The Vatican Rip

by Jonathan Gash

  ‘Yes! Yes! I’ll get him right away—’

  ‘Do you have a store room?’

  She was gasping. ‘Yes. By the loading bay.’

  ‘Good. And I’ll seal the lavatory cubicle until it’s proven clear. Don’t worry.’ I rounded on her like I’d seen on the movies. ‘Do as I say and people’ll hardly notice. You have a beautiful clean restaurant here. We don’t want to attract attention—’

  ‘Thank you, Doctor!’

  She was in a worse state than I was when I left and strode commandingly through the cafeteria. I cautioned Carlo’s relieved custodian to silence and thanked him for waiting. Carlo looked so bad I grew really frightened but there was nothing I could do.

  The duty security officer was a stout Turin chap with the intriguing name of Russomanno. He was delighted at the whole thing and determined to be pompous, thank God, and proudly showed me the tiny loading bay. Signora Faranada wanted instructions so I told her to parcel up Carlo’s table and the utensils he had used in sealed plastic. She dashed off up the steps.

  I glanced about. There were occasional faces peering from the Vatican Museum windows overlooking the tiny roadway and the loading bay, but with an ambulance backed in all sight of the loading steps leading into the rear of the cafeteria would be blocked off. From the other side walkers on the upper terrace could see over.

  ‘I wanted that terrace cleared,’ I said tersely.

  ‘It’s entrance will be closed immediately, Dottore.’

  An ambulance was trundling slowly down the narrow thoroughfare. Time the security man went. ‘You’ll have the numbers of diners checked, of course?’

  ‘Of course, Doctor.’ He looked quite blank.

  I smiled, nodding. ‘Forgive me. I forgot I was dealing with a professional. Rest assured my team will be discreet and swift.’

  The stout man puffed up the steps as Valerio reversed the ambulance – a full-blown, genuine ambulance – smoothly up to the loading bay. Patrizio sported a moustache, to my alarm. Did ambulance men wear them? Both he and Valerio wore some kind of dark blue uniform. Valerio’s peaked cap bore an impressive but anonymous badge.

  We had one nasty moment when I couldn’t yank the door of the store room open, but Patrizio’s hand gently pushed me aside and turned the handle.

  ‘The table, Lovejoy.’

  My work of art – still apparently nothing more than ordinary steel-and-formica cafeteria furniture, though with a thicker top than usual – was wedged between the two stretcher slots. I stood on the steps ready to use delaying tactics should the manageress come fluttering down to do some ground-level panicking. Valerio and Patrizio carried my table into the store. I mopped my forehead.

  ‘Let’s go. Bring the stretcher.’

  Eight minutes later Carlo was inside the ambulance with Captain Russomanno standing proudly on the running board. Poor Carlo was ashen and almost comatose. Anna would go for me if I’d really killed him. With him went the table at which he had been sitting, his plates and drinking glasses.

  I trudged upstairs, nodding confidentially towards the worried Signora Faranada to show everything was in hand. ‘I’ll seal off that one toilet cubicle,’ I said in an undertone. ‘It might be contaminated. The rest of the loo can be used with safety. Then I’ll slip out. I’ll return tomorrow. Just tell your staff to continue as normal.’

  ‘Very well. Doctor, I am so grateful—’

  I smiled nobly, wishing there was more time for this sort of thing. She was lovely.

  ‘Only my job, signora,’ I said, smiling. ‘If only I met such charming people every day . . .’

  The cafeteria was full as ever. I melted among the crowd and made my way over to the loos. Inside my grand case I had tape labelled ‘Hygiene. Sealed by Order’ to seal the cubicle.

  And in the sealed cubicle would be me, sitting silently waiting for the closing hour. The ambulance by now would be rolling into the Via Porta Angelica.

  For the rest of my team the rip was practically over. For me it had only just begun.

  Chapter 23

  I sat in the loo, that powerful creative location, thinking and listening.

  Sealing the outside of the cubicle door with that impressively worded sticky tape had been a simple matter. I had written ‘Out of Order’ on a piece of cafeteria notepaper and stuck it to the door then climbed inelegantly over and dropped inside. There was enough of a hubbub in the cafeteria to convince me the manageress would assume I’d slipped out as I’d promised. Now, short of some nosey-parker peering in, I was safe.

