The Vatican Rip

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘Please don’t say anything to the signora—’

  He grinned again. ‘I can handle her.’ I could have hit him.

  By the time Fabio swept in I was working like a mad thing, quietly and efficiently testing the strength of my plywood mock-up. The base of a rent table’s essentially a modified cylinder, with tangential walls showing lovely wood patterns. Now, a table top’s always easiest to falsify, so don’t trust it when you’re buying antiques. Also, remember that a table is a flat surface or it’s nothing, which means its top is always the first to suffer should drinks be spilled or serving maids have catastrophes with smoothing irons. Luckily, I was in the enviable position of forging a table whose major surface would be covered by a Presidential cage of synthetic sprawling birds.

  But the pedestal base would be in clear view the entire length of that gallery. It had to look genuine, solid and old.

  Tip: polyurethane varnishes are superb and polyurethane hardglazes look superb, but only true beeswaxes feel absolutely correct. Antique dealers dress a falsely veneered surface by varnish, then by beeswax, which is given a microscopic craquelure by rapid drying. This is done effectively only in two ways: in front of a fan or by a chemical desiccant such as sodium hydroxide in a sealed container. I’d applied both, placing the workshop’s fan heater on ‘cold’ during the day and stuffing the folding veneered plywood into a plastic bag with the crystals overnight. There’s always plenty of these crystals in an antique shop – even honest dealers (should there be any left) use it for putting that golden gleam on oak. Like I say, it’s getting so you can’t trust anybody these days.

  With my heart in my mouth on that day I checked Piero was fully occupied, and extracted the veneered plywood. It was beautiful, its gleaming surface now dulled by drying. Microscopic examination would reveal minute cracks in the waxed surface, such as are normally associated with ageing. The corners and intersections were more obviously peeling than the rest, but I helped this artefact along with a little crushed carbon from a piece of drawing charcoal (use Winsor and Newton if you can get it) blown on to a piece of chamois leather and rubbed gently along the edges.

  I still had the thin top sections and hinged edges to slot under the cafeteria table, but when Adriana sent to tell me I was to stop for coffee the collapsible pedestal was folded out of the way under the work bench. I was well into machining the metal support rods which would give it strength. Two hours to go.

  I was on time. My heart was banging.

  Dead at one o’clock Patrizio came for the cafeteria table in his wheezy World War II van. He arrived with the characteristic boredom of the vannie, smoking laconically and humping the steel and formica job on his shoulder without a word. Piero came to see I wasn’t flogging a Regency piece.

  ‘Get a receipt, Lovejoy,’ he orderd.

  ‘You,’ I shot back, getting on with my job.

  Patrizio gave Piero a don’t-interrupt-me look and drove off leaving Piero looking foolish, to my delight. That was my last smile for a long, long time.

  We closed at quarter to two, me strolling unbelievably casual into St Peter’s Square exactly at two.

  Valerio was a chip off Patrizio’s block all right. He was a square thickset young bloke. I’d told his dad no drinks, no smokes. Valerio was obediently sitting picking his teeth and reading the Osservatore Romano on the end of the lines of chairs set out between the fountains.

  ‘You want a seat?’ He made to rise. Daft, really. There were four hundred empty places.

  ‘No,’ I said, mouth dry and voice no more than a croak. ‘I have an urgent appointment.’

  He eyed me curiously. I eyed him. It was the first time we’d met. Anna had suggested this ludicrous interchange because security forces everywhere had these directional microphones. He nodded imperceptibly. My words meant the rip was on.

  ‘Then go well,’ Valerio said.

  ‘Ta.’ I walked past him on legs suddenly made of uncontrollable rubber and headed for the loo to the left of St Peter’s façade. The Vatican post office was doing a roaring trade. Old Anna was being bothersome among a crowd of amused Americans near the great basilica steps. From the corner of my eye I glimpsed her sudden querulous departure. Judging by the burst of laughter she had made some crack. Her job now was to find Carlo and hurtle him in to the loos after me.

