The Assassini

by Thomas Gifford

  Sister Elizabeth was exquisite in a black velvet dress with a square-cut neckline, a cameo choker she said Val had given her, her hair tied back with a black ribbon. She smiled at me when we met at the Hassler, a smile I’d never seen before. It was as if there were no conflict between us anymore, as if the air had in fact been cleared. Our eyes met, and she took my hand as I helped her into the limousine. We had reached our truce in that brief middle-of-the-night conversation in my room. Now I, too, felt calm. We were at last on the same page, regardless of how our minds might be working, what resolutions we might be hoping for.

  We found ourselves on a sweeping staircase, looking down on the ceaselessly surging crowd. She looked up at me. “Which story do you believe?” She had told me of her conversation with Sandanato, his claim that D’Ambrizzi himself was behind all that had happened. That D’Ambrizzi was reaching for control of the Church and would destroy it with his reaction against everything he himself had stood for. “D’Ambrizzi is either the good guy or the bad guy. The question is, how will we know?”

  “I don’t know. They’re all bad guys. Okay—he fits all the criteria for the bad guy. We have only his own word he’s the good guy.”

  “We also have Father Dunn’s word,” she said.

  “How reassuring. What’s it worth? I have no idea.”

  “But what does your gut tell you?”

  “That I still want to spend some time alone with Herr Horstmann. Then I’ll worry about who sent him to do the killing. It stands to reason it’s Simon, the real Simon … D’Ambrizzi.”

  “But there’s Val—he’d never have ordered Val’s murder—”

  “What about your murder? My murder? He could have ordered those?”

  She looked away, said nothing.

  A middle-aged priest with a smug, humorless face approached us from the stairs above. “Sister Elizabeth,” he said, “and Mr. Driskill. His Eminence Cardinal Indelicato would like to meet you. Please follow me.”

  We followed him up the stairs, along a landing, then down a corridor lined with green and gold brocade occasional chairs and dozens of framed drawings and tables of green and gold with vases of cut flowers. He stopped at a doorway and pointed us inside. The room was long and narrow with high windows, heavy floor-length draperies, a carpet a thousand years old, an elegant escritoire, a large painting by Masaccio dominating one wall. I had no idea there were such works in private homes, villas however grand.

  The room was empty. “Momento,” the priest murmured, and disappeared through an ornately carved door behind the desk.

  I nodded. My eye was caught by a small painting hung beside a window above an ultrasonic humidifier that was doing its best to keep things from crumbling to dust. In the painting a ghostly robed figure seemed to float in the middle distance, a long arm extended, pointing at the viewer, or the painter. On closer examination the figure’s face was revealed to be a skull, blanched and smudged. There were leafless trees in the bleak background, black birds turning in a faint red sky as if the fires of hell burned beyond the horizon. I was struck by the picture because the pointing robed figure might so easily have been a depiction of my dream-mother, reaching for me, about to speak the incomprehensible words. I heard a rustle of heavy garments and turned in time to see Cardinal Indelicato shimmer into the room.

  His face was long and sallow. His dark hair might have been shellacked against his skull which was long and narrow. He shook hands with Sister Elizabeth, then came to me and repeated the gesture, very nearly clicking his heels. A heavy silver cross hung from a thick silver chain draped around his neck. It was studded with what appeared to be emeralds and rubies. He saw the way it caught my attention.

  “Not part of my normal costume, Mr. Driskill. A family heirloom—good for warding off the nimble vampire, I’m told—which like this ostentatious attire I wear only on ostentatious occasions. Of which this, I’m afraid, is one. The Church pays heed to the modern medium of television. We’re previewing an American television program which will reveal ‘how the Vatican really works.’ How very American, eh? The inside story—I find that Americans are fascinated with what passes for the inside story. And they will believe—pardon my saying so—almost anything they’re told. But I am rambling, forgive me. I wanted to offer my personal condolences regarding your sister … I did not know her well, but her reputation made her known to everyone throughout the Church and the world beyond. And my dear Sister Elizabeth, what a horrifying experience you’ve had.” He shook the sleek head, lifted a thin, long-fingered hand, an eloquent gesture. “But we are nearly finished with our investigation. I can assure you there will be no more killings. The Church is back on the road to salvation.” A smile so thin it must already have slipped between a million cracks.

