The Debt

by Glenn Cooper

  ‘You assume correctly.’

  ‘Good. We leave in ten minutes, at nine on the dot. We’ll get you a vest.’

  It was a little past ten o’clock. The pope had fallen asleep but Cal was awake, doing some thinking about his life and wishing he had a bottle of vodka to go along with the exercise. He’d been gradually resigning himself to an unhappy endgame and he was a little surprised at his phlegmatic state of mind. It wasn’t as if he was content to say goodbye to the earthly world; there was a lot to like about being Cal Donovan. After all, he’d just been made a University Professor and he’d hardly been able to exercise any bragging rights with his colleagues. But what had really surprised him was this realization: when faced with the final curtain and all that, most men, he assumed, would look back on life and regret this and regret that. But he wasn’t having any of it. No revisionist history for me, he thought. I did things the way I wanted to, I treated good people well and bad people poorly, I left a paper trail of my accomplishments, I slept with some great ladies, and I drank some pretty good booze along the way. Besides, how many people were in a position to have a pope say a prayer over their dead body?

  Celestine stirred at the sound of the door bolt sliding open.

  Viola came in and his shadow, Antonio, assumed his usual position by the door.

  The pope sat up and Viola hit the light switch.

  ‘I’m sorry to wake you, Holy Father. Believe me, I am.’

  ‘Arturo, what is the matter?’ Celestine said. ‘You look like you’re in great pain.’

  There was no hiding it. Viola had waited for over an hour, hoping the pain would subside. He couldn’t stand straight. He couldn’t think straight. It didn’t seem that the problem was going to spontaneously resolve. He had to act while he could.

  ‘Please don’t worry about me, Holy Father,’ he said through twisted lips. ‘I told you that I would wait until tomorrow for your answer but I need to know tonight.’

  ‘But, Arturo, surely you know what my answer must be.’

  A severe cramp hit Viola. He put a hand hard against his stomach and managed to say, ‘I’ll have no choice but to kill Donovan. I’m going to have to do it. I’m going to have to do it now.’

  The pope pushed himself off his bed and stood. He was clad only in his underwear but he didn’t pay any heed to modesty.

  Cal got up too. Being shot in bed wasn’t the way he pictured it.

  The pope looked to Viola’s pain-squinted and then to Antonio’s fearful eyes and said, ‘No, Arturo, no, Antonio. Do not do this. A life is too precious. It is not for you to take. Do not put yourself in the position of God. It is forbidden. I forbid it.’

  Viola opened his mouth. The words, ‘Holy Father,’ came out, followed by a pailful of bright red blood.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Viola collapsed to his knees and to Cal, everything seemed to be in slow motion.

  The pope almost slipped on vomited blood as he laboriously stooped to help Viola.

  Viola retched another gusher of blood.

  Antonio made what seemed to be the most languid of movements of his gun hand as Cal commenced his leap.

  And nothing seemed real until the moment Cal’s shoulder rammed into Antonio’s chest.

  Then everything sped up considerably.

  The amateur boxer in Cal came out of the ring punching and punching hard. Antonio tried to shout for help but a right to the jaw shut the kid up. He still had his gun but he seemed more interested in using his hands to block Cal’s punches than putting the weapon to its intended purpose. The second he got it raised higher than his own waist, Cal hit him so hard in his thin gut that his grip failed and the gun dropped to the floor. They both looked at the pistol. When Antonio bent to pick it up, Cal delivered a cracking roundhouse to the kid’s chin that was so fierce, it left Cal with an unbearable pain in his knuckles. God knows how Antonio felt because he went down like a toppled statue, his face splashing into Viola’s bloody effluent.

  Cal couldn’t pick up the gun with his busted right hand. He had to settle for his left. The safety was off. He couldn’t tell if there was a round in the chamber and one-handed as he was, he couldn’t pull the slide back. There was only one way to tell and that was going to be by pulling the trigger.

  Antonio got up on all fours. He wasn’t finished.

  Cal pointed the gun at his head.

  ‘Professor, no!’ the pope cried. ‘For God’s sake, don’t shoot the boy.’

