The Assassini

by Thomas Gifford

  “Holiness,” Indelicato said. “I am at your service.”

  “You look so sad!” Callistus turned the smile outward. He lay on the bed, propped up against an enormous monogrammed pillow. “Do cheer up. The last thing a dying man wants to see in the dark of night is someone with a sad face.”

  “Please accept my apologies, Holiness. What may I do for you, Holiness? You need only ask.”

  “Well, Fredi, what’s this I hear about you?”

  “I don’t understand …”

  “I’m told you’re the Antichrist, Fredi.” The pope chuckled softly. “Can such a thing be true?”

  “I’m sorry, Holiness. I can’t hear you.”

  Callistus was suddenly aware of everything in the room. The rain at the window, the letter on his bed, the heavy ancient document beside it, the low light from his bedside table, the silent flickering image of a soccer match on the television screen. He felt the texture of the sheets, felt his hand clenching beneath the sheet. With one part of his mind he was intensely aware of all that, the rustle of Indelicato’s garments, and with another part of the brain which would soon be closing down forever, he remembered, saw and heard, that night in the snowbound cabin, the cold wind, the men waiting, with Simon encouraging them against the fear and the frozen gale, the smell of the weapons.…

  “Come closer, Fredi, so you can hear. There’s something important …” He held the parchment document between his fingers. It felt as if it might crumble away. “Here. I have something for you.”

  Manfredi Cardinal Indelicato came to the side of the bed.

  He leaned across the body of the Holy Father to take the document. He saw the ancient seal.

  The Holy Father moved, a shifting beneath the sheets, and withdrew his hidden hand.

  7

  DRISKILL

  The bedroom of Pope Callistus.

  This, in the heart of the Vatican, the Apostolic Palace, was not a place I of all people had any business being. It was ghostly as hell, the corridors quiet, the lights dimmed, our footsteps muffled. Some of the tapestries on the walls, scenes of history and violence and armies on the march and bands of angels wanting attention and God only knows what else—the tapestries seemed so full of sound and fury, battle cries and trumpets of the heavenly variety, but someone had turned the volume down. Or maybe they hadn’t the strength to make noise anymore.

  D’Ambrizzi led the way, all business now, and Dunn and I followed like courtiers. There was a priest on the night watch at a desk outside the bedroom. D’Ambrizzi spoke to him very quietly, forcefully, and he didn’t move from the desk. We went into the bedroom. It was odd, no formalities, just through the door. No knocking. No announcement. Nothing.

  Nobody would have answered, as it turned out.

  Cardinal Indelicato lay sprawled facedown across the bed. He was utterly still. From ten feet away I’d have bet ten to one he was dead. The fact registered simply, directly. The implications dawned a good deal more slowly. Father Dunn crossed himself perfunctorily, sighed. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  D’Ambrizzi said, “Hardly.” He bent over the other man, whom I’d momentarily forgotten. Callistus lay under the blanket, Indelicato’s body pinning him down. I went closer. D’Ambrizzi leaned down, murmured. “Holiness? Can you hear? Sal … it’s Simon.” He waited, listening, then placed the fingers of his right hand against the papal pulse. “He’s alive. Unconscious, but alive. Help me turn this one over.” Dunn stood watching while D’Ambrizzi and I shifted the body of the late Cardinal Indelicato onto his back.

  The light was dim. The television was on, the sound off. The shadows seemed to have erased the walls. We might as well have been onstage.

  D’Ambrizzi turned on two more table lamps in addition to the one beside the bed. He stood with hands on hips staring at the bed. Then he looked at me, then at Dunn.

  “This man has died of a heart attack.”

  Protruding from Indelicato’s chest was the ornate gold handle of a dagger. Dunn and I looked at each other.

  “So he has,” Dunn said. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Yes,” D’Ambrizzi observed sagely, “this man has suffered a fatal coronary.” He slowly pulled the dagger from Indelicato’s chest. He took several tissues from a box on the bedside table. He folded them around the blade and wiped it clean. He crossed the room and opened a drawer of the desk, placed the dagger inside. “Florentine. Fine workmanship.” He closed the drawer.

  “You don’t often see a heart attack bleed like this.”

