The Debt

by Glenn Cooper

  ‘You’re not, Holy Father,’ Cal said. ‘The plotters are the ones responsible.’

  ‘Yes, but it is I who set all this in motion,’ the pope said mournfully.

  Cal thought back to the first letter he found in the archives from Cardinal Antonelli: nothing is more important to him than the safety of the banker.

  No, Cal thought, swallowing hard. I’m the one who set it in motion.

  THIRTY-ONE

  It took about half an hour for them to reach the turnoff at Nazzano.

  ‘Almost there,’ Viola said. He coughed some more into a handkerchief.

  Viola was giving directions to the driver, who clearly had never been there before.

  They snaked through the small town to its outskirts where Viola had the man turn into a small industrial park comprised of a few medium-sized warehouses.

  ‘The safe house is here?’ Cal asked, peering through the darkened window.

  ‘I should better call it a safe warehouse,’ Viola said, ‘but don’t worry, it’s quite comfortable inside.’

  At the warehouse at the farthest edge, Viola hit the button of a garage-door opener. It lifted and Viola had his man drive inside.

  Inside it was dimly lit. Cal couldn’t make out much more than the shapes of a few more men, standing by.

  ‘Ours?’ Cal asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Viola said. ‘Give me a moment then I’ll let you out and escort you to the lounge.’

  Viola stepped out and told the driver to come with him. The young officer unclicked his seatbelt and climbed down.

  A loud percussion boomed and reverberated inside the steel building.

  Cal saw the driver fall.

  ‘My God!’ the pope cried.

  Cal tried to open his door but it was locked. He reached over the pope to the other door but it was also locked. He was trying to climb over the front seats when Viola opened the driver’s side door and tossed in a hissing canister. The door slammed and the cabin filled with gray-green gas.

  Cal began to choke. He heard Celestine coughing and moaning.

  Cal made one last effort to scale the seats but it might as well have been Mount Everest.

  Colonel Celestino grilled the Vietnamese priest. ‘Again, I ask: did he say where he was taking the Holy Father?’

  Dinh was seated in a room with senior officers of the Swiss Guards and the Vatican Gendarmerie, uncomfortably sipping a bottle of water to lubricate his mouth.

  ‘I’ve told you, he only said somewhere safe.’

  ‘And he didn’t say why he was taking this action?’ Meyer, the commander of the Swiss Guards, asked.

  ‘Not to me. Perhaps he told the Holy Father in his office.’

  ‘Did Donovan say anything?’ Meyer asked.

  ‘Not that I recall. He was helping the Holy Father walk quickly.’

  ‘And he left his travel bag behind.’

  ‘I found it in the office.’

  ‘You mentioned the pope said he’d call when he got to this safe place,’ Celestino said.

  ‘He said that, yes.’

  ‘Which number would he call?’ Major Pinotti of the Gendarmerie asked.

  ‘My office line.’

  ‘Is someone monitoring that line now?’ Celestino asked.

  ‘Yes. One of the monsignors is there waiting by the phone.’

  ‘You can return to your office,’ Celestino said. ‘Call immediately if the Holy Father rings. And don’t discuss this with a soul.’

  When the door closed behind him Klaus Zeller, the deputy commander of the Swiss Guards, said, ‘What the hell is going on here? Has Viola gone mad? How can he do something like this without informing the Guards?’

  ‘He didn’t inform his own organization, either,’ Celestino said. ‘We’re totally in the dark too.’

  ‘Is it possible he had a legitimate reason?’ Pinotti asked.

  Celestino shook his head. ‘Vittorio, it’s not possible. It’s a complete violation of protocol. Plus, they’ve been gone for over an hour. Even if it were some kind of emergency that only he knew about, he would have called from the car.’

  ‘But there was an emergency, wasn’t there?’ Zeller said. ‘The shooting at the Excelsior. Maybe Viola heard about it and was worried about an imminent attack.’

  ‘Yes, but the timeline is off,’ Celestino said. ‘Vittorio, tell them what you found out.’

  ‘Shots were fired at the hotel at exactly nine forty-seven. Viola’s SUV was picked up on cameras leaving the Vatican just before nine forty-eight.’

