The Debt

by Glenn Cooper

  ‘I am unsure whether this entreaty comes from God or the Devil. Still, tell me what you want me to do.’

  ‘Send a party of men to Gaeta to free Jean Sassoon. Then let us fill our coffers and get on with our revolution.’

  The Angevine-Aragonese Castle at Gaeta was an ancient, ponderous structure of almost colorless stone. Although it was squat and utilitarian, it commanded a breathtaking, panoramic view of the green-blue waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea. From where it sat it was a strategic part of the defenses of the Kingdom of Naples.

  Jean Sassoon could not take in the natural beauty of the promontory. He had arrived at night and was held in a windowless, medieval cell, dank and dirty. All he could do to stave off boredom and worry was to pace in a tight, squared-off pattern while waiting for word to arrive from London whether his father would accede to the pope’s demands.

  One of his jailers, a lowly officer in King Ferdinand’s army, always seemed to be on a short leash, held back like a vicious hound. If he hadn’t been under strict instructions not to harm the young Frenchman his natural inclination surely would have been to inflict daily beatings. On this evening, while waiting for his meager supper to arrive, Jean heard sustained, muffled volleys of gunfire penetrating the thick castle walls. He reckoned the shooting had to be quite close. Could it be that the republicans were on a southerly march from Rome? If the castle fell, might he be freed?

  The sadistic jailer appeared with a wooden tray and set it down hard, spilling half the watered-down wine.

  ‘What was the gunfire?’ Jean asked.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you that I don’t talk to Jews,’ the officer said. Then a smile crossed his face when he seemed to find a way to defy his orders to keep quiet about the fighting, albeit obliquely. ‘But if I did talk to the likes of you, you’d know that you’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Jean demanded, but the jailer left, laughing and hurling curses. When the door slammed shut Jean screamed after him, ‘What the devil is going on?’

  Cardinals Lambruschini and Antonelli went to the pope’s modest apartment on a middle floor of the castle. They didn’t know if he was still awake but they found him seated in a chair by a small fire, a rather coarse blanket on his lap.

  ‘Holy Father,’ Antonelli said. ‘We are sorry to disturb you.’

  ‘I heard the gunfire. Was it the Red Shirts?’

  Lambruschini nodded. ‘The information we received from the spy in Garibaldi’s brigade was correct. A band of some twenty-five Red Shirts was met by the superior force of Ferdinand’s men lying in wait for them on the castle road. The threat is no more.’

  ‘Thank God,’ the pope said. ‘Now let us see what the Sassoons will do.’

  Garibaldi received the news at his camp the following afternoon but waited until the cover of darkness to visit Mazzini’s house.

  ‘Slaughtered,’ he told his sad-eyed colleague.

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Every last man.’

  ‘Bad luck or treachery?’ Mazzini asked.

  ‘It remains to be seen. We may have a spy in our midst.’

  Mazzini had become hardened by their struggles but he fought to hold back tears. ‘Their blood is on my hands. They died because I wanted money.’

  ‘I refuse to allow you to be hard on yourself,’ Garibaldi said. ‘In war a commander is obligated to make hard decisions. Win or lose, we move forward and keep fighting. This affair is over but you will find other ways of raising funds to support our cause. Battles will be lost but the war will be won. Remember what you always say. There will come a day when there will be one Italy.’

  Claude Sassoon was lit up with rage. He charged unannounced into his brother’s house to find Mayer taking supper with his wife and his son, a pale young man a few years older than Jean.

  ‘Claude, what a surprise,’ Mayer said. ‘We did not expect you. Look, Edouard has come from Manchester. Rachel, set another place. Join us.’

  Claude was in no mood for socializing. He took a letter from his pocket and tossed it on to Mayer’s plate of food. ‘What do you know of this?’ he demanded.

  Without reading it, Mayer said, ‘Claude, it is the Sabbath. We cannot discuss business.’