  “Benjamin, you’re not a doctor, so don’t pretend to things well beyond your understanding.” He picked up the telephone. “Private line. Doesn’t go through the Vatican switchboard.” He dialed a number and waited. “Dr. Cassoni, this is D’Ambrizzi. Are you in your pajamas yet? No? Good. I’m with the Holy Father. He’s unconscious, breathing normally. You’d better come have a look. And, Cassoni … I also have a corpse. Heart attack. I’ll tell you when you get here. Do hurry. And don’t bring anyone to assist you. Do you understand? Good fellow.” He hung up and looked again at the body of Indelicato. “We may not know the man the Holy Father would prefer to succeed him. But his reaction to Fredi shows a marked lack of confidence, wouldn’t you agree?” He stood looking at the long, gaunt face of his old enemy. “Well, no tears for Fredi. He was a diabolical son of a bitch here on earth and got just what he deserved. Now God can sort him out.”

  He dialed another number, turned his back on me as I walked around the bed, trying to make sense out of all this. Of course, I knew perfectly well that everybody was staying right in character. D’Ambrizzi, Indelicato, Callistus, who was once Sal di Mona, Horstmann, Summerhays, even Dunn and me. We fit our roles perfectly.

  In the folds of the blanket I saw a piece of vellum or parchment with a bit of red waxen seal that seemed to be flaking away. I was just reaching for it when I stepped on something that had drifted off the bed. It was a single sheet of paper, handwritten, only a line or two.

  I read it and of course it made the present charade take shape. I folded it and slid it into my pocket.

  D’Ambrizzi said into the telephone, “My dear Cardinal Vezza, please accept my apologies for the lateness of the hour. Yes, Eminence, I’m very much afraid it is important. Fredi Indelicato is no longer with us … no, I mean to say that he is no more.… Dead, Vezza, quite dead. Yes, of course, a great tragedy. Well, yes, young perhaps, in your eyes.” D’Ambrizzi chuckled softly. “I believe it would be wise if you joined us. We are in the Holy Father’s bedchamber. I’ve called Cassoni. No one else knows. The sooner the better, my dear Vezza.”

  When he replaced the telephone I said, “Why Vezza?”

  “An ally of mine. He’s my man in the enemy camp. A member of Cardinal Poletti’s little group of Indelicato supporters. Invaluable, really. Do you know, they even went so far as to put a tape recorder on the oxygen machine so they could listen to my discussions with the pope? No, so help me, it’s true. Not only was I telling Callistus what would motivate him … but I was prodding them onward as well. It’s a strange world, Benjamin.”

  While we waited, listening to the pope’s breathing, D’Ambrizzi noticed the piece of parchment on the bed. He reached across the blankets and picked it up. “This has caused so much trouble.” He paused, pursing his thick lips. “No, that’s not true. It is, however, a kind of record of trouble. This is the Concordat of the Borgias. What might we call it? Almost the charter of the assassini, I suppose. Pius sent it with me to Paris, as if it were indeed a piece of the One True Cross. As if it validated me, gave me power, as if it would inspire me to do what had to be done for the Church. I sent it north with Leo and Horstmann … and now here it is. A list of names.”

  “How did it get here?” I asked.

  “Horstmann gave it to me yesterday. I gave it to Callistus. He’d never actually seen it. I wanted him to see his name. Now—what to do with it? Hide it in the Secret Archives?” It was a purely rhetorical question. “No, I t
hink not. It is a relic we can all live without, don’t you agree?”

  Casually he dropped it into an ashtray on the desk and produced his gold lighter. The flame leapt to life and he touched it to the edge of the centuries-old parchment. History went up in smoke, a matter of seconds. Dunn watched, shaking his head.

  D’Ambrizzi looked up at him. “Who needs it, Father? Nobody. Little good ever came of it.”

  We sat in chairs staring at the tape of the soccer match on the television.

  Then Dr. Cassoni arrived and set about making certain very special arrangements.

  It seemed that Cardinal Indelicato had indeed died quite unexpectedly of a massive heart attack.