  People came and went in gusts of noise from the cafeteria. I heard all the languages under the sun. I learned a dozen new jokes, but only one was even vaguely amusing and anyway I always forget the endings. There was a two-inch gap under the cubicle door, so at the faintest sound of approaching customers I sat with my knees hunched and toolbag on my lap, just in case. Once I actually dozed, probably reaction to the state of abject terror in which I’d lived all day.

  Somebody wiser than me – or even more scared – once said hell was other people, or something. Sitting in the foetal position there on one of His Holiness’s loos was the loneliest place I’d ever been in my life. I’d have loved to go out for a minute, just for a cup of coffee, with normal happy people all around and noise and light reassuring me that everything was as it should be. But there was no chance of that. While blokes came and peed and chatted and were replaced by others I sat miserably on, convinced it was the end of the world. Hell, I couldn’t even have a pee myself in case of noise.

  The trouble was Arcellano. Even though I was tormented by visions of Adriana worrying herself sick about my sudden absence it was Arcellano’s vicious face which kept recurring. Throughout those long moments, while I waited for the Vatican City to quieten, the evil that was Arcellano seemed to dominate my mind whichever way it turned. What maddened me was how little choice poor old Lovejoy had in all this. There just no way round the bastards of this world. If they conscript you into their army, you’re a draftee for life.

  Unless . . .

  Sitting there in utmost privacy, I gulped audibly and shook my head. None of that. No sinister thoughts of revenge, no creeping desires to fight back as savagely as Arcellano himself, because I’m a peaceable bloke at heart. I’ve always believed (and I really do mean it) that Homo sapiens is a higher being, noble and even God-like in his innate purity and benevolence. Okay. Occasionally you do come up against evil. When that happens the natural inclination is to grab the biggest howitzer you can find and let fly, but that’s all wrong. Maybe it was the gentle atmosphere which was getting to me, but there in the loo I vowed fair play for Arcellano. I nearly moved myself to tears. Maria would love me for it. Anna would lash me up a lovely unhealthy breakfast of polysaturated fats for it. And Adriana would forgive me everything for it. Noble and even God-like in my innate purity and benevolence, I dreamed on about my final confrontation with Arcellano and his pair of psychopathic killers. I would be smiling, persuasive, kind.

  But as I sat on, hunched and fretting and dozing, some little gremlin in my head kept sniggering and saying, I’ll be frigging kind all right. You see if I’m not.

  As long as my homemade winch was strong enough.

  Eventually the cafeteria noise settled to a steady muffled banging as the servers gave the counters an end-of-day scouring. It was poisonously familiar. I’d dishwashed often enough to recognize that sound anywhere. Twenty minutes later some heavy-footed bloke stopped by the loo, presumably the security, banging the doors of the other cubicles back and giving my door an experimental rap. I heard him spinning the stopcock on the ascending water main, obviously a security man of the most careful and pestilential kind. His footfalls receded and the outer door went again.

  I listened to my sanctum’s silence, holding my breath as I did so. Presumably I was now alone and the whole loo empty. Just in case I counted slowly to a hundred and listened again. Nothing. I did another hundred. Nothing, not a sound.

&nbs
p; You feel better with your feet on the floor instead of dangling. I lowered them carefully, put my briefcase down and slowly stretched. A quick peer underneath the door made me feel even better – no nasty boots waiting motionless for poor unsuspecting intruders to emerge whistling. I was alone.

  Nobody’s had more practice than me at being scared witless. The trouble is, every time’s the worst. With the caution born of a lifetime’s cowardice, I gauged the time. Anna said the security shift of eight officers signed on at seven o’clock. The international football came on the television at half-eight, a live screening from West Germany which meant two untroubled spells of fortyfive minutes, briefly intersected by that worrisome fifteen-minute interval. Some conscientious nuisance could trot out of the telly room for a quick listen for burglars in that gap. I couldn’t repress a surge of irritation at weak-kneed footballers actually needing a rest between halves. Soft sods. When I was a kid we simply switched ends and carried on. You get no help when you need it.