  ‘You told me you were writing to accept the terms of the loan and were sending a contract but instead, you tried to make a deal with Mazzini. You went behind my back. You have jeopardized the life of my son. The plot failed and now I have this threatening letter from this cardinal giving us an ultimatum of one week. I will not forgive you for this.’

  Mayer stood and tried to get Claude to come into the library but his brother stood firm. ‘If my plan had worked you would have had your son back,’ Mayer said, ‘and the bank would not be faced with ruin.’

  Claude shook a long finger at Mayer and said, ‘It is my turn to write a letter. That letter will say that I agree to the loan terms and that the money will be sent. I have a majority! You should know that I was considering a change in my last will and testament so that Jean and Edouard would have equal shares. Now I tell you: that will never happen. My side of the family will always have a majority!’

  ‘Claude, please!’

  ‘I am sorry to say this over your Sabbath meal, Rachel, but Mayer, you can go to hell.’

  NINE

  There was no advance agenda for the meeting but the cardinals in attendance knew exactly what would be discussed. Cardinal Lauriat had made sure of that. The C10 had met earlier in the day and Pope Celestine had previewed his concerns with his closest colleagues. Lauriat along with Cardinal Leoncino were the bridging members of the two groups. Lauriat, as secretary of state, chaired the session today of the Council for the Economy, one of the pope’s new initiatives to wrestle thorny Vatican economic issues to the ground.

  ‘Prepare yourself,’ Lauriat had warned the council’s cardinals in rapid-fire calls. ‘He’s on the warpath.’

  The pope had, in a cursory manner, raised another topic at the C10 meeting – he had briefed his advisors on what he knew about Cal Donovan’s loan.

  ‘I am informing you of this situation,’ he had said, ‘because in the event the professor finds the loan papers I would not want you to be surprised. Potentially, we might be facing a huge liability and we would need to mount our legal defenses to protect our solvency.’

  ‘Can’t you just shut down Donovan’s search?’ Lauriat had asked.

  ‘Would you prefer instead that an enemy of the Vatican find it one day?’ the pope had countered.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Lauriat had agreed, ‘but if Donovan is successful we would need to bury this loan in a very deep hole.’

  The pope had joked, ‘Surely, Pascal, that is the type of thing lawyers do for a living.’

  The economic council members had arrived at the third floor of the Apostolic Palace and had filtered into the Sala Bologna, an ornate and frescoed sixteenth-century hall strategically located between the traditional papal apartments the pontiff had chosen to eschew and the sumptuous chambers of the secretariat of state. Awaiting the commencement of the meeting, the cardinal members chatted amiably with the lay members, an international group of esteemed Catholics skilled in business, finance, auditing, and economics.

  One of these men, the Canadian chairman of an international consulting company, buttonholed Cardinal Malucchi and said, ‘I don’t know if it was an oversight but I received no preparatory materials.’

  ‘It was no oversight,’ Malucchi said. ‘The pope wished to address the council on a delicate matter and did not want to disseminate his thoughts in advance.’

  ‘The pope is personally attending?’ the wide-eyed businessman asked.

  Just then, two tall Swiss Guards wearing the Medici colors of blue, red, and yellow took up positions at the entrance of the Sala Bologna whereupon the pope entered. He urged everyone to take his place and looking around, asked Lauriat where he should sit.

  To polite laughter the French cardinal replied that the Holy Father cou
ld sit wherever he wished.

  Celestine chose a chair in the middle of the long table and placed before him a thin red-leather portfolio adorned with the papal seal. When the room was quiet he began his remarks in English, the common language of the assembly.

  ‘You may be wondering what the pope is doing crashing your meeting. With the kind indulgence of your chairman I wanted to speak with you today on a matter of some urgency. You sit on this council because you are experts in economic matters. Well, I should say that you lay members are the true experts but the cardinals are recognized as running rather efficient financial operations within their home dioceses. I wish I could tell you that the Holy See and the Vatican City State also have efficient financial operations. They do not. I formed this council to help us navigate stormy seas. You all know from your first meetings that our finances are a mess.’ His voice suddenly soared and he slammed the table with his palm in a flash of anger. ‘A complete mess!’

