The Debt

by Glenn Cooper

  ‘I’m sorry, Cal. This confirms my initial impression. There isn’t a single catalogue reference to the Sassoon surname in general or to a Jean Sassoon in particular.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  ‘Of course, that doesn’t mean that there are individual documents related to the Sassoons contained within other volumes, such as the ones you found amidst the Lambruschini, Antonelli, and Tizziani papers. Let me try Parizo.’

  Again, there were no hits.

  ‘Do you want my recommendation?’ Orlando asked and after Cal eagerly said he did, he said, ‘Let me lend you one of my secret weapons as a Vatican archivist: the consistories of cardinals, the rolls of all the papal appointments. They are invaluable tools.’ He opened a large metal filing cabinet on one wall and found a particular leather-bound book. ‘Here’s the aggregate of all the consistories from the nineteenth century. Cardinal Lambruschini died in 1854. You might want to concern yourself with other cardinals, post-1854, who worked at the Vatican in lesser capacities than Antonelli, who might have been delegated matters such as dealing with loans. The bulk of their papers would be on the Diplomatic Floor.’

  Cal took the book and thanked Orlando.

  ‘The other idea I would offer is to go through the Rothschild material in the Bunker. You never know. Perhaps they purchased the Sassoon loan. A big fish swallowing a smaller fish, the way of the world.’

  The list of mid-nineteenth-century cardinals who worked at the Vatican was long. Gazzoli. Mattei. Fieschi. Ugolini. Ciacchi. Tosti. Casoni. Corsi. Piccolomini. Marini. Roberti. Savelli. It took Cal the entire day to locate and work through the private papers for just half of them. By five o’clock, all he had to show for the effort was a sore backside and a throbbing headache.

  The following day he returned and polished off the other half of the list. Again he failed to find a single mention or reference to loans, Sassoon or otherwise.

  The weekend arrived and with it came a break from the grind. It was quite cold and on the Saturday snow flurries slicked the Roman streets and snarled the traffic. Cal slept in then waded through a series of planned social engagements – lunches, dinners, and drinks with friends and colleagues from the Sapienza University and the American University of Rome. On Saturday night, an Italian professor of religious studies and his wife brought along to dinner a vivacious graduate student. He liked her enough to invite her back to his hotel.

  She was a talker, and by the time she had consumed half a bottle of Prosecco and had climbed naked upon the bed, her mouth was running as fast as a boat propeller. Cal was hardly listening but in his own vodka haze she seemed to be motoring on about the philosopher Wittgenstein.

  ‘Did you know that Wittgenstein once said that a serious and good work of philosophy could be written consisting entirely of jokes?’ she asked.

  He dove on to the bed like an Olympian. ‘I did not know that.’

  When their frantic bit of sex was done, from somewhere far away he could have sworn that the same rapid-fire voice was talking about the metabolism of hummingbirds.

  When he awoke, the light was filtering through the gauze curtains gusting in the frigid air. From the open windows he heard the sound of tourists milling around Bernini’s elephant-topped obelisk in the Piazza della Minerva. His head pounded like a hammer beating on an anvil and then he remembered salient elements of the previous night. The bed was otherwise empty. He called her name then worried that he’d gotten it wrong. Was it Laura or Loredana? The bathroom too was empty but written in pink lipstick on the mirror was a very nice heart. A desperate call to room service followed asking them to hurry along a pot of coffee.

  By the time Monday rolled around he was wearier than when the weekend had started but anxious to get back to work. He spent the morning buried in the Bunker at the section dedicated to the Rothschilds. It was slow going owing to the nature of the documents, rather densely and obtusely worded financial statements and agreements. By lunchtime Cal was satisfied that he hadn’t missed a reference to the Sassoon Bank. When he was done, he stopped by the offices to thank Maurizio Orlando for all his help and moved on to Plan B.