  “That’s a comfort,” I said. “The word seems to be getting around that we’re all just about home free. Which is certainly going to do my sister Val a lot of good. And Robbie Heywood and Brother Leo and all the others who have died at the hands of Herr Horstmann—”

  “Yes, yes, I understand how you feel.” He turned from my rather bellicose outburst to Sister Elizabeth, who watched him from behind a veil of calm objectivity. She looked as if she were studying a particularly interesting specimen of Cardinalus Romanus, looking perhaps for signs of panic—of anything that would reveal guilt or innocence, the truth or falsity of Sandanato’s version.

  “But,” he went on, “you must remember that this is a Church matter. It is not only that it is best handled from within the Church … it can only be handled within the Church. Very soon Horstmann and his master will be revealed and dealt with as only the Church is capable of doing. Until then, I must ask you both to refrain from pursuing this matter any further. The Holy Father has involved himself at last … you two must remove yourselves, whatever your personal feelings. May I assume I have your pledge?”

  “You may,” I said, “assume anything you damn please.”

  “You only make it more difficult,” he said. “You are precisely what I’ve been warned you’d be. But you are a free agent. And there is nothing you can do to affect the outcome now. Thank you for coming.” He smiled again in a distant and pitiless manner. “Please, enjoy the evening. And don’t miss the screening of the film. You may indeed learn something of how the Vatican really works. I believe it is portrayed as a disarmingly simple and cheerful place.” He inclined his narrow head.

  “So you say it’s D’Ambrizzi,” I said to him, standing my ground as he tried to move us toward the door. “You must think you can prove it … but to whose satisfaction, I wonder? Not to the Roman police. Not to the Princeton police. You want to keep it inside the Church. The pope is dying and may not even know what you’re talking about anymore. So where is it you go with your case?”

  Cardinal Indelicato shrugged, the tiniest elevation of his shoulders. “Enjoy the evening. Now, you must excuse me.” He went around me, then stopped in the doorway, turned back to stare at me. He said nothing, rather to my surprise, and left.

  The papabili were out in force. They were everywhere. There were also some other faces I recognized, men who were not in the running for the papacy.

  Standing on a balcony, I saw them moving in the crowd below.

  Cardinal Klammer was there, all the way from New York. Cardinal Poletti, the curia spin-doctor, and Cardinal Fangio, said by some to be an innocent in a viper pit, said by others to wear the mantle of innocence as camouflage so perfect it was nearly believable. There was Cardinal Vezza and Cardinal Garibaldi and hunchbacked Cardinal Ottaviani and Cardinal Antonelli with his long, still-blond hair. There were others whose names eluded me but whom I recognized: a Dutchman who walked with two canes, dragging his feet; a German with a famous trademark crew cut, a black man who must have been nearly seven feet tall, all faces familiar to the viewers of television or readers of newspapers. I also spotted Drew Summerhays and at his side the little man I’d seen with him in Avignon, the little man with the mangled throat. In an archway
, with shadows playing across his face, was a surprise, a face I knew but hadn’t expected: Klaus Richter in a dark business suit, sipping champagne, speaking to a priest. It was all still in place: the Nazis, the art, the Church. Richter. The old golf-playing Nazi, one of the men in the photograph Val had stolen from his office. I wondered, was he in Rome on the old master business, the blackmail business? He had to be.

  Father Dunn drew up beside me, murmured something, and as I turned toward him I thought I saw from the corner of my eye a sleek silver head, round spectacles catching the candlelight, a man flickering past in the crowd below. I jerked my head quickly but the man was gone. Dunn followed my glance. “What?”

  “I’m having delusions,” I said. “I thought I saw Horstmann.”

  “Why should that be a delusion?” He smiled wryly. “Are you telling me you still have it in you to be surprised? That surprises me.”

