The Immortal

by Thomas Nelson

  I may never understand why I sank into the empty chair facing him. I didn’t particularly want to talk to him; perhaps the sight of a familiar face drew me to his table. Genzano looked up immediately, of course, and greeted me with a quiet, “Buon giorno.” I answered him with the same phrase, then defensively crossed my arms and my legs and stared at the milling crowds in the piazza. I could feel the pressure of Genzano’s eyes upon me, but after a moment he looked away and continued reading his paper. While I sat in lonely silence and mentally replayed my conversation with Kurt at least another dozen times, Genzano said nothing but flipped the pages of his paper until he reached the last page. When he had finished reading, he folded the paper, lowered it to the table, and picked up his coffee cup.

  Watching from the corner of my eye, I felt a pain squeeze my heart as he leaned toward me. “Are you well, signorina?”

  I wanted to lift my arms and scream no! at the top of my lungs— an action that probably wouldn’t draw much attention in Manhattan or Rome. But an air of old-world gentility clung to Genzano, and I didn’t think he’d want a bloodcurdling scream to shatter the serenity of his morning.

  I swallowed the despair in my throat and tried to maintain an even, professional tone. “I’m fine—had a bit of bad news this morning, though.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Genzano spoke in a tone of surprised respect. “Family trouble?”

  I nearly choked on the word. “Family? Not quite. My fiancé.” I bent toward the ground and pretended to brush dirt from my shoe. “My engagement is off.”

  Genzano crossed his arms and pasted on a thoughtful expression. “I’m sorry to hear that. But I know you would not make a rash decision.”

  He was so calm, so matter-of-fact, that I wondered how many other women had wandered up to him and sat in pouting silence while he tried to enjoy his paper and espresso. His behavior was properly compassionate and supportive, but he was probably counting the minutes until I decided to leave . . .

  He’d have to wait a few minutes more.

  “Breaking up with Kurt was the rashest decision I’ve ever made,” I told him, turning to look directly at him. “But I think it was also the rightest, if there is such a word. Trouble is, now I don’t know what to do with myself. I had so many plans—things Kurt and I were going to do together. Now I feel a little lost.”

  His mouth quirked with wry humor. “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’S purpose that prevails.”

  I cut him a quick glance. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Genzano shrugged and shifted in the chair. “Only that we are often part of a bigger picture without knowing it.”

  I sighed, weary of Asher Genzano and his riddles. I hadn’t seen much of him since he came to work at Global Union. Signora Casale had assigned him to work with the Publications Department on the fourth floor, so our paths rarely crossed during the day. I hadn’t forgotten about him, though. Some back room of my brain not occupied with whatever task lay at hand speculated that perhaps I’d been right about Asher Genzano all along. Though everyone praised his work, his humble attitude, and his unflagging commitment to The Cause, I had a niggling feeling that some off-kilter aspect of his personality would pop that illusionary bubble one day . . .

  Until then, I could do nothing but watch for signs of impending implosion.

  I looked up at him, grateful that he provided a meaningful distraction from my pity party. During our interviews, Genzano had not displayed any signs of religious devotion—at least, no more than other Romans, most of whom merely paid lip service to the religious trappings surrounding them. This reference to “the Lord” offered a clue to a side of Genzano I hadn’t seen.

  I smiled. “Were you quoting the Bible?”

  “It’s a wonderful book. You ought to read it.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, his face dangerously close to mine. “One of the men who penned the Bible wrote, ‘My days have passed, my plans are shattered, and so are the desires of my heart.’” He hesitated a moment as if weighing my reaction. “Sound familiar?”

  “I suppose that’s how I feel.” I scanned my memory, reluctantly trying to recall a Bible character with major problems in his love life, but my childhood Sunday school teacher must have skipped all the really juicy stories. “Who wrote that?”

  “Job.”

  I nodded, not wanting to reveal my ignorance, then pulled back so a much more comfortable—and American—distance lay between us. “What happened to Job?”

