by Declan Finn
By the time he was done,
Four dozen armed men charged into the hall, guns ahead of them, led by Giovanni Figlia, Wayne Williams, Maureen McGrail, and Wilhelmina Goldberg.
“You’re late,” the Pope told them. He rose from the floor, then over the rest of the bodies. It was going to take forever to perform last rites on all of them.
“Sorry, Your Holiness,” Figlia answered with a bow, “we hit traffic.”
“You should talk,” Sean Ryan answered, walking into the hall with Shushurin in his grasp. Murphy and XO were behind him.
Giovanni Figlia nodded. “She’s still alive… so I suppose we need to talk.”
Chapter XXI: An Impious Plan
Sean Ryan nodded at Figlia, his eyes wide and fixed, the fire in them intense enough to blacken his soul — though from what he had seen recently, Figlia wouldn’t be surprised if the man’s soul had been coated with asbestos.
Sean’s usual easy smile had instead fixed into a hard, solid line as he scanned the floor, looking over the dead.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the signal jammer, turning it off before tossing it to Goldberg. The former NSA agent looked at the device and blinked. “You schmuck. You took this out of my luggage.”
Shushurin raised a brow. “You somehow thought he carried that sort of thing on him routinely?”
Goldberg lowered the device and squinted at her. “Shut up, bitch.”
Abasi’s eyes followed Sean as he moved with purpose to the center of the room, where three of the bodies had been. “Why do you have it with you, Agent Goldberg?”
“I’m a techie,” she muttered, “I like my toys.”
Sean knelt down next to one of the bodies and rummaged through his equipment, then grabbed hold of something and pulled, coming away with a communications unit. He forced a smile and keyed it open. “This is Sean Aloysius Patricus Ryan to all of you Oedipal bastards. The bitch is dead. Repeat, your bitch is dead.” He smiled evilly. “You sukinsyn had better run. I’m giving you a head start. You just keep missing your target, and your employers won’t like that. And Grandpa is mighty pissed with you.
“Yes, you heard correctly: you missed my grandfather altogether. Oops. Well, that was a waste of time.” He sat in a chair by his grandfather’s corpse, and took a coming breath. “I nailed your informant runt to the wall, and your crappy assault team with her. So, run, Ivan, before I find you. And I will find you. When I do, I will send you straight to Hell. Every, last, one of you will die screaming. Have a nice day.”
Sean took his finger off the button, then tossed the radio to Goldberg. “You’re the NSA IT department. They’ll have radios, so track them.”
Goldberg frowned. “They’ll have gone to a secondary frequency.”
Sean pointed at Shushurin. “She’ll have it. And if they she’s dead, they won’t change it to a tertiary they didn’t tell her about.”
The Pope nodded. “We’ll need the time for Last Rites for everyone. Frank, let’s get to work.”
* * *
The Pope’s office was very crowded after everyone had showered, dressed, and been patched up.
Abasi’s skull had been so badly damaged that the stitches in his forehead made him look like Frankenstein’s monster. Instead of his suit, he wore jeans and a t-shirt that was too small for his massive frame. Everyone had changed, mostly to get the smell of smoke out of their clothing.
After everyone was seated, Manana Shushurin began. “In the 1920s, the KGB learned that it was easier to penetrate the Russian Orthodox Church than the Roman Catholic. The Russian Orthodox was Caesaro-Papist, and the KGB was Caesar. There were married clergy who could be blackmailed with a honey trap.” She smiled wanly at XO. “Trust me when I say that the KGB files on the Russian Orthodox Church will never see the light of day. They would show just how many of them were KGB agents.
“But Rome was harder. The agents sent to seminary didn’t survive… the rules, the screening, the celibacy, all did them in.”
XO nodded. “The Nazis tried the same thing, and had much the same problem.”
Shushurin nodded. “But, they had a solution: a little blackmail, the support and promotion of drunks, cowards and weaklings; the occasional subversion of those already ordained. The Soviets’ biggest friend was a neck-and-neck race between John XXIII and a priest who called himself Xavier Rynne. That Pope was easy to manipulate. He gave away his chance to condemn Communism so two Russian Orthodox representatives could be present at Vatican II — and they were both Soviet spies! So he had no condemnation of the Soviets, despite that they had already murdered more of their own people than the Nazis had.