  “I never seem to learn a damned thing.”

  “Of course you do. You seem positively lighthearted given the circumstances. Let me guess. Détente with Sister Elizabeth?”

  I nodded.

  “Just remember,” he said, “she’ll never make it easy for you. Even when she tries, it won’t be easy.”

  I nodded, wondering if I could possibly have seen Horstmann. Maybe he was waiting for fresh orders from Simon. So far as I knew, he hadn’t killed anybody in a week.

  “Look,” Dunn said, pointing toward a flurry of activity at the far end of the hall below.

  Cardinal Indelicato was greeting Cardinal D’Ambrizzi. Tall and thin and suave; short, fat, smiling. They might have been best friends. Other cardinals seemed drawn to them as if they were powerful magnets which, of course, they were.

  “What a game it all is,” Dunn said. “Tonight Indelicato stakes his claim for all the initiated to see. He’s saying in their secret code, I will be Pope! And everyone here—almost—is trying to make sure they’re on his good side. You just have to love it.”

  An hour later the crowd was being slowly herded into the ballroom, where the television program would be previewed for this select audience. Cardinal Indelicato was going to say a few words. He introduced the famous American anchorman who was the narrator; he would accept the praise once the lights went up. He was being swept along on the wave of the heady moment. It was not the sort of excess he often permitted himself.

  D’Ambrizzi had slipped away and joined us in the shadows behind a grove of potted palms. Dunn turned. “Eminence.”

  The cardinal had Sister Elizabeth in tow. “This one”—he inclined his head toward her—“still maintains the belief that I am not Jack the Ripper. I hope to demonstrate that fact to you, Benjamin, as the evening goes on. As for my dear friend Indelicato, he believes he’s putting an end to the career of old Saint Jack tonight.” He shrugged. “And what if he does? Would it be such a tragedy? Well, yes, it might be something of a tragedy for the Church.”

  “What do you want for the Church?” I asked.

  “What do I want for the Church? I suppose I don’t want it to fall into the hands of the Iron Masters—my name for them. The old guard, the ultraconservatives. I don’t want Indelicato to take it over and turn it back into a kind of baronial preserve. It’s too late for that. That’s the heart of it.”

  “Indelicato seems very confident tonight,” I said.

  “And why not? He has me under his heel, does he not? Horstmann was Simon’s creature, everyone agrees on that … and I was Simon … I tried to kill a pope, I led a band of killers, and now I am supposed to have reactivated Horstmann. It all fits into the long, dark history of the Church and Indelicato thinks he can prove it. How in the world can I stop him from blackmailing me out of the picture? It would—if I may say so—take an act of God. Of course, I believe in God.” He smiled beneath the broad, hooked beak, gently fingering an ivory crucifix on his chest. “And God is well known to help those who help themselves. But now, are you intent on seeing this television program?” We all indicated we weren’t. “Neither am I. Come with me. Quietly. I have something to show you.”

  He led the way down a deserted corridor, down a flight of stairs that hooked around a corner into a dark, cavernous basement, lit only by occasional ceiling lights. He touched a switch on the wall and the great hulking shadows were revealed as wine racks. Thousands of bottles stretching away. Dunn said, “I’ve heard it’s the finest cellar in Rome.”

  D’Ambrizzi shrugged. “I am no judge of wine. As long as it’s rough and the color of blood I’m happy. A peasant.” He was moving between the racks. “We will not be disturbed down here. I have something you must see.”

  Elizabeth said, “How can you be sure we won’t be—ah—interrupted?” She was looking over her shoulder as if expecting a Swiss Guard S.W.A.T. team at any moment. “Isn’t this off limits?”

