The Assassini

by Thomas Gifford

  “Wait. Stop.” Sister Elizabeth was frowning as if she were unable to quite grasp the situation. “You intended to murder Pope Pius?”

  “It was just what he needed, Sister.”

  “And Father LeBecq blew the whistle, warned the Vatican, Pius didn’t make the trip, so you killed LeBecq—”

  “I have told you, I did kill him. He had, I believed, caused the death of my fellows. But there’s a problem with that. I was told by a man who knew, some time later, that LeBecq wasn’t the one who warned the Vatican. I had killed the wrong man. No great loss, however—”

  Sister Elizabeth gasped. “My God …”

  D’Ambrizzi went to her and took her hand. He refused to let her go. “Poor Sister, poor dear girl. You’ve had a bad time with all this. I’m deeply sorry. But all I can do is bring the nightmare to a conclusion.”

  “Who tried to kill me?” She was fighting off tears.

  “Soon, it will be over soon. I understand your concern, your outrage. You’re right, it is a kind of insanity. A priest who tried to kill the pope, who killed another priest with his bare hands … yet this priest is also the beloved old man you see before you, a man you’ve known for a long time and trusted. It’s confusing. What are you to make of it? Well, I stopped worrying about the morality of it all long ago. I did what I needed to do, what I believed to be right. Not much of an attitude if you want to be a good priest. But I was never much concerned with being a good priest. I wanted to be a good man.” He looked at his watch. “Tomorrow night at Indelicato’s villa about this time—the last act begins. For now, good evening.” He stopped in the doorway, looking back. “Be careful.”

  That night I sat in my room at the Hassler, alone, thinking about D’Ambrizzi’s version. Father Dunn had gone off on business of his own without a word regarding just what his relationship with D’Ambrizzi involved. I couldn’t imagine having another go at Sister Elizabeth. How big a fool could a man make of himself? Why go for the Olympic record?

  So I sat and thought about D’Ambrizzi in the mountains waiting for the train bearing Pope Pius. The audacity of his plan was breathtaking. What might have happened had he succeeded? Would the Church have found a great man, a great leader who would have helped reveal the Nazis for what they were? Would the moral development of the Church have proceeded differently? Would it have emerged from the war prepared to lead? And if it had been a different Church, might I have been a different man? Might I have become a priest in a Church that—Pius having lived—never existed?

  My life had not worked out as planned and I couldn’t foresee a time when I wouldn’t be paying one price or another. I had lost the Church and I had lost the love of my father, and somewhere along the way I had begun to hate both. What if D’Ambrizzi and his little band had killed Pius? Might I still have the Church and my father?

  I decided that I couldn’t afford to know the answer.

  But I wondered, who did betray the Pius Plot?

  My back was pretty well healed. The scar was puckered and joined. The occasional pain was no more a dull throb when it came, not the searing poker. I filled the tub with water so hot it steamed the mirror. I opened a bottle of scotch Father Dunn had found at some joint catering to thirsty Brits. It had an almost sweet taste, yet still earthy and full of peat smoke, and I’d never tasted anything quite so good. E’Dradour, it was called, and Dunn told me it came from the smallest distillery in Scotland. I no longer had any idea where Dunn stood on anything else, but when it came to the water of life the man knew what he was talking about. I lay in the tub and kept dribbling E’Dradour over ice until there was only half a bottle left. Some of my worries were fading in the glow of strong drink.

  I was very tired and maybe it didn’t matter so much anymore that nothing was ever what it seemed. Rome, Roman angles, Roman intrigue, they were swallowing me whole and I knew I wouldn’t be missed. It was an odd, disconcerting feeling, but comforting, too. Maybe I just didn’t matter all that much. I wouldn’t be much of a loss.… Well, they did things differently in Rome. When in Rome, you were supposed to do as the Romans did. But who could ever figure it out?

  D’Ambrizzi.