  Genzano turned and propped his elbow on the back of the chair— a relaxed posture, so he obviously felt comfortable discussing religious figures. “Job was a righteous man who thought he had lived an honest and honorable life. God had blessed him and protected him. But Satan decided to test Job, and God permitted the testing, allowing Satan to take everything but Job’s life.”

  I made a face. “Sounds like a pretty brutal test.”

  “It was. Satan left Job with only one thing, a nagging wife, while he took Job’s children, his riches, and his health. Everyone in the city came around to commiserate with poor Job, but most of his friends spent more time criticizing than they did helping. They all figured Job must have committed the worst kind of sin to earn that kind of punishment.”

  “Did he?”

  “Not outwardly; he had lived a blameless life before his fellow men. But Job battled the sin of pride, and it was only after he humbled himself before God that his health, wealth, and family were restored.”

  “Sounds like a tough way to learn a lesson.”

  “It is.”

  I found myself suddenly stunned by the weary, wounded look that appeared in his eyes. My disappointment and hurt faded to triviality in the light of that look. What happened to this man? The question snapped into my thoughts like a whip, making me flinch, but I had no time to consider it.

  “Ask yourself,” Genzano went on, looking away, “whether you are upset because you loved this man greatly or because he has wounded your pride. Are you hurt because you are angry or because he has broken your heart?”

  I took a deep breath, feeling a dozen different emotions collide. I was angry and hurt and disappointed, and I had liked Kurt tremendously. We were great friends and perhaps, if I could work through my feelings, we could be friends again. But now I felt the sting of humiliation most. Was he taking this other woman to the diners and restaurants we had visited together? Were our friends whispering about me, even pitying me? If they knew about Kurt’s lady friend, they probably thought me the worst kind of fool—

  My mind came to an abrupt halt, like hitting a wall. “You’re right. My heart isn’t broken. I’m just . . . embarrassed. My pride is hurt more than anything, and I can fix that. I can call my secretary, and he’ll be sure to spread the word around. I want everyone to know the engagement is off, and I’m the one who ended it.”

  Genzano gave me a look that said his brain was working hard at an entirely new set of problems. “That’s your answer? If you save your pride, you’ll feel better?”

  To my annoyance, I felt a blush burn my cheeks. “Works for me.”

  He looked away and shook his head slightly. “I knew you did not love this man. So perhaps you are right, a little anger, a little pride, and you will feel better.”

  “You knew—” I closed my mouth, clamping off the words that threatened to rise from a geyser of indignation. I wanted to know why he thought I didn’t love Kurt and by what right he had presumed to read me, when I was the professional people reader and jury consultant extraordinaire. But people read each other every day, reason assured me, and Asher Genzano seemed more observant and thoughtful than the average man . . .

  He seemed to realize he had offended me, for he gave me an apologetic smile and gestured toward the piazza. “Would you like me to show you the city?” His smile crinkled the corners of his fascinating eyes. “I can guarantee no one will give you a better tour of Rome.”

  Suddenly uncomfortab
le, I slid toward the edge of my chair. “I’ve seen most of the sights.”

  “You’ve seen the tourist spots. Let me show you the real city.”

  I looked up. The morning sun had driven the clouds away and now bathed the piazza with dazzling light. “I don’t want to spoil your holiday. You probably have other plans.”

  “Signorina Fischer,” he said, examining my face with considerable absorption, “trust me. I have all the time in the world.”

  Before I could think of another excuse, Genzano had taken my hand and was leading me toward the Pantheon. His touch surprised me, though I should have expected that he would hold my hand; Italians held hands all the time. Yet there was something strangely intimate in the warm gesture that placed us palm to palm, and not even Kurt held my hand routinely. I was trying to remember the last time Kurt had impulsively caught my hand when Asher stopped abruptly and pointed toward the behemoth that, he assured me, had originally been built by Marcus Agrippa, the stuttering son-in-law of Caesar Augustus. Credit for the awe-inspiring dome belonged to the emperor Hadrian, but Agrippa got the project off the ground.

