“I think he would have liked to read the letter,” Sarah added, mentioning the letter she had read in the Piazza Navona and carried with her.
“He always knew that the bullet was special. Divinely turned aside inside his body.”
“A holy bullet.”
“A holy bullet.”
“I’m sorry about your uncle Clemente,” Sarah finally said. She should have said it much earlier but hadn’t been able.
“Thanks.”
“Were you very close?”
“He was my only living relative,” he admitted.
They arrived at an enormous gate with two wings, fixed in a high wall that surrounded an enormous property. It was open, so Rafael drove in without stopping. The road continued for a few more miles.
Where the hell are we going? Sarah wondered, tired of so much mystery.
Silence descended again. Rafael and Sarah were only comfortable with each other when the situation involved revolvers, shots, bombs, chases, and torture. A ride in the car through the fields on a sunny day was too complicated for both of them to deal with.
“I hope you’ll look upon me as a family member,” Sarah suggested sincerely.
Rafael looked at her and stopped the car.
“Thanks, I already do.”
They exchanged looks, and for moments nothing else existed. Only she and he inside the car.
A knock on the window woke them from their romantic trance.
“We’ve arrived,” Rafael told her.
He opened the door and left the car, while Sarah closed her eyes in frustration before getting out.
“Tim,” Rafael greeted him.
“How are you, Rafael?”
“I got here at the last moment, but I got here.”
Sarah joined them. They were in an open space surrounded by trees. On one side there was a kind of well.
“This is Sarah, a … close friend.”
“How do you do?” He shook her hand. “Tim Baynard.”
Sarah looked at him. He was a calm, happy man. He carried a black briefcase he gave to Rafael.
“Safe and sound.”
Tim went over to the well that turned out to be stairs going underground. The panel that covered it was half open. It wouldn’t have been easy for Tim to lift it alone.
“Let’s go,” he said, going down rapidly ahead of them.
Sarah couldn’t figure out precisely how long they descended, but she was surprised to see electric lights illuminating the way, very different from Moscow.
“This is private property?” Rafael asked.
“Yes, bought by the Vatican,” Tim answered eagerly.
“Do you know what you’re going to do with your life now?” Rafael changed the subject.
“No. Time will tell. Whatever comes, I hope it’ll be for the best.”
“That’s a good philosophy,” Rafael agreed.
They entered something that seemed to be a crypt, confirmed as such by a tomb in the center of the wide space.
It was new, granite, with letters engraved in gold.
Krystian Janusz Wladyslaw.
II-IV-MMV.
“What does that mean?” Sarah asked, confused.
“Thirty-three days after his interment in the tomb of the popes in the Vatican, Karol Józef Wojtyla was brought here secretly in accordance with his wishes. Here he’ll rest for eternity under this name. If someday someone enters here mistakenly, he won’t know to whom it refers.”
Sarah got down on her knees on the floor next to the tomb holding the body of the most beloved pope of all times. She let tears of emotion fall.
“There’s now nothing to keep me here,” Tim said to Rafael. “Keep this as a memory.”
He left a gilded object, small, cylindrical, bright in his hand … a bullet.
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
Alone. Rafael approached Sarah and gave her his hand to help her up.
They remained for a moment holding hands, keeping watch on Karol Wojtyla’s tomb.
“And now?” Sarah asked emotionally.
Rafael looked at her, and, afterward, at the tomb.
“This isn’t over yet.”
Freedom of conscience and religion … is a primary and inalienable right of the individual.
—JOHN PAUL II, message on religious freedom, November 14, 1981
The Holy Bullet Page 41
