The Debt

by Glenn Cooper

  It was Cassar who broke the ice, rising and nervously extending his arms to simulate a chip shot.

  ‘I think I’m going to miss my flight.’

  ‘Is that all you can say?’ Leoncino asked. ‘We’ve just witnessed a call for the financial destruction of the Church and you’re complaining about your flight.’

  ‘I think he was joking,’ Malucchi said. ‘Were you joking, Joseph?’

  ‘Yes, I was joking. The pope is out of his mind.’

  Lauriat was on his feet, making his way to the window. Gazing at the dome of St Peter’s the eavesdropper said, ‘This is a monumental betrayal of trust,’ seemingly unaware of the irony. ‘He lied to us about his intentions.’

  ‘Did you hear all the yes-men, sucking up to him,’ Malucchi asked. ‘Nauseating. Twenty-five billion! Where will he find this money? He says he has some ideas. What ideas? If and when the time comes, our voices of dissent must be heard. But what can we do? He is the pope.’

  Leoncino said, ‘It’s a pity. When a corporation makes a mistake and selects the wrong chief executive, they can correct the mistake with a few strokes of the pen. When the Church selects the wrong pope it is usually obliged to wait for his passing to make a change.’

  Lauriat returned to his desk, reached for a pen, and angrily threw it down. It skittered off the desk and when Cassar went to retrieve it, the secretary of state told him to leave it.

  ‘No! I will not simply resign myself to a bad situation or wait for God to claim him,’ he said in a near shout. ‘If Celestine thinks I will stand by and let him weaken or destroy our sacred Church to aid this neo-liberal thinking he seems to have embraced he is sadly mistaken. This shall not pass, gentlemen, it shall not pass.’

  THIRTEEN

  There was something awfully insulting about the way Cal’s meeting at the Sassoon Bank was playing out. Before he was allowed to set foot inside their Manhattan offices he was obliged to interview Marcus Sassoon’s son, as if he couldn’t be trusted to follow through on his promise if the sequence were reversed.

  After a good night’s sleep at the Pierre Hotel – he’d slipped into town without notifying his mother – he met the kid at the appointed place, an Italian restaurant chosen by the bank. After a week in Rome, he had hoped against hope for a change of cuisine. Steven Sassoon was already there, waiting at a table, glued to his phone and sporting a semi-bored expression. He was tall for sixteen going on seventeen, with a bunch of gelled, unruly hair. His blue blazer looked crisp and new.

  Cal extended a hand and the kid took it without getting up.

  It became quickly apparent that there wasn’t going to be a lot of small-talk coming his way so Cal kicked things off after passing on a proper drink and opting for a diet soda.

  ‘So your father tells me you’re interested in Harvard.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  Somehow lunch instantly reminded Cal of pulling latrine duty in the army.

  He asked Steven to talk about himself and after some coaxing a picture emerged of a privileged, spoiled kid who was expected to follow a preordained path from prep school to college to business school to prime the pump on his arrival at the family business. His cousin, Julian, was six years ahead of him, a second-year student at Harvard Business School.

  ‘What do you like to do?’ Cal asked.

  ‘You know, the usual stuff. Sports, girls, hang out with friends.’

  ‘Which sports?’

  ‘Golf and tennis mostly. I’m good at tennis. What’s Harvard’s team like?’

  ‘I think they’re always competitive in the Ivy League. You think you’re good enough to make the team?’

  ‘I play number one singles at Dalton. Other than me the team kind of sucks.’

  ‘OK. What do you think you want to study at college?’

  ‘I don’t know, something that’ll help me get into business school. What do you teach?’

  ‘History of religion and biblical archeology mainly.’

  ‘Not that.’

  Mercifully, the food arrived, slowing the conversation and speeding the time until the chore was completed. Cal decided to turn the remainder of the meal to his advantage by extracting information about the Sassoon family.

  ‘So your father and his cousin, Henry, work together?’

  ‘They always have.’

  ‘Tell me about your Henry.’

  ‘He’s been sick a lot. He doesn’t come in much anymore.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Something with his lungs. Not sure. He’s on oxygen.’

  ‘So your dad is pretty much running things?’

