“The message was stark: ‘We will kill anyone suspected of working with the Sandinistas. Whoever they are.’ ”
Paola sat without saying a word, reflecting on what she had heard.
“And you blame yourself. . . . It’s true, isn’t it?”
“It would be hard not to. I wasn’t able to save those nuns. And I didn’t take very good care of those young boys, who ended up killing their own people. My urge to do good was what dragged me there, but that wasn’t what I achieved. I was just one more cog in a monster factory. My country is so used to it that it no longer bats an eye when someone we’ve trained, helped, and protected turns against us.”
Although the sunlight was now full on his face, Fowler didn’t blink. He merely squinted, turning his eyes into two green slits. He continued to stare out over the rooftops.
“The first time I saw the pictures of the common graves,” the priest went on, “I was struck by the memory of the gunfire from the machine guns in the tropical nighttime. ‘Target practice.’ I’d grown accustomed to the noise. And then at some point one night, half-asleep, I thought I heard people crying out between the rounds, but I dismissed it. Sleep got the better of me. The next morning I told myself it was just my imagination. If, at that moment, I had talked to the base commander, and we had investigated Salazar more closely, we would have saved many lives. For that reason I am responsible for those many deaths, for that reason I left the CIA, and for that reason I was called before the Sant’Uffizio.”
“Padre, I don’t believe in God anymore. Now I know that when we die, it’s all over. I think we go back into the earth, after a brief trip through the intestines of a worm. But if you in fact need absolution, I offer you mine. You saved the priests that you could before they fell into the trap.”
A fleeting smile crossed Fowler’s face.
“Thank you. You don’t know how important your words are for me, even while I lament the profound break that comes across in such an affirmation from a longtime Catholic.”
“But you still haven’t told me why you decided to return.”
“It’s very simple. A friend asked me. And I don’t like to let my friends down.”
“So that is what you are now, God’s spy.”
Fowler smiled.
“You could call me that, I suppose.”
Dicanti stood up and walked over to the shelves nearest her desk.
“Padre, this goes against principles, but as my mother likes to say, you only live once.”
She pulled a thick volume of forensic analysis from the shelf and handed it to Fowler. He opened it. The first page had a signed dedication: “I hope this gift helps you to keep the faith. Maurizio.” The pages of the book were cut out, creating three empty spaces, conveniently occupied by a half liter of Dewer’s and two small glasses.
“It’s barely nine A.M.”
“Are you going to do the honors or do we wait for sunset, Padre? I feel proud to have a drink with the man who created the Eisner Foundation. Among other things, because that foundation provided the scholarship which sent me to study in Quantico.”
It was Fowler’s turn to be astonished this time. He poured two glasses of whiskey to the same height and raised his.
“Who are we toasting?”
“Those no longer with us.”
“All right. For those who are no longer with us.”
They drained their glasses. The liquid swirled down her throat, and for Paola, who never drank, it was like swallowing nails soaked in ammonia. She knew her stomach would be throwing tantrums all day, but she felt proud of having raised a glass with this man. There were some things you just had to do.
“What we have to be concerned about now is getting Dante back on the team. As you intuited, you owe this unexpected gift to your friend in the Vatican,” Paola said as she gestured toward the photographs. “I ask myself why he did it. What does he have against you?”
Fowler broke out in laughter, which surprised Paola, who never before had heard a noise so theoretically joyful sound so piercing and sad.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t follow.”
“Dottoressa, for someone so versed in applying reverse engineering to people’s actions, you are demonstrating a radical lack of judgment in the case before you now. It’s quite clear that Dante has taken a romantic interest in you. And for whatever absurd reason, he believes that I am his competition.”
Paola was stone-faced, her mouth half-open. She could feel her cheeks turning a suspicious color, and it wasn’t on account of the whiskey. It was the second time that man had managed to make her blush. She wasn’t completely certain how he’d done it, but she wanted to feel it just a little bit more, like a child with a weak stomach who insists on getting back on the Ferris wheel a second time.
Providentially, from the point of view of getting out of a badly embarrassing situation, the telephone rang at exactly that moment. Dicanti grabbed it. Her eyes lit up.
“I’ll be down immediately.”
Fowler watched her, intrigued.
“Let’s get a move on. Among the photos that the UACV developed from the Robayra crime scene is one with our Brother Francesco. We may have something.”
UACV HEADQUARTERS
Via Lamarmora, 3 Thursday, April 7, 2005, 9:15 A.M.
It was only a blur on the computer screen. The photographer had captured the interior of the chapel, and there in the background was Karosky, disguised as Brother Francesco. The technician enlarged that part of the image 160 times. Still, it was hard to make out anything specific.
“Not a whole lot there,” Fowler interjected.
“Slow down, Father.” Troi barged into the room, his arms full of papers. “Angelo is our forensic sculptor. He’s an expert in image upgrade and I’m sure he’ll find a way to get it in focus. Am I right, Angelo?”
