The Debt

by Glenn Cooper

  ‘So you’re off tomorrow, is that right?’ she had said.

  ‘Early flight.’

  ‘To where did you say?’

  ‘Rome. The Vatican.’

  ‘Again? You seem to spend an inordinate amount of time there. I do wish you’d spread your wings a bit more. You’re not getting younger.’

  He had half-smiled. ‘Are we going to be having that conversation again?’

  ‘Which conversation is that?’

  She had known full well, of course. The religion conversation. The heritage and identity conversation. The marriage conversation.

  ‘Willie Sutton robbed banks because that’s where the money was,’ he had said. ‘A professor of history of religion goes to the Vatican because that’s where the documents are.’

  ‘They have documents in Israel too.’

  He had tried to keep it on an even keel. ‘I travel to Israel with some regularity. You know that.’

  She had put her cup down, rattling it on the saucer. ‘I want grandchildren, Cal. You’re the only one who can make that happen. I want Jewish grandchildren, not Catholic ones. The amount of time you spend in Italy. I know what’s going to happen. You’re going to marry a Catholic.’

  ‘Just like you did,’ he had said, looking her in her milky eyes.

  She had been undeterred. ‘I know you say you identify as Catholic, Cal. It’s hardly a surprise given the larger-than-life effect your father had on you but by law – Jewish law – you’re a Jew because I’m a Jew.’

  ‘As you know, or conveniently disregard, I’ve taken it rather further than identifying as a Catholic, mother. I’m baptized, confirmed, and have received the Eucharist. Hook, line, and sinker as they say.’

  ‘I don’t even know what all that mumbo-jumbo means.’

  He had glanced at one of her priceless table clocks. ‘Look at the time. We’d better get going if we’re going to make our lunch reservation.’

  Cal blinked at the young librarian and hoped his daydream hadn’t lasted more than a second.

  ‘You have a great day, Mariagrazia. Ciao for now.’

  He buried himself back in the book and nearly halfway through it, his eye caught Lambruschini’s name at the top of a page. It was a letter addressed to him, written in reddish-brown ink in a neat scrawl. He began to read the short letter, hoping it might salvage an unproductive morning.

  It took only a few moments for Cal’s day to become considerably more interesting.

  29 November 1848

  My Dear C. Lambruschini

  We arrived safely. True to his word King Ferdinand has been gracious and has afforded us sanctuary. However I write you in urgent warning concerning information passed to us by a Neapolitan spy. The republicans are said to target you in an assassination plot. The Holy Father wishes that you leave Rome immediately to join the papal party. Furthermore you are to bring the banker with you. The Holy Father has expressed that apart from your well being nothing is more important to him than the safety of the banker.

  C. Antonelli

  Cal took a deep breath of that intoxicating, stale air. Who the hell is this banker? he wondered.

  FOUR

  Rome, 1848

  Giacomo Antonelli was young for a cardinal secretary of state, only forty-two. Long-serving functionaries within the Apostolic Palace were still having difficulty wrapping their minds around the notion of a cardinal deacon with nary a single strand of gray hair. He was a sober man, a natural administrator who had managed to advance his career, first under the conservative administration of Pope Gregory XVI, and then under the decidedly more liberal tenure of the new pope, Pius IX. However, two turbulent, war-filled years had turned Pope Pius away from his liberal tendencies and had turned him into a heavy-handed ruler. Now the young Antonelli would need every bit of his even temperament and administrative skills to navigate the present crisis swirling around the Eternal City.

  The cardinal hurried through the halls of the palace at an unbecoming pace, his leather-soled slippers slipping on marble floors as if they were sheets of ice. With each clap of distant gunfire his pace quickened until he was practically running. If he had paused to look through the windows of the corridor he would have seen the sea of cobblestones of St Peter’s Square, wetted from nighttime rain and glistening in the morning sunshine, and he would have noticed that the square was empty save for a small number of determined, cloaked pilgrims making their way up to the great doors of the majestic basilica. Ordinarily, by this time of day, the square would be thick with the faithful, but two days after the assassination, most Romans were staying indoors to avoid the unpredictable danger of public spaces.