  The two usual women attendants were sitting at a little white table by the door. They ignored me. As long as I remembered to throw a hundred-lire coin into their plate as I left I’d remain an invisible passing tourist. Once in a cubicle I frantically started stripping off my clothes, hands shaking. I was sweating like a pig. My shirt and jacket were drenched, the sleeves clinging to me from damp. I cursed and wrestled in the confined space, a couple of times blundering against the door so noisily I forced myself to slow down. Hurry slowly. Good advice for anyone, as long as they’re not frightened out of their skulls.

  I dressed in my new sober gear. Make sure the handkerchief’s showing from your top pocket, Lovejoy, Anna had said. It’s a man’s equivalent of white gloves in a woman, she’d said, trying to smile brightly, and I’d promised. Shoes cleaned, and in a plastic bag so as not to soil the clothes. Money – what there was – shifted into the new navy suit. Shirt. Sober tie, monogrammed imaginatively but with careful ambiguity. Cuff-links. Surprisingly, as I flopped on the lavatory pan to lace my shoes, a note on a stolen card. It read, ‘Good luck, darling cretino,’ and was signed with three cross-kisses. The card was for a silver wedding. I had to smile, even the shaky state I was in. Obviously she’d had difficulty finding a card with an appropriate good-luck-nicking-the-Pontiff’s-antique motto.

  I stood with the customary stiffness of a man in a strange new suit, and checked over the discards. Items into the briefcase, one by one. A moment’s stillness. A quick listen. Deep breaths for control. Hundred-lire coin in my right jacket pocket for the women attendants, a tug on the handle to flush the loo – I’d tried to squeeze out a drop but every sphincter I possessed was on the gripe – and out, walking with purpose.

  One old man leaving, tapping his stick. Two German youths combing hair and talking loudly, about to depart. And Carlo, nodding and winking and chewing gum and rolling a cowboy’s cigarette one-handed, doing it all wrong. Sweating worse than ever, I ignored him and went to wash my hands.

  From the handbasins the women attendants were talking just out of sight. I ran the water, peering through the mirror towards the entrance. The German lads left, still talking. The old geezer was gone. All the cubicle doors were open. Nobody.

  I pulled a third-bottle out of my pocket and swiftly unscrewed the cap. ‘Carlo.’

  ‘Yeah, boss?’ He slid over, gum-chewing and shoulder-hunching. His hand was thrust deep into his jacket pocket. He now sported a white trilby pulled down over one eye just to prove to the world’s armies of Swiss Guards that he really was a genuine hundred-percent gangster on the prod. With virtually uncontrollable hands I poured him a capful of the dark rum. No good doing things by halves. His eyes widened delightedly. No acting this time, I noticed wryly.

  I whispered, ‘Cheers, Carlo,’ and tilted the bottle, my tongue in its neck to stop any leaking into my mouth. ‘But you said—’

  ‘Shhh! Old custom,’ I told him, gasping to good effect as if stunned by the booze.

  ‘To the death, Captain!’ He swigged it back, the poor sod. His eyes bled tears and he gasped, ‘A superb shot o’ old red-eye!’

  ‘Er, yes.’ I screwed the cap on and slipped the bottle into the case. Still nobody. ‘You have fifteen minutes, Carlo.’

  ‘Sure, boss. Ready? Willco!’

  The poor goon slunk out, hunching and glancing, his collar up. The two women rolled eyes to each other showing exasperation at the young. Carlo looked a right carnival, but he no longer mattered much – as long as he made the Museum cafeteria at speed.

  Coin casually in the dish, and I was out into the warmth of St Peter’s great square, a picture of the professional gentleman scan
ning the sights of Rome. There is no real short cut to the Vatican Museum doorway, so it meant making a brisk diagonal under the Colonnade, down the Angelica, round the Risorgimento and along. I was panicking in case there was a queue.

  Seven minutes to reach the slope where I could see three coaches reversing into the slip by the Museum doorway. I lost all decorum as I hurried up the street to reach the entrance before the scores of Dutchmen poured out, and only slowing down once I was certain I would be ahead of them.

  An elderly lady sold me some violets from the low wall near the entrance. I paid, leaving my briefcase to be swiftly covered by her shawl. Anna squeezed my hand as she gave me the change. While buying my ticket I realized she had short-changed me by five hundred lire, but that was only her joke. Anyway, I was almost smiling as I made my way up that spectacular staircase. Three violets were our signal that Carlo had made it ahead of me by three minutes. A rose would have been the signal to abort, that Carlo had failed to show.

