The Pope's Assassin

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  "Perfectly, Most Reverend Prefect."

  "I ask you kindly to respond to our doubts as best as you can. After the hearing, the congregation will decide if the ideas you advocate are damaging to the church or not."

  The rules and procedures understood, the prefect gave the fl oor to Monsignor Scicluna, a man whose wizened face looked a century old. Obviously he would have to be twenty years or more younger, since the positions consecrated to His Holiness required retirement at seventy-five without loss of honor and privileges. Even the servants of God are attacked by old age and senility. All are equal in the eyes of the Lord.

  "Reverend Father Hans Matthaus Schmidt," Monsignor Scicluna began faintly. "Having read your works attentively, I confess I am struck primarily by the titles, which are certainly peculiar. The fi rst is Jesus Is Life, which I must say I agree with, though I'll ask you to explain certain ideas in it. The second is The Man Who Never Existed. In both books we are dealing with the same person." He sipped some water to moisten his dry throat. "My first question to you is how can Jesus be life if, in your own words, He never existed?"

  Schmidt had anticipated that this would be the first question. He hadn't wasted time thinking of hypothetical questions. If the roles were reversed, he would logically ask this same question.

  He straightened his back, not so much that he would show ner vousness or disquiet, but because he wanted to be comfortable. He took his time opening a bottle of water sitting on the desk in front of him and poured some in a glass. He wet his lips, put the glass down, and smiled.

  "Good Morning, Reverend Prefect, Mr. Secretary, and you other counselors. I understand your doubt perfectly, my dear Monsignor Scicluna. On the one hand Jesus is life, and on the other, He never existed. What an outlandish idea . . . at first glance." His voice reverber ated through the room. Everyone listened intently, and the cherub had closed his eyes, as if he didn't want to listen. "The message I want to convey is that one can live in two ways. There is no one right way with Jesus or another wrong way without Him, or, if you wish, with what ever other divinity." Schmidt noticed some red faces and a deepening irritation in Scicluna's. He wasn't there to be friendly. He wanted to start out forcefully. "What I intend by Jesus Is Life is to provide teach ings about how to live day by day in Jesus by abstracting the essence of His words, and in The Man Who Never Existed the same message without Jesus, because it is possible to live with Jesus or without Him, in God or without Him. However God is understood."

  "What are you saying?" Monsignor Scicluna protested, rising and bracing his hands on the table.

  "I have come to the conclusion that all forms of religion are true. The Jewish Bible is true, as is the Catholic, and all the others. The Torah is true, along with the Talmud and the Koran. We are neuro-divine." A clamor arose among the counselors, the prefect, and the secretary.

  "All forms of faith are true. Even believing in nothing is true," Schmidt concluded in the same reasonable manner.

  "That is heresy," Monsignor Scicluna accused, the veins in his neck protruding in fury.

  "That which in this room is a heresy," Schmidt returned, "would also be so in any synagogue or mosque, but that doesn't really matter . . . to me."

  William covered his face in his hands. Schmidt was a fool. He knew very well what he could and could not say in that room. He'd chosen something else . . . something more diffi cult.

  "Are you saying that the Word or the Mystery is of secondary or little importance?" the monsignor demanded.

  Schmidt shook his head no. "No, nothing like that. I'm saying that the Word or Mystery have the importance that the believer wants to give them." He let the idea sink in. "Great importance," he paused dra matically, "or nothing."

  "The gentleman is putting himself into a very delicate position," Monsignor Scicluna warned in a cold, dry voice.

  Schmidt got up and confronted the others with an attitude that some would consider disrespectful. "Everyone in this room knows I am right. Isn't that so?"

  29

  It's not a good sign when a ritual changes, especially if it's repeated, like a sacred act, without variation in content or feeling. The purpose of rituals is to evoke, venerate, and honor relevant events, whether historical, political, religious, or—no less important—personal.

  The year 2010 would be registered in Ben Isaac's storage safe, fi ve hundred feet from the main house, below the toolshed, as the year when it was opened twice, a unique occurrence in more than fi ve decades.

  He positioned his eyes in front of the visual reader so that the com puter could recognize him as the owner. Another change to the ritual was that this time Ben Isaac would not descend the twenty steps alone, but with two other people. The fluorescent lights came on as they advanced and went out behind them, creating a sensation of endless darkness in front of them and unknown secrets behind them.

  "I cannot believe that you've always had this here and I didn't know, Ben Isaac," Myriam complained, alert to every sound, her eyes wide open.

  "I couldn't tell you, Myr. The less you knew, the better," the Israeli argued. It was never a good sign when Myriam called him by both his first and last name.

  "I'm your wife, a part of you. You can't keep secrets to yourself."

  Myriam was visibly angry and disillusioned with him. Ben knew she was right, but this was how he was, he kept things to himself. It was an immense effort to bring them there.

  The mechanism opened the heavy door with a sigh and, for a few moments, they just looked inside without moving. Myriam took the fi rst step decisively. Sarah followed her, and Ben was the last to enter the room.