  ‘I guess so. I mean he’s got people who’ve been there a long time and my brother’s a vice-president.’

  ‘Albert.’

  ‘How’d you know his name?’

  ‘It’s on the website.’

  ‘Henry’s wife has been coming in too, I hear.’

  ‘Is your mother involved?’ Cal asked.

  ‘Not a chance. She’s a lady who lunches. Can we skip dessert? I’ve got tennis practice in half an hour.’

  Cal smiled in relief. ‘I’ll get the waiter to bring the check.’

  ‘It’s paid for,’ the kid said. ‘We’ve got an account.’

  It wasn’t a stretch to imagine Steven Sassoon morphing into his father in forty years. Marcus was flat-ass lanky and tall, his suit hanging more loosely than modernity dictated, his almost colorless hair cut short back and sides. His eyeglasses too were from an earlier generation – flesh-colored, plastic frames with thick lenses that made his eyes seem far away.

  He greeted Cal and ushered him into his office on the second floor of the East 73rd Street row of townhouses that served as the bank offices. From the window the seasonally bare trees looked forlorn but inside the décor was opulent and inviting – lots of dark paneling and good rugs. Very old-world European.

  Cal declined a beverage and sat across from his host in his conversation area by a bay window.

  ‘So you met Steven.’

  ‘Just came from there.’

  ‘What did you think?’

  Cal was expecting the question. He lied. ‘He’s an impressive young man. He told me he’s got good grades and test scores. The tennis doesn’t hurt. Also, Dalton’s a reliable feeder school for Harvard.’

  ‘A lot of his classmates are legacies at Harvard. That’s a problem, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Where’d Henry’s son, Julian, go?’

  ‘Columbia. No help there. Will you be able to write the letter?’

  Cal nodded. ‘Where should I send it?’

  The banker gave Cal his card and without so much as a thank you, moved on. ‘OK, Professor. Your turn. Henry’s wife, Gail, wanted to join us. Do you mind?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Gail Sassoon was much younger than he expected. He knew from the web bios that her husband was pushing seventy. This woman was in her late forties at most, stylish in a designer suit that clung to her curves and matched the color of her eyes. She looked uber-fit, like she worked at it conscientiously. And she was attractive enough that he had to force himself not to stare too long. But her girl-next-door beauty and blonde shoulder-length hair that bounced when she walked defeated him. She seemed to notice that he was checking her out and her smile became ever so slightly coquettish.

  When she spoke she seemed genuinely interested in him and mentioned something about hearing him talk once. Before he could ask where, Marcus interrupted because seemingly, like his son, he wasn’t given to chitchat.

  ‘OK, Mr Donovan, you’ve got the floor,’ he said, putting an end to the light banter.

  ‘Marcus, he’s not a mister,’ she said sharply. ‘The professor has a Ph.D.’

  Marcus sounded annoyed. ‘OK, whatever. Professor. Doctor. Go for it.’

  Cal tried to defuse the tension by saying, ‘You can call me anything you like if you let me into your archives. Here’s the story. As I told Mr Sassoon on the ph
one, I was doing some research at the Vatican that has caught the interest of Pope Celestine. I’m here on his behest.’

  ‘Go on,’ Marcus said.

  ‘What I found is this: it appears that the Sassoon Bank made a loan to the Vatican at the time of the 1848 Italian Revolution.’

  Marcus interrupted. ‘Didn’t know the Italians had one.’

  ‘There were revolutions happening all over Europe during that period,’ Cal said.

  ‘What’s the size of the loan?’

  Gail got testy. ‘Marcus, would you please let Professor Donovan tell his story?’

  The banker looked at the ceiling once, in a gesture of seeking divine intervention, then sank back into his chair in a forced silence, leaving Cal to wonder which one of these Sassoons was more in charge.

  ‘The loan was for three hundred thousand pounds sterling. It originated in London – I believe it was Claude Sassoon who controlled the bank at that time – but the Italian branch of the bank, represented by his son, Jean Sassoon, was involved. Specifically, I found an executed loan contract, signed by Claude Sassoon and a Vatican cardinal named Antonelli, but the specific terms of the contract were spelled out in an annex to the contract that I haven’t found.’

