The Pope's Assassin

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  "The Jesuits don't need me. They have their own methods. Besides, they have Nicolas."

  "Who is Nicolas?"

  Donald got up and accompanied Rafael out of the sacristy. "Nico las is the man who carries out their jobs. The Jesuit front line. He's the one who solves their problems."

  "Where can I find him?" Rafael was visibly interested in this infor mation.

  "I have no idea. I don't even know where he's from. Some Jesuit will know. He's one of them. Talk to Robin."

  The two men went to the door.

  Donald offered his hand. "I'm not going to wish you good luck because you're a tough son of a bitch."

  Rafael smiled. "Keep your head down for a few days," he advised. "Things are going to get hot."

  39

  Spill it, Sam," Barry ordered. He was not in the mood for bullshit. "I don't want to hear We don't know."

  The meeting was in the same room where they held briefi ngs on ongoing operations or those being planned. Aris sat on Barry's right, Sam on the left, Staughton, Davis, and Travis followed. No one sat at the opposite end.

  "The Italian and the taxi driver?" Barry wanted to know.

  "They're being interrogated as we speak," Aris informed him.

  "Let's begin, then," the director ordered.

  Sam got up and pulled her skirt down. She seemed nervous, tense, a little feverish, judging from her red cheeks.

  "Everything began about fifty years ago with an agreement between Pope John the Twenty-third and Ben Isaac."

  "Ben Isaac." Barry thought it over. He tried to flesh out the name with more information, give him a face. "The Israeli banker?"

  "The same," Sam confirmed. "In 1947 he was one of the discoverers of the famous apocryphal gospels."

  "The what?" Aris asked.

  Sam shrugged her shoulders in irritation. "The Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran."

  Aris raised his thumb to show he understood.

  "It seems there were some very important documents in these dis coveries," Sam continued. Her nervousness disappeared as she got used to the male eyes focused on her. "Some of them were never made pub lic, since they were covered by an agreement between the Israeli and the Vatican. That agreement was called the Status Quo."

  "Interesting," Barry said. "Okay, let's throw some light on the rea son Rafael was in Paris."

  "And in London," Sam added.

  Barry looked at her, puzzled.

  "Ben Isaac has lived in London for more than fifty years," Sam explained confidently. "But there's more . . . much more."

  "Put Ben Isaac under surveillance as soon as possible."

  "Already done," Sam replied.

  "Don't keep us waiting, then, Sam," Barry said with a smile. "Go on, please."

  Sam continued. Ben Isaac and the agreement with John XXIII, John Paul II, the Three Gentlemen, the Five Gentlemen, Magda, Myr iam, Ben Isaac Jr. . . . Jesus Christ.

  All the participants were silent. No one knew what to say. They considered the information silently.

  "Wow," Barry finally said. "That's a lot."

  "Why did those four people die?" Aris threw in.

  There was so much to know. Doubts, questions, misunderstandings, all the reasons for anger, wars and tortures. Jesus Christ? It wasn't every day that a case like this came up. Nothing like this had ever appeared in the history of the CIA, a short history compared to that of the church.

  "There weren't four. There were six," said a voice that had just entered the room.

  "Thompson. Welcome," Barry greeted him. "Have a seat."

  Thompson pulled out the chair across from Barry and sat down.

  "Six dead? What are you telling me?" Barry asked.

  Thompson threw a bunch of papers on the table. Transcripts, texts, and photos covered the surface.

  "Ernesto Aragones, Spanish priest, assassinated with a shot to the back of the head on Sunday in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem."

  The others began to look at the papers.

  "This morning they killed a priest inside the Vatican."

  "A what?" Barry was scandalized. "What the hell is going on? Who was he?"

  "The curator of the Relics Room. Don't ask me what it means."

  "What's the connection between all these people?" Aris asked again.

  "Yaman Zafer, Sigfried Hammal, Aragones, and the priest today, Ursino, were part of what was called the Five Gentlemen," Thompson replied.

  "And the others?"

  "The others were Jesuits. According to what I was able to squeeze out of the Italian. The acolyte killed the priest to silence him, then committed suicide."

  Barry shook his head. "Who are we fighting with, folks?"

  "They don't know themselves, from what I could find out," Thomp son suggested.

  "Okay," Barry said thoughtfully. "Now we have something to work with. This Ben Isaac. Could he be Rafael's target?"

  "He could be," Aris commented.

  "We need to find out what that agreement covers, and what Jesus has to do with all this." Barry thought rapidly, trying to sketch out a preliminary strategy.

  "I can try to pry out a little more, but I don't think the Italian knew much to begin with," Thompson suggested, always practical.

  "Sam, did you book a flight to Rome?"

  "Of course. It leaves at five in the afternoon from Gatwick and arrives in time for supper."

  Barry was pleased. As director of the Agency for the European the ater, he had a fleet of vehicles at his disposal. A Learjet 85, two Bell helicopters, several cars. He usually chose to fly commercial when his schedule permitted. His rule was not to waste taxpayer dollars, long before any president recommended the cost cutting.