  Cal nodded and brought the butt of the pistol down on the dome of Antonio’s head.

  ‘I’m going for help,’ was all Cal said before creeping into the hall.

  ‘Don’t do a flyover,’ Cecchi told the pilot of the AgustaWestland Merlin. ‘We need to surprise them.’

  The helicopter pilot found a relatively flat piece of land to put down on about one and a half kilometers below the villa as the crow flies but more like three kilometers of winding road up the mountain. A dozen ROS SWAT officers jumped out of the chopper along with Cecchi and Celestino and were met by an arctic blast of wind.

  ‘Ready for a nice little jog?’ Cecchi asked, sprinting to catch up with his men.

  Celestino, glad to be wearing rubber-soled boots, took off after him up the snowy road.

  Celestine cradled Viola’s head on his lap.

  ‘Just try to breathe normally, Arturo.’

  Viola opened his eyes. ‘The pain is less,’ he croaked. ‘Something let loose and now it’s better.’

  ‘That’s good. It’s a blessing,’ the pope said.

  ‘Let me try to get up,’ Viola said.

  ‘Easy. Go easy, my son.’

  He sat himself against a wall and looked at a bottle of water on the nearest nightstand.

  ‘Are you thirsty?’

  Viola nodded but said he was afraid to drink in case he vomited again.

  ‘Just a small sip, perhaps,’ the pope said, rising to his own feet on the slippery floor with a fair bit of difficulty.

  He handed the bottle to Viola, who managed to hold down a small amount. He thanked the pope and said, ‘The cancer. It’s spread to my liver and intestine. I think – no I know – this is my last night on the earth.’

  ‘Then you must confess your sins, Arturo. Are you prepared to do this?’

  Cal edged down the stairs, barefoot and shirtless, in his boxer shorts, gripping Antonio’s gun in his off hand. His right hand, broken for sure, alternated between stabbing and throbbing pain.

  A voice came from somewhere on the ground level. ‘Antonio? Everything OK up there?’

  Cal kept coming. There was no other choice. He didn’t know how many other men were in the house but he couldn’t deal with them upstairs. He didn’t want bullets flying around near the pope.

  A young man appeared in the hall. They saw each other at the same moment. Cal was about to find out if a round was seated in the chamber. He aimed the best he could with his left hand and squeezed the trigger.

  The gun fired; a bullet creased the wall and sent the man diving back into a lower bedroom. The fellow was shouting now, calling his companions to action.

  Cal couldn’t stay put. The staircase felt like a lane in a shooting range and he felt like a man-sized bullseye target. He started eating up steps, moving as fast as he could, and when he got to the downstairs hall and the open door where the man had retreated, he blindly fired twice into the room as he moved past it.

  He heard a shout behind him, a different voice, and then an explosion. In the confined space it sounded more like a cannon than a pistol and he knew instantly he’d been hit. The spray of blood from his grazed deltoid muscle spattered the right side of his face and the pain registered an instant later. He kept running. Cocking back his left arm and without looking let alone aiming, he fired three more times at whomever was behind him.

  The front door was coming up fast. The doorknob was going to be a problem. He could either toss his gun or try to use a broken fist attached to a shot arm. The gun seemed t
oo important so his snap decision was to opt for agony. He bellowed as he clamped down on the knob and gave it a twist. If he hadn’t had so much adrenaline pumping around he might have passed out.

  Thankfully, the door wasn’t locked.

  He blew out into the freezing cold just as someone fired at him again.

  It was sleeting and the driveway was slick.

  His bare feet gave him no traction and he slipped and fell immediately. He found himself by one of the parked cars and put the gun on the ground for a moment to use a door handle to get up.

  There were more shouts from behind and zero time to look for keys inside the vehicle. He kept running but the flat upper driveway gave way to a slope. His feet went out from under him again and this time he landed squarely on his bleeding upper arm.

  An involuntary scream pierced the thin mountain air.

  Pain wasn’t his only problem.

