The Holy Bullet

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  Ten minutes of silence. Ten. Not a word was spoken, only the heavy breathing of the old man and the rustle of Raul Brandão Monteiro’s clothes, when he shifted in the chair where he was sitting uneasily. Nothing more.

  9

  THE SECOND CONCLAVE, 1978

  Now that God has given us the papacy, let’s enjoy it.

  —LEO X, letter to his brother Giuliano

  Monday marked the third day of the conclave. Already there had been six sessions of scrutiny without conclusion. One hundred and eleven cardinals under eighty years of age were participating in the vote, the same ones who six weeks earlier had chosen Albino Luciani, the deceased John Paul I. After only thirty-three days in office, his heart stopped, according to the official history, which was permanent … until the contrary was shown to be true.

  Work was suspended for dinner, increasing tension in the Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla’s shoulders. For two nights he had prayed intensely in cell number 91, which had been assigned him, that God would inspire the conclave with His infinite knowledge in the just conduct of the voting. Why was it so difficult to be a man of the Roman Catholic Church? If only the great beyond could communicate more directly with the earth … how to understand the signs, what was true and was not? The sudden death of Luciani still weighed on him, his genuine smile, his intrinsic goodness, his sanctity… . He had never thought to return to the Sistine Chapel again in his own lifetime to choose another pope, certainly not in the same year.

  Now he bent over his cannelloni without appetite, afraid that God would see in him the successor to Luciani.

  How was it possible that the conclave began that Saturday with a surprising six votes for him, and by the sixth round, before lunch, he’d received fifty-two? During the days of preparation for the conclave several cardinals calmed the partisans by hypocritically announcing during dinners and other holy encounters they were not candidates. Wojtyla and the others knew who the favorites were: Siri and Benelli—the first an ultra-conservative with a very bad reputation, the second in the liberal line of his friend John Paul I. He went over to discuss the chances of the Genovese and Florentine with Koenig, the influential Austrian cardinal.

  “The conclave is for those runners who come from behind, Karol,” Koenig answered him. “Those who enter the conclave as popes normally leave as cardinals.”

  “I know that, Franz. But I don’t believe that this conclave will have the surprises of the previous one,” Karol offered sincerely. Both spoke the living language that they shared between them, Italian. Koenig with a German accent and Karol as flawlessly as a native speaker.

  “One never knows,” Franz Koenig said, giving him a pat on the shoulder. “One never knows.”

  The first vote revealed a trend plainly along the lines of the Pole’s thinking. Siri ahead with twenty-three votes, followed by Benelli with twenty-two, Ursi with eighteen, Felici with seventeen, Pappalardo with fifteen, and … Wojtyla with five, probably out of goodwill, five souls whom he had treated with prudence in the recent past. Let the fact be noted we are not dealing with a sporting event or other competition, but with something done in the most sacred spiritual togetherness, and any resemblance to a disorderly dispute is false. These are saintly formulas for electing a saint. The method of communication with the Father and the description of the results are merely illustrative. When it is said Siri leads with twenty-three votes, one shouldn’t imagine fans shouting his name.

  In the second round of Saturday, Benelli had forty votes, Felici thirty, and Siri had fallen to eleven. Ursi maintained eighteen votes, Pappalardo dropped off the list, and Wojtyla, somehow, had raised his stock to nine. At that moment he didn’t worry about it; those votes would be out of sympathy, nothing sustained or sustainable. In a little while he’d drop off the list, like Pappalardo. He’d be back in Krakow by the end of the week at the latest.

  Sunday would start with three sessions, although Benelli shouldn’t need them all. He would be pope by the end of the day or before, Karol Wojtyla thought naively, unaware of the machinations of his great friend. The first session of the day, third of the general conclave, gave forty-five votes to Benelli, twenty-seven to Felici, an unusual eighteen votes to Ursi, and the same nine to Wojtyla. Thirty more and Giovanni Benelli would obtain the two-thirds plus one necessary, not very problematic.