  Pellegrino Rossi, the pope’s minister of the interior, had been stabbed to death on the stairs of the parliament by a republican sympathizer, an act of violence that was reverberating throughout the Vatican. If a papal minister could be killed by the mob, why not the pope himself?

  The pope was working in the office he used whenever he travelled to the Vatican from his residence at the Quirinale Palace. Until recently, the pontiff almost always appeared serene, but stress had creased his patrician face into a fixed frown and his skin had turned blotchy. His downy white hair, usually well kempt under his red skullcap, looked unruly, like a neglected garden.

  The pope was at his writing desk by the window. ‘Thank you for coming. Did you sleep?’ he asked, putting down his dipping pen.

  ‘Very little, Your Holiness,’ Antonelli said. ‘Did you fare any better?’

  The pope blew on fresh ink and pushed away from the desk. ‘Hardly a wink. The gunfire, you know. There was no let-up.’

  They huddled by a small fire. It was mid-November and the palace was chilly.

  ‘Do you feel as you did yesterday?’ the pope asked.

  ‘I do. Rome is not safe for you,’ the cardinal said. ‘The fighting in the city is only the beginning. More revolutionaries are on the march and Rome is their destination. Garibaldi’s legion is coming. The Polish legion from Lombardy is coming. Others too. We are defenseless. The Swiss Guards, as you know, have been disarmed and confined to barracks by the rabble. My plans for your escape are not yet set in stone. However, within days, perhaps a week at most, we will remove your person from the Vatican to a safe location away from Rome, away from the Papal States.’

  ‘To where do you think?’

  ‘Gaeta seems best.’

  Antonelli did not wish to burden the pontiff with the complex diplomacy involving the Bavarian and French ambassadors who would arrange for safe passage to Gaeta, only a day’s carriage-ride from Rome but safely within the Kingdom of Naples. From there, if the pope wished, a Spanish ship would take his party to the Balearic Islands until the revolution, God-willing, burned itself out.

  ‘Gaeta …’

  The pope’s sadness touched Antonelli. He wished he could provide comfort but it was not his role to be a friend or confessor. He was a fixer and there was much to be fixed. The fire that had begun in France was burning throughout Europe and the flames were threatening the very heart of the Church.

  The pope was staring at his own small flames, dancing through a pile of logs. ‘Before we depart there is an urgent matter, Giacomo.’

  ‘Yes, Your Holiness?’

  ‘There is no money.’

  ‘Perhaps that is an overstatement,’ the cardinal said. ‘We are not completely bereft of resources. The contents of the treasury will be sent to Gaeta. I am making the arrangements.’

  ‘It is only a matter of time before we are bankrupt, and not a great deal of time,’ the pope said wearily. ‘I have a stack of letters from governors of the Papal States requesting emergency funds. And now to make things worse we will have to fund a government in exile. I thought the situation under Gregory’s reign was dire. This is worse.’

  When his predecessor, Gregory, was made pope the Vatican cupboards had been almost bare. The economic woes traced to before the turn of the century when Napoleon came to power and demanded the Vatic
an pay enormous tributes to France. When the Vatican could no longer make contributions he sent troops to Italy to rob churches and cathedrals of anything of value, shipping the loot back to Paris. Compounding the problem, Vatican real-estate revenues had tumbled after Napoleon nationalized Church properties throughout France. The situation was hardly better elsewhere in Europe as rulers in Austria, England, Scandinavia, and Germany diverted Vatican-bound rents to their own treasuries.

  The newly minted Pope Gregory had to deal with the crisis from the moment he took office. With full knowledge of the inevitable outcry, he turned to the Jews for help. And not just any Jewish moneylender, not some Court Jew who loaned a few thousand pounds or francs here and there, but the Rothschilds, the pre-eminent European banking dynasty. The Rothschilds were lenders to monarchs, saviors to governments, for who else had deep enough pockets to prop up a state?