  His gun hand was empty now and he kept on sliding downhill on mostly bare skin. His body became a toboggan, picking up speed. Eventually the roadway curved but he kept going straight until he crashed into a snow bank.

  Momentarily stunned, he heard the urgent sounds of men coming after him, and he willed himself back on his feet. The only way he was going to get traction was by moving alongside the road in deeper snow and he took off running again, all his pain melting together into something hot and bright.

  At least two men were following him on foot. He heard them shouting to one another, asking if they saw where he went.

  Another shot rang out, the sound echoing off the next mountain peak. He had no way of knowing if it was aimed or just intended to keep him ensnared by fear. But then he heard a more terrifying noise, a car starting up and tires rolling and skidding on the snowy drive.

  He thought of running at a sharp angle to the road but where there was impenetrable blackness there might be a blind drop into nothingness. The car was getting closer and headlights began to dance around a curve.

  There was no other way.

  He’d have to turn away from the road and take the plunge toward an ink-black fate.

  Suddenly his eyes hurt.

  Beams of light made him squint then clamp his lids shut. He stumbled into a knee-high drift.

  The car was almost on him.

  There were shots, lots of them, but they were throatier and louder than the pistol fire.

  The car kept coming but it was sliding past him now, moving fast into the abyss, disappearing from the road entirely, followed seconds later by a fearsome grinding of metal against stone.

  Gloved hands were pulling him out of the snow bank, carrying him on to the road.

  An ROS officer was speaking loudly at him while others shone their torches in his face.

  ‘Are you Donovan? Where is the pope?’

  Cal answered numbly. His lips felt thick. ‘He’s up at the house.’

  Cecchi arrived, followed by Celestino.

  ‘Is the Holy Father safe?’ Cecchi asked.

  ‘I – I think so.’

  Celestino peeled off his jacket and threw it over Cal. ‘Who’s there with him?’

  ‘Viola. Others.’

  ‘Stay with him,’ Cecchi ordered one of his men. ‘He’s bleeding badly.’

  Cal was watching the officer pull a first-aid kit out of his pack when mercifully he slipped out of consciousness.

  The pope winced at the sound of every distant gunshot.

  ‘Please, Arturo, can you make your people stop shooting at the professor? He’s a good man. He’s my friend.’

  Viola was still propped up against the wall, sipping from the bottle of water, his chin and shirt stained with his own blood.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘I beg of you, Arturo. Call to them.’

  The pope turned his attention to Antonio, motionless on the floor.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said. ‘He’s still breathing. Antonio, can you wake up?’

  A man called up the stairs. ‘Antonio? Viola?’

  Viola tried to yell but it came out weakly. ‘Up here.’

  Two men appeared. They were young and scared and seemed unnerved at the sight of Celestine, his underclothes smeared in blood.

  ‘Young men,’ the pope said, ‘I beg you to put down your weapons. I beg you not to harm Professor Donovan.’

  ‘Where is he?’ Viola asked.

  ‘He ran away,’ one of them answered. ‘Two guys went after him.’

  ‘Is Antonio dead?’ the other man asked.

  ‘He’s knocked out, that’s all,’ Viola said.

  From a short distance they heard a volley of automatic weapons.

  ‘We’ve got company!’ one of the men shouted. ‘Come on, Marco!’

  Viola managed to rise to his feet by hugging the wall. Celestine watched as he pulled a small pistol from his trouser pocket.

  ‘I don’t think we have time for my confession, Holy Father.’

  ‘You should put away your gun,’ the pope scolded. Perhaps most men would have backed away when a gun was pointed at them but Celestine did the opposite. He extended his arms in a gesture of peace and began slowly walking toward his adversary.

  ‘But that I can’t do,’ Viola said. ‘You see, we’ve come to the end of this affair, Holy Father. There’s only one way to stop you from destroying the Church. It won’t hurt, I promise. I’ll follow along shortly but we may not be arriving at the same destination.’

  Ear-piercing volleys of automatic gunfire filled the lower level of the villa and the smell of gunpowder drifted up into the bedroom.

  There was a rush of footsteps up the stairs.

  Before Viola could react, Celestino was at the threshold with Cecchi only a step behind.