  How much was true? Was any of it true in the sense of actual truth? Did anyone even remember what truth was? I lay soaking, sweating, my mind wandering into delusion.…

  I felt as if I were dying on the beach with a pretty girl crying in the shade of a palm tree and there was the colonel, his shadow falling across me, the sun shining past his head with its peaked officer’s cap, shining in my eyes, the colonel with his stupid face, the glasses, and the gun.…

  It was a Donald Fagen song running through my mind, jazzy and sad, and I knew perfectly well I was in the tub with the steam and the scotch and the melting ice in the Hassler’s bucket and the fear about what might happen the next night knotted in my gut, but I was down and bleeding in the sand, too, the motor launch I’d hired from the skinny man in two-tone shoes had never come to take me off the beach and the girl had betrayed me and the colonel had betrayed me and I was going to die. I knew the plot, I’d read the book, I think I just got the good-bye look … my mind was wandering, I was half singing the song to myself, as if I had a fever that was going to kill me if the slugs I’d taken didn’t.…

  Christ. D’Ambrizzi had tried to kill the pope!

  And he had succeeded in killing LeBecq—the wrong man.

  And he simply didn’t give a shit!

  Who did such things?

  Must have been the war, that was it. There’d been a war on and that had changed everything. The rules had no longer applied.…

  I finally staggered off to bed, lay shivering, thinking about the warm, dark, rounded softness of Gabrielle LeBecq, knowing I would never see her again, wanting her to wrap her legs around me and draw me inside her, where I’d be safe … I wanted to be safe. It didn’t seem like too much to ask.

  I wondered if Cardinal Indelicato’s party would be a safe place. It seemed unlikely. Our invitations had been waiting for us at the Hassler. He requested the pleasure of our company at his villa.

  The next night.

  My mother was once again waiting for me in my dreams.

  It was the same old dream.

  She was coming closer this time, though, as if some strange sense of urgency were compelling her toward me. She was still clad in the filmy nightgown or robe, it was the same old scene I’d grown familiar with through the years … the dream, the memory of her reaching out to me, her hair disheveled, the rings glittering on her long fingers with the painted nails, but she was clearer this time, as if a curtain or two had blown away from between us.

  It was as if I felt an acute embarrassment, as if I were seeing her in a private moment when I shouldn’t have been there at all, yet she knew I was there, she was reaching out, talking to me, and I could smell her perfume, one of those gardenia-scented numbers you smell as a kid and never forget, but I could also smell the gin, the martinis on her breath … all this for the first time, new to my dream … she was coming out of her bedroom, the light shone yellow behind her, it was night, I realized I was wearing my red plaid Pendleton robe and pajamas, I must have been ten or twelve, and I could for the first time hear her voice quite clearly.…

  I’d never heard her speaking—words, real words—in the dream, yet I knew it was a memory, that I was remembering something that had happened but that I’d forgotten, repressed, and the words were coming from far, far away, she was calling on me, repeating my name, Ben, Ben, listen to me, please Ben, my mother’s voice pleading with me, listen to me … and I was shrinking from her, not seeing her as my mother normally was, not perfect and pristine and right, this woman had been crying and drinking and there was a catch in her voice, almost a sob, a handkerchief clutched in one hand, she was pleading, she wanted me to come closer but there was something frightening about her, maybe it was just the difference in her … her voice was ragged, raw … Ben, don’t run away from me, please, darling, listen to me …<
br />
  I was moving closer to her, so great was her urgency. I felt her hand closing on mine, strong, like a bird’s talons, I saw the bird impaled on the point of the wrought iron fence so long, long ago, saw my mother’s frightened eyes staring at me, it was all mixing together in my dream, the bird, the fence, my mother’s raw voice, her hand like a claw, a collection of bones, on mine.… Then the bird was alive and wriggling on the fence, dying, jerking, its wings beating, flapping helplessly, its feet kicking, and then it metamorphosed into another shape—why? why? Because it was a dream, I suppose. The bird was now a man, the feet dancing in midair. It was black, still black like the dying bird, and it, too, was dying, this figure of a man, black against white, and then I knew who it was … dying,… already dead, swinging in the wind.…

  Father Governeau.

  Out in the orchard, a sight I’d never seen.

  But I saw it then, in my dream. Why? I had no idea why. It was a dream, dammit! A dream and more, of course.