  They planned to release the news of Cardinal Indelicato’s passing thirty-six hours later. By then I was going to be airborne, bound for whatever might pass for sanity back in Princeton. Out of the confusion filling my mind, all I knew I needed was some recovery time. And I wanted to see my father. I’d learned a lot since I’d left, but there was precious little satisfaction in it. None of it had turned out the way it should have. There wasn’t even a single villain at the core of the evil, least of all Horstmann, who was now painted as an unwitting victim in Indelicato’s master scheme. Maybe it was Indelicato’s and Archduke’s scheme: I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have trusted myself with a gun in my hand and Horstmann nearby, but Horstmann had been sent back to the darkness from which he’d come. I’d lost my chance even for base animal revenge.

  And then there was the matter of Monsignor Pietro Sandanato. What to make of him? Well, he was, I suppose, your over-the-edge Catholic crazy, call him a zealot or just bloody nuts. What was he to do now? How could he live with himself, with the betrayal of his mentor and the death of his accomplice and new sponsor? I supposed that D’Ambrizzi in his wisdom and apparently Godlike power within the Church would paper over the relative disgrace of nurturing a murderous little shit at his bosom all those years and shuffle Pietro off to an obscure post in an even more obscure venue.

  Perhaps I should have been more surprised or shocked or even amazed by Callistus’s murder of Indelicato, but in a peculiar way—a way I could see was reasonable, on its own terms—it made sense. He’d been one of the assassini, he’d set off following his leader into the snowy mountains to murder a pope. So, forty years later, that same leader reminds him he was once one of the assassini, that maybe they hadn’t gotten their pope back then but what was to stop their putting an end to a would-be pope now? I mean, once you’ve decided you can kill a man, it’s surely only a matter of circumstance and proper motivation thereafter. Forty years went by and Callistus, once Sal di Mona, still had it in him. Well, he wasn’t the first dying pope to have murdered. I said more power to him. The Church could undoubtedly benefit from more right-thinking murderers. Or have I lost the point somewhere along the path to Golgotha?

  I was summoned by Cardinal D’Ambrizzi late that same afternoon. No one knew yet, at least in the public sense, of Indelicato’s fatal heart attack. D’Ambrizzi left instructions for me to meet him in the Vatican Gardens and I was escorted there by a smiling, round-faced priest who enthused about what a lovely day it was.

  The cardinal was strolling the path, the skirts of his plain cassock catching the chilly breeze beneath the palm trees. Gardeners were at work. His head was down, as if his eyes were fixed on the bulbous toes of his old-fashioned boots.

  When I caught up with him he took my arm for a moment and we walked awhile that way. I felt curiously close to him, as if we were old and intimate friends, which was a fantasy, of course. I blamed the delusion on my exhaustion. He stopped and watched a workman with a wheelbarrow full of rich black earth.

  “You see that man,” he said to me. “Now, you might say he has dirty hands. But, Benjamin, I think of my hands today—in a very rare moment of conscience, you understand—and they seem a good deal dirtier. I’ve been dirtying them for such a long time. I think in terms of this kind of metaphor every so often and, by God, it’s never, never a good idea. Dirty hands, clean hands, what difference does it make? But I’ll tell you what makes a difference, Benjamin—would you like to know?”

  “I’m not at all sure,” I said.

  He shrugged, grinning suddenly. “People make a difference, Benjamin. For instance, I already miss Sandanato … I’ll never think of him the way he was during these past two years. He’ll always be earnest young Pietro … faithful to me … yes, I’ll miss him for the rest of my life.”

  “What have you done with him? A distant posting?”

  “I’ve done nothing with him. My old friend August Horstmann killed him last night. I should have known Horstmann would strike back at him. For betraying me, you see. Once he knew Pietro had played the part of Simon—oh, it was an evil thing to do. August sometimes sent communications to me thinking they were reaching the Simon he knew from long ago. But Pietro read them first, led poor August to believe he was working for me. So August did what he does best … he killed Pietro. The police have just been to see me. A single bullet. Back of the head. I called you here at once.”

  “Just as my sister was killed.”

  “Well, it is over now. Horstmann is gone. Sandanato is dead. Indelicato is dead. Callistus is in a coma from which Cassoni tells he may not emerge. Benjamin, what would happen if we ran out of priests?”

  “I’d sure as hell like to find out,” I said.