  “How do they know Agrippa stuttered?” I asked, looking up at the immense portico, enclosed by stately granite columns. On the pediment overhead I could read the letters M A G R I P P A.

  “I know he stuttered,” Genzano answered, gently pulling me around a pastry vendor’s cart. “He was an insecure fellow, even after he gained the throne. I think he believed history would be merciful to his memory if he created buildings like this. No one would care that he stuttered like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”

  “Signor Genzano—”

  “Please. Call me Asher.”

  “All right. Asher.” I glanced up at him, warmed by his effort to lighten my spirits and annoyed by his outright fibbing. “You don’t have to embroider the history to make it interesting. The notion that Agrippa was a nervous kid is funny, but we probably shouldn’t mock his memory.”

  His faint smile held a touch of sadness. “I’m not mocking anything. I knew the lad, and I heard him stutter myself.” He lifted his free hand in the Italian gesture that seemed to mean, I can’t help it, then gestured toward the steps of the Pantheon.

  My mind whirled at his response, but perhaps I had misunderstood. Shaking my head, I sighed and followed him.

  November 2, All Souls’ Day, followed the feasting of All Saints’ Day, but the latter day was not a holiday. On Tutti i Santi, people went to church and prayed to the saints with the government’s blessing; on Tutti i Morti, they went to cemeteries and prayed for the dead on their own time. As I left my residenza for work, I saw that Benedetta had sacrificed her mail route for the sake of the dearly departed. Her boys wore matching dark suits and petulant expressions. Each carried a small bouquet of flowers destined, I knew, for the graves of ancestors.

  Leaving the boys and their flowers, I went out the door in a flood of relief, grateful to go to work instead of the graveyard. I wore a black wool skirt, a gray sweater, and a black jacket—dull colors to fit into a soberly dressed European crowd. Today I was to fly to Brussels for the European Union conference.

  My stomach did a little flip-flop when I saw Asher at the airport. With wit, charm, and an incomparable knowledge of Rome, yesterday he had succeeded in doing the impossible—he scattered my melancholy thoughts of Kurt to the four winds. And he was right—he did give me a better tour of the city than any of the regular tourist guides. He showed me the Ara Pacis, a detailed monument erected after Augustus Caesar secured peace in A.D. 13; he even pointed out the boundaries of Rome when the city burned during Nero’s rule. We saw the Colosseum together; I touched the mosaics from the Baths of Caracalla; I marveled at a standing section of the Aurelian Wall. Asher opened my eyes to the Rome of the common people, and I inhaled its scents—of diesel fuel, cooking foods, ancient sewers, and ancient stones.

  During my tour, Asher Genzano revealed himself as a man of culture. Without any help whatsoever he could detail the history of Rome, list the papal progression, and recite the epic poetry of Virgil. Yet this learned man of letters was sensitive enough to stand in wistful silence before Michelangelo’s Pietà.

  According to a brochure I picked up about St. Peter’s, the sculptor finished the statue in 1499, when he was only twenty-five years old. “Hard to believe he was so young when he did this,” I said as we stood before the Pietà.

  “Yes,” Asher answered, not taking his gaze from the statue of Mary with the body of Christ draped across her lap. I watched as water rose in his eyes, like a slow fountain filling up. “He was very young . . . to suffer so much. But God showed him mercy.”

  His comment made no sense, but I shrugged to hide my confusion and moved away. Asher Genzano was often mysterious. Out of gratitude for his time and concern, I had decided to leave it at that.

  Now we sat aboard Justus’s private jet with Reverend Synn. Asher sat in a seat by the far window, but Synn sat next to me, his elbow nudging my shoulder as he explained our assignment for the day. “The task is very simple,” he said, his yeasty breath blowing over me as he leaned in my direction. “You will be home tonight with the job well done.”