  Then I heard my own voice. The priest in the orchard—

  I’d never said such a thing before, not to my mother: it was an impossible subject, but there I was, blurting it out into my mother’s face and the tears seemed to explode from her eyes, as if her eyes had burst, overripe, spilling her sorrow down her cheeks as if her face were melting, as if I were losing my mother there in the hallway … and I heard her voice …

  You, you, it was you … you did it … it was all you, you did it, you from the beginning … you … only you … nothing I could do about it … it was too late … you did it … the poor priest …

  Then she turned, staggered back to the bedroom, closed the door.

  I stood in the hallway, ice-cold, it was dark. I was shaking … and I woke in my bed in Rome, wet with sweat, shivering, exhausted but full of dread and awe. For more than thirty years I’d suffered through that dream, for all those years I’d struggled to hear her words and see her more clearly and understand what it was all about.

  Now I’d gotten through the whole thing.

  I wished I hadn’t.

  It sounded to me as if my mother were telling me I was to blame for what happened to Father Governeau.

  It was all tied together. Father Governeau and Val and everything else. Why had Val been so interested in Governeau at the end?

  And how could I have been to blame?

  The knocking at my door started at something past three o’clock and I lay there having trouble deciding whether or not it was in my dream. When I finally got to the door and swung it open, Sister Elizabeth was about to give it another hammering. I asked her if she knew what time it was.

  “It doesn’t matter. What time is it?”

  “Three in the morning. Past three.”

  “You’re tough. You can handle it. Come on, let me in.” She wore her trench coat which was soaked and her hair shone with the rain. A black turtleneck showed and slacks and wet sneakers. She swept past into my room. She was acting like she was on speed, but I knew it was just the hyperactive side of her nature. Everything had finally gotten to her.

  “What are you doing here? What’s going on?”

  “I cannot put up with the fighting and the uncertainty anymore. Between us, I mean. We’ve got to talk before this whole thing crashes in flames. It’s my whole world, Ben—the wheels are coming off everywhere I look. No, no, don’t interrupt. We’d just fight and then we’d be worse off than ever, so just let me tell you what’s on my mind and don’t say a word unless I ask you a direct question.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m worried about my life getting away from me before I’ve lived it. I think Val was going to leave the Order. Marry Lockhardt. I know what she felt about him—I think I’ve felt it with you. I’m worried about that. And my belief in the Church has been shot to hell—what does it mean if the Church is involved in all this? What has happened to the Church?”

  “I take that as a direct question. And the answer is it’s the same old Church, just the part you’ve refused to notice. It’s no better, no worse, than ever.”

  “So I don’t know what to believe anymore. My Church is suddenly a mystery. I don’t know if anyone in it can be believed. D’Ambrizzi has more faces than the portrait gallery—and I’m looking for someone to believe. So I’m wondering about you—”

  “Look, I—”

  “That wasn’t a question. Look, I’m normally a very organized person with my schedule and my Filofax and my orderly mind. You may think that’s a lie but it’s not. I’ve been a nun for a long time and I admit I’ve developed certain ways of thinking—about life, about myself, my feelings, my faith. I’m not about to bore you with all that, but you’ve got to understand it’s powerful, the way I’ve learned to think and believe. Now I come across you—and you are some crazy ex-Jesuit novice who has more complicated motives and a more screwed-up set of defenses than anyone I’ve ever met.… But that doesn’t mean I don’t like you and care about you, even if you make a point of treating me like absolute shit whenever you can. Well, I look at you and I think, there’s a fairly elaborate head case, but you could probably be fixed.… Now all I want from you is the answer to one question. Then you’ll just have to sit and wait and think about not being quite so full of blind, mindless animal hatred for the Church which, God knows, is an imperfect institution—”

  “Wait for what?”

  “To find out what I’m going to do next, I guess.”

  “What’s the question, Sister?”

  “Did you mean what you said to me?”

  “I’ve said a whole lot of things to you. Some I meant—”

  “You know perfectly well—”

  “Look, if you came here for another fight, I’m just the guy who can—”

  “You told me you loved me! Now, I want you to—”

  “I certainly did tell you that. You want to know if I’ve lost my mind, is that it? Well, I’ve asked myself the same question. Is it worth it? What’s the point in sacrificing myself to the Church again? Who needs this crazy belief in mumbo-jumbo, right or wrong?”