  His laughter rumbled across the silent expanses of garden. “Sounds like a good idea to you, does it? Now poor Pietro wouldn’t have seen the humor of that.” He looked at me sharply. “He had no sense of humor. Maybe that’s what was wrong with him.” He shrugged.

  “There sure was something wrong with him.”

  “Agreed.” There was a memory, a bit of sorrow in the old man’s voice.

  “Since I’m quite a heathen—”

  “Agreed, once more.”

  “—and no respecter of clerics, I can ask you an impertinent question. The next time I hear about you, will it be your elevation to the papacy?”

  “Maybe. If I want it, Summerhays will probably arrange to buy it for me. But I’m getting on. Does the Church need a long-term or a short-term leader? That’s the question, isn’t it?”

  We walked to the place I’d entered. The penny had dropped: forgive Archduke … because he may just buy you the papacy!

  “I think I’ll walk awhile longer, Benjamin.” He turned to face me, squinting at me from those hooded eyes. It was as if someone were living—had scraped along as best he could and then taken shelter—inside the aged hulk, peering out, plotting, occasionally feeling. “But let me give you one small bit of advice. When are you going home?”

  “Tomorrow,” I said. I didn’t relish his advice, but then you never knew. He was a gnarly old bastard, he’d survived a hell of a lot more than I would ever see, maybe I should pay attention. The sun was sinking and the palm trees looked lonely against the dome of sky going gray.

  “Forgive yourself, Benjamin.”

  “I beg your pardon, Eminence?”

  “That’s my advice. Forgive yourself. Take a leaf from my book, son. I don’t know what it is you’ve done, but you should have learned recently that there is far, far worse. It’s part of being alive, that’s my guess. Bad things occur in one’s life … one does things.” He was trying to light a black cigarette in the wind, finally succeeded and took a deep breath. “Forgive yourself your deeds, your trespasses, your sins.… I’m not speaking as a priest, or even as a Catholic, but just as a man who has lived his life. Forgive yourself, my son.”

  Artie Dunn said he was staying in Rome for a few days, doubtless hatching some ungodly plot with D’Ambrizzi, so we had a last Roman dinner together. He seemed to have something on his mind but I couldn’t shake it loose. Somehow we got to talking about my parents and Val’s death and the suicide—Father Governeau, who had to sleep his eternal rest outside the fence, outside consecrated ground. By mistake, of course, since he’d been murdered. Ah, God is great
, God is good. He told me to wish my father well and badger him about reading the books he’d left. I promised that I would. He said he’d call when he got back to New York.

  We spoke only circumspectly about Indelicato’s and Sandanato’s deaths. He’d heard from D’Ambrizzi, too, and we knew we’d speak of these things later when the dust had cleared.

  “D’Ambrizzi said something that struck me rather sideways this afternoon.” We were walking back toward the Hassler, climbing the Spanish Steps. “I asked him if he thought he’d be elected pope—”

  “You just asked him?” Dunn’s fuzzy gray eyebrows rose. His eyes twinkled mischievously.

  “It’s what he said …”

  “Which was?”

  “He said if he decided he wanted to be pope, Summerhays was prepared to buy it for him. Summerhays.”

  “Not entirely a scoop, Ben. I mean, it’s a growth industry, isn’t it? Summerhays, your father, Lockhardt, Heffernan … and others, I’m sure.”

  “You miss the point. Summerhays. Archduke. Don’t you see the … the amorality of it? Archduke betrayed him to Indelicato and the pope forty years ago … and now he says Archduke will buy him the papacy. I call that pretty damned astonishing.”

  “Sounds like excellent use of human resources to me,” Dunn said. He winked at me.

  * * *

  I wasn’t quite sure what saying good-bye to Elizabeth was going to be like: I was going to miss her but the door wasn’t closing. That was the important thing. So I called her. The phone conversation was cryptic.

  “I’ve got things to tell you before I go,” I said. “Important things. Have you seen or heard from the cardinal?”

  “Yes, yes, I have.” She was cutting me short. “Look, don’t say anything. I don’t know who’s listening—we have to meet. When are you leaving?”

  I told her.

  “All right.” I heard her thumbing her Filofax. “Look, I can blow off my next two hours if you can. Are you at the hotel?”