  ‘Don’t jump down my throat, Gail, but let me ask why the contract was a two-parter,’ Marcus said.

  She surprised Cal by answering for him.

  ‘Usury laws, Marcus. That’s the way a lot of contracts were structured in Europe back then. It gave the parties plausible deniability on usury.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Cal said, nodding and smiling. ‘Not too many people know that.’

  ‘Gail’s a fancy lawyer,’ Marcus said. ‘Harvard Law.’

  ‘I’m rusty on modern law,’ she said, ‘but I remember old, useless things.’

  ‘Not so useless in the current situation,’ Cal said. ‘Even without the annex we believe we know the terms of the loan from a letter written to Jean by Claude. Unusually, it was a non-collateralized loan with a ten-year term, carrying a seven percent interest rate that rolled over into perpetuity if was unpaid at the end of the term. Here’s the thing. There’s nothing in the historical record to indicate that the loan was ever repaid.’

  This seemed to get Marcus’s attention. He moved to the edge of his chair and leaned in toward Cal.

  ‘Was this a compounded loan?’ he asked.

  ‘It was. Annually for the first ten years then monthly thereafter.’

  Cal could almost imagine gears turning inside the banker’s head. He got up to grab a calculator off his desk but Cal told him not to bother – he had the present loan value. He delivered the figure cleanly, like an arrow shot into the bullseye.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gail said, ‘did you say twenty-seven billion dollars?’

  ‘Approximately.’

  Marcus was good for a ‘Holy shit,’ before leaning back again, a crooked smile creasing his face. ‘So that’s why you want to search our archive? To find the other half of the contract?’

  Cal nodded. ‘I’ve pretty much exhausted my options for finding the Vatican’s copy. Maybe it was misfiled in their archives. Maybe it was destroyed.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Gail said, sipping at a glass of sparkling water. ‘Back then three hundred thousand pounds was a great deal of money. Why would the Sassoon Bank have ever agreed to a non-collateralized loan? And wasn’t the practice in those days to package the loan into a public bond offering?’

  Cal was even more impressed. She knew her stuff. ‘From what we can tell from a surviving letter, the Vatican pressured the Sassoon family by holding Jean Sassoon hostage. It looks like the loan was made under duress.’

  ‘Do you think there was ever an intention to make good on it?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Cal said. ‘Maybe yes, maybe no, but it looks like everything was done on the quiet.’

  She pressed on with her lawyerly cross-examination. ‘Why wouldn’t the bank raise holy hell – excuse the expression – when the loan matured and payment wasn’t forthcoming?’

  ‘I don’t know the answer to that either.’

  ‘I’m sorry to keep peppering you with questions,’ she said, ‘but why on earth would the Vatican want to bring this enormous obligation to light? Surely it’s very much against its self-interest.’

  Marcus took on a look of pain. ‘Why ask? If they want to find a way to pass us twenty-seven billion dollars, I say, let’s show this man into the archive and let him have at it.’

  Gail might as well have crowned Marcus with a dunce cap by saying, ‘I’m quite sure their reasons are a little more nuanced than that.’

  Cal pointed at her playfully. ‘More than you could possibly guess. Pope Celestine is an interesting man.’

  Gail’s chauffeur-driven Bentley was waiting at the curb outside the bank. After the meeting she had asked Cal if he had time to see her husband, Henry, at their residence and Cal had readily agreed. Marcus wasn’t exactly Cal’s cup of tea and the less time spent with him the better. And Henry, though an unknown quantity, was the chairman. While Cal waited Gail had phoned ahead to make the arrangements for the visit.

  ‘Do you live far?’ Cal asked her as the big car eased into traffic.

  ‘Just a few blocks away on Park.’

  ‘Must be fairly close to where my mother lives.’

  ‘Bess Donovan. I know.’

  He did a double take. ‘You know my mother?’

  ‘Fairly well. We haunt the same philanthropic circles. That’s where I heard you talk, at her birthday luncheon a few years ago. I thought your remarks were charming.’

  ‘Quite a small town, this New York City,’ he said.

  ‘So Henry will be ready by the time we arrive. I should tell you, he hasn’t been well. He’s got pulmonary fibrosis. There’s no cure. The steroids have altered his appearance. But mentally he’s as strong as ever.’