  To a man, they all stared incredulously, some at the pontiff, others at their pads of paper. In public he was the picture of a mild-mannered, jovial uncle, a calm, beatific presence in a turbulent world. None, save Lauriat, had seen this combustible side, and the secretary of state had witnessed it only when the pope struggled with Vatican finances.

  ‘I have here a new report from our international auditors,’ the pope said, his hand patting the red portfolio. ‘It is a damning report. When I leave you may read it. In this room only! I have made no copies because I don’t want to see it in the press. I trust you but I cannot trust every member of your staffs. Some leak Vatican documents because they wish to help us. Others wish to harm us. Leaks are unconscionable. We must make our analyses and deliberations in private. That is the dignified way.’

  He paused to take in the nodding heads.

  ‘So, what does this report say?’ the pope asked. ‘It says we are running severe deficits within the Holy See. At least ten million euros per year, although the number could be much higher owing to the auditor’s inability to get accurate information from several departments. One doesn’t know if these black holes arise from deliberate obfuscation or incompetence. The profit and loss statement of the Governorate is more stable, owing to the revenues we receive from tourists visiting the museum, buying stamps at the post office, and so on, but again, some of the departmental figures are difficult to verify. And why do we have these deficits? We have too many employees! We are bloated. We have many, many employees who are paid a lot to do little or nothing. We have enormous pension obligations that arise from all these retired employees who are living longer and longer these days. Another thing. We don’t have consistent bidding for contracts. Often there are no bids at all. We pay too much for our construction, our maintenance, our printing. Without accountability. We spent half a million euros on our Christmas tree! It was a very nice tree but not that nice! Some suppliers dump their useless and outdated products on us knowing that they can do so with impunity and do you know what happens? We have to buy them again! We are poor landlords. We often do not charge fair-market prices for apartments we own in Rome and elsewhere. Some renters get below-market rates. I was astounded to learn that hundreds of accounts are marked as Affito 0. No rent at all! Others get their flats for one hundred euros per year! Why does this occur? I cannot prove that graft and kickbacks exist but in my heart I truly suspect these dark practices. Then there is the peculiar phenomenon of funds entering into some especially notorious black holes never to be seen again. Actually, I prefer the term rat holes but Cardinal Lauriat admonishes me for pejorative language. I speak, for example, of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints where we collect an average of five hundred thousand euros from sponsors to support a single inquiry into sainthood, although in some complex cases the sum exceeds a million. That money – tens of millions of euros – is intended to support research into matters of sainthood, medical consultants, printing costs, but there is no audit of how these funds are spent. Again, no accountability. Money vanishes. Where does it go? Now let us consider the Vatican Bank, where we continue to have murky accounts and persistent allegations of money-laundering.’

  Malucchi had been squirming in his seat. ‘Surely there have been improvements there, Holy Father,’ he interjected.

  ‘You are correct, Domenico,’ the pope said, nodding his large head. ‘We have closed down many bad accounts but the auditors are not convinced everything is clean. A bigger problem is bad investments and too much speculation. We put money into these private hedge funds in America that make decisions about which direction the yen is heading and other things I can’t even imagine. Last year we had big losses. This is the Vatican’s money. This is the money of the faithful. We should not be losing their money in operations little better than a casino. We must be conservative and prudent. Then there is significant mismanagement of our real-estate holdings. I could go on and on but one finding of the report drove me to tears. Yes, I cried when I read it. Peter’s Pence. Last year we received nearly one hundred million euros from the faithful – men, women, and children all over the world who put their hard-earned money into collection plates. Why do they pay Peter’s Pence? Because they are moved by the spirit of charity within their hearts to help the poor, believing, as I did, that the money was going to support Catholic missions to aid the hungry and the sick and victims of disasters. Do you know what the auditors discovered? Only eighteen million euros went to the poor. The rest? It seems we have been using Peter’s Pence as a slush fund to cover our administrative deficits. What if the faithful knew their donations were going to Christmas trees and pension liabilities, rather than the poor? Always it is the poor who suffer. And here the suffering is at our own hands. One hundred million euros is a great deal of money, but it is only a drop in the bucket of worldwide poverty and misery. We do not do enough! And now because of mismanagement we do even less? It breaks my heart.’