Angelo Biffi, one of UACV’s technicians, only rarely got up from his computer. His bottle-cap glasses were crowned by greasy hair; he looked to be somewhere in his thirties. He cloistered himself at a large, poorly lit table that served as his desk, and it reeked of half-eaten pizza, cut-rate cologne, and singed plastic. A dozen monitors of the very latest generation took the place of windows. Glancing around, Fowler decided that Angelo probably preferred to sleep next to his computers than to go home. He gave every impression of having been a lab rat his whole life, but even so he wasn’t bad-looking. A timid smile had taken up a permanent perch on his face.
“You see, Padre, what I mean is, we, the department, or maybe it’s only me—”
“Spit it out, Angelo. And have some coffee too,” Paola said, leaning forward with the tray that Fowler had brought for Dante half an hour earlier.
“Thanks, Dottoressa. Wait, it’s cold!”
“Don’t worry, it’s already hot outside. In fact, when you grow up you’ll look back and say, ‘This April is getting hot but not so hot as the one when Pope John Paul died.’ Just wait and see.”
Taken aback, Fowler stared at Dicanti, whose hand was resting on Angelo’s shoulder in an attempt to calm him down. Even if she were going to pieces inside, Dicanti tried to camouflage it by making a joke. She had barely gotten any sleep, the bags under her eyes were larger than a raccoon’s, and her emotions were a mess, sad and full of anger all at once. You didn’t have to be a psychologist or a priest to see it. And in spite of everything, she was trying to help that kid feel more comfortable around a priest who intimidated him just a little. And at that moment Fowler loved her for it, but he quickly suppressed the thought. He couldn’t forget the shame she had made him feel just a little while earlier in her office.
“Explain how you work to Padre Fowler,” Paola said. “I’m sure he’ll find it interesting.”
When he heard that, the kid perked up.
“Take a look at the screen. We have, or I, OK, I designed special software for the interpolation of images. As you know, every image is composed of color dots called pixels. If a nor
mal image contains roughly 2,500 by 1,750 pixels but we are only interested in a tiny corner of the photo, we’ll end up with a few pointless splotches of color. Making it bigger simply turns it into the messy image you see now. Normally when a conventional program tries to enlarge an image it uses the bicubic method, what I mean is, it takes into account the color of the eight pixels adjacent to the one you want to enlarge. So at the end you get the same splotch magnified. But with my program . . .”
Paola looked at Fowler sideways while he leaned toward the monitor, staring. The priest had to force himself to pay attention to Angelo’s explanation as he contended with the ordeal he had gone through just minutes before. Looking at those photos had been a very hard undertaking that had left him deeply upset; it was obvious to anyone who looked at him. And in spite of all that, he was forcing himself to like a timid young man he would never see again. Dicanti loved him for it, but she rapidly pushed the thought out of her mind. The embarrassment that had just taken place in her office was still on her mind.
“. . . and taking into account the variables in the points of light, let’s consider what a three-dimensional information program could bring to the project. It’s based on a complex algorithm which takes several hours to work itself out.”
“Damn it, Angelo, you brought us down here to tell us that?”
“But this—you’ll see . . .”
“Don’t worry, Angelo. Dicanti, I suspect that what this intelligent young man is trying to tell us is that the program has been working for several hours and will soon present its conclusions.”
“Correct. In fact, it’s coming out of the printer right now.”
The humming laser printer directly in front of Dicanti produced a single piece of paper with an old man’s face, his eyes shaded, but all in all a much more focused image than the original.
“Nice work, Angelo. Not strong enough to identify the man, but it’s a point of departure. Take a look.”
Fowler examined the features in the photograph closely. Troi, Dicanti, and Angelo watched and waited.
“I’d say it was him, but it’s hard without seeing the eyes. The shape of the eye sockets and something else, something indefinable, tells me it’s him. But if he walked by me in the street I wouldn’t give him a second glance.”
“So this is yet another dead end?”
“Not necessarily,” Angelo suggested. “I have a program which can make a three-dimensional image out of a few pieces of information. I think we can infer enough with what we have. I’ve been working with a photo of the engineer.”
“The engineer?” Paola asked out loud.
“Yes, the photo of engineer Karosky, the guy passing himself off as a Carmelite. You should see the look on your face, Dicanti.”
Troi’s eyes went on full alert, making unmistakable gestures of alarm behind Angelo’s back. It finally dawned on Paola that Angelo had been left in the dark. Paola knew that the director had refused to let the four technicians looking for clues at the Robayra and Pontiero crime scenes go home. What he had done was give them permission to call their families to explain, and then put them in quarantine in one of the rooms where people took their coffee breaks. Troi could be hard when he wanted to be, but he was also fair: overtime he paid at three times the hourly.
“Ah yes, what was I thinking? Go on, Angelo.”
Troi was no doubt divvying up the information at every level so that no one had all the pieces to the puzzle. No one had to know that they were investigating the death of two cardinals. Still, this obviously made Paola’s work more difficult, besides which, it gave her serious doubts as to whether she had been made aware of all the elements in play.
“As I was saying, I have been working on the photo of the engineer. I think that in about thirty minutes we can have a three-dimensional image of his photo from 1995, which we can compare with the three-dimensional image we put together in 2005. If you come back in a little while, I’ll have something more definite.”
