The Assassini

by Thomas Gifford

  “D’Ambrizzi,” I said mostly to myself. Was it really possible he had ordered the murder of my sister, sent his old silver-haired weapon to kill her … to kill Lockhardt and Heffernan … to kill Brother Padraic and poor Leo.… And my gun was a toy.

  We left the café. A fine mist had filled the air and the smell of fruit and flowers and restaurants was overwhelming, like an exotic bazaar.

  He showed me the Church of Santa Maria, said to be the oldest in Rome because in the old imperial days Trastevere was a center of Jewish life. A meeting place for Christ’s followers had been required and another Pope Callistus, the first of that name, had founded it. I followed him around a corner to the tiny Piazza di San Callistus—connected to Santa Maria by the Palazzo di San Callistus—which he told me is owned by the Vatican.

  “Did the Holy Father take his name from this Callistus?”

  “An infelicitous choice if he did.” Father Dunn led me across the square to stand before the palace. “Where the palace now stands there stood the house where the unfortunate Callistus was finally imprisoned and tortured. He was eventually thrown out of the window into a well in the courtyard. That was all some time ago. The year was 222, actually.”

  We were standing on a bridge looking down into the Tiber. The mist had just barely turned to rain and it dimpled the river. He was talking to me about D’Ambrizzi and Simon.

  “He really was in his element during the war,” he said. “The man was designed for use in a crisis. Built by a firm that meant business, built to last. But I don’t quite make him fit Simon now. I suppose that’s the point though—not to be obvious, I mean. I don’t know, Ben.” He was staring into the black Tiber running in the rain. I heard thunder far away, over Tuscany. We began to walk. There was nothing left to do but wait for D’Ambrizzi and Callistus to finish their conference. Nothing to do but wait and wonder what to do when the waiting was over.

  “Come,” he said. “There’s something else I want you to see.”

  Ten minutes later we stood across the street from a shabby building, part warehouse, part grocery store with an attached restaurant, it was dark and the wind from the river was cold. He said, “The Church owns this building. The whole block, actually. Not a bad ristorante. The owner used to be a priest in Naples. Come on.”

  I followed him down an alleyway, back around to the rear of the building. A single dreary automobile, well past its prime and showing it, stood by a metal door that was open an inch or two. “Come on,” he said again. “Don’t be shy.” He pushed the door open and stepped into a narrow, dimly lit hallway that smelled of spaghetti sauce and clams and oregano and garlic. I heard a sound from a room at the end of the hall. Someone was pitching darts into a cork board. There’s no sound quite like it. We stopped just short of the doorway. “Go on in,” Father Dunn said.

  There was a man pulling darts from the board. He turned, his hand bristling with the gleaming points.

  I hadn’t seen him in such a long time. Not since my sister and I had waited impatiently for him to come outside and play with us. He was wearing a dark gray suit with a pinstripe, a white shirt with a dark tie and a starched collar that sank into his jowls.

  Seeing me, his face lit with a broad smile.

  He came toward me, stood looking up into my face.

  Then he grabbed my shoulders and embraced me.

  “It has been too long, Benjamin. You were only little children.” He shook me like a giant doll. He was still very strong. “Benjamin.”

  He leaned back to look at me again and I stared into the eyes of Giacomo Cardinal D’Ambrizzi.

  Why had Artie Dunn delivered me into the hands of my enemy?

  3

  Sister Elizabeth sat at her desk in the empty office, eyes closed, hands clasped before her on a stack of layout sheets. She had come back to the office from the Borghese Gardens and Sister Bernadine had quickly and efficiently briefed her on the production status of the material ready for press. At the conclusion of the recitation, Sister Bernadine leaned against a file cabinet, pushed one of the drawers shut with her hip, and said, “Look, it’s none of my business, but are you okay? You look a little chewed up around the edges—have you been crying?”

  Sister Elizabeth had tilted her head back and laughed softly. “Ahhh,” she said, thinking. “No more than usual, I guess.” Seeing the concern on her assistant’s face, she added, “No, no, I’m fine. But you’re right, I am tired.”

