor who helped me get in also asked me to go see him in the Vatican. So I went. He wanted to give me the papers, the ones we’re now trying to recover, for safekeeping, and that’s what I did”—the old man smiled sneakily—“putting them in the safest place in the world. Besides, the idea amused me. How could I have imagined that Firenzi, the idiot, would finally find them and end up taking them out?”
“But weren’t you asked to destroy them?”
“No, not at all. Except for the list and the secret of Fátima, the rest is harmless. There were only papal orders concerning Church reorganization. Some of them more controversial than others, but nothing explosive, at least for anybody who follows religious matters.
“But the list is another story. As you surely know, it’s not about the list of P2 names that everybody knows, but a much more sensitive version. It includes the names of great personalities and, specifically, of one prime minister. Any third-rate judge would have a clear basis to prosecute them for the death of a pope. Nobody could have imagined that any such thing was going to happen. That damned prosecutor of the District of Rome . . .
“Nobody would have suspected any irregularity in the pope’s death, except that Villot, in his excessive zeal, made a series of mistakes after the body was found by Sister Vincenza. He demanded an absolutely unnecessary vow of silence from all the residents of the palace, and he then invented an official story, later proved false by the Vatican itself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The first official version said that John Magee, the pope’s secretary, found him dead at five thirty in the morning, when actually he was found forty-five minutes earlier by Sister Vincenza, his personal assistant.”
“Why did he do that?”
“It didn’t seem appropriate for a woman, even though she was a nun, to be freely entering the pope’s private quarters. Image issues. Then Villot got too personally involved. He issued a series of mistaken declarations and made outlandish decisions. He said that the pope had his bedside book, The Imitation of Christ, by Kempis, in his hands. This special edition was actually in Venice. He hastily summoned the embalmers. Soon it was learned that the nun had discovered the body. If one added the rushed cleaning of the papal private quarters to all these incongruities, it became easy to understand why everybody would think this reflected the personal behavior of somebody who had something to hide.
“On the other hand, the doctors would collaborate with us only if they didn’t have to face another doctor’s opinion. Luciani’s physician was Dr. Giuseppe de Rós, who always attended him in Venice, and during his month in the Vatican. It was important that he corroborate the diagnosis of his colleagues when he arrived in Rome. Villot would not, however, authorize an autopsy, also prohibited under canon law. Villot was the cardinal camerlengo and, as such, the head of the Church until the end of the next conclave. He was very busy, and very nervous about all that had occurred.”
“Understandable,” Sarah remarked.
“Dr. Giuseppe de Rós approved the diagnosis of the other doctors, but he actually had little chance to do anything else, because he could only conduct a superficial examination. Since an autopsy was out of the question, if Villot had not acted so precipitously, it would have been a perfect crime. A new pope was elected and life went on. But the death of John Paul I had already aroused too many suspicions, and everything began to fall apart, and in a way particularly damaging to the P2, which disbanded in 1981. Since then, we’ve been more in the shadows than ever.”
“And how did they manage to bury the P2?”
“The details are complicated. Let’s just say that, for years, judges, journalists, and some police organizations followed clues that led to the IOR, t
he Banco Ambrosiano, the P2, and businesses that connected them.”
“And what happened with Villot, Marcinkus, and the manager of the Banco Ambrosiano?”
“Villot was very sick at the time of Luciani’s assassination. He himself had asked to be relieved, but he wouldn’t allow Benelli to serve as his replacement. Villot wanted to choose his own successor. Benelli was a man too much like John Paul I. He, too, would have caused irreparable damage. After Luciani’s death, Villot relaxed a little, and he died in peace in March 1979, very well attended.
“Marcinkus continued with his shenanigans in the IOR for a long time, until he was taken away, and he returned to Chicago. Later he retreated to a parish on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona.”
In old J.C.’s opinion, Marcinkus was a villain. He had no friends, no associates, no allies. He was only a friend to himself and served his own interests. Because of that, he could continue his businesses for a long time, after both John Paul I and Villot had left this world. There he was, at the head of the IOR until 1989, under the aegis of Pope John Paul II himself.
“As for the others,” J.C. went on, “Calvi was found dead in 1982, strangled beneath the Blackfriars Bridge in London. The embezzlement of the Banco Ambrosiano finally amounted to some two billion dollars. That money was lost, but it was very profitable for Gelli and Marcinkus.
“Would you like to know where Gelli is?” the old man asked, making a dramatic pause. He knew he was nearing the end of his story. “He’s fulfilling a residential imprisonment in Arezzo, Italy. And as for me, well, I’m not anywhere.”
Again he fell silent. Then Sarah threw out a question that still hadn’t been answered, perhaps the one she was most interested in.
The Last Pope Page 22