  Anna had said you couldn’t reach the cafeteria from the Museum entrance in less than four minutes. I had argued and argued but she’d remained adamant, and now I was glad she’d been so stubborn. The small corridors between the decorated chapels were crammed with schoolchildren. Teachers herded classes to and fro. I blundered among them in a lather, trying to keep up a steady count in my mind so I could keep on schedule, but finding to my horror I was starting over and over again at one, two, three . . .

  Worse, the bloody cafeteria was bulging though its self-service line was moving forwards fairly quickly. I looked anxiously for Carlo. He was near the front, almost at the till by now and sandwiched between two strapping blondes. Apart from Carlo, I was the only person there not in jeans and tee shirt. If I’d known I wouldn’t have worried about looking exactly right. My spirits hardly rose, but at least they crept cautiously out of hiding an inch or two.

  We shuffled forwards. I collared a couple of wrapped sandwiches and moved with the rest, sliding my tray along the chromed rails. Carlo carried his tray to a newly-cleared table by the picture windows which overlooked the garden terrace. He sat and immediately started wolfing his cream cakes.

  ‘Move along, please.’

  ‘Er, sorry.’ The worrying thing was Carlo had three glasses of wine, not one. The two blondes were watching him with conspicuous amusement from a table across the aisle. Yoghurt-and-soup queens. Mercifully he was too busy stuffing his face to respond to them. I shuffled on, nervously paid up and tried to get a seat facing Carlo but a sprinting Aussie beat me to it, so I started on my sandwiches with my ears exquisitely tuned, Listening for sudden activity at Carlo’s table behind me two aisles away. Old Anna came through the cafeteria, on the cadge. She plumped opposite me, doing her exhaustion bit and openly nicking one of my sandwiches. I chuckled affably to show my good-humoured acceptance of the old dear, especially when I felt my heavy briefcase slide on to my feet. Idly I checked that everybody was too preoccupied to notice, and edged it beneath my chair. Anna gave me a roguish wink and departed, chewing gummily on my sandwich. By now I trusted her enough to know my briefcase would be emblazoned by a Department of Health sticker. But that Carlo . . .

  Ten minutes later I was beginning to wonder if I’d poisoned him all wrong. There was no sound other than the usual cafeteria din. He must have had a stomach like a dustbin liner because at least a third of the rum which I’d given him was a mixture of jalap and colocynth, the most drastic purgatives known to the old nineteenthcentury doctors – and they were experts in drastic purgatives, if nothing else.

  It happened just as I was about to chuck it in and abort the whole thing. A chair crashed over behind me. Somebody exclaimed in alarm. Casually, I glanced round in time to see Carlo streak through the doorway into the loo across the other side of the cafeteria.

  The eddies created by Carlo’s passage had not stilled when I moved purposefully among the tables and into the men’s loo. Ominous noises came from one of the cubicles. A worried man was hastening out.

  ‘I think somebody’s ill in there,’ he said. ‘You think I should go for help?’

  ‘I’m a doctor,’ I said calmly in the best American accent my Italian could stand. ‘Wait until I see . . .’

  ‘Oooh. Lovejoy—’ Carlo’s voice moaned from the cubicle as I glanced in. I could have murdered the fool, giving out my name, except I was worried that maybe I had. He sounded in a terrible state.

  ‘That must be his name,’ I pronounced glibly to the man. ‘Signor. I want you to stand just inside this entrance. Let nobody in. I don’t like the look of him.’

  ‘Yes, Dottore.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Signor Lovejoy,’ I called loudly to Carlo in the poisonously brisk voice. ‘I’ll have you safely in hospital in no time at all.’

  I strode purposefully out into the cafeteria and headed round the queue of people at the paypoint. I had the full attention of the customers. A lady emerged from behind the line of servers. She wore the harrowed look of a superior longing for obscurity.

  ‘Good day, Signora . . . Manageress? I’m Doctor Valentine.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Is anything wrong? She’d glimpsed the sticker on my briefcase.

  ‘Have you an office, please?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’ she pleaded over her shoulder, leading the way behind the terrace of stainless steel and bright cookers.