“The KGB helped popularize phrases that meant nothing except what they wanted them to mean. John XXIII’s aggiorniomento — to open the windows of the church, to update it — what could be more up-to-date, more modern, than communism? Many useful idiots, like Rynne, portrayed the Vatican II politics between evil, conservative curia and good, sainted laity.
“The Soviets even sponsored Rolf Hochhuth’s play, The Deputy, slandering Pius XII, and he almost got away with his second play blaming Winston Churchill for World War II.”
She shrugged. “But, the spin on Pius wonderful, because everything he says that was not anti-Nazi could be read that he was not sufficiently pro-Communist — which was tantamount to being fascist. Religion is either on the side of Communism, or the enemy.
“Once that happens, you get pseudo-intellectuals at their weakest. If you get rid of religion, if there is nothing worth fighting for except yourself… then duty, honor, country mean duty to your own concern, honored by an op-ed page in the New York Times, and what country? You’re now an intellectual! An internationalist! All head, no heart, and only the groin for company.”
Goldberg glared at Shushurin, tightening her fingers on the arm of the chair, as though she were trying to keep every motion under tight control. “Is there a point?”
Shushurin nodded. “Ever notice how most of Pius’ critics are ex-Seminarians, ex-Priests, or the most unreligious Jews imaginable? Who, for high ‘moral’ reasons, of course, are in favor of birth control, abortion, and female priests? They are very useful idiots. In the late 1970s, the mission was to separate the American Church from Rome, and in the meantime, let them screw their little hearts out in the name of ’conscience’ and ’freedom,’ and encourage them to tell stories to make them feel better about it. And while the KGB is no more, a weaker Rome can’t make headway into Africa like a good Russian Orthodox missionary can – and Africa has a lot of interesting natural resources Russia could use.”
Shushurin smiled. “The nice thing about the slanderers of Pius is that they treat the testimony of all the Jews supporting Pius like dreck, and Jihadists enjoy that. So to kill the person, the legacy of the Pope, these slanders actually have to be more anti-Semitic than Pius himself.”
Abasi nodded. “It was of great amusement to my grandfather; our people took in the Nazis that never made it to South America.”
Goldberg groaned in annoyance and frustration. “All right, you’ve given us why. Give us what — as in what’s going on?”
Shushurin looked directly at Pope Pius XIII. “You, Joshua, have a few enemies.”
The Pope smiled. “I’ve noticed. It’s a gift.”
“The Chinese, the North Koreans, North Sudan, all of them want you dead. You’ve put them on your human-rights hit list, and they, in turn, put you on their literal hit list.”
Figlia nodded, following the train of thought slightly faster — mostly because he was more familiar with the Pope’s enemies than anyone else. “And they would have less of a terrorist network, and more like terrorist networking.”
Shushurin nodded. “They… we… members of the youthful Soviet agent program, had been tapped by certain elements who wanted you dead. These mercenaries would, in turn, call upon all of their resources.”
Abasi leaned forward. “What resources?”
“Are any of y
ou familiar with the KGB chief, Andropov, and his plans for the church?”
Giovanni Figlia blinked, before the Pope or even O’Brien could open their mouths. “I read about this years ago. He had penned a plan to disrupt the church at every level possible.” He looked to Pius XIII. “I know about it because he wrote about it some years before Ali Agca shot your predecessor.”
Shushurin nodded. “You’re very good. But not all the details of this were put to pen — no one wants an assassination order on paper. Pope John Paul II was supposed to be killed, and replaced by someone more reasonable.”
“He survived the USSR by 15 years,” the Pope said, thinking it over.
Figlia nodded thoughtfully. “And the children in the Soviet training program? What happened to them?”
Shushurin smiled, like a teacher who saw that her student’s mind at work. “You tell me.”
“They became mercenaries,” Figlia murmured. “Just like everyone else in the Soviet forces. If these plans were in place, the mercenaries — your people — could continue Andropov’s plan. It would have to be rewritten, but it could be done.”