  The only American in the room, Cardinal Sprague from Baltimore, said through a pained expression, ‘What would you like us to do, Your Holiness?’

  The pope leaned forward, indenting his midsection against the edge of the table. ‘I want your help. I need your help. The pope cannot accomplish sweeping reforms alone. He is not a one-man band. I spend too much time on our finances! My predecessors, all worthy and revered stewards of our great Church, spent too little time on them and now we find ourselves in this mess. In the first moments after my election to St Peter’s throne, I imagined that I might be able to use my pulpit for the betterment of humanity. I imagined that I might devote my days to promoting initiatives for our brothers and sisters who are suffering, to succor them not only spiritually but physically, for people need food and clean water and shelter and freedom from fear so that the seeds of faith may have fertile soil in which to grow. Not so many days into my pontificate I innocently turned over a financial rock and then another – rocks I freely admit I should have turned over when I was cardinal secretary – until I decided I could no longer turn a blind eye. I formed this council and empowered the auditors and here we are today. We need reforms, we need accountability. For once and for all, we need to purge our house of fraud, waste, and abuse of power. We need to wipe away corruption, eliminate the deficits, properly fund our liabilities, and free ourselves to focus on our mission: supporting the spiritual and physical well-being of our flock.’

  Cardinal Cassar of Malta said, ‘We can help repair the foundations, Holy Father, but to accomplish everything you cite, this will take some time. Considerable time.’

  The pope softly repeated the words ‘considerable time’, and then said wearily, ‘I’m an old man, Joseph. My time on this earth is limited. It is certainly not considerable. Please, all of you, please help me in my mission.’

  Cassar was about to reply when Lauriat nodded vigorously and said, ‘As chairman of the council, I pledge my help and the help of the members, Holy Father. We will carefully examine the auditor’s report and we will continue our work as expeditiously as is possible.
’

  Cassar would not be still. ‘I only wished to inject a sense of realism into the proceedings. Rome was not built in a day.’

  Celestine impatiently drummed his fingers on his portfolio. ‘I’ll tell you what can be done in a day!’ he said, his voice rising. Then he seemed to stop himself. His chest heaved with a sigh. ‘No, I’ll say no more,’ he said. His sudden sadness was palpable.

  A silence fell upon the room. None of the laymen seemed inclined to break it.

  It was Cardinal Leoncino who chose to speak. ‘Holy Father, I wish to assure you that this council will do its job as expeditiously as is humanly possible.’

  The pope pushed back his chair and stood, prompting the others to rise. Forcing a smile he said, ‘Thank you, Mario. I will let you do your job. But I beg you, gentlemen, proceed with a sense of urgency.’

  TEN

  Cal left his meeting with the pope and headed straight for the Vatican Secret Archives, where he sought out Maurizio Orlando and informed him of the pope’s wish to have the original copies of Cal’s transcribed documents delivered to his office.

  ‘To my knowledge this is the first time the Holy Father has requested texts from us,’ Orlando said, his sweater swelling with pride. ‘I will bring them to him personally.’

  Cal told him he needed to try and find the annex mentioned in Monsignor Parizo’s letter to Duke Tizziani. With a wave, Orlando led Cal into a small research room with a staff computer terminal. Cal stood, peering over his shoulder, while Orlando queried the database looking for any mention of the Sassoon family. The name didn’t register.