The Assassini

by Thomas Gifford

  “My God, I hope not. He’ll die and he’ll never know why or who killed him. He’ll never know if there was a reason—”

  “What kind of reason could there be? For murder—”

  “And the way it is now,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “his father’s going to need him at home. He told me you tried to convince him to give up the idea of going after the killer, to leave it to the authorities.”

  “I tried—with highly counterproductive results.”

  Sandanato shrugged, resigned to the madness of others. “I hope he thinks it over.”

  “Look, the authorities in Princeton and New York aren’t going to unravel all this—it’s just not going to happen. They’re not going to be able to get inside the Church to find this man—”

  “You’re assuming he is a priest, then—”

  “Just listen to me. The Church is going to get the wagons in a circle and keep them there. It won’t let the cops inside if the killer is a priest. So what’s going to happen? We both know that. The Church is going to do its own investigation its own way, and if the evil ones are inside the Church we could have a case where the evil ones are investigating themselves.” She sat back and took a long drink of iced mineral water. The pollution had dried out her tongue and settled in her throat. The autumn wind was growing cool in the piazza.

  “You are needlessly cynical,” he said.

  “Oh, I am, am I? Well, you’re on the inside. What kind of investigation are they going to conduct?”

  “Wait a moment, Sister. I cannot simply assume a real priest, someone within the Church, is doing the killing—”

  “But maybe that assumption is right. Then where are you? Who is this priest? Who knows his identity? Who gives him his orders? Or does he act alone, pick out his own victims? The questions are terrifying—”

  “You can’t believe that, Sister! The Church is the victim here, our people are being killed!”

  “Next you’ll be telling me that Cardinal D’Ambrizzi isn’t all that interested in what’s happened—”

  “Believe me, he’s busy enough with everything else. We’re not likely to run short of scandals these days.”

  “That,” she said, smiling, “qualifies as very, very old news.”

  Sandanato cleared his throat. She knew what was coming. “And speaking of news, you aren’t planning to write about any of this in your magazine—”

  “I can’t pretend Val’s alive and well, can I? She’s one of our official heroines, Monsignor.” She watched him shift uncomfortably in the white metal chair. “But I don’t know anything. So what could I write?” She watched him relax. She was enjoying the opportunity to toy with him. “But I do have a question. It’s from Val, really.”

  “And what could it be?”

  “What did Val mean when she was talking about the death of a prominent layman, I believe it was a layman, the name just won’t come back to me … but Val said, That makes five in a year.’ What does that mean to you? Five deaths? What kind of deaths? Five Catholics? Which five? What did she mean?”

  “Sister, I have no idea.”

  He answered quickly, interrupting her, giving himself no chance to think. She’d seen it all before. He didn’t need or want to think. His eyes clouded over, erasing her once she passed a certain point. As a woman she would always be an outsider when it came to certain kinds of things, serious things, things within the Church.

  His Holiness Pope Callistus IV was still capable of having good mornings. He knew the supply was running low so when one came he tried to enjoy it, so far as enjoyment mattered anymore, but more important he tried to get something done. He might have only an hour or two before the pain began, either in his chest or in his head. Then more pills, eventually the loss of consciousness. So he had to make time count. This morning was one of the good ones. He had summoned the men he wanted to see and now he waited, tried to relax.

  Standing at his office window on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, he watched the sun rise over the hills of the Holy City, over the swirling currents of the Tiber, cresting the dusty mounds at the horizon. He had often in years past wondered what a pope thought about as he surveyed the world from his pinnacle, but never had he imagined the state of mind in which he found himself. He was not a particularly emotional man: he had never chosen engagement when the role of observer was available. Which was probably why he’d emerged from the pack to become il papa. He had for many, many years been immune to confusion, fear, passion, ambition, and even the more extreme encroachments of faithlessness. All that was different now, in the last act of his life. Watching the beauty of the sunrise, he wondered if any pope before him had ever been so scared of what lay beyond his window. Of course he knew it was an idiotic question. He knew perfectly well that he was merely the latest in a lengthy procession of terrified pontiffs.