  In the following round, Benelli, still ahead, achieved sixty-five votes, Ursi four, and Wojtyla advanced to twenty-four. A new candidate emerged, Giovanni Colombo, archbishop of Milan, with fourteen votes.

  Before the last vote of the day, Cardinal Colombo presented a petition asking not to be considered in the subsequent sessions. So, Benelli had seventy votes, five less than needed for the papacy, and Wojtyla received forty. He returned to cell number 91 after dinner with some anxiety, but not much. Benelli was close to the votes needed to become the next Supreme Pontiff. By morning everything would be resolved in favor of the Florentine. Wojtyla prayed for Benelli to obtain the necessary enlightenment to guide the Church in its next years. With the third pope in the same year, they needed stability.

  So Monday morning and the sixth round surprised Wojtyla on hearing his name fifty-two times, while Benelli saw his number reduced to fifty-nine votes. As conclaves go, when one lost ground, one never recovered.

  Now you know why the cardinal from Krakow looked at his cannelloni with no appetite. His nerves gripped his stomach, and he was left pale, breathing hard.

  “The conclave is for dark horses, Karol,” the Pole heard. It was Franz Koenig sitting down by his side. Karol’s compatriot, Wyszynski, was with him.

  “This is your work,” Wojtyla accused him, looking at his companion.

  “Mine?” the Austrian replied with a smile. “No, Karol. This is your work.”

  “Everything is going to turn out well,” Wyszynski added in support.

  The three men got up and went to the chapel. Wojtyla’s plate remained untouched through the entire meal.

  “Do you remember what Willebrands said to Luciani in the last voting?” Koenig asked in a low voice.

  “I was not close to him in the last conclave.”

  “I was. And when Luciani began to panic at his imminent election, Willebrands told him a great truth: ‘The Lord gives the burden, but also the strength to bear it.’ ”

  “Don’t wish to be in my place, Franz. I hope Benelli recovers and puts an end to this right away.”

  They got in line for the orderly entrance into the chapel. Nothing in this place was disorderly, everything according to the standards of God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth. Karol Wojtyla closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Everything would be as He desired. Benelli or him. What shall be shall be.

  A little farther behind in line Franz Koenig rejoiced in his work. Since the beginning, he had carried out a strategy that would lead to the election of Karol Wojtyla. He had spoken with the majority of his non-Italian colleagues, given them works by Wojtyla to further convince them. Nothing like a little publicity, not deceitful, since Wojtyla was a serious man with integrity. All this with Wojtyla completely unaware. Enough of Siri, Benelli, and Felici. They all had their good qualities, of course. All right, Siri might not have any, but it was a moment for change. The time of the Italians must come to an end. The seventh session of voting, the same ritual of eight centuries, the days of black and dirty white smoke, the suspense, the frustrated, expectant onlookers in Saint Peter’s Square. Two hundred thousand people in that place, on constant watch, and a million ears pressed to the radio and eyes glued to the television. There were also all the experts and the curious, unmotivated by religion, and those fond of spectacle. The recount threw seventy-three votes to Wojtyla and twenty-eight to Giovanni Benelli. Two votes more and Karol Wojtyla would never see Krakow with the eyes of a cardinal, but only as pope on brief visits. This thought daunted his heart and his eyes watered with emotion.

  At five-twenty in the afternoon, according to the watches, whether more or less o
n time, Wojtyla became the first non-Italian pope in more than four hundred fifty years of history. The last one was a Dutchman, Adrian VI, elected in 1522, very unpopular in Rome for defending and referring in one of his works to the haeresiam per suam determinationem aut decretalem asserendo, which meant that the popes could commit errors in matters of faith. Sacrilege. Sacrilege. He died little more than a year after his enthronement, leaving behind no desire to remember him.

  The two hundred sixty-fourth pope of the Catholic Church put his hands to his head and began to weep, spreading emotion through the chapel that turned into moderate applause. Cardinal Jean-Marie Villot, chamberlain to the pope, and the equivalent of interim pope, a duty that only exists from the death of a pope until the election of the successor, approached Wojtyla with a frown, a sign of solemnity.