She nodded. “If you had money, which required clients. There were enough funds to put it in action. Under this new plan, they’ve been trying to increase the drumbeats of ‘priests are pedophiles,’ and ‘Pius was a Nazi,’ and every other slander they could find as a buildup to a strike.”
The Pope frowned. “I had believed that this was just about countering any research about Pacelli from the archives.”
“No,” Shushurin told him. “Though that’s why your Dr. Gerrity was killed; he was interested in the truth. Yousef was also killed for the truth; he came to Rome believing the papacy hated Jews as much as he did. He was wrong, and was killed when he wanted to declare a jihad on Rome. In fact, that’s why Giacomo Clementi — the Red Brigade assassin — was called in on the pretense of fighting the revolution, and was to assassinate anyone who discovered the truth of Pius XII.”
Shushurin looked to Giovanni Figlia. “That included Dr. Gerrity.”
She glanced to Maureen McGrail. “And Father Harrington of County Kerry, your victim.”
She looked down. “And James Sherman Ryan.”
Shushurin took a deep breath and continued. “The rest of the plan was simple. Once it was ‘proven’ the papacy was with the Nazis, or once they removed all evidence to the contrary, the next step was to crash a plane into the papal offices during a speech.” She looked at the Pope. “Once St. Peter’s Square was blocked by a plane filled with burning jet fuel, the Pope killed in the crash, the gunmen ... my fellow students… would invade and ransack the city — rob the vaults, museums. And you would have been replaced with someone more… reasonable.”
The Pope’s face went darker. “Such as?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure who.”
Sean Ryan growled. Everyone’s attention turned to the bodyguard. “I am. Cardinal Cannella. Remember the news article about strange ‘donations’ made to Cannella? It was a war chest, something to support his bid for election.”
Goldberg let out an aggravated sigh. “We should have seen it.” She glanced to the Egyptian. “Hashim, remember when we made the arrangements to move everyone into the Vatican? Cannella was there for that.”
Abasi nodded. “And we had mentioned going to see the archive logs.”
Father Frank shook his head. “The entire College of Cardinals, and the bishops would have to be killed for Cannella to be made Pope. No one wants Cannella to wear his red hat. But Pope? No.”
Sean Ryan frowned and furrowed his brow, his electric blue eyes staring into the walls so hard, Murphy expected a hole. “How would it work? What could they…” He winced. “They would use another plane! When they kill the Pope in the first plane crash, they’d use another to crash it into the papal conclave! And narrow the field as much as possible”
The Pope nodded slowly. “How would we prove this?” he asked.
“It’s simple,” Maureen McGrail answered, a clue coming to her mind from back in Ireland. “The Markists were founded the year that Pius XII died? Given their overall conduct, Pius XII didn’t allow them to come into existence as a society — and I’ll bet neither did John XXIII.”
Sean and McGrail looked at each other. “The Soviets forged the paperwork!” they chorused.
He whirled on Shushurin. “You left something out. I heard something about your father being involved in all this?”
She bowed her head. “My father trained us, and now leads my fellow alumni of the school as mercenaries. He told me he was going to say I was still on the Russian payroll, and he had documents ‘proving’ it. The German government would’ve arrest me, and probably my mother as well
Wilhelmina Goldberg eagerly leaned forward. “What does your father look like?”
Sean Ryan stood, unfolding a sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket. “I’m ahead of you. I took a crack at making a computer composite while we all collected ourselves.”
“In short,” Abasi said, “while I was being patched together again.”
Sean shrugged. “Whatever you say, scarecrow.” He handed Shushurin the paper. “This is the one that threw me off the roof. This him?”
She took a quick look, then nodded.
He nodded. “Thought so. But this isn’t the guy who burned the archive log books. He was slighter built, with silver hair — more like Father Frank.”
Shushurin sighed. “That would be my brother, Nikita, an assassin like our father, like our grandfather, and like I was supposed to be. He assassinated Ashid Yousef.”