  They both saw Viola’s pistol but it was Cecchi who yelled, ‘Gun!’

  Viola pointed his gun at the pope’s head as Celestino raised his Glock.

  The pope was still moving forward; he was close enough to brush Viola’s cheek with his hand when the pope looked at Celestino and shouted, ‘No, don’t!’

  Celestino fired first but the pope was intentionally thrusting his body between Viola and the colonel.

  A red circle appeared on the pope’s undershirt over his belly button and he slowly slumped to the floor.

  Viola had the presence of mind to adjust his aim for a coup-de-grace to the pope’s head but a single shot from Cecchi’s Beretta stopped him dead.

  Celestino rushed to the pope’s side and began putting pressure on the wound.

  ‘Radio the chopper,’ Cecchi screamed down the stairs. ‘Tell him he’s got to land up here now!’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The nurse tried to dress him but he waved her off. Five minutes later Cal sheepishly rang his call bell for help after trying and failing to get his shirt on over the cast on his hand and the bandage on his shoulder. The nurse chided him while doing up his buttons.

  ‘Can I go now?’ he asked.

  ‘You have to wait for the doctor. She needs to write your discharge paper.’

  His room at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital was overheated so he cracked the window with his good hand. That allowed him to hear the hubbub from the omnipresent crowd below.

  His mobile rang. It was his mother. Again. He understood her anxiety but her confusion about time zones meant she was calling at all hours including the middle of the night.

  ‘Yes, it’s still happening today,’ he said. ‘I’m just waiting for the doctor to discharge me.’

  ‘Are you in much pain, dear?’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  ‘And you’re coming right home?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning. The Sassoons were nice enough to send their airplane.’

  ‘Gail’s a dear. Why don’t you come to New York instead of Boston? You can stay with me. I can get you a private duty nurse.’

  Cal laughed it off. ‘I have a broken hand and a flesh wound in my shoulder. What exactly would a nurse do?’

  ‘Sponge baths?’

  The new
spaper came while he was waiting. He glanced at the banner headline: THE WORLD PRAYS.

  At midday he was free to go. Armed with prescriptions for antibiotics and pain relief he looked for the pharmacy but saw the sign for the ICU first. Stepping off the elevator he didn’t get far. A cordon of plain-clothes Swiss Guards and Vatican Gendarmes blocked the corridor.

  ‘Your business, please?’ he was asked.

  ‘I wonder if I might see him?’ Cal asked.

  ‘See who?’

  ‘The pope.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Calvin Donovan.’

  ‘Are you on the list?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  The guard checked a clipboard and told him to get back on the elevator.

  A gendarme close by overheard the exchange.

  ‘Professor Donovan?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please wait one minute.’

  He returned after a while and told Cal to come with him. The doors to the ICU slid open and they entered the cool antisepsis of the ward. The nursing station was crowded with hospital personnel – nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists, and technicians – but all the patient cubicles were empty.

  Except for one.

  There was a single chair beside the elevated bed.

  ‘Do you know her?’ the gendarme whispered to Cal. ‘She hasn’t left his side.’

  ‘I know her.’

  Elisabetta stood when she saw Cal. She tenderly touched him on the arm, asked how he was feeling, and apologized for not coming to see him.

  ‘I was worried that he might wake and I wouldn’t be there,’ she said.

  There was nothing to show that the patient was a pope. He simply looked like an old, overweight, and critically ill man with tubes in his arms, a catheter running to a collection system, and a breathing tube connected by hoses to a respirator. The incessant beeping from a monitor might have been a small irritation were it not indicative of a steady heartbeat.

  ‘How is he?’ Cal asked.

  She had been present for all the doctors’ bedside conferences.

  ‘He lost a lot of blood before he got to the hospital in Sanza. They don’t know if it affected his brain. He hasn’t woken up. The surgery went well but they had to remove several feet of his small intestine. There’s an infection. Peritonitis. Today they’re worried about pneumonia. He’s seventy-eight, you know. That makes it especially difficult. He’s in God’s hands.’