  He was dumbfounded by the killings. Murders. This latest horror in New York … and the troublesome, irritating nun. Where the hell would it stop? Where was it leading?

  He sighed and poured a cup of thick black coffee from a silver pot. A plate of rolls sat untouched on the desk. From his window he was able to see the section of Rome where he’d lived as a young student. It was unsettling to realize that from one of those anonymous hillside buildings a man with a rifle decked out with all the accoutrements of modern technology could sight in through the window, wait for Callistus IV, Bishop of Rome, to stop his pacing and stand still, mesmerized by the view of the rising sun, and blow his brains all over the office.

  But he was being melodramatic. Nobody was shooting anyone with rifles. Not yet.

  He finished the coffee just as the alarm on his custom-made Piaget wristwatch—a gift from a famous movie star—went off, reminding him that his first visitor would be waiting in the anteroom.

  He took an antique cloisonné pillbox from his pocket, musing on the ironies of men’s behavior. He was always contemplating ambiguities, ironies, absurdities: it went with the job. Not for the first time he supposed he’d have been better off—more resigned to the unexpectedly absurd nature of his role as pope—were he a pious man. Piety, however, was not a requirement in the pope’s job description in this latter part of the twentieth century.

  The coffee was a stimulant, tended to exacerbate any anxiety he might be feeling. The pills in the exquisite little box were propranolol, a beta-blocker. They slowed down his heartbeat, kept his hands from sweating and trembling, kept his voice steady and authoritative. They arrested any stage fright that might assail him at crucial moments. He took a pill, washed it down with cold water from a cut-glass tumbler on his breakfast tray, and made a check mark on a list he kept in his pocket. He’d taken his heart pill, his blood pressure pill, and his beta-blocker.

  He reflected that, had he been granted a slightly longer lifespan, he might have become the first synthetic pope.

  He picked up his telephone and said to the secretary, “Have His Eminence come in now.”

  Manfredi Cardinal Indelicato always intimidated the little man who had been simple Father di Mona when Indelicato had already been moving up the Vatican ladder back in the forties and the austere figure of Pius had perched atop it. Some people thought he had modeled himself on Pius, but they were mistaken. Indelicato was of truly noble birth, a family that must have gone back to the Ice Age; he was immensely wealthy with the full run of a spectacular villa and staff; he lived, however, the life of an ascetic. Intellectually, morally, genealogically, physically: he seemed the better man. Better than Pius, better than di Mona. But Sal di Mona was the pope, so nothing else mattered. If only the pope could keep that in mind.

  He looked up at Indelicato’s pale white face, the black hair which he probably dyed, the eyes like those of a patiently, waiting bird of prey. A long-legged bird, waiting, watching, ready to dig its beak and spear something small and furry and fearful. “Holiness,” he said softly, making the word sound somehow threatening. He could make anything sound threatening. In a way it
was part of his job.

  “Sit down, Manfredi. Don’t loom so.” Callistus always tried to establish their relationship by using his first name, by gently belittling him. Indelicato sat down, crossed his immensely long, thin legs. “Your friend Saint Jack will be here in a few minutes. You’ve been doing as I asked?”

  The long, narrow head inclined slightly, as if the question hardly needed to be asked.

  “Then I would hear your report.” The pope leaned back, folded his hands in his lap. He wondered if it was too late now to train Manfredi Indelicato, the most feared man in the Vatican, the Chief of Vatican Intelligence and Security, to kiss his ring from time to time. Of course, it was too late. But it would have been amusing. So seldom was it given to one to bully the Bogey Man.

  “I have kept the individuals in question under surveillance, Holiness. Dr. Cassoni is a paragon of discretion, of course, in all ways … but one. Yesterday morning he arose in the middle of the night and drove to a spectacularly unfashionable hospital in the depths of a slum. There he kept an appointment, and I am afraid it is reasonable to assume that you were the subject of the conversation.”

