The HolyPhone Confessional Crisis

by Charles Brett

  Unfortunately the sordid reality was that her father was not quite appealing enough to provide himself with the steady income he required to keep his church going. This was where Michele had come in. If, he had said, she would help him he would help her and her father.

  Even now she was unsure what was really in it for Michele but his suggestions arrived at a moment when she needed to solve problems. Better still, it came with minimum commitment from her, only to introduce Michele to her sister’s husband. She’d agreed.

  Then the money rolled in. She had not complained with most of it was going to her father.

  She finalised her plane ticket. She would leave reserving a rental car in case her sister might pick her up at the airport. As for somewhere to stay, she assumed Judith would also provide. What she did not relish, however, was the in-your-face leering of Judith’s husband. Besides being in bad taste she thought him unpleasant. She could not understand what her sister saw in him, even if he was a genius with computers in banks.

  “Oh well, I had better go and meet that new client and then go research my Zillow. That will keep me busy for an hour of two and hopefully beyond temptation.”

  Thursday, Nahalal

  Tamar woke up. It was the middle of the night but another military plane was taking off from the nearby Ramat David air base. They ruined her sleep. Her husband Noach grunted. He slept through anything. She guessed it was his time in the Israeli Defence Force though most of that seemed to have occurred in a special unit where the mathematically gifted were trained to use computers rather than be out in the field.

  She had married him twelve years earlier, even though he was almost fifteen years older. She had been in her early twenties. He was an Israeli who had studied for his Doctorate in Computer Science at Rutgers. When they met some years afterwards, through her older sister, he was working on Wall Street for a middle-sized Arab bank. She had not then thought to question why an Israeli would work at an Arab bank though she came to understand that he must have represented himself as just another New York Jew. As New York Jews were the foundation of Wall Street, the Arab bank probably had not realised. One day it mysteriously collapsed.

  By then Noach and she were head over heels in love, or so she remembered. When he had come home one day saying that he had lost his job because the bank was bankrupt and that he was going to have to leave New York immediately she had wanted to know where he was going.

  “Back to Israel, and if you want to come with me I’d be so, so happy.”

  Without further thought, and knowing that her father approved of the Jews being back in Palestine, she had enthusiastically agreed. She had had no idea of what moving country would involve. She had only been out of the USA once, to Cancún, and that was more like Dallas-on-Sea than a foreign country with the beach talk utterly dominated by who was sleeping with whom.

  They had somehow managed to get married in New York on the day they had to leave from Newark on the long flight to Israel. She remembered that day – especially that evening – like yesterday, but not because of the romance and excitement of setting out for a new life in a young country. Instead what she recalled was her humiliation by El Al. At Newark she had been more or less strip-searched as well as reduced to tears. If she had been back in suburban New Jersey, she would have gone to the Police to complain of mental and psychological abuse. Noach, her husband of fewer than six hours, just stood looking on without complaining or interceding.

  This had proved to be a foretaste of what was to come. She had also learnt over the years this was typical of how El Al treated its customers. Stories of similar passenger abuse regularly appeared in Israeli newspapers, yet nothing happened. El Al would not change, and probably could not. It even had had a chief executive who had been a fighter pilot credited with shooting down two enemy aircraft. This was just the sort of customer-friendly profile a passenger airline needed for its business leader. That was Israel through and through.

  She knew she had worked hard at their marriage. He had not, or at least not much since the early days. She had adopted Judaism and taken the good Jewish name of Tamar, to replace her given Judith. She liked the sound of Tamar and even that it meant palm tree. She had learnt Hebrew, but she spoke with a distinct American twang that was often laughed at, to her embarrassment. This did not improve with time.

  The good aspect was that Noach was now comfortably off, which meant she was. Israel was expensive and having enough money to live mattered. They lived in the North, not far from Haifa and the Sea of Galilee in the village where Moshe Dayan was buried. They had a good house. Their three boys were her joy. She saw plenty of them and increasingly less of Noach. His business interests seemed to consume him. She could no longer be bothered to object.

  On the down side she knew she was now a featureless frump with only one redeeming feature — a face that was still lovely. Three pregnancies had removed the figure she once owned when she had emigrated. The births of her boys, bless them, had taken their toll.

  Noach had wanted more until she refused, threatening to stay in the United States with them after one of their once regular visits to her father, whom Noach beyond probability liked. That threat had been enough to dissuade Noach. To be fair to him he had not complained since, though his mother continued to do so. She seemed to think that the only role for women was breeding. Her attitude was almost biblical, until you remembered that she had given birth to nine children — four of whom had been killed either in various Arab wars or in a mindless Intifada bus bombing in Jerusalem.

  What did bother her more was Noach’s increasing involvement with the Settlers, those Israelis who thought that greater Israel included the West Bank. Most wanted to eject the Arabs living there. It was one of their number who had in cold blood murdered Itzaak Rabin in central Tel Aviv just as he seemed on the verge of bringing a peaceful solution to Israelis and Palestinians. Why both could not agree to live in peace was beyond her. But she knew this was a view that must not be voiced in front of Noach or his Settler friends.