  ‘That’s not enough time for Viola to have gotten a call and responded,’ Meyer said. ‘This looks terrible.’

  ‘Because it is terrible,’ Celestino said.

  ‘Could Donovan be part of this?’ Zeller asked.

  Celestino pointed to Cal’s shoulder bag. ‘We searched his bag. There was nothing to incriminate him. He had airline tickets for a flight to Boston via London leaving this afternoon. His passport was there too. From what I’ve heard he’s a reliable friend to the pontiff.’

  ‘No one is ruled out,’ Meyer said harshly. ‘And what about your man at the wheel?’

  Celestino shrugged. ‘Corporal Ambrosini’s a good officer. That’s all I can say right now. We’ll do more checks on him, of course.’

  ‘No,’ Zeller insisted. ‘We should do the checks on him. And on Inspector General Viola. Something is rotten in the Gendarmerie. You can’t be trusted to police yourselves.’

  ‘I’ll choose to ignore that, Kaspar,’ Celestino said, working to keep his cool. ‘The pope is missing and we’re going to need to work together to get to the bottom of this.’

  ‘Celestino is right,’ Meyer said. ‘We’ve got no choice but to pool resources. Our timeline is short. We won’t be able to keep a lid on this for long. We need to immediately liaise with the city police to find out what we can about the hotel shooter and get access to CCTV from around Rome looking for Viola’s car. The Guards can’t make those inquiries. It’s out of protocol. The Gendarmerie’s got to do it.’

  ‘We’re already working on it,’ Celestino said. ‘I need to get back to my command center.’

  The curtains were closed but Cal could see that it was no longer daytime. A dusky gray light was leaking around the edges.

  His head throbbed and his stomach was queasy, pretty much the way he felt after a particularly heavy night on the bottle. He was flat on his back and when he tried to lift his head, the pounding only got worse.

  Then he realized there was a sound in the room.

  Snoring.

  He turned his head. There was a second bed. The white cassock almost glowed in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Holy Father,’ he said, his throat as coarse as sandpaper.

  The snoring continued unabated.

  Cal forced himself to a seated position and tried to stand. He made it up on the second try but dizziness sent him down again. The next time upright he held on to the nearest nightstand and let his balance harden before taking a few steps. His body hurt all over. He couldn’t make out a light switch but there was an open doorway. He went for it and discovered a bathroom. Turning on the light there were toiletries and towels laid out and in the mirror he saw that his shirt was stained with secretions.

  Then he remembered the gas.

  He quickly drank from the tap, used the toilet, and found the light switch in the bedroom.

  The pope was lying on his back. His cassock and the top of his sash were stained the same as Cal’s shirt. He let him sleep and tried the bedroom door. It was dead-bolted and there was no key. When he parted the curtains he saw an iron grate screwed on to the window frame. There were no lights outside, just shapes of large trees moving in the evening gloam.

  At the sound of a shuddering moan, Cal kneeled at the side of the pope’s bed and put a hand to his shoulder. ‘Your Holiness, are you all right?’

  There were a few rumbles from deep inside his large body coming from a place where words were formed.

&
nbsp; ‘Holy Father, can you hear me? It’s Cal Donovan.’

  Both eyes opened a slant. ‘Where … where …’

  ‘I don’t know where we are. We were taken. Can you remember?’

  ‘In a car. Couldn’t breathe.’

  ‘He gassed us.’

  ‘Who did?’

  ‘Viola.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Viola,’ the pope said, trying to sit up.

  Cal helped him to swing his legs over on to the floor. He coughed a few times, still in a daze.

  ‘My cassock. Goodness.’

  ‘Let me get a towel.’

  Cal wet a towel and cleaned off his garment as best he could. Then he filled a water glass from the tap. Celestine drank thirstily.

  ‘Is that a bathroom?’ the pope asked.

  Cal helped him up and made sure he was steady enough to make his way. Through the closed door he heard him brush his teeth and use the toilet. When he emerged he looked more composed.

  ‘So, it seems we are alive,’ the pope said. ‘That is a blessing. We must presume that Inspector General Viola has some plan for us.’