  “Sister, I have known Manfredi Indelicato for more than fifty years. There’s nothing we don’t know about each other. He always has his spies watching me. But he sees me as an unsophisticated bull in a china shop. About me, he believes what he wants to believe. In any case, he would never believe that I have my spies in his personal employ … members of his household staff. He occasionally uses something he could learn only from his spies. Thus, he gives himself away … and identifies his spy for me into the bargain. I, however, never use what I learn about him. I merely note it for future reference.” He grinned like a crocodile. “I use it only obliquely, you see. I am the subtle one, not Manfredi.” He beamed self-consciously. “He’s prepared to kill me tonight. If he must, he will … or so he believes. But do I appear worried to you? Please, Sister, be assured—we are quite safe here. I have been here before. What I am about to show you I’ve seen several times, just to assure myself it was real.… Come, follow me.”

  The dust from the bottles, the smell of the wooden racks, the coolness of the cellar: I was inhaling all of it, wondering why we were there. When he came to the final rack against the wall D’Ambrizzi reached up and gently pushed the rack sideways. I heard a whirry, softly grinding sound and the rack, as well as the wall itself, slid away on invisible bearings, giving access to yet another room. D’Ambrizzi beckoned us to follow.

  “Manfredi is an arrogant man. Another man with a secret room beneath his villa would install an alarm system-, a series of television cameras—this is the age of technology. But then, the people who installed the system might leak and there could be nothing worse.… Manfredi is so certain of his inviolability, so deliciously egocentric, he believes himself to be utterly impregnable. No one could know about this crypt—no one could know what he has hidden here. But he is mistaken. Giacomo D’Ambrizzi knows …”

  The room was deeper yet beneath the level of the ground and, in contrast to the vast wine cellar, it was clean and free of the trappings of great antiquity. There were two large humidifiers and an air filtration system, temperature gauges, automatic sprinklers in case of fire. Everything was in crates of all sizes and shapes. The room was the size of two tennis courts.

  “This, my friends,” D’Ambrizzi said, “is the loot of World War Two. All in Manfredi Indelicato’s basement. Come, look at these crates. Come.” He waved us down two flights of stairs onto the concrete floor, among the crates. “Look … look!”

  The crates were stenciled in black with eagles and swastikas of the Third Reich. Some had names inscribed in more faded black ink. Ingres. Manet. Giotto. Picasso. Goya. Bonnard. Degas. Raphael. Leonardo. Rubens. David. There was no end to it. Scrawled in red on many of the crates was the word Vaticano.

  “It’s all very safe here,” D’Ambrizzi said. “He has taken great care with the environment. Very fond of art, Manfredi. Runs in the family. And this stuff is going to have to be safe for a very long time. Because most of these pieces have rather detailed histories. Provenances. They may have to be kept in hiding for another century. If Fredi becomes pope, he will surely see that it all goes to the Church—”

  “And if you become pope?” I asked.

/>   “I have hardly thought about it. I would not be a free agent. I suppose I’d think of something. Maybe Indelicato will try to keep it in his own family.” He sighed. “It’s really something of an albatross, isn’t it, this treasure? Since we’re not supposed to have it at all. I thought you might enjoy seeing it, seeing what Indelicato was up to back then. If you inspected the crates carefully, you’d see that some of it was earmarked for Goering or Himmler or Goebbels or Hitler himself. But Indelicato took it … with my help, I admit, on occasion—”

  “But why Indelicato?” Elizabeth asked. “He was in Rome during the war, he had nothing to do with the assassini in Paris … you were the one making sure the Church got its share of the loot—”

  “Well, I had no heart for it, you see. But Fredi, he was at Pius’s right hand when the whole assassini business was conceived. It wasn’t only Pius who gave me the unpleasant job of going to Paris to do the dirty work. It was Indelicato that Pius turned to for a suggestion. And Indelicato saw a way to get rid of me. Even then we were natural rivals. He believed it was unlikely that I would survive the Paris assignment. He supposed the Nazis would eventually have enough of my contentious behavior and simply kill me. Oh yes, Indelicato monitored my work very closely.”

  “Did he know about your plan to kill Pius?”

  “Oh my, yes, of course. It was Indelicato who was tipped off to the plot. It was Indelicato who further cemented his relationship with Pius by ‘saving his life.’ Pius never forgot.”

  “So, who told Indelicato? Who betrayed you?”