  “And there’s the aftershock of that nut getting into your apartment.”

  “Probably.”

  “You need some real down time, Liz.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be all right.”

  Now she sat alone at her desk in the quiet, darkened office with the portable Sony radio playing pop music, the volume turned low. She reluctantly opened her eyes to the green glow of the computer screen. She’d called up the D’Ambrizzi and Indelicato comparison she’d entered a few weeks before, stared at the stories of their lives reduced to a few lines of type, the paths they were taking toward the papacy. She wondered about the war years. There now seemed to be no doubt D’Ambrizzi had been up to something in Paris—how she’d have liked to get her hands on those manuscript pages he’d left behind in New Prudence!—but she was even more curious, at just that moment, about what Indelicato had been doing. Working in Rome. Close to the pope …

  The image of the two men as two armies, gathering their supporters, grinding inexorably toward the one goal, stuck in her mind. A lifelong race toward the Throne of Peter. D’Ambrizzi and Indelicato, the peasant and the nobleman, linked together through the years, step by step, enemies and brothers of the cloth.

  She fumbled in the dark in search of a half-empty, dried-to-dust package of cigarettes that was six months old. For some unfathomable reason she smoked two cigarettes a month, on average, and now was the time. Her hands were shaking and when she found the package it was empty. It lay among the paper clips and rubber bands and ballpoint pens by loose dried tobacco. Sister Bernadine had beaten her to it. God, may I have your attention, please? I’ve been through a lot, am I right? So I want a smoke, just one cigarette? Too much to ask for? What they say about You? It could be true. She pushed the drawer shut and saw her hands, couldn’t take her eyes from the hands.…

  Dry, bony, parchment hands, cold hands, blue-veined—the hands of an old nun …

  She was sobbing.

  She was remembering Val’s hands, how they had always been strong and tanned and supple. Now Val would never be old, never be a dry and barren old woman, mourning the life and the children and the love she would never know.…

  She was staring at her hands through the tears.

  The telephone was ringing.

  She wiped her eyes with a tissue, tried to shake away the tears and the depths of her mood.

  She answered and heard a voice she knew and had half expected at the other end. Monsignor Sandanato.

  “Listen to me, Sister. Stay where you are. Don’t leave your office. Not with anyone. Wait for me. Do you understand what I am saying to you? You are in danger. I must speak with you. I’m leaving my office now.”

  Sandanato arrived in less than fifteen minutes. He was breathless, his face damp and glistening with a patina of perspiration. His dark olive complexion was blanched. He sat on the edge of the desk, his burning, fevered eyes searching her face. “Where have you been? You were in Paris and then you were gone—this is crazy. I’ve been very, very concerned.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I ran into Ben Driskill and Father Dunn in Paris—”

  “Oh, my God,” he sighed under his breath. “Go on.”

  “I went to Avignon with them.”

  “But why?”

  “Why not?” There was no hiding the exasperation. “You have no business giving me the third degree! Remember, they’re two of the good guys. You and the cardinal may not take the assassini theory as seriously as I do, but they had found a man who was able to throw more light on all of tha
t—”

  “What man? What are you talking about?” He reached across the desk and took her hand. “Sister, forgive me—I’m acting like a madman—but you’ve got to tell me the truth now. We’re almost at the end of this terrible thing. We’re going to cleanse the Church, Sister, and we’re going to do it now. But you must tell me about the man in Avignon. Please.” He squeezed her hand, encouraging her.

  She felt a sigh escape her, as if she were expelling an awful burden, and told him the story of the trip to see Kessler/Calder. When she reported his assertion that Simon Verginius was in fact D’Ambrizzi, she looked at Sandanato, waiting for the explosion, the denial.

  But it didn’t come. Sandanato’s shoulders slumped. He stood up, pacing the room, hands in his pockets, shaking his head.

  “Sister, you and Driskill have got to get out of this thing now. Listen to me. You’re not really in it, you’re not players, you’re bystanders, and I don’t want you to be the ones who get hit by the runaway truck. Do you understand me?”