  “Nobody needs a wise guy, Ben.”

  “I never suggested you or anyone else needed me.”

  “I want to know what you meant when you told me you love me.”

  “Anybody ever say it to you before? A man, I mean?”

  “Yes. But there’s love in a convertible when you’re seventeen, and then there’s love. What did you mean by love?”

  “Well, I’m a hellish long way from seventeen. Love, Sister. I meant love. I’m sorry, I hate to make it messy for you, but I meant I love you. Now, if you’ve got another question, I pray it’s not why. I haven’t any idea.… Love, love just happens, Sister. Maybe it’s proof I’m crazy. Maybe it’s proof that I can find someone I love after all, just when it looked pretty damn hopeless! What do you want from me? It’s the middle of the night!”

  “No more questions. I’ve got to think. It may take a while. Let me know if you change your mind.”

  She was gone before I knew what was happening. I stood there in my pajamas, staring after her.

  What had I just let myself in for?

  It was simply incredible, that was ail.

  A nun.

  5

  DRISKILL

  There must have been a thousand candles flickering in the foyer, the ballroom, down the shadowy corridors of the Villa Indelicato, built in the sixteenth century and ever since the family seat of that noble family. Cardinals, statesmen, scientists, bankers, rogues, poets, lovers, generals, thieves—the Indelicato blood had produced all of them as the centuries had passed by in parade and the villa had seen the last bunch, the last four centuries’ worth. It was immaculately cared for, staffed by thirty full-time attendants, and now home to Manfredi Cardinal Indelicato, who stood, in the eyes of Roman handicappers, a very good chance of becoming the first Indelicato pope.

  Everything about the setting was absolutely right. The candlelight flickering on the peach marble, the strain
s of Vivaldi from the chamber orchestra, the gold thread tracing through the tapestries, the scent of pines from the open portals, the multitude of clerics in full regalia, women in elegant designer gowns with acres of creamy cleavage on display, silver-haired men who could afford such women, film stars, cabinet ministers, the hum of conversation blending with the music, the heightened sense of drama that came with the knowledge that a pope might be dying in a secluded Vatican chamber, the tension that is so often sexual when a dressy and powerful crowd is on view.

  Sister Elizabeth, Father Dunn, and I arrived by limousine, thoughtfully provided by Cardinal D’Ambrizzi. We climbed the long, gentle flight of stairs and were quickly absorbed by the flow of the party. Elizabeth was immediately approached by people she knew, Dunn was stopped by clerical acquaintances, so I wandered on alone. Champagne, elaborate food on long tables and from trays whisked about by waiters in evening dress. The light of the candles, only subtly enhanced by electricity, had a dreamy rose-lit quality.

  The villa was a dwelling; on nights such as this it was a showplace; it was also a private museum. The walls forty feet high were hung with tapestries and paintings by the great masters, all of which were surely worth incalculable sums. Through the centuries the Indelicato family had produced many determined collectors, the fruits of whose labors were on view. Raphael, Caravaggio, Reni, Rubens, Van Dyke, Baciccio. Murillo, Rembrandt, Bosch, Hals, on and on. It was almost surreal, so much art, so much wealth concentrated in a single private dwelling. I walked slowly, caught in the crush, through one gallery after another, sipping champagne, half forgetting at times why I was there.

  None of us knew what to expect. Why had we been invited in the first place? Dunn, who had said nothing by way of explaining his suddenly revealed relationship with D’Ambrizzi, said he believed we were there because Indelicato had, along with D’Ambrizzi, been entrusted by Callistus with finding Val’s murderer. Since we’d been on the same search, Indelicato wanted to meet us. Why had D’Ambrizzi been so insistent on our attending? That elicited nothing but a shrug from Father Dunn. But obviously D’Ambrizzi was working to his own timetable: he’d said that it would all be over by the end of this evening. Something was going to happen. We just didn’t know what or when or to whom. Every time I took a sip of champagne it stopped and dug in its heels about halfway to my stomach.