  It was important that the status of the pontiff’s health not be revealed except in the exact manner the Vatican—Callistus and the curia—chose. It was Cardinal Indelicato who had suggested a watch be kept on the private physician.

  “I am not seeking suspense here, Manfredi. I want information. With whom did he keep his appointment?”

  “Let me ask you, Holiness, how did Cassoni come to be your physician?”

  “D’Ambrizzi recommended him.”

  “I should have expected that,” Indelicato murmured, a faint self-reproach.

  “Not even you can be expected to know everything.”

  “Perhaps not, but it was with Cardinal D’Ambrizzi that the good doctor had his meeting.”

  The pope could think of nothing to say, but when he looked up from his cold coffee he wondered if he’d seen what passed for a smile in Indelicato’s repertoire flicker at the corners of the wide, thin mouth.

  Cardinal D’Ambrizzi came in, and after greeting the pope he turned to Indelicato. “Fredi, Fredi, why the long face? You think you’ve got troubles … ha! What I could tell you!” He stood back and looked at the tall, thin man in the immaculately tailored suit of an ordinary priest. D’Ambrizzi grinned, reached out, and rolled the lapel between his fat fingers. “Nice suit, very nice. Your usual tailor? Me, I don’t have the figure for it. A good tailor would be wasted on me. The more voluminous the garment, the better I look, eh, Fredi?”

  Indelicato looked down from his great height. “Giacomo. We must see more of each other. I miss your fabled wit.” He turned. “And Monsignor Sandanato, how good of you to join us this morning.”

  More coffee and rolls were brought in while the pope waited for the two cardinals to stop pissing on each other’s shoes. It was like watching Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, unless you knew them. Indelicato sat barely sipping his black coffee while D’Ambrizzi filled his with sugar and cream. Sandanato merely stared into his. All through the years Indelicato and D’Ambrizzi had been linked in the minds of the Vatican watchers—opposites, adversaries, colleagues with but one aim … to serve the Church.

  “Eight,” the pope said in the silence, and watched all the eyes turn toward him. “We are faced with eight murders. Eight murders within our Church. We don’t know why. We don’t know who is doing the killing. We don’t even have a pattern … we cannot predict the next killing. But we may be sure there are bound to be more.” He paused. “We have considered the possible killers … our friends, the Mafia. Extremists … Opus Dei. Propaganda Due.”

  Indelicato was shaking his head. “My investigators have uncovered nothing to indicate the involvement of any of these organizations. They say no, there’s nothing there for us.”

  “No one teaching us a lesson?”

  “No, Holiness. Not among these groups.”

  “The fact is,” D’Ambrizzi growled, “all these people are always angry about something. The Jesuits are angry because they think you, Holiness, are slighting them in favor of Opus Dei. Opus Dei is fed up because they wanted autonomy from the bishops and control of Vatican Radio and you, Holiness, won’t give them either one. The Marxists look upon us as capitalist tyrants operating out of the Vatican. And the conservatives look upon us as a hotbed of commie bastards destroying the Church. God only knows what Propaganda Due thinks, but He should be ashamed of Himself—they scare even me. But when it comes to murdering people within the Church …” He shook his head. “For one thing, they seem to kill indiscriminately, regardless of philosophical orientation. Have I left anybody out, Holiness?”

  Callistus made a gesture of resignation. “Put three priests together on a street corner and you’ve got a new faction that’s unhappy about something. But killers? No … but tell me, what is this I hear about a priest killing the three in America?”

  D’Ambrizzi’s eyes widened beneath the deep furrows carved across his forehead. “May I ask, Holiness, where you heard such a thing?”

  “Giacomo, please. I am the pope …”

  D’Ambrizzi nodded. “Point taken.”

  “Well? Is it true?”

  D’Ambrizzi said, “Pietro?”

  Sandanato recounted what he knew, and when he was finished Callistus thanked him with a noncommittal grunt. “We must get to the bottom of this. It must be stopped.”