  “No. I understand almost nothing at this point. Not you, not Driskill, none of you. But I can’t believe that Cardinal D’Ambrizzi is guilty of—”

  “Promise me you’ll stay out of this. Please!”

  “I’ll be damned if I will—who gave you all this authority all of a sudden? And why aren’t you blowing your top about Kessler’s story?”

  “All right,” he said, making theatrical calming gestures, controlling himself by an exercise of extreme will. “I’m not blowing my top because Kessler’s story may be true. D’Ambrizzi may have been Simon. Yes.”

  “What are you saying? Is he Simon now? That’s what matters—Pietro, you love this man—you are closer to him than anyone else on earth—”

  “We’re not talking about personal relationships, Sister. We’ve gone way beyond that. We’re talking about the future of the Church … we’re talking about the man who may be pope. Now we’re very close to pinning this all down. The murders Sister Valentine tied together, her murder, the attack on you—”

  “We? Who’s we?”

  “Cardinal Indelicato and I! Yes, just believe me. His Eminence and I have been working together to get at the truth—”

  “You and Indelicato? My God, they’re sworn blood enemies! They hate each other. What’s going on? Since when are you and Indelicato together?” Her mind was reeling. One of the fixtures of the Church she knew was the pairing of Sandanato and his master, D’Ambrizzi. What had happened?

  “Since … since I realized that D’Ambrizzi was leading the Church astray. Since I realized that he was doing nothing to carry out the Holy Father’s wishes on the question of Sister Valentine’s killer, the killer of all the others. D’Ambrizzi was in fact obscuring the truth, confusing the issue.… Because he—he himself—was behind it all. Indelicato and I both saw what he was doing to Callistus, isolating him, lecturing him, leading him because Callistus no longer has the strength to make his own way. We saw D’Ambrizzi’s hidden agenda … and it terrified us.” He looked at her, his face an agonized mask.

  “But when? How long ago?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Sister. What matters is that you must realize that it hasn’t been easy for me. You know he’s been like a father to me … but the Church must come first. You and I, we agree on that. I have always known that I would have to tell you the truth sooner or later. That’s why I tried to talk to you about the need to cleanse the Church … and how good might come from evil. There’s no time to thrash it all out now, Sister. No time.” The dim light threw his face into dark relief, the cheeks and eyes hollowed out and black. The spirit of agony, the martyr, willing to die for his Church right or wrong. He was drawn to the breaking point.

  She was scrambling to assimilate what he was saying. Trying to reinvent the world on the spur of the moment. D’Ambrizzi had for so long been the one certainty in the Church, the one unfailing beacon of rationality, common sense, decency: the man who had it all in perspective. Saint Jack, the man who should have been pope.

  “Kessler was right,” she said softly. “Is that what you’re telling me? That everything Ben said is right?”

  “I have no idea what Driskill said, but I want you to stay away from him and Father Dunn. Driskill is perfectly capable of taking care of himself—”

  “I thought you said he and I had to get out of this!”

  “I don’t care what happens to Driskill, Sister! It’s you I’m—”

  “I can’t take care of myself? Is that it?”

  He ignored her sudden petulance. “You have to deal with what’s going on here. There’s no point in our arguing. You are a terrible threat to D’Ambrizzi’s plan. He’ll remove you without thinking twice if you keep after him … you may still believe in him, but what you’re actually doing, what you’ve been doing all these weeks-it can destroy him!”

  “This is pretty hard to buy,” she said.

  “Think how it must have seemed to me.”

  “If you’re right, what’s his agenda? What’s happening?”

  Sandanato fished a cigarette from his coat pocket and lit it, the smoke swirling toward the light on her desk. She didn’t want a cigarette anymore. He coughed, flicked a shred of tobacco from his tongue.