  Their apartment was only three blocks from his mother’s. He hadn’t planned on looking her up on this leg, but on the chance he might be outed by Gail Sassoon, he realized he’d have to call her. Bess Donovan’s apartment, as regal as it was, could have fit in half of one floor of the Sassoon’s penthouse triplex. The scale of everything was grandiose, especially for a New York high-rise, and Cal was struck by the design aesthetic, a rather clever blend of traditional and modern. From the entrance hall to the grand sitting room, the high ceilings and expansive walls allowed for oversize pieces of contemporary art. Rothko, Pollack, de Kooning, Hockney, Picasso, Botero, and Cal’s eyes jumped around crazily.

  ‘Are you interested in art?’ she asked.

  ‘Earlier stuff. Medieval, Renaissance mainly, work that dovetailed with the history of European Christianity.’

  ‘As you can see, we’re mired in the twentieth century,’ she said. ‘We haven’t had the fortitude to understand really modern trends. I’ve just had a text from his nurse. Henry will receive you in his upstairs study.’

  They took an internal staircase – the wall lined with more museum-quality paintings – up to another large reception room. At the far end, through a set of open double doors, they came to a library where a bloated figure was slumped in a wheelchair.

  There were no flesh tones. Henry Sassoon had the grayest skin Cal had ever seen. It was dusky, almost like slate. A plastic tube snaked from an oxygen generator to nasal prongs. Cal knew he was seventy-two, but his illness saddled him with the appearance of a much older man. Whether he was self-conscious of baldness or simply cold, he sported a Yankees baseball cap. It looked like he had been hastily dressed because his trouser fly was wide open and Gail, noticing this, went over and gave the zipper a tug while pecking him on the cheek.

  ‘Henry, this is Professor Calvin Donovan of Harvard.’

  It took some effort for him to say, ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m good, Mr Sassoon. Please call me Cal.’

  ‘Then you should call me Henry,’ was the breathy response.

  Cal followed Gail’s su
it by sitting opposite Henry. She told her husband that the conversation at the bank had been so interesting she felt he needed to be personally informed right away.

  ‘All right,’ Henry wheezed.

  She asked Cal to summarize the history of the loan for her husband, what was known about it, and what was unknown. When Cal was done Henry asked the same question his wife had asked earlier.

  He labored at it haltingly, fighting breathlessness. ‘Why – does Pope Celestine – want to bankrupt the Vatican – to pay back some Jewish bankers – on a loan they didn’t even know – they were owed? It’s wacky.’

  ‘It is on the unusual side,’ Cal said. ‘I’ll tell you what I told your cousin but I have to ask you as I asked him, that this conversation be kept confidential.’

  With a wave of a hand, Henry assented.

  ‘If we’re able to find the contract, assuming it’s signed by both sides and valid, the pope has instructed me to tell you that he wants to satisfy the obligation to the full amount due, principal plus interest. However, he does not wish to make the payment to your bank. He wants to pay it to a charitable foundation, perhaps under some kind of joint management between the Vatican and the Sassoon family – details to be hammered out, of course – for the benefit of the poor and needy of the world.’

  Henry’s eyelids fluttered. ‘Only for Catholics?’

  ‘The pope believes the foundation should be inter-faith,’ Cal said. ‘Again, this is only high-concept at this stage.’

  ‘Doesn’t that sound wonderful, Henry?’ Gail said. Then turning to Cal, she added, ‘Henry and I have a family foundation, you know.’

  ‘You told my cousin this? That we were owed – twenty-seven billion?’ Henry asked.

  Cal told him he had.

  ‘And what did he say?’

  Cal wasn’t anxious to step into the middle of family affairs and Gail came to the rescue.

  ‘Oh, you know Marcus,’ she said. ‘He said he had no interest in the idea. If the bank was owed money, the bank should get the money.’

  Henry’s sputtering laugh became a cough and the cough a paroxysm that turned him the color of a ripe eggplant. Gail shouted for the nurse who came running with a suction catheter. Cal was asked to wait in the adjoining room while she worked on Henry. Before long, he was called back.