  I leaned on the opposite armrest and tried to avoid crinkling my nose as he continued. Asher and I were to sit in the observer’s gallery of the EU’s Council of Ministers’ building and make notes on the demeanor of three particular men: Vail Billaud, the ambassador from Luxembourg; Marlon Dutetre, the ambassador from Belgium; and Jan Dekker, the representative from the Netherlands. The EU provided an interpreter and headsets for those who needed them, but I was not to rely upon the official translators. Instead, I would have Asher Genzano seated next to me. He would speak into a tiny microphone fastened to his cuff, and the sound would instantly be transmitted to an earpiece in my ear.

  Synn placed the dime-sized receiver in my palm. “It has been thoroughly tested,” he said, transferring his gaze to Asher as he handed over the inch-long microphone. “You, Signor Genzano, will speak in a casual whisper. No one will suspect anything.”

  I shook my head. “Won’t he attract attention if he’s talking to himself?”

  Synn laughed softly. “Not in the visitors’ gallery, signorina. Trust me. Signor Genzano will be practically invisible.”

  After arriving at the airport, Synn left in a long, dark limo. Asher and I waited until a handful of officials and reporters wandered away, then we crept off the plane and walked into the airport terminal. With the ease of a veteran traveler, Asher hailed a cab and in fluent French gave directions to the EU Council of Ministers’ building.

  The European Union headquarters was located in an area of the city known as Euro-Brussels. We alighted from the cab in front of a gleaming building that rose from a colorful, cacophonous city like a modern-day Tower of Babel. People of every race and tongue milled in the crowds around us.

  Asher paid the taxi driver as I drank in the scenery, then together we climbed the steps, entered the building, and crossed a polished foyer. I was about to ask a security guard for help when Asher gestured toward a sign that pointed the way to the visitors’ gallery. He pulled two passes from his pocket, and I realized that while the gallery was open to anyone, seating was limited. Justus must have reserved these seats before he even approached me with the idea.

  The upstairs visitors’ area featured curving rows in a balcony overlooking the cavernous councilors’ meeting room. Though the polished circular desk below was brilliantly lighted, with each seat well identified by a nameplate, there were no lights in the gallery, making us all but invisible to the council participants. For security reasons, a wall of glass panels, probably bulletproof, stood between us and the ambassadors. The sound poured in through a series of audio speakers, one mounted in each corner of the gallery.

  I discovered the reason for Synn’s confident assertion that no one would notice us soon after we had taken our seats. Without warning, the double doors blew open and a series of children—proba
bly a class of ten-year-olds, judging by the giggly look of the boys and the superior look of the girls—pushed and shoved and stomped their way into the rows behind us. A trio of exhausted-looking adults filed in with them, then the chaperones split up—two kept an eye on the unruly young ones from opposite corners, while another stood guard at the door. There were about half a dozen other adults in the gallery—journalists, I supposed, because, like me, they carried steno pads and briefcases.

  The subdued lighting in the gallery dimmed like the lights in a movie theater, and the children stilled. As the hush settled over the gathering, the councilors filed in and took their seats below us, then the president of the European Union stood before the lectern. He spoke in English, which made things easier for Asher and allowed me to direct my attention to the three men whose motives concerned Santos Justus. I knew these first few unguarded moments could tell me volumes.

  Scanning the nameplates on each desk, I located the three men Justus had instructed me to watch. They sat just to the right of the lectern and next to each other—an interesting fact, considering that the names were not arranged in any sort of alphabetical order. Close seating therefore implied friendship, or at least cooperation.

  While the president droned on in formal welcome, two of the men—Dutetre and Billaud—looked at each other and exchanged an eyebrow flash. Within sixty seconds, they each looked at the third man, Dekker, and received a brow flash and a simple smile in return.

  I noted the fact in my notebook. An eyebrow flash, as any student of body language will tell you, is an international greeting, an action most people take completely for granted. If you are talking to a friend on the street and you see another friend pass by, even if you can’t speak, you will certainly flash your brows at the approaching friend when your eyes meet. To refuse the flash is an outward sign of avoidance or hostility, often intended to provoke a response. The simple fact that these three had greeted each other with silent eyebrow flashes bore strong testimony to their acquaintance and implied a viable friendship.