  "Something is bothering me," Barry added.

  Everyone looked at him, waiting for him to fi nish.

  "You mentioned Five Gentlemen, right?" he asked Sam.

  "Yes."

  "Four have died. There's a pattern. Someone is out to kill these Gentlemen."

  He let the implication sink in.

  "There's one left," Aris said. "Could it be Ben Isaac?"

  "We'll have to set up a security perimeter in that case," Barry ordered.

  "No, Ben Isaac is very well protected. He doesn't need our pro tection. They have a good security system, some former and current Mossad agents," Sam explained. "He's not the fi fth Gentleman."

  "Who is, then? And why do they call them 'Gentlemen'?" Barry asked.

  "Because they had a gentlemen's agreement of silence among them," Thompson explained.

  "The question is this," Barry advised, getting up. "They've assas sinated four of the five, so someone is in danger. Find out who the fi fth Gentleman is."

  "Uh . . . we know," Sam said timidly.

  "Then spit it out, Sam. That person's life is in danger."

  "The fifth Gentleman is Joseph Ratzinger . . . the pope himself."

  40

  Ben Isaac had a maxim he'd used for a long time in life, especially in business: everything has a price. An object, a jewel, a house, a business, a man, everything could be bought and sold. All you needed was capital, and Ben Isaac had more than enough money. But tonight the Israeli banker would learn a lesson that would strike down that maxim. There are people no amount of money can buy, even if all the coffers in the world are emptied. Ben Isaac had dealt with such a per son only once before in his life, and it had not gone well. He felt lost, disoriented, and could think of nothing but his son, tied to a chair, mistreated, bloody, and beaten. Just the idea made him shiver, heart sick, and panic flooded his veins. He remembered Magda, his daughter, dead in the womb, and how he had not been there when she died. Some deal or some excavation, something more important, had required his attention at the time.

  Myriam, alone in London so often, watching the rain fall or freeze, or the weak sun rising, without her husband. A day or two, a week. A phone call from Tel Aviv, another from Amman, an unexpected nego tiation in Turin, a meeting in Bern, a meeting with the excavatio
n team, who knows when and where, another with the team in a university in the States, to deepen his knowledge of something excavated, no big deal, he'd be back as soon as possible, a kiss.

  Myriam never lacked money, not a penny to buy anything she wanted. Ben made sure of that. Myriam sometimes thought that for him money was a more sacred bond than the one by which God united them. On bad days she wished Ben weren't so successful, that he'd fail, and on the worst days, that he'd go bankrupt.

  Their daughter, Magda, died on November 8, 1960. His hands were trembling when he called the house from hundreds of miles away to say he'd be home that night. He finally had an agreement in his pocket that Myriam never suspected or would suspect.

  Myriam didn't answer that phone call or the others that followed insistently. Ben would find her in a hospital bed at St. Bart's, sound asleep from the strong sedatives prescribed by the staff doctors. She remained that way for several days and nights, without regaining con sciousness, breathing quietly, her face as white as a corpse. The doctor on call explained nothing to Ben Isaac, deferring to his superiors. It was not his place to say what was happening to the patient; her own doctor had left this instruction.

  The young, prestigious banker, used to doing and undoing, order ing and contradicting both his subordinates and heads of state who clamored for the money he had and they didn't, waited by the bed for her personal physician to deign to appear.

  "Myriam tried to commit suicide," was the doctor's greeting. "I can't stay. I'm getting married," he explained.

  Ben Isaac was unable to say anything. He couldn't even make a ges ture. He stared silently at the doctor, subdued, disgusted, with a three days' growth of beard.

  "She didn't eat for days and filled her stomach with barbiturates. She repented and called an ambulance. While she was waiting for the para medics, she was probably anxious and inattentive, and she tripped on the stairs and fell. When she arrived here, she was crying out . . . for Magda."

  Tears ran down the face of young Ben Isaac, the multimillionaire whose wife was so unhappy to want to kill herself and the daughter she carried in her womb.

  "I'm very sorry, but we weren't able to save Magda."

  Ben Isaac covered his face in his hands and trembled with a smoth ered wail. Sorrow exploded in his chest and punished him with blows of agony and disgust.

  "When are you going to stop sedating her?" he managed to ask.

  "Myriam isn't under sedation now," the doctor informed him.

  "But she's still sleeping!"

  The doctor sighed and leaned toward Ben Isaac."Myriam will wake up when she understands . . . when she feels ready. Help her. She's going to need it."

  The doctor murmured "Good luck" before leaving the couple in the cold hospital room, on his way to church to a ceremony that would seal a sacred compact, not necessarily infallible, even if marriage were not a human invention.