  She rolled over and finally fell asleep. She did not know she would see her sister Miriam shortly just as she was oblivious that an old lover of Miriam’s was providing the monies that supported Noach’s Settlers.

  Thursday, Rome

  Michele had returned to Parioli on the other side of the Tiber. He had logged into his special email several times earlier in the day from his Vatican hovel. That evening he was receiving those same bankers he had mentioned to da Ferraz for dinner. Luckily his cook-cum-butler was well up to the task. All Michele had to do was decide the numbers and the level of sophistication of the dinner required and the rest was done for him.

  He was looking forward to an evening of financial gossip. He missed that part of his past life in New York.

  Before going to shower and change he took out his tablet and connected to the Internet. There had been progress in the hour or so since he had left the Vatican. From la Condesa had come “Yarden wines are good.” From Miriam, “Booked on the direct flight arriving Friday at 0945,” and from her sister’s husband, “What a view you will have.”

  After the shower and dressing in a simple but tailored soutane, he poured himself a glass of Prosecco and sat back to think before his guests arrived. He had never met la Condesa though he had met her predecessor, Mariano, a senior member of Opus Dei in Madrid when setting up the special arrangements. Mariano had then had the misfortune to collapse after a eating a surfeit of suckling pig, what the Spanish called Cochinillo. A French colleague had once described eating this and the horror he had felt after scraping out semi-liquid fat from under the skin of the piglet when being honoured at a restaurant in Burgos. It had sounded disgusting. No wonder Mariano had made a premature earthly exit.

  Though he and la Condesa had not met face to face she had seemed admirably competent in all dealings since Mariano’s death, mostly done by email and occasionally by phone. Based on this Mariano had chosen his deputy well.

  As for Miria
m, the less he thought of her the better.

  Her younger sister Judith was different. She was a true American beauty. Not tall like Miriam but slim, curvy, and richly endowed ‘up front’. He had only met her once when with Miriam in Manhattan. She was alive in that simple US of A way that he missed so much in Rome.

  It was curious that two such different daughters should be born to the Reverend Ezekiel Smith, firebrand and zealot of Christian Zionism. It was even odder that Judith ended up marrying an Israeli Jew — he reminded himself that not all Israelis were Jews and not all Jews were Israelis. Yet it was the connection from Miriam to Judith to Judith’s husband that made the Santofonino so valuable.

  So far the unauthorised business dimensions had worked to perfection and hopefully this would continue in future. Supplying extra income for Opus Dei to thrive in Spain, for Christian Zionism to survive in the USA, and for the Settlers to expand in the West Bank was, some might think, a curious misuse of the faithful’s payments for confession. But in his judgement this assisted the church as well as supplementing his recently reinvented personal pension plan. He had no intention of retiring penniless to an old priest’s home, a concept so awful as to more than justify what he had initiated.

  Tomorrow he must start to develop a rationale for da Ferraz that would let him leave Rome discreetly for a few days. He was not going to volunteer to da Ferraz where he was going. But he did not think da Ferraz would mind provided he invoked that great facilitator of all things underhand called ‘need to know’. It constantly amazed him what Vatican bureaucrats did not want to know so that they might never be tarnished.

  The doorbell rang. His guests were arriving, no doubt using their shareholders’ funds to stay at the Hassler or some equally expensive boutique hotel. He blanked the tablet and rose to greet them as they arrived in his salon.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Thursday, a week later, Madrid.

  A grey, miserable day enveloped the taxi taking Inma out to Terminal 4 at Barajas Airport. Fortunately her apartment was in the Salamanca area of Madrid and the ride would only take about fifteen-twenty minutes. On the other side of the A2 driving into Madrid, and on the M30 in both directions, the traffic was already building to its customary early morning rush hour inability to move fast or far.

  Obtaining time to be away from her work for a long weekend had proved more complicated than expected. It was her own fault. She had invited two colleagues to visit at the finca near the tomb of Carlos I. Finding an excuse to uninvite them had proved awkward, but fixing an alternate weekend in a couple of months had soothed the waters. As for her reinsurance Opus Dei confréres, they were used to her coming and going, plus she had already said that she was going to be away from Thursday evening though Monday evening. The fact that she would be on a plane to Tel Aviv on Friday morning rather than relaxing at the finca was not something she felt she had to explain.

  Now all she had to do was navigate Barajas without running into any colleagues or clients — made easier because flights to Israel were not Schengen ones and so boarded out of Terminal 4S. Again, to minimise any risk of unwanted encounters, she had checked in as if an ordinary passenger. She had not used her title when making the reservation. Of course her passport showed that she was a Condesa but the surly Iberia check-in agent had taken no notice —about par for Spain’s so-called national airline that rarely seemed capable of providing a positive experience of her country.

  On board she found herself in the middle of a noisy and cheerful group of Argentinos heading to the Holy Land. They had arrived on the overnight flight from Buenos Aires. She hoped that after flying through the night they might want to sleep rather than talk. At least she was in an aisle seat, though that did not prevent the husband and wife besides her yelling across her to their fellow pilgrims on the opposite side of the aisle. From what she could gather they were all from Córdoba and had never been outside Argentina, not even to Chile, Brazil or Uruguay — all places she had visited on behalf of Opus Dei where it had substantial presences.