  ‘Nothing that cannot be efficiently handled, signora.’ I kept my Americanese variation of Italian going. ‘A man’s been taken ill after eating your cream cakes—’

  ‘They are perfectly fresh—’

  ‘Of course. I know that.’ I smiled bleakly to keep some threat in the words. She trotted ahead into a neat pastelblue office. Her name was on the door stamped in white on brown plastic. Signora Faranada was a pretty thing, understandably distrait but the most attractive manageress I’d yet seen in the whole Vatican. If I hadn’t been terrified out of my wits I’d have chatted her up. She pulled the door to. ‘Signora,’ I said, instantly becoming terse. ‘He is very sick. It looks like Petulengro’s.’

  ‘Petulengro’s? A disease?’

  I reached for the telephone, laconic and casual the way doctors always are when putting the boot into suffering innocents. ‘You’ve heard of Legionnaires’? Similar thing.’

  ‘Legionnaires’ Disease?’ she moaned. ‘Oh my God! But—’

  ‘Nothing that can’t be handled quietly and efficiently,’ I reassured with my wintry smile. ‘You’re lucky. I was just calling on you – courtesy visit. I’m from Communicable Diseases, Atlanta, USA. Currently with World Health, on loan to the Rome Ministry. Here.’ I passed her the receiver as if disgusted with the slowness. ‘Get me an outside line.’

  She frantically spun the dial.

  ‘The Vatican has its own children’s clinic and physicians. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’

  Impatiently I dialled the number as if I knew it by heart, reading it off Anna’s postage stamp I had stuck to my left wrist. ‘But no resident epidemiologist expert in communicable diseases, right?’ I barked the question, the old lawyer’s tricks of two knowns followed by an unknown, all to be answered with the same word.

  She hesitated. ‘I don’t think so, Doctor—’

  I turned away impatiently. Valerio came on the other end. A sweat of relief started to trickle down my collar. ‘Doctor Valentine. Get me the epidemic section – fast.’

  ‘Epidemic!’ moaned Signora Faranda.

  ‘Hello?’ I made a conciliatory gesture to the lady as I spoke commandingly into the phone. ‘Hello, Aldo? Great! There’s a rather problematic issue here – Vatican Museum. Cafeteria. Looks like a case of Petulengro’s . . . No. Only one, a man. I’ve got him under control in the toilets . . . Of course I applied emergency treatment, brought him round . . . No. The place looks really superbly clean . . .’

  ‘We scour and disinfect every half-day,’ Signora Faranada bleated, tugging my sleeve.

  ‘Sure, Aldo.’ I
laughed reassuringly, the expert all casual in the presence of somebody else’s catastrophe. ‘No, I agree. We can’t take chances . . . Look, Aldo. Can I leave it to you to . . . ? Fine . . . No, no sirens. Quietly does it . . . The least noise the better. No sense in being alarmist . . .’ I smiled and nodded at Signora Faranda. ‘So you’ll send an ambulance . . . ? Good . . . No. I’m sure the manageress can handle that . . . Agreed?’

  I slammed down the phone.

  ‘I’ll get back to take charge,’ I told the lady. ‘I’ve arranged hospital transport.’ I stilled her protests with a raised hand. ‘Infectious diseases are always sent to a special unit because they are, erm, infectious.’ I smiled a cut-rate Arcellano smile. ‘You know how patients just love to sue places these days, I don’t doubt.’

  ‘Sue?’ she gasped, the poor thing.

  ‘It won’t come to that,’ I said smoothly. ‘I promise.’

  ‘What must I do?’

  ‘Do you have a rear entrance to the cafeteria, where the ambulance can pull up?’ She nodded anxiously and reached towards the top filing drawer. ‘The gate will need notifying,’ I said, ticking off the items. ‘Aldo – that’s Doctor Cattin of the Public Health Division – said St Anne’s Gate. Is that acceptable?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’ll telephone—’ She clutched feverishly for the phone.

  ‘And the table. It may be contaminated. For taking specimens, and disinfection.’

  ‘I’ll see it’s brought round—’

  I snapped, ‘Tell everyone it’s in need of repair, wobbling or something. Use your discretion.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Discretion,’ she gasped, dialling frantically.

  ‘Get your duty security man. I’ll need that terrace quietly sealed from the public. It overlooks the drive-in, correct?’