  “Do you accept your canonic election for Supreme Pontiff ?”

  With wet eyes Wojtyla raised his head and looked at everyone. Tears slid down his face.

  “With obedience to the faith of Christ, Our Lord, and with confidence in the Mother of Christ and in the Church, in spite of great difficulties, I accept.”

  A sigh of relief ran through the chapel, especially around the Austrian, Franz Koenig. Electing a pope was easy. Accepting the duty was up to the elected one alone.

  “By what name do you wish to be called?” Villot continued. The same question that only six months ago had been asked the unlucky Albino Luciani, later found dead in his apartments in the early morning of the twenty-ninth of September, the pope who died alone, according to the official version. Some claimed it was a shady death, that he’d been murdered because of his reformer impetus and total incorruptibility. They even talked of poison or a pillow that suffocated him in the silence of the night. But that was the story of Pope Luciani. What is important now is the story of the Pole, Wojtyla.

  Karol Wojtyla thought for a few seconds and smiled for the first time.

  “John Paul the Second.”

  The opening of the chapel was ordered. The brothers Gammarelli came in to robe the new pope in the sacristy. They had made three spotless tunics. One of them must fit the Pole.

  The papers were burned in the way that produces the famous white smoke, but the problem wasn’t in the chemical compounds, but in the dirty chimney that hadn’t been cleaned in a century. Onlookers were not sure if the smoke was white or black. A few spectators stayed uncertainly in Saint Peter’s Square. Others delayed returning to their homes or hotels, to their own lives.

  Two hours later the bells rang announcing the good news and the doors of the portico of Saint Peter’s Basilica opened. The plaza seethed with the faithful in silence for Pericle Felici to pronounce the same words of August 26, substituting only the name of Luciani’s successor.

  Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum, habemus Papam! Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Carolum, Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Wojtyla, qui sibi nomen imposuit … Ioannis Pauli Secundi.

  10

  Sarah Monteiro knew she was one and only one of the wheels in the greater set of gears. Journalist, Portuguese/British, daughter of the captain of the Portuguese Army, Raul Brandão Monteiro, and of Elizabeth Sullivan Monteiro, she realized that her position depended on her work serving the greater interests of those who controlled the gears.

  If someone had told her months ago that today Sarah would be the editor for international politics for the prestigious Times of London, they would have provoked a guttural laugh, blunt but true, followed by a loud “You’re crazy!”

  But those who controlled life, the gears, wanted it so. Sarah was the respected editor of international politics, a position immensely sought after and envied, one that she’d never expected to reach. The way she managed to get exclusive information or foresaw consequences was astonishing. Other editors of international politics followed her, waiting for her to show the path. In England that respect and admiration among colleagues had earned her the nickname “Bob Woodward.”

  As always, there were some greedy naysayers who, out of incompetence, misfortune, or pure malice, never succeeded in reaching Sarah’s level of professionalism and who sullied her good name by inventing a supposed lover she had in the secret services. The truth was that someone did give her information, which always turned out to be correct, but it was not a lover or any agent in the secret services of any country. It was very much beyond all that.

  To understand how Sarah reached this position, we would have to go back several months, almost a year, to a night in her old apartment in a house on Belgrave Road, right next to the stop for bus 24, which goes from Pimlico/Grosvenor Road to Trafalgar Square, and tell another story. We would have to speak of secret Masonic lodges and spies, assassins and assassinated priests and cardinals, documents lost and found, a pope mysteriously dead before his time.

  “That’s another book,” Sarah protested. “It’s for sale in the bookstores. You don’t need me to tell you. This is a new story.”

  “Is it published?” Simon asked curiously.

  “What?”

  “That book.”

  “Don’t be so literal,” she explained. “And don’t think the world revolves around you. I wasn’t talking to you.”

  Simon looked around.