  She resigned herself to a flight without peace. She took out her Android tablet. She used this for both her Opus Dei and her reinsurance work. For the tablet she had had created a secret inner system sanctum where she kept her personal Bible and other books of devotion. This enabled her to seem to be reading any normal book.

  Today she thought that rereading some of Escrivá’s The Forge would help her. She squirmed a little. Her plastic cilice, wrapped around her right thigh, was behaving as intended, inducing mild pain as a sign of her repentance and atonement. But at least under her unimpressive clothing there was no hint of its presence. Only in the gym was it a problem, normally solved by wearing baggy clothing rather than the fashionable super-tight, colourful outfits sported by the smartest yummy-mummies of Madrid. She did have to be careful, though: it could start bleeding.

  Thursday, Rome

  As regular travellers know to their cost, Fiumicino is a mess of an airport, even by the standards of other old airports like Heathrow or JFK. It had always been like this and seemed destined to continue so. Michele disliked it intensely but for flying to Tel Aviv — avoiding El Al, as he remembered Miriam’s stories of what her sister had experienced on her wedding night — there was no practical alternative.

  He had met with da Ferraz earlier in the week. He had subtly suggested, or he hoped he had been subtle, that there was a possible angle involving Balkan criminal participants that he wished to learn more about.

  “Would His Eminence mind if he went to see what could be discovered? He would not bother his Eminence with the details, until he came back. If he had anything to tell, then would be the time to report the substance.”

  Da Ferraz had fallen for this, only enquiring whether or not he would use his Vatican diplomatic passport. He had been uncertain. Da Ferraz recommended it — safer if he hit problems. Faced with such an instruction, even if wrapped up as a friendly recommendation, he’d agreed. He was leaving Italy on that red diplomatic passport.

  He now had two hours to decide whether to use it, or his own US citizen one, or a third illegal one that he had quietly acquired, when he arrived in Israel. The trouble was that each brought advantages and disadvantages, especially as he had to use the same one leaving Israel as he used to enter.

  “Oh well, I can play the scenarios through before deciding.”

  Once he arrived in the late afternoon he would go to the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv. He did not warm to the city but it was nearer to Ben Gurion Airport for the next morning when he would pick up Miriam before heading to Belvoir. He just hoped she would not demand a hotel so she could clean up. The time sequencing was already tight plus the notion of her using his hotel room could raise some unneeded eyebrows. This was another dimension to consider.

  At least there was the prospect of a decent dinner at the Dan. The Raphael was said be a good restaurant and he looked forward to something tasteful to eat before setting out for the wilds of Northern Israel. That was why he had chosen the Dan n the first place, plus it was besides the Tel Aviv seashore promenade.

  Thursday, Nahalal

  Noach returned home. He had not told Tamar that her sister would be arriving the next day. He was not sure if he had made a mistake. Perhaps the best thing was to take her along to Belvoir the following day and pretend it was a surprise.

  But that would not explain the presence of Michele or the Spanish lady.

  He was not normally irresolute. Today he was, for he knew that if anyone was going to be put on the spot it was him. He had the unpleasant feeling that he might have to confess to being greedier than was the original plan. Not that he was going to apologise, a concept that repelled him despite having lived in the US.

  Tonight, as Miriam was flying over the Atlantic, he would try being nice to Tamar. Her figure had disappeared into bags of fat and surplus flesh, except for her face, which had always interested him. He could not really complain. Too much sitting at computers had left him looking like a si
milar blob. In men it did not seem to matter so much. That was not fair even though neither of them fancied working out.

  Thursday, New Jersey

  Miriam had arrived at Newark Liberty Airport a touch early on Thursday. She had felt anxious on the way; her ten-mile run earlier had not had the calming effect she sought. Finding her way across New Jersey involved the usual traffic nightmare, but at least it was not rush hour. She had considered taking a taxi but remembered her return flight arrived at about four in the morning. Taxis or limos at that hour would be expensive. Better to take the car and accept the price of long-term parking. That way she would be able to drive home easily, against the morning traffic flow, when arriving back.

  Checking in at Terminal C, once she had arrived on the grubby little train from the parking area, had been the usual United Airlines experience. Somehow the concept of self-check-in machines and passports always created problems. She could see that others were having the same frustrations. On the other hand, when handing over her luggage, the check-in clerk had been kind enough to give her an aisle seat in Premium Economy — more room, he had said, and as the flight was not very full he thought she might find the seat beside her one empty. With about eleven-twelve hours of sitting in the same seat, that would be welcome.

  Now she was aboard the plane, after yet another security check near Gate 121. So far no one had sat beside her, though a young man in the window seat looked like an Orthodox Jew. He seemed, if her eyes were unmistaken, to be wearing dusty — even dirty — black and white clothes. He did not look like he wanted to talk. He held a book, in Hebrew, judging from the lettering. She was happy to say nothing, which for her was ideal. Silence was one of the few pleasures of long-distance flying, if you were allowed it.