  I’d planned a couple of hours’ calm reflection at this point, but being calm doesn’t work for some blokes and I’m one of them. I just can’t see the point of serenity. My inner peace lasted three minutes. After that I sat and sweated.

  Anna had assured me that the Vatican Secret Police were mythical. There’s no such body. Security guards, yes. Secret cloak-and-dagger artists, no. I’d believed her. Alone in the gathering gloom, I wasn’t so convinced.

  In fact I was shaking as I peered into the deserted cafeteria. Empty places are really weird. Not bad in themselves, but you’re used to seeing them filled with people, aren’t you.

  The cafeteria was spotless, shining and neat. And silent. Long curtains were drawn across the long curved picture windows. Through them a weak light diffused, presumably the floodlights which played along the Stradone di Giardini, the low road which runs straight as a die between the four-hundred-metre stretch of the Museum and the Vatican gardens. The central security possessed eighty closed-circuit TV monitors arranged in banks five screens high before a control console. They needed light. I had to trust Anna’s map of the security electronics.

  Slowly I stepped out into the cafeteria, feeling curiously exposed though I made no noise, almost as if I were performing on a stage with some vast silent audience watching my every move. Absurd.

  The downstairs store room was locked, which meant an irritating ten-second delay while I pressed my plastic comb through the crack. A quick lick to stick my suction-pad coat-hook on the door, a series of rapid push-and-pull motions, and the lock snicked back. The delay was minuscule but worrying. That it was locked meant some bloody guard was doing his stuff, and that was bad news. I wanted them all cheering and booing in that staff telly room between the Museo Paolino and the Sala Rotunda.

  No windows in the store room, thank God. I locked the door, took the thin towel from my toolbag, rolled it into a sausage and wedged it along the door’s base to prevent light leaks. My krypton bulb beamed round the room. Two spare batteries weighing a ton were the heaviest items in my toolbag, nearly, but I couldn’t risk working blind for a single second. They’d be worth the effort before the night was out. A rectangular black cloth to hold the tools, a swift unpacking, jacket on the floor and I was off.

  My cafeteria table on which I’d laboured so much was the same as all the rest, except that its top was thicker, and an X-shaped strut reinforced the tubular steel legs. A security man might pass it over at a glance as an average modern nosh bar table. To me it meant ripping the Vatican.

  I inverted the table and levered off the gruesome shiny edging strips. The main section I wanted was held on the underside by eight mirror brackets with their flatheaded screws. For one frightening second I thought I’d forgotten my favourite screwdriver, but I’m always like that when I’ve a job on. It was there all the time, beside the hand drill. The wooden section was only a series of oblique triangles. To fold a polygonal surface you can only hinge it along three lines. (Experienced forgers will already know this. You beginners can work it out.) I’d done this by linen hinges, for flatness, and now I unfolded the wood. It was a lovely Andaman surface. Some call it ‘Padouk’ wood, a rich rosewood-like Burmese wood which has been with us since the eighteenth century. Now I took my prepared rectangular blocks and made a quick swirl of the resin adhesives. I hate these modern synthetics, but a lovely old-fashioned smelly gluepot was a wistful dream in these crummy circumstances. I laid the inverted polygonal disc on the floor and glued the little blocks across the linen hinges, which had now served their purpose. In thirty minutes the disc would be rigid, and would become the ‘Chippendale’ rent table’s top.

  Meanwhile I unplugged the tips of the four hollow legs and from two drew out the slender steel rods carefully packed inside. The tissue paper could stay in, to save telltale mess. From the other two legs I shook out a dozen pieces of quartered wooden dowelling. The glued blocks had holes to take the rods which slipped in easily, to my relief, though I’d rehearsed this a million times. The polygonal rent-table top was now reinforced.

  The cafeteria table’s steel legs themselves and my added cross-strut came apart once the screws and clasps were undone, which only shows what modern rubbish stuff is nowadays. I had long ago dissected away the thin formica layer back in Adriana’s workshop. Now I simply pulled it off and leaned it against the wall behind some stacked chairs.