Scott Murphy, who had been sitting next to her the entire time, said, “One question: how would this plan have worked? The plane hits the Pope, chaos ensues, theft ensues. Then what?”
Hashim Abasi laughed, and then grabbed his head. “Ouch… I know exactly what they would do. Think of it as RICO — with the Americans, they take everything used in the commission of a crime, and the profits: if you can ‘prove’ that the Vatican issued orders to support the Nazis, or gave no resistance to them, and throw in something else…”
“They could ransack Rome and say it’s ending a criminal empire,” Captain Wayne Williams concluded. “Sudan could even say that they endorsed it legally — they are, after all, on the Human Rights Committee at the U.N.”
Father Frank nodded. “But do you know how out-of-hand this could get? Invoking RICO with such a claim… If others were dumb enough to pick up on the idea, governments could start legally raiding every church around the world.”
Shushurin nodded. “Exactly. That’s the idea. They aren’t stupid — they want the Church dead, and they’re hoping that everyone else goes along with it.”
Goldberg blinked. “Even I know you can’t kill an organization like yours”—she glanced at the Pope—“by taking out the buildings; it’s like a Washington hierarchy… as much as we don’t like to admit it, you could take out the government from the entire Congress on up without the country slowing down, because the permanent bureaucracy is in charge.”
The Pope nodded. “In the case of the Church, we could merely move the location and start again. One could destroy Vatican City, and the remaining Archbishops would merely move to elect the next Pope, who could select the curia. Given that most of the planet’s cardinals have been selected by either JPII, Benedict XVI, or myself…”
Father Frank smiled. “The next batch of Vatican employees could look something akin to a right-wing extremist group… In comparison to us, anyway.”
Goldberg laughed unexpectedly. “I just thought of something. Aside from the countries where they’re already trying to take out the Church, what world powers would even let them get away with this?”
Amusement twinkled in the Pope’s dark eyes. “Look to your own country a moment, Ms. Goldberg. Did not a President say there was no freedom of religion, just a ’freedom to worship’? Whatever that means. Why do you think statists have always hated God? If God exists, the stat
e doesn’t have absolute power – there is always a higher power. With this plan, those countries that don’t crush the Church for money will do it for power. Imagine, no Council of Bishops to come out with inconvenient statistics about cohabitation and doomed marriages, or that abortion causes post-traumatic stress.
He shrugged. “Money and power. It’s the same story since Abraham — unless the state controls the religion, the state doesn’t want the religion. Be it the pharaoh of Exodus, or the wars of Josephus, the message to those who worship Yahweh is simple: you are not of us, you are made too free by your own religion; come to us, where you can be ‘liberated,’ indulge yourself, and be slaves to your own hungers and to the state.”
Goldberg nodded. “Okay, point taken. My people have lived with that since, well, forever — every Jewish feast is ‘they tried to kill us, they didn’t succeed, let’s eat.’
“Exactly,” the Pope concurred. “It does not stop. Ever. This is… is…”
Father Frank sang, “Still the same old story, a fight for love of money, a case of do or fry—”
The Pope gave him a sidelong look. “Thank you, Frank.”
“The fundamental things go die, as the Times rolls by…” Captain Wayne Williams continued.
Scott Murphy looked from one Williams to the other, then took out his pipe. “Whole damn family is cracked,” he murmured.
Shushurin looked at Goldberg. “This is a multilevel campaign. Attack the Vatican, discredit them historically, steal it blind, and if there is anything left when they’re done, it will be securely in their pocket with a Pope Cannella.”
Goldberg lightly thumped her head against the wall behind her. “We three listened to Frank talk about Pius XII, and it was all true. I hate being stupid about this. Dammit, I feel like Dorothy at the end of that bloody movie.”
At which point, the Pope laughed. “Agent Goldberg, in three days, you have become a believer in a historical fact that goes against what you knew was true? How many know the truth and reject it? In your faith and mine, we know those who were raised to believe in the Truth that is God, but would rather cling to anything else, desperate to avoid what they know to be true. They prefer their envy, their lust, their greed, and their cycles of revenge. It happens. If we were perfect, there would be no covenant, no cross.”