  “There’s no one else here.”

  “I have a lot to do. Come on, let me work.”

  Simon, Sarah’s intern and assistant, recruited from Cardiff, with a thick accent difficult for even English to understand, left the office with his head down. Sarah was a mystery to him in every way. She was considered extremely attractive by all her peers. She hired him after only two questions, the first to confirm the name of Simon Lloyd and the second if she could confide in him, dissolving all the fears and afflictions, cold sweats and nerves that surrounded the day before an interview. He was prepared for something more intense in which he’d have to show his worth, self-confidence, and self-esteem, but, unexpectedly, before he even settled into the chair, Sarah gave him her hand, telling him to show up the next day at nine in the morning prepared to work. He often asked himself in the few months he’d spent in that newsroom what made her offer him the job. He tried also, many times, to know more about his corporate superior, but without success. Sarah fiercely guarded her privacy and always made clear that going in that direction was like hitting a brick wall. If a door existed in that wall, it would open when and if she wanted to reveal it.

  The truth was that these last months were going well for him in every way. There are those phases in life in which we seem unstoppable, everything works out, nothing seems impossible, and the future seems very easy to reach. A job at the best British newspaper could not have come at a better time. At the same time a new love affair full of passion had appeared by chance the night he celebrated his new position, a blessing. Simon was full of calm and confidence, courage and passion for life. He felt capable of everything and emanated love, for himself and his new lover, as well as gratitude and admiration for his mysterious boss, who gave him, without knowing it, all that professional and emotional stability.

  The phone rang on his desk—yes, he had his own desk outside Sarah’s office, turned toward the noisy editorial office always overflowing with frenzied activity—shaking him out of that happy daydreaming and recalling him to work.

  “Simon Lloyd,” the person on the other end of the line said.

  “Hello, my love.” A wide smile gradually spread over his lips as soon as he recognized the voice. A blush colored the skin of his face and stirred other corporal reactions, normal in this case. “I wasn’t expecting a call from you.”

  A conversation began at this point between lovers that is not worth following, topics like “Did you sleep well? You’re an angel,” and even “I didn’t want to wake you, so I left quietly.” Let’s move on to the persistent ring of the phone five minutes later, another call that required his attention.

  “Hold on a minute. I have another call on the line,” Simon said. “Just a minute, ange
l. Kiss, kiss, kiss.” He forced himself to press Hold.

  “Simon Lloyd,” he answered professionally, although he let some irritation show in his voice.

  “Good morning, Simon,” he heard a voice say in a not very friendly foreign accent. “I want to talk to Sarah.”

  “She’s busy. I’ll have to see if she wants to take the call. Who’s calling?” he asked while he looked at the nails of his right hand, analyzing whether they needed to be trimmed. Image was everything in this business and in this city.

  “Tell her it’s her father.”

  “Oh, Senhor Raul. How are you? I didn’t recognize your voice. I beg your pardon.”

  “No problem. I’m fine, and you?” If it weren’t for Cupid’s arrow, Simon would have noticed a certain impatience in the captain’s voice with talking for the sake of talking.

  “Very well. I’m very well.” The same stupid smile spread over his mouth, a smile of happiness. “I’m going to transfer you, Senhor Raul. Have a good day.” If it hadn’t been for his lover on hold on the other line, Simon would have started a long conversation with Sarah’s father, whom he had not yet had a chance to meet. Better that he chose not to. Better for the two of them, of course.

  He pressed the buttons to transfer the call to Sarah without telling her first, since his instructions were to send any family calls through directly.

  “I’m back, my love,” he said with the same stupid grin and blush covering his face. “It was my boss’s father. Nothing important.”

  Let us leave the love affair on that side and move on to Sarah’s office, where the telephone began to ring. It was not Simon; that would sound different—the marvels of technology—it was an outside call, and a glance at the screen identified the familiar number of the family home of her parents in Beja. She stopped the work she was doing and answered immediately.

  “Hello?”

  “Sarah?”