  That gave me the cafeteria table’s rectangular chipboard top. One of my most difficult pieces of work had been cutting the rectangle into four so that it could become an elongated cube. The tubular steel legs would hold it rigid enough to carry practically any weight. They already had screwholes, made three days ago with a noisy electric drill. I’d veneered the exterior, of course, but the travelling had done it no good and I wasted time worrying about the shine. Anyway, the top central spot would be covered by that monstrous case of stuffed doves. The pedestal’s lock keyhole was phoney but looked good.

  The real rent table upstairs had a base plinth as deep as the drawers – always a good sign in an antique of this kind, because the plinths got deeper as fashions changed. the narrower the plinth, the earlier your antique. This place of honour was reserved for the last bit of chipboard which I screwed along the base. It was only stained African white wood and the colour was too dark compared with the thing upstairs, but it was the best I could do.

  The metal X-shaped strut I placed across the centre of the polygon. By now the adhesive was setting well. I turned the huge wooden polygon the right way up and screwed it to the strut through the six holes I’d stencilled there. Solid and lovely.

  Sweating badly in that confined airless room, I found my jacket and carefully removed the six tiny circles of Andaman veneer from the top pocket. I’d pencilled a number on the underside of each to show which screwhole it came from. A touch of synthetic glue, and the shiny screws were covered precisely by the matching veneer.

  I was having to hurry now. The false drawer fronts were the weak spots. If people fingered underneath the edge of my table, nosey sods, they would realize the game instantly, because there’d be only a sharp edge instead of a lovely smooth underface. I’d have to risk that. Once the rip was over they could laugh their heads off at my folding copy – because a million miles off I’d be laughing too.

  The drawer fronts had come fitted easily between the undersurface of the cafeteria table’s top and the folded polygonal section, being only veneered three-ply. My pieces of quartered dowelling rods came in handy now to hold the drawer façades completely rigid. It had to be glue, though my heart ached for a small brass hammer and a supply of fixing pins. I hate doing a job by halves.

  So, in total silence, I completed the table margin with rotten modern adhesives and stood the polygonal top on its façade of drawers to set firm.

  Looking at it, I was quite proud. It looked really great, even in the harsh beam of a krypton torch. Once the gleaming top was plonked on the pedestal it would be indistinguishable from the real thing, unless you
looked underneath or pulled it to bits. The only good thing you could say about it was that it was twice as sound as the jerry-built modern crap they sell nowadays.

  I must have taken about an hour. I was on schedule.

  Time.

  Chapter 24

  The Vatican places great faith – charmingly quaint, really – in the reliability of mankind. As I say, it takes all sorts. There are the pilot lights at each of the corridor intersections, set high by each of the main doorways. They indicate the security time clocks where the patrolling guards clock in. No hidden infra-red sensitor beams, unless you include the sets indiscreetly built into the walls near the Viale Vaticano entrance and between the Cappella Sistina and St Peter’s itself. You mustn’t know about them because they’re secret. And the secret cameras which connect with the screen-outs in the security room which I mentioned can be seen quite clearly from the galleries. They’re not quite archaic, but striving hard for obsolescence. They’re about as secret as Mount Palomar. Anna had mapped out the camera blind spots, and I had them by heart. Anna had reported that there were more magic rays to trap unwary burglars at St Anne’s Gate. Big deal. That’s the trouble with museums. They’re crazy about entrances.

  Nervous as a cat, I locked the store-room door with a horrible loud click and walked in silence up the stairs to Signora Faranada’s office. There were two risks: a wandering guard, and some unexpectedly simple alarm system like a bell on a door.

  The office door came apart at a waggle of my comb. The top filing-cabinet drawer was locked, but they all have that fatal flaw of a spring-loaded catch, and old Joe Bramah showed civilization the way round that in the 1880s, so I hardly paused. The box inside was unlocked, and held the set of master keys the manageress had used earlier in the day. I was worried about the light from my pencil-torch and did all I could to shield it. The trouble was, I was going into places where windows would be a constant risk. The Vatican has more windows than a mill.