  ‘He’s got to be part of something bigger,’ Cal said. ‘He’s not acting alone.’

  Celestine sat back on to the bed. ‘I understand my plan for the IFH is controversial, even radical to some. But why must men object to ideas with violence? Why not civilized discourse?’

  ‘Fear of change,’ Cal said. ‘Some will resort to extreme measures to protect the status quo, entrenched interests.’

  ‘It was this mentality on the part of the Romans that led to the crucifixion of Christ. Destroy what you fear. What do you suppose they want from us, Professor?’

  ‘Let’s find out.’

  He went to the door and began banging on it with his fist, shouting for someone to open it.

  The Gulfstream was midway across the Atlantic when Julian received yet another call from Gail Sassoon on the satellite phone.

  ‘What now?’ he answered. He was alone in the cabin. There hadn’t been time to arrange crew beyond the pilots.

  ‘I just sent you an email with a file. Did you get it?’ she asked. She sounded less frantic than on the previous calls.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Just look at it, please. I’ll hold the line.’

  He got his laptop and logged on to the plane’s WiFi. Gail’s email was headed, Open Immediately.

  The attachment was a MOV file. When he clicked on it, the face of Viola’s filled the frame.

  ‘My name is Inspector General Arturo Viola of the Vatican Gendarmerie. This message is for the Sassoon Bank. I am the one who took the Holy Father and Mr Calvin Donovan. I am the one who ordered the killing of Mr Julian Sassoon. I sincerely regret that he escaped. I took these actions on my own behalf. No one else at the Vatican was in any way involved. I took these actions to …’ He began to cough and at that point the recording clearly stopped then started up again when he had ceased coughing. ‘I took these actions to protest and to foil this diabolical plot to destroy the heritage of the Church and its financial integrity by giving away an obscene sum of money in a confused attempt to satisfy an illegal and invalid debt that is almost two hundred years old. Here is my demand. The Sassoon Bank and the Sassoon family must legally remove any claim to the Vatican debt and refuse to participate in the International Fund of Humanity or any such foundation. Your written declaration to that effect must be made publicly available for legal experts to validate its proper form and substance. Only then will the Holy Father and Donovan be released. Please be aware that your family will never be safe unless you agree. Likewise if you rescind or renege on your agreement you will be targeted for assassination. Even when I am dead a dedicated army of Catholic sons will carry on and they will exact a terrible revenge. You have forty-eight hours.’

  ‘Julian, are you there?’ Gail asked.

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘Marcus has seen this too.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Several variants of I told you so. He wants out, of course.’

  ‘And you?’ Julian asked.

  ‘I think we have to withdraw from this. They almost killed you. This is a nightmare.’

  ‘What’s the Vatican saying?’

  ‘Nothing! Nothing at all. There’s no news of a kidnapping.’

  ‘Maybe it didn’t happen.’

  ‘I tried calling Cal. There was no answer.’

  ‘Did you try calling Celestine?’

  ‘No, I should try that,’ she said.

  Julian gripped the phone tightly. ‘Here’s the thing, Gail. Whether or not it’s true, I’m not backing down. They’re not going to intimidate me. My reply to them is a big fuck you. And don’t you dare get soft on me. If you want my respect you’re going to have to suck it up and vote your shares with me. Understand?’

  Cardinal Leoncino joined Lauriat in his office to initiate the international conference call with the other members of the C10. When everyone had announced his presence Lauriat asked if they were all aware of the assassination attempt on Julian Sassoon. All responded in the affirmative. He then astounded them with the news that Celestine had been abducted along with his visitor, Professor Donovan.

  Cardinals Da Silva and Vargas were still in Rome continuing to work on the formation of the IFH. From his room at the Sanctae Marthae guesthouse, a short distance from the site of the kidnapping, Da Silva asked who had done such a thing and how was it possible.

  ‘I regret to say, but it was the pope’s chief bodyguard, Arturo Viola. I have received an email from him admitting responsibility. He claims he did it to protest the repayment of the debt and that the Holy Father will be held until the plans he announced have been withdrawn.’

  ‘But surely,’ the bishop of Mainz said, ‘only the Holy Father can do that.’