  It was Carl Rothschild, brother of James de Rothschild, the head of the family enterprise, who had travelled back and forth between Naples and Rome, negotiating the terms of a regime-saving deal, pumping hard currency into the Vatican treasury in the nick of time. Gregory had suffered the slings and arrows of anti-Semitic sentiment, but he got his money and disaster had been averted.

  ‘What would you have us do?’ Antonelli asked.

  ‘We must secure a loan.’

  ‘How large?’

  The number shocked the cardinal.

  ‘For a sum of this magnitude, we must go back to the Rothschilds,’ Antonelli replied. ‘I can draft a letter to Carl Rothschild and have a courier ride to Naples.’

  ‘No! We cannot go back to the Rothschilds!’ the pope shouted, surprising the cardinal with the seismic eruption. ‘They will know we are in dire straits. We have no leverage with them. They will exploit their advantage and we will be forced into predatory, even crippling terms. They are like sharks with blood in the water. No, not the Rothschilds.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘There are other bankers, other Jews. I have in mind a grasping family who would aspire to elevate themselves to the heights of the Rothschild clan. Our friend, Lambruschini, knows them from his years in Venice. I speak of the Sassoons, particularly the Sassoon son who represented the family interests in Venice but is now in Rome.’

  ‘Do they have the resources to satisfy a loan of this size?’

  ‘They have the funds on hand, if Lambruschini’s information is sound.’

  Cardinal Lambruschini had been Antonelli’s predecessor as secretary of state. An archconservative and conclave rival, Pius had marginalized him in favor of the more palatable Antonelli. But as the pope’s attitudes had hardened, Lambruschini had been brought back into the fold. In ordinary times, Antonelli might have been annoyed that the old cardinal was whispering in Pius’s ear but he had far too much on his plate to worry about Vatican politics.

  ‘There is an impediment, I believe,’ Antonelli said. ‘The previous loan contract with the Rothschilds stipulated that we are obligated to return to them, and them alone, should we require future lending.’

  ‘Then we must compel complete secrecy from the Sassoons so that the Rothschilds remain unaware.’

  ‘It is no easy thing to keep a large papal loan secret,’ the cardinal said.

  ‘Lambruschini assures me we can accomplish this,’ the pope said enigmatically. ‘Of course, I want more than secrecy.’

  ‘What more?’

  ‘I want excellent terms,’ he replied. ‘Truly excellent terms.’

  ‘If we go to them with a begging cup, how are we to extract good terms from these Jews?’ the cardinal asked.

  The pope smiled for the first time that day. ‘Leverage, Giacomo. Leverage. I know a thing or two about these Sassoons and I will not hesitate to – how shall I say it – nail them to a cross.’

  ‘Then we must approach this Sassoon. I presume he operates from the ghetto. I will send my secretary to locate him.’

  ‘No need for that,’ the pope said, pushing himself out of his chair. ‘You can find Jean Sassoon closer to home. Lambruschini has him locked inside a cell in the basement of the Sistine Chapel.’

  FIVE

  The morning after the discovery of the enigmatic letter from Cardinal Antonelli to Cardinal Lambruschini, Cal was back at the archives, about to make his way through the reading room and up to the Diplomatic Floor. As he was heading toward the staff entrance he turned to wave at Maurizio Orlando who was leaving his office. Just then Cal almost collided with a nun in a black habit who was leaving the stacks.

  They traded hasty apologies. Ordinarily he paid more attention to a nun’s habit than her face – he was fairly adept at identifying a religious order by the garb. But this face surprised him and he found himself staring to the point of embarrassment.

  She was stunning, on par with the most beautiful women he had ever seen, and he fancied himself somewhat of an expert on that score.

  For her part, she lingered for a long moment, fixing him with what he thought was a flicker of interest.

  When she disappeared he went over to Orlando and asked, ‘Who is that? I think I just made an ass of myself.’

  Orlando laughed. ‘You are not alone in that regard, Professor. That is Sister Elisabetta Celestino. She is no ordinary nun. She is the secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, the first woman to hold this position. She has a very interesting background, but as you like to find things out for yourself, I will leave you to your own devices to learn about her.’