  “D’Ambrizzi,” he said, squinting at her, “is set to take over this entire Church … starting with the heart. He has centralized his power, he has a solid cadre of support among the cardinals and in the press, he has American money behind him, he has one foot solidly in the material and political world, the other in the Vatican. The press loves him, Sister … I love him, as do you, as did Val … but the man we love and trust has used us to further his own plans. He is the only man the Holy Father will listen to anymore. He has complete control over Callistus, over his mind, over access to him. He is arranging for the Holy Father to speak with enough cardinals to press D’Ambrizzi as his own personal choice as successor—Cardinal D’Ambrizzi intends to be pope and he has arranged to hide his past forever. He must be stopped, Sister!”

  “And you and Indelicato can stop him,” she said.

  “If anyone can.”

  “Then you and Driskill are allies,” she said, trying to see it all whole.

  “No, no. Don’t you see? Dunn has complete control over Driskill! He has had from the beginning. Dunn is a subtle man, a manipulator—”

  “But what’s wrong with that? Dunn is—”

  “What’s wrong with that? Elizabeth, Dunn is D’Ambrizzi’s man! Don’t you see? That’s why Dunn has been in on this from day one in Princeton … he was with Driskill that night, he was the first to find Driskill in the family chapel with his dead sister. Ben Driskill never had a chance to react to Val’s murder without Dunn at his side, guiding him, comforting him.” He coughed again on the smoke, moving past her to look into the street from her office window. “Dunn must have known that Sister Val had to die … she was too close to the truth about D’Ambrizzi.… She had connected him to the Nazis in the past and she knew the past had to be wiped clean. And D’Ambrizzi wanted Dunn there to see Driskill through it—and to make sure the job had been properly done.”

  “But they tried to kill Ben when you two were ice skating—”

  “Ben had convinced Dunn that he was going after Val’s past, he was going to try to reconstruct what had led to her murder.…”

  The words kept coming, one enormity after another, like time bombs triggered long ago and exploding now in the depths of her psyche. The Church was being blown apart. Dunn was a villain, D’Ambrizzi was a villain, the Holy Father was D’Ambrizzi’s captive … all in the name of D’Ambrizzi being elected pope. Quite a journey, from assassini to the papacy, forty years.

  Sandanato wanted her to come with him, he’d take her to the Order, where she should stay until it was all over. But she shook him off. He persisted and her anger and frustration bubbled over again, she flailed at him with words. It was all insane, you couldn’t possibly keep track of any of it … and he’d tried to explain i
t all rationally, calmly. It was all D’Ambrizzi, all his own brilliant, perverted conception. The pope was terminally ill; the Church needed to be moved even further into the mainstream secular world and he was the master, the expert. As pope he could see the Church into the future as a world power. But there were men alive, and a woman, two women eventually, who knew too much about his past, what he’d had to do with the Nazis and the assassini … so he had begun to clear the obstacles away. It wasn’t difficult to comprehend if you looked at it that way, the right way.

  She sent Sandanato away and he left grudgingly, warning her to stay away from Driskill and Dunn and D’Ambrizzi until it was over.

  Driskill. Alone, she could barely think of forming the sound of his name. Nothing in her life had ever gone so bleakly, desperately wrong. She was wrung out, all the options closed off when it came to Driskill. Hopeless.

  An hour later she left the office and was struck by the cold wind of late November. It was dark and quiet in the street of shuttered offices. She set off briskly, but by the time she’d reached the corner a gleaming black Mercedes had pulled alongside her.

  A priest in a black raincoat, his white notch of collar peeking out, stepped out of the front passenger side.

  “Sister Elizabeth?”

  “Yes?”

  “The Holy Father has sent his car for you. Please.” He swung the back door open.

  “The Holy Father?”

  “Please, Sister. Time is very short.”

  He took her elbow and she went into the black hole of the backseat. She was alone. The car pulled away.

  “The Vatican is back the other way. Can you explain this, Father?”

  He turned his face and nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry, but we have another stop to make, Sister.”

  “Where?”

  “Trastevere, Sister,” he said as they gathered speed, staying on back streets which were dark and empty, heading toward the Tiber.

  The driver honked and a flurry of cats was caught in his headlights, dashing in a frenzy for safety.