  It took seven days for Myriam to wake up, and when she did, it was as if he were not there at all. She didn't say a word, didn't respond to his encouragement or questions, excuses or promises, or love. Ben Isaac would not hear her voice for the next nine years. The absences that he'd curtailed resumed, but it didn't bother Myriam, who was involved with her garden, her friends, her book club, exhibits, tea parties, the theater, the culture that London offered, faithfully, without fail. She didn't share any of this with Ben. It was as if she were living two lives and were two women, Ben's wife when he was home and Ben's wife when he was absent.

  One Saturday lunch Myriam said to Ben Isaac, "I'd like to get to know Israel, Ben." It was as if they'd been talking about it just yes terday, seconds ago, forever, without the hiatus of almost a decade in which Ben had not heard a syllable, an interjection, a complaint, or even a sob.

  Ben Isaac took her to Israel, Cyprus, Italy, Brazil, and Argentina, and they talked all day about the things normal couples who have a lot of money, and normal couples who don't, talk about. They smiled, laughed, made love again, kissed, felt their bodies breathing, felt the other's sweat—everything a couple feels or ought to feel, except Magda. They never once talked about her. She was a sealed subject, forbidden, taboo.

  Ben Isaac lived with silent bitterness, tied up with the strong cords of guilt, resigned to getting through the day, losing himself in his work, filling the hours, attending to Myriam. He didn't return to excavations. Magda served as warning, a punishment from the Almighty, a closed door he could not open again.

  All this went through his mind as he read the message he'd received on the cell phone. If you want to see your son alive again, get rid of the journalist. Sarah and Myriam continued to look over the ancient docu ments, neglecting the papal agreements that held no interest for them, despite the fact that they were the only documents whose language they could understand. The rest exercised a hypnotic fascination on them. Ben Isaac had felt it several times. The characters, ornate, styl ized, but without pretensions or arrogance, unlike the papal blazons, which in those days didn't yet exist.

  He couldn't lose little Ben. He couldn't lose another child. Where was divine justice? Would he always be punished for sticking his nose into something he shouldn't have? No. He had paid an enormous price. Magda, Myriam, and nine years of sepulchral silence.

  How could they possibly know about the journalist? The leak had not come from his side. He was absolutely certain. He remembered when Cardinal William had introduced him to Sarah. The leak came from the Vatican at the highest level, and that was serious. He had to get Myriam to safety and put an end to the situation.

  "Myriam," Ben called. "A moment, please."

  Myriam returned to her husband, who showed her the phone

  screen. She read the message and raised her hand to her mouth in shock. Sarah noticed.

  "No, Ben. We can't," stammered Myriam shakily, her legs weak. "It's not true."

  "We have to do it, Myr. Ben's life is at stake." Ben put both his hands on Myriam's shoulders. "We have to do it."

  Both of them looked apprehensively at Sarah. She realized some thing had happened that had to do with her.

  "What's going on?" she asked timidly.

  Ever since she'd entered the underground storage vault, her heart had been beating nervously. She knew what she had to do. William had been completely explicit in the Palazzo Madama. A sacrifice that would make all the difference for millions of the faithful.

  Myriam collapsed on the floor, sobbing. "No, Ben."

  "I'm sorry, Sarah," Ben said, approaching her slowly. "I have no alternative."

  Sarah backed up until she bumped against a showcase. It was now or never. Ben's threatening attitude helped her make up her mind. Ben clicked a number on the phone and said something in Hebrew. He was calling security.

  Sarah put her hand in her jacket pocket and took out the small, six shot revolver that William had given her. She aimed at Ben.

  "Not one more step."

  Ben looked at her, surprised. How was it possib . . . Cardinal Wil liam. Who would have suspected the cardinal?

  Myriam raised her head, analyzing the situation.

  "Give me the documents," Sarah ordered, her voice stronger than she felt.

  "Put away the gun, Sarah. You won't get out of here alive. Besides, you're not a killer," Ben warned. "You don't have what it takes to kill."

  "Myriam, get up and come over here." Another order.

  Myriam got up with difficulty and approached Sarah suspiciously.

  As soon as she was within reach, Sarah grabbed hold of her, turned her around, and pushed the barrel of the gun into her right temple. Myriam closed her eyes.

  "Still don't think I have what it takes?" Sarah asked. She hated her self at this moment. "Now, give me the documents so Myriam and I can take a walk."

  "Do you really want to do this?" Ben asked very calmly.

  Sarah trembled with the gun at Myriam's head. She tried not to press too hard, to avoid hurting her. Myriam was actually calmer than she was.

  "Don't do somethin
g you'll regret," Ben pleaded in a low voice.

  "Give me the documents," Sarah insisted.

  "That's not going to happen, Sarah. Understand this very well. It's the life of my son at risk."

  Sarah was losing her options. She'd never pull the trigger. Her bluff was about to be called.

  "Lower the gun, Sarah. My men are almost here. They're pros and—"

  "Good evening," a male voice said in perfect English.

  "Hadrian," Ben called without looking for him. "Do me the favor of disarming the lady, who's beginning to annoy me."