  Leoncino leaned closer to the speakerphone. ‘Or the Sassoons.’

  ‘Where is Julian Sassoon?’ Cardinal Vargas asked.

  ‘We understand he is on a private plane heading back to America,’ Lauriat said. ‘If it weren’t for a bulletproof vest he surely would have been gravely injured.’

  ‘Was Viola involved with the shooting too?’ Da Silva asked.

  ‘Presumably.’

  ‘Are there other conspirators?’ the archbishop of Lima asked. ‘Within the Vatican,’ he added almost in a whisper.

  ‘Not to our knowledge,’ Lauriat said.

  ‘What are the police saying?’ the archbishop of Manila asked.

  ‘Nothing yet. They’re at an early stage of their investigation. However, they want to enlist the help of the public in finding the official vehicle that Viola used for the abduction. That means that we shall have to announce the kidnapping. Inevitably the news will leak soon anyway. I am preparing a press bulletin that we will release within the hour.’

  ‘What can we do?’ the Nigerian cardinal asked.

  Leoncino leaned toward the speaker. ‘We should do what we do best. We should pray.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Someone came to the door and unlocked it.

  ‘Back away,’ the voice commanded through the door.

  Cal obeyed and retreated toward his bed.

  A young man with a sleeve of tattoos on one arm and an unshaven face entered, pistol first.

  He glowered at Cal but when he saw the pope, he partially lowered his gun arm and seemed overwhelmed to be in his presence.

  ‘Holy Father,’ the man said. ‘I apologize for your treatment.’

  ‘Tell me, young man,’ Celestine said gently, ‘who are you?’

  ‘I’m Antonio. I am a good Catholic, I promise. This is a job for me. They only told me it was you when I was here.’

  ‘And where is here?’ the pope asked.

  ‘I’m not allowed to say. It’s a villa. It’s in a remote place.’

  ‘Is it just you, Antonio?’ the pope asked.

  ‘There are others.’

  ‘Is Viola here?’ Cal answered.

 
Cal didn’t garner the same respect. Antonio raised his pistol again and pointed it at him.

  ‘Please lower your weapon, Antonio,’ Celestine said calmly and when he did so, the pontiff repeated Cal’s question.

  ‘Yes, he’s downstairs. He’s sleeping.’

  ‘Kindly ask him to come and speak with me when he awakens.’

  ‘I will, Holy Father. Are you hungry? I can get you food.’

  The pope looked to Cal who shook his head. He was still churning inside from the gas and he suspected Celestine was too.

  ‘Not at this time,’ Celestine told the young man but he added, ‘Does this villa have a coffee machine?’

  ‘I’ll bring you some.’

  ‘Two cups. Don’t forget the professor. And Antonio?’

  ‘Yes, Holy Father?’

  ‘I’ll pray for you.’

  Antonio nodded in astonishment and left them.

  When the call with the C10 was over, Lauriat told Leoncino that he was going to get Malucchi and Cassar on the line.

  ‘I thought you didn’t want calls with the four of us showing up on your telephone records?’

  ‘In the wake of a papal kidnapping, I think it’s plausible that groups of cardinals can be expected to communicate.’

  Cassar sounded agitated although the reception on his mobile phone was poor.

  ‘Where are you?’ Lauriat said. ‘I tried your office number.’

  ‘I just got on the golf course. I’m walking now. Is that better?’

  ‘Golf, in the winter?’ Malucchi said.

  ‘In Malta it’s sunny and warm enough with a sweater. Are you calling with news on Celestine?’

  ‘The police are working on it. That’s all I know,’ Lauriat said. ‘The press office is releasing a bulletin shortly acknowledging the abduction. We couldn’t hold off any longer.’

  ‘That’s the end of my game, I suppose,’ Cassar said. ‘I’ll have to go back to my diocese to deal with the local fallout.’

  ‘Such sacrifice,’ Leoncino mumbled under his breath.

  ‘Tell me, Pascal,’ Cassar said, ‘I didn’t ask when you called me before but I’m asking now. Did you have anything to do with this?’

  ‘Don’t ask me questions like that,’ Lauriat replied angrily. ‘Don’t ever ask me.’