  The State Archive of Rome was located only a very short walk from his hotel. On the way he stopped for a cappuccino at Sant’ Eustachio Il Caffé, one of the best coffee bars in Rome in Cal’s humble opinion. Fortified, he arrived at the Palazzo della Sapienza. The building, commissioned in the fifteenth century by Pope Alexander VI, had been one of the early sites of the University of Rome. He traversed the grassy courtyard designed by Borromini with its porticoes on three sides and the church of Sant’Ivo on the fourth. With the slight rush of excitement he still experienced at the threshold of an old library, he entered.

  The archive had been founded in the nineteenth century to conserve the documents of the Pontifical State for the period surrounding the Italian unification. As a practical matter documents later than 1870 were housed elsewhere in Rome, at the Central Archives of the State. Cal had been here many times but he was hardly a regular. He recognized no one in the index room, a large chamber with a classical mosaic floor and an elaborate coffered ceiling.

  Within these archives Cal was a mere mortal, treated like every other academic who had to submit research requests in writing and patiently wait at tables in the index or reading rooms until the material was delivered. There were strict rules. A researcher could receive only three books or documents at a time with a daily limit of six.

  Cal signed in with his Harvard credentials and went to the index bookshelves to search for any material related to Duke Francesco Tizziani of Romagna. The index books were all handwritten ledgers of some antiquity themselves, generally organized by family name. In time he found an entry for Tizziani that simply indicated the presence of various papers, 1757–1869.

  Almost an hour after submitting his request, stipulating his interest in mid-nineteenth-century material, a young, pimply fellow shuffled into the reading room with three large boxes and plunked them down with a thud. Cal looked up from his phone he’d been using for emails.

  ‘Were there more?’ Cal asked.

  The young man seemed surprised that Cal spoke Italian and replied that there were three additional boxes of papers related to his request.

  ‘The magic number,’ Cal said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Six. Six units of material per day, isn’t that correct?’

  ‘You are permitted only six.’

  An older man seated across from Cal had been eavesdropping and when the young man left he said, ‘I think the boy is a temporary worker. Don’t get a bad impression. The staff here is very sharp.’

  Each box contained a thick stack of loose papers tied with a thin pink ribbon. The first box consisted of material too early for interest, pertaining to Francesco Tizziani’s father. He dispatched that one quickly and opened the second box. It proved more relevant to his search. It didn’t take him long to confirm his earlier impression that Francesco Tizziani seemed to have lived his life in constant legal battles with family members and neighboring nobles over land rights, rights to taxation revenues, and the share of profits from various agricultural ventures. The documents were, for the most part, obtuse and remarkably uninteresting and when he was done with this and the next box, he had no choice but to order up the next three.

  When the dull young man returned with these, Cal knew better than to engage him in small talk.

  It was midday when he finished reading through the next three boxes. There was nothing to show for his efforts. The word loan hadn’t appeared in a single document. The day was still young but he had exhausted his quota. He decided to pay another visit to the index shelves on the remote chance that there was something on the Sassoons. From what he had read on the Internet, the Sassoon Bank, during its nineteenth-century tenure in Italy, had operated from Venice. The Republic of Venice had never been a member of the Papal States so this was the wrong archive for Venetian material. If push came to shove he’d be obligated to
make a trip to the Venetian State Archives, or at least examine their online index.

  He browsed the relevant index book while absently thinking about some trivial bit of academic nonsense stirred up by one of the emails he’d read earlier.

  But there it was: the Sassoon name.

  A notation sent him flying back to the staff counter.

  Contains papers of J. Sassoon found among the papers of F. Tizziani.

  His heart pounded out of his chest while he waited in a short queue manned by a female archivist. A second archivist, a man, became free first but Cal stayed put, thinking he might have more luck with the lady.

  The archivist looked rather imperious, her hair pulled back so tightly it suggested a touch of masochism.

  ‘I wonder if you could help me?’ Cal asked, smiling as sweetly as he could.

  She neutralized him with a sour once-over and waited for him to say more.