  “Of course, Holiness,” D’Ambrizzi said. “But it presents problems.”

  “But, but, but …” Indelicato appeared to be working up a contradiction but finally proved unequal to the task. “He’s right. We can but try—”

  “I want it stopped. If it’s coming from somewhere inside the Church, it must be stopped, and every trace eradicated. I’m not overly concerned about exposing the killers … we will deal with them at the proper time.” He was squinting, fighting the pain that had begun in his head. “More than anything, I want to know why.” He took a deep breath. “And there must be no outside authorities turned loose inside the Church … here in Rome, in America, not anywhere. Do you understand? This is a Church matter!” He winced uncontrollably, clutched his head.

  “Holiness,” D’Ambrizzi said, getting up, going to him.

  “I’m suddenly very tired, Giacomo. That’s all. I must rest.”

  Leaning on D’Ambrizzi’s great bulk, with Indelicato at his side, Callistus stood and slowly allowed himself to be led away.

  Sister Elizabeth cursed herself for being too busy to have thought things through properly. Ideas kept coming to her that should have occurred to her days before. Now she’d thought of Mother Superior, the nun in late middle age who was the chief executive officer of the Order. She lived and worked in the peach-tinted gray building, part Church, part convent, part castle, at the top of the Spanish Steps. She was French. She had been fond of Sister Valentine. Elizabeth had known her reasonably well for nearly ten years. The mother superior could show warmth and affection, but she always reverted to protocol if you returned it in kind. She controlled the show, the world in which she lived, and you could raise hell all over the world if you were a lady when you presented yourself at the home office.

  The mother superior’s office was decorated in peach and cream and a soft art deco pearl-gray. There was a very modern crucifix that seemed to float two inches from one wall, casting a dramatic shadow, lit by a recessed spotlight. It looked like a wall in a small private museum. The bowls of flowers and shiny green leaves were the perfect complement. Beyond the window people moved in the sunshine on the steps themselves. The mother superior stood with her hands folded, looking out the window, then turned to face Elizabeth. She bore a striking resemblance to the actress Jane Wyman who had once been Mrs. Ronald Reagan. “You want to talk about dear Valentine?”

  “I should have come days ago,” Elizabeth said, “but there’s so much going on at the moment, I get caught up in details. But I just wondered if you saw much of h
er during the past six months?”

  “Why, yes, of course I did. She was living here, my dear.”

  “But she was mainly in Paris.”

  “I don’t know about mainly. She seemed to be dividing her time. She was her usual rather ebullient but secretive self.” She smiled fondly at the memory. She was rearranging the flowers in a cut-glass vase. “I gave her one of the big bedrooms here and we moved a desk in. She was working hard. As always.”

  “Have you emptied the room yet?”

  “Not yet, Sister. It is such an unhappy task, I haven’t had the heart for it. In fact, I’ve been intending to call you about the disposition of her things … the papers, books, she always collected quite a jumble, didn’t she?”

  “I had no idea she was staying here,” Elizabeth mused.

  “Well, you mustn’t feel left out. She was so wrapped up in what she was doing. She was always so single-minded, wasn’t she? She spent a lot of time in the Secret Archives. She still had so much influence—what is the American expression?”

  “Clout?”

  “Of course, clout. She still had clout in high places.”

  “You mean?”

  “Cardinal D’Ambrizzi, of course. He greased the skids—an Americanism, right?—so the Secret Archives became her personal preserve.”

  “Might I see her room?”

  “Of course. Now that I’ve got you here, I wouldn’t let you leave otherwise. I’ll take you up myself, my dear.”

  The mother superior left her alone in the sunny room. There was a lavish splash of bougainvillea outside the two narrow windows. For half an hour Elizabeth sat in an overstuffed chair sifting through notebooks, folders, loose papers. Everything seemed to relate to previous books, articles, even speeches Val had made. She sighed despondently and picked up a stack of folders and notebooks held together by three rubber bands.

  The folder on top was marked with a felt-tip pen. Two words.

  THE MURDERS.