“Perfect. If it’s okay with you, Padre, Ispettore, I would like to go over everything in the conference room. Angelo, we’ll see you in a little while.”
“Right, Direttore Troi.”
The three headed up to the conference room, two floors above. No sooner had Dicanti walked in than she was overwhelmed by the terrible realization that the last time she had been in the room was in Pontiero’s company.
“May I inquire what the two of you have done to Deputy Inspector Dante?”
Paola and Fowler exchanged quick glances. Their heads shook in unison.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“That’s good. I hope I don’t see him storm out of here because of you two. It would be better if he was just pissed off by Sunday’s soccer scores, because I don’t want Cirin all over me, or the minister of the interior.”
“I don’t think you have to worry. Dante is fully integrated into the team,” Paola lied.
“So why don’t I believe it? Last night the guy saved your neck by a few inches, Dicanti. Want to tell me where Dante is now?”
Paola said nothing. She couldn’t talk to Troi about the group’s internal problems. She opened her mouth to say something, but a familiar voice got there first.
“I went out for cigarettes.”
Dante, wearing his suede jacket and ironic smile, stood in the doorway to the conference room. Troi studied him slowly, skeptically.
“It’s one of the very worst vices, Dante.”
“We all have to die of something.”
Paola watched Dante as he took a seat next to Fowler, as if nothing at all had come between them. Two fleeting, hostile glances were enough to convince Paola that things were not so smooth as they would like people to think. As long as they treated each other in a civilized manner for the next few days, everything would turn out well in the end. What she could not understand was how quickly her Vatican colleague had recovered from his anger. Something had happened.
“All right, then,” said Troi. “This bloody case gets more complicated by the minute. Yesterday, in the course of going about our work in full daylight, we lost one of the best cops I have ever known, and nobody has a clue what’s coming next. We can’t even hold a public funeral, at least not until we come up with a reasonable explanation for his death. Which is why I want us to put our heads together. Tell me what you know, Paola.”
“Since when?”
“Since the beginning. A quick overview of the case so far.”
Paola stood up and walked over to the blackboard to write. She could think much more clearly on her feet, with something in her hands.
“OK, here goes. Victor Karosky, a priest with a history of sexual abuse, escapes from a private, low-security institution where he was subjected to excessive quantities of a drug which castrated him chemically while raising his levels of aggression. From June of 2000 until the end of 2001 there’s no trace of his whereabouts. In 2001, using a fake name, he surreptitiously assumes the identity of a bare-foot Carmelite in front of the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina a few feet from Saint Peter’s Square.”
Paola drew a few lines on the blackboard and began to construct a calendar.
“Friday, April first, twenty-four hours before the death of John Paul the Second: Karosky takes the Italian cardinal Enrico Portini hostage in the Madre Pie residence. Have we confirmed that blood traces from both cardinals were found in the crypt?”
Troi nodded yes.
“Karosky takes Portini to Santa Maria, tortures him, and brings him back to the last site where he was seen alive: the chapel in the residence. Saturday, April second: Portini’s body is discovered the same night as the death of the pope, although the Vatican Vigilanza decides to clean up the evidence, believing it to be the isolated act of a madman. Purely by luck, word does not get out, in good measure thanks to responsible parties in the residence. Sunday, the third of April: Argentine cardinal Emilio Robayra arrives in Rome on a one-way ticket. Our theory is someone meets him at the airport
or en route to the Santi Ambrogio residence for priests, where he is expected on Sunday evening. We know he never arrived. Do we have anything useful from the airport’s surveillance cameras?”
“No one has checked. We don’t have enough personnel,” Troi said, by way of excuse.
“We have more than enough.”
“I can’t bring any more detectives into this. The important thing is to keep a lid on it, complying with the wishes of the Holy See. Let’s play it by ear, Paola. I will personally ask for the tapes.”
Dicanti pulled a long face, but it was the response she had expected.
“Back to Sunday, April third. Karosky kidnaps Robayra and takes him into the crypt. Once there, he tortures the cardinal for more than a day, leaving messages on his body and at the scene of the crime. The sentence on the body is from the Gospels: ‘And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven,’ referring to the moment when the first supreme pontiff of the Catholic Church was chosen. This and the message written in blood on the ground, added to the severe mutilations of the body, leads us to believe the assassin has his eyes set on the conclave.
“Monday, April fourth: The suspect drags the body to one of the chapels in the church and calmly calls the police in his role as Brother Francesco Toma. Taking his mockery even further, he makes it a habit to wear Cardinal Robayra’s glasses whenever he can. Vatican agents call UACV and Direttore Troi calls Camilo Cirin.”
Paola paused briefly and looked directly at Troi.
“When you picked up the phone to call him, Cirin already knew who the criminal was, although he never suspected he was a serial killer. I gave it a good deal of thought and I believe Cirin knew the name of Portini’s killer Sunday night. He probably had access to VICAP’s database; the entry ‘severed hands’ would pull up a few cases. His network of contacts puts him in touch with Major Fowler, who arrives on the night of the fifth of April. Most likely the original plan did not include us. It was Karosky who brought us into the game, deliberately. Why is the real question in this case.”
Paola drew the final line.