  ‘I’m Professor Donovan from Harvard University. I understand and greatly appreciate your six-unit daily limit but I have to return to America and only need to look at a few more units of material. Is there any way you could make an exception for me?’

  As she fixed him with a death stare he began to think about how he’d bide his time before returning in the morning.

  Then she surprised him. ‘Professor Calvin Donovan?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  It wasn’t exactly a show of warmth but her face became less scary. ‘My colleague at the Vatican Archives, Maurizio Orlando, told me about you. You have special privileges there.’

  ‘I do. It’s a great honor.’

  ‘How many additional units?’

  ‘It’s rather hard to tell from the index. Hopefully not too many.’

  ‘Let me see the request.’

  He slid the form across the desk.

  ‘We’ll see what we can do.’

  ‘You’re a saint,’ he said.

  She finally let herself go, flashing the most rapidly extinguishing smile he’d ever seen. ‘I know I am,’ she said, returning to form.

  He spent another hour doing work on his phone all the while trying to imagine why Duke Tizziani had come to possess the Sassoon papers. Finally, the pimply clerk appeared, straining under the comically teetering weight of many more boxes.

  ‘Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen’ the young man said. ‘I don’t know how you managed to have your request granted.’

  ‘I’ve got friends in high places. Is this all there were?’

  ‘Only these. Any others and you would have exceeded the limit by even more.’

  The spines of each box were embossed with a single name, Sassoon.

  He opened them in quick order, untying ribbons and quickly getting the lay of the land. Most of the loose letters, contracts, and ledgers were written by Jean Sassoon. The earliest documents carried dates from the early 1840s and seemed to deal with matters originating at the Venetian office of the Sassoon Bank. The second and third boxes contained more of the same. Box four had material from 1846 to 1848; it appeared that during this period the bank was operating from Rome. The final three boxes revealed that the offices of the bank had returned to Venice. Documents and correspondence from these were dated from 1848 to 1858.

  He returned to the first box and began reading through scores of mundane lending agreements, all for relatively piddling sums, mostly denominated in scudos, the currency of the Papal States.

  He was moving through pages at a fair clip when midway through the second box, his eye caught a different handwriting from Jean Sassoon’s. While most of the other documents that were in Italian, this one was in French. He paused to read it carefully and within a few seconds he knew he had come closer to the mother lode.

  28 January 1849

  My son,

  I have received word that you have safely returned to Rome. You will know that I have agreed to the egregious terms of the Vatican loan and that the gold sovereigns have been delivered to the pope. Needless to say your uncle was unhappy with the transaction but I have the majority. Need I say more? It is incumbent upon me to share with you the terms of the loan contract so that you will understand the challenges the firm must overcome in the future. The principal was three hundred thousand pounds sterling representing a great deal of our available capital. We are not permitted to lay off our risk with a flotation of bonds to investors in London or Paris as would be the norm in a loan of this magnitude. The pope has his reasons for keeping the loan secret. We may surmise these relate to certain prior understandings with the Rothschilds. The duration of the loan is ten years with a rate of interest of seven percent compounded annually. Here is the rub. Since we were unable to recoup the funds through a bond flotation and were likewise unable to secure collateral we are vulnerable if at the end of the ten years we are not repaid. The loan rolls over into perpetual extensions until a date uncertain when the Vatican is able to repay the principal and interest. The cold comfort for us is that for loan balances exceeding ten years they agreed to a seven percent interest rate that will be compounded monthly. Why you may ask did I agree to these abhorrent terms where a repayment date was not fixed? It is because I feared for your life, my son. Now I would have you leave this barbaric country and return to your loving parents in London. Let us rebuild our capital together.

  Father

  It was dark when Cal left the archive. He had transcribed the letter from father to son and then had moved laboriously through all the boxes until coming to the very last document in the very last box. Dated November 1858, it was a pedestrian letter sent to Jean Sassoon from a Venetian merchant about obtaining credit to expand a glass-blowing workshop. Walking briskly through the throng of tourists taking photos at the Pantheon, Cal reflected on a good but imperfect day at the office. He now knew the terms for this extraordinary Vatican loan but that’s as far as it went. The Sassoon papers had not included a copy of the loan annex and there was still no definitive evidence whether the loan had ever been repaid.