  Sarah had not imagined such a bare space. Three display cases, nothing more, and cold, unadorned walls. She thought she would fi nd shelves full of other singular things, of lesser significance certainly, but full of sacred relics with many stories to tell. She never thought that the large room would contain only three cases. She joined Myriam, who was examining the parchments displayed under glass. She couldn't understand a single word written there. Elaborate letters written in an ornate style, unintelligible to her.

  "Can you understand anything, Myriam?" she dared to ask, as if she were creating an explosion in the awkward silence.

  Myriam looked at the small document in the fi rst case and shook her head no.

  "No." Myriam looked at Ben Isaac. "Is it Latin?"

  Her husband affi rmed it.

  "I didn't study Latin, but it looked like it," Myriam offered, her eyes fixed on the parchment. "Yeshua ben Joseph. And it talks about Jesus in Rome," she said, more to herself than the others.

  She moved to the second case and frowned. Sarah looked at her but couldn't tell whether or not Myriam understood what was written there. For Sarah it was impossible. She couldn't begin to unravel what ever was written there. It was not in the Roman alphabet, like the other one, but in a series of strange letters.

  "What is this? Ancient Hebrew?" Myriam wanted to know. Her voice seemed worried.

  "Aramaic," Ben Isaac answered. He had remained behind, observ ing his wife.

  "Of course Aramaic." Myriam looked at the parchment in a differ ent light. "I still don't understand anything all this time."

  "Aramaic is similar to ancient Hebrew," Ben Isaac explained.

  "Is this the gospel?" Myriam asked in a halting voice.

  Ben did not respond. Silence meant yes.

  "Walk over here next to me," Myriam said, more like an order than a request.

  Ben approached her step by step, slowly, timidly, as if walking on shaky ground, until he was next to Myriam, who continued looking carefully at the gospel. For a few seconds no one said anything.

  "Read it to me," Myriam fi nally ordered.

  "Myriam," Ben sighed, as if it were a painful experience.

  Myriam gave him a hard, pained look. "Read it."

  Ben hesitated. It troubled him to reveal something only he and a few others knew about. Myriam needed to know what the text said. If that piece of
lamb or calfskin was worth more than a human life, than that of their son, their Ben, who had left her heart weeping in such a deep sorrow.

  "Uhh . . ." Ben began.

  Whether it was divine intervention or the coincidence of fate, a providential ringing of a cell phone interrupted Ben's reading. It was his own.

  "Excuse me, dear," Ben said, moving away a little.

  Sarah hugged Myriam. "Be calm. Everything is going to work out."

  Ben Isaac took out his phone. Some instruction from the kid nappers. Poor little Ben. He remembered the image of his son tied to a chair, tortured, bloody. He shivered. He looked at the screen and opened the message. He couldn't wait to read it. His heart began to beat faster suddenly. How can this be possible? Who are these people?

  He read the message again in the hope that he had read it wrong, but no. The text was the same.

  If you want to see your son alive again, get rid of the journalist.

  30

  Circumstances.

  All of life is an accumulation of unknown and imponderable factors, uncontrollable and totally unforeseen, that can be summarized in that simple and powerful word: circumstances.

  Rarely do we think about them or even give them any value, but the fact of turning to the left instead of the right, planning a trip to a cer tain place and not another, deciding to take one course instead of another, all this, and much more, will completely change the circum stances of everything and everybody.

  Rafael was not so given to thinking about circumstances. He evalu ated them, whenever necessary, but lost no time thinking about the reason to be in a certain place at a certain time under certain condi tions. Whenever he entered a place, he immediately studied all the pos sible exits. An occupational hazard that could not be called a defect, derived from years of dedication and involvement in dangerous mis sions in the name of God.

  So it wasn't natural for Rafael to still be troubled about Gunter, who might still be alive if Rafael hadn't come to ask him for help in clarifying certain evidence of the crime that had sent Yaman Zafer to his Creator. Unlucky circumstances.

  If he hadn't gone to the Church of Saint-Paul–Saint-Louis, Gunter would still be alive, along with Maurice. If he hadn't heard those words that Saint Ignatius had pronounced more than 450 years ago. Ad maio rem Dei gloriam. If, if, if . . . Or if he were not in the habit of specu lating about what could have been. Rafael was a man of action and reaction, not refl ection. He had to turn the page on Gunter once and for all. Maybe that would only happen when he resolved the situation. He had to clear up that confusion.

  "Gavache has a big problem on his hands," Jacopo said, interrupt ing the priest's thoughts.

  The train was travelling at more than two hundred miles an hour toward the station of St. Pancras International, right in the heart of London. They were now passing through Her Majesty's land, a few minutes from their destination.

  "Gavache? What about us?" Rafael answered.

  Jacopo let himself mull over the priest's reply for a few moments while he looked down at the screen of his laptop.

  "How tragic," Jacopo lamented. "Why would the acolyte have done that?"