  Cal tucked his curiosity away and headed straight for the Lambruschini papers on the Diplomatic Floor. He had left off at 1848. The cardinal died in 1854 so the task at hand was not exhaustive – six years of the cardinal’s papers spread out over three volumes. He dove in looking for any further information about this mysterious banker.

  For the most part the correspondence and documents in the folios were banal, the work product of an elderly prelate no longer grasping the reins of power. Cal hadn’t completely lost interest in his original mission of finding new, relevant information about Lambruschini’s involvement in the revolution but there was a critical gap in material during the nine months in 1848 and into 1849 when Lambruschini was in exile with Pope Pius. When the cardinal returned to Rome, Cal could detect a certain apathy in his writings, as if the great events had taken a toll on his spirit, if not his physical health.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Cal was getting to the end of the exercise. Only a few pages remained of the last volume. It was fast approaching noon and Cal had a luncheon appointment with his friend, the archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Da Silva, and he quickened his pace and rapidly turned each page after only a cursory scan.

  Cal felt the last two pieces of paper between his thumb and forefinger. The penultimate document, written a month before Lambruschini’s death, was a polite letter to the cardinal from a Roman store requesting payment on a past-due bill for wine and olive oil. He came to the last page. It was a letter in the cardinal’s distinctive handwriting, but the script was uncharacteristically sloppy and loose, the lines written at a downward slope. Within ten days the man would be dead. Cal could almost visualize the ill prelate limply holding a dipping pen, perhaps sitting in bed with a lap desk, drawing the pen unsteadily over the paper.

  Cal raced through the short letter and the reply, written in a steady, bold hand in the empty space at the bottom of the page. As he read it, he felt the sting of adrenaline prickling his skin.

  2 May 1854

  My Dear C. Antonelli,

  I know you are aware that my health is rapidly failing me. I am endeavoring to address the last of my worldly business. Among them is the matter of the Sassoon loan. I had intended to deal with the matter four years hence upon its maturity but alas I will no longer be an earthly presence at that time. If the loan is not repaid there will be consequences. I regret that it will be left to you to attend to them. Might I suggest that when the moment arrives you enlist the assistance of Duke Tizziani? He is a frien
d who possesses the ability to deal with the bankers in Venice and their foreign offices. And now a final request. Please pray for my soul,

  Lambruschini

  My Dear Luigi,

  Do not trouble yourself any longer. Consider your burden passed to my shoulders. The Holy Father prayed for you this very evening and I too fervently pray for your eternal soul.

  Giacomo

  Cardinal Da Silva was momentarily distracted by the arrival of a large plate of pasta.

  ‘My goodness, Cal! Would you look at that? Magnificent. You might want to reconsider.’

  Cal tasted his salad. ‘This will do me fine, thanks, but your carbonara does look good.’

  The café, a popular spot for Vatican staffers, was a short walk from the walls of the city state. Da Silva, short and roly-poly, never disguised his love of eating; it was his self-declared sole vice. As he lowered his head to twirl a forkful of buttery fettuccine, his scarlet zucchetto shifted forward over his bald dome forcing him to reposition it with his other hand.

  ‘This really is superb,’ he said. ‘Here, you must have a taste.’

  Cal obediently forked himself a few strands and rendered an approving verdict.

  He had known Da Silva a long time. They had first met years earlier when the Portuguese-American was bishop of Providence, Rhode Island and the two appeared on the same panel discussing the history of the Catholic Church in Portugal. Cal had given a talk on the two Portuguese popes and Da Silva had spoken about the dissolution of the monasteries after the Portuguese Civil War. Afterwards they had become friendly and Cal was a personal guest at Da Silva’s investiture as cardinal in Rome. The modest and self-effacing prelate, whose face seemed to be in a state of perpetual mirth, was one of those cardinals always mentioned in articles about future papal candidates. Lionized by liberals, demonized by hardline conservatives, Pope Celestine counted him as one of his closest advisors, appointing him to his kitchen cabinet.