  His phone rang and he smiled at the caller ID.

  ‘Joe! How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, Professor,’ Father Murphy said. ‘Am I catching you at a good time? Sounds like you’re in a crowd.’

  ‘Perfect time. Let me get away from this gaggle of tourists.’

  ‘How’s your research going?’ Murphy asked.

  ‘It’s taken an unexpected turn, as research is wont to do. What’s going on back at the ranch?’

  ‘I was just wondering if you’d heard anything from Professor Daniels? You see, I ran into Marty Gordon. He told me he understood I wasn’t getting the position.’

  Gordon was an assistant professor at the Divinity School, a protégé of Daniels.

  Cal swore at the news. ‘I haven’t heard a goddamn peep. Marty’s obviously in a position to know a thing or two about what goes on in Daniels’s world but it would be staggeringly bad form not to let me know about a negative decision or give me a chance to appeal. Hang in there. I’ll try to reach Daniels and get back to you as soon as I have more info.’

  With the phone back in his pocket, Cal let out a loud ‘Son-of-a-bitch!’ and scared some pigeons into flight.

  Back in his hotel, Cal reclined on his bed and made some calls. All of Gil Daniels’ numbers rang through to voicemail and Cal left the same message on each.

  The next call was to Monsignor Moller to let him know that he had found more information about the topic of interest to Celestine. Moller promised to get back to Cal as soon as he’d had a chance to speak to the pope.

  The final call was to one of his occasional basketball teammates, Frank Epstein, a renowned professor of finance at the Harvard Business School, who picked up on the first ring.

  ‘Epstein.’

  ‘Frank. It’s Cal Donovan.’

  ‘How the hell’re you doing, Cal? Having a good holiday?’

  ‘Better than you,’ Cal said. ‘I’m in Rome and you’re in your office.’

  ‘We’re le
aving for our place in Hawaii tomorrow. Can’t wait.’

  ‘I don’t want to hold you up but you got a minute to help me with a question?’

  ‘Not before I take the opportunity to congratulate you?’

  ‘For what?’

  There was a longish silence.

  ‘Shit, Cal. Forget I said anything. I hate it when I step in it.’

  Cal had no idea what he was talking about but just laughed it off, whatever it was.

  ‘I need to figure out how much a very old loan would be worth if it were repaid today. It’s for a research project.’

  ‘OK, I’d need to know the amount of the loan, the age of the loan in years, months, and days, the interest rate, and the compounding schedule.’

  ‘I’ve got all of those.’

  ‘All right, shoot.’

  Epstein took down the data then told Cal to wait a second while he opened a spreadsheet on his computer. Through the phone Cal heard the keystrokes, then Epstein coming back matter-of-factly with a number that made Cal’s eyes water.

  ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘Nope. I never joke about loans. What you’re seeing is the magic of compounding, especially monthly compounding for a hundred-sixty of the hundred-seventy years. Of course, there’s another factor to consider. You could make an argument that it might be appropriate to inflation-adjust the three-hundred-thousand-pound loan into present-day pounds sterling. If you compounded an inflation-adjusted loan value, the principal plus interest owed today would be a few orders of magnitude larger than what I just gave you. Now that’s a big-ass number. I could do the math for you but it seems to me, if you’re the guy owed the money you’d probably be pleased as punch to get the first figure I quoted. Just saying.’

  ELEVEN

  The pope took almost all his meals at the modest cafeteria of the Sanctae Marthae guesthouse, sitting with staff or visiting clerics. He usually took a place at one of the communal tables but this morning he chose a private one in the corner.

  ‘Have anything, Professor,’ he told Cal. ‘The food is quite good.’