  "I don't know," Rafael answered. "No one kills or is killed for noth ing. Something very serious was going to happen."

  "The boy seemed desperate," Jacopo commented, remembering the scene, which was still vivid in his memory."Are we going to help Gavache?"

  "Only insofar as he lets us help solve the murders," Rafael deliber ated. "It's all very confused."

  "Yeah, it is. And this change of location to London is extremely strange." He typed an address into his computer. "William could have been more explicit."

  "Sometimes it's better not to know much," Rafael replied. "And that's Cardinal William to you."

  Jacopo didn't acknowledge the remark. He was absorbed in a search for information about the mysterious Ben Isaac.

  The car was full of passengers. Executives fi nalizing presentations for some important meeting, Muslims talking on their cell phones as if they owned the world, tourists, married couples, criminals who resem bled executives, lonely travelers, beautiful women, handsome men, some reading erudite books of French philosophy with dazzling or monotonous titles, others reading the best seller of the moment about sacred lies, assassins of popes, and Vatican secrets, crimes to solve, and bits of ancient legend.

  "We have a problem with the Jesuits," Rafael fi nally said.

  "You're just figuring that out now?" Jacopo's sarcasm was obvious.

  "I'm not talking about unfounded suspicions," Rafael argued. "We saw last night there's some secret they're guarding with their lives."

  Jacopo comprehended what Rafael meant. "Do you think it's a secret known by every member?"

  "I don't know," Rafael replied, but Maurice had been the one to pull the trigger, which meant that the lower orders knew something. "I don't know," he repeated.

  "Tarcisio is going to meet with the black pope today. Maybe he should bring this up," Jacopo suggested.

  "There's only one pope," Rafael objected, showing some irritation. "There is no black pope. He never existed."

  Jacopo had referred to the popular designation for the superior general of the Society of Jesus. The head of the Jesuits, in other words. "Black" referred to the color the members of the society wore and also to a certain dark power of the order. It was said that the black pope has more power than the pope himself, and whoever occupied the Apos tolic Palace of the Vatican had to swear allegiance to the Curia Gener alizia on Via Penitenzieri, a few feet away from the palace, if the pope wanted to have a peaceful reign. But these were legends and myths that lacked legitimacy.

  "Call him the superior general if you want, but what's certain at the moment is he seems to know more than the pope."

  Rafael didn't want to admit that Jacopo was right. Something dark was happening in the society. Gunter, Maurice, Zafer, Sigfried, and Aragone were the proof of that. Ben Isaac was the answer to the whole puzzle, at least Rafael hoped so.

  He thought about William's final words when he had called Rafael with new instructions. Your friend Sarah is now with them. He hadn't expected that development. The journalist always seemed to be in his face. Without wanting to, certainly, but always on his trail. Maybe this meant something.

  He had taken the opportunity to inform the cardinal of the trag edy that had occurred in the Church of Saint-Paul–Saint-Louis. The prelate said nothing. He absorbed the information and didn't want to know any more details. Follow the instructions I gave you. Without mis takes. And don't let anyone kill anyone else or commit suicide this time were his final words, without even a good-bye.

  Later, already on the road, David had called. He was in Rome and wanted to meet him for dinner. Accustomed to analyzing situations in fractions of a second, he'd agree to meet him that evening. He had to do everything to make this happen. At least he had to land in Rome at the end of the day. He didn't understand David's call. He was a friend from another life, a life that was over. He thought about not accepting the invi tation, but the American could be useful in the game that was unfolding.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a female voice coming over the public-address system.

  "Passengers, in a few moments we'll arrive at St. Pancras International Station. Please check to make sure you have your personal belongings with you. We hope you have enjoyed the trip, and it will be a pleasure to welcome you aboard Eurostar next time."

  "Finally," Jacopo complained. He shut his laptop and put it in the case.

  Rafael's cell phone rang just as the train slowed to come to the plat form. He answered and listened for a few seconds. He ended the call without saying a word.

  "Everything okay?" Jacopo asked, visibly tired.

  Rafael nodded his head yes. Before the train came to a stop, a line was already forming by the door. Passengers crowded to leave—their business more important than anyone else's. Rafael remained seated, along with Jacopo, more out of deference to
the priest than his own wishes.

  As everyone started to leave for the platform, Rafael looked at Jacopo with a serious expression.

  "As soon as we step outside the train, we're going to do things my way."

  Jacopo swallowed dryly and agreed.

  31

  Total concentration. Don't take your eyes off of them," David Barry said, looking at a large monitor that showed several images of the interior of St. Pancras International Station and some even inside the train.

  There was no better city than London for this kind of surveillance. The thousands of cameras spread over the city offered a vast view of everything and everyone in practically all public places, and with the proliferation of video cameras and cell phones, there was no place that couldn't be watched. And, of course, there was the cherry on top: the high-definition spy satellites that surveyed the earth, four hundred miles in space, and could capture the glow of a cigarette with greater detail than a conventional camera a few feet away.