Fowler paused to take a sip of coffee. The shadows in the room had grown darker and longer, and Paola was overcome by fear. She sat down in the chair in the reverse position, her arms grasping the back while the priest went on talking.
“In 1958, John XXIII, the pope who initiated Vatican II, decided that the time for the Santa Alianza had passed, that its services were no longer required. And right in the middle of the Cold War, he dismantled the lines of communication between the various informants, absolutely prohibiting members of the Alliance from carrying out any action without his prior approval. And for four years it stayed like that. There were only twelve of fifty-two Hands left in 1939, and several of them were getting on in years. The pope ordered them to return to Rome. The secret location where they trained went up in flames mysteriously in 1960. And the head of the Saint Michael, the leader of the Holy Alliance, died in a car accident.”
“Who was he?”
“I can’t say, not because I don’t want to but because I don’t know. The identity of the head is always a mystery. It could be anybody: a bishop, a cardinal, an uomo di fiducia, a simple priest. It has to be a man, more than forty-five years old. That’s all. Since 1566 until today the name of only one head has gotten out: the parish priest Sogredo, an Italian, originally from Spain, who fought Napoleon tooth and nail. And that piece of information is only available in very small circles.”
“It isn’t exactly strange that the Vatican refuses to recognize the existence of an espionage service, if it uses methods such as you describe.”
“That was one of the motives that moved John XXIII to have done with the Santa Alianza. He said murder is not just, even in the name of God, and I agree. I know that a few of the campaigns undertaken by the Hand of Saint Michael hit the Nazis very hard. One of their attacks saved hundreds of lives. But there was one faction, very reduced in numbers, which operated completely on their own, and they committed terrible atrocities. I don’t want to go into that now, and even less so at this late hour.”
Fowler waved one of his hands in front of him, as if he were trying to chase away ghosts. In someone like him, whose economy of movement was almost supernatural, a gesture like that could only indicate an overwhelming case of nerves. Paola concluded he had had enough of this particular history lesson.
“There is no need to keep going. Just tell me what you think I need to know.”
Fowler smiled gratefully.
“But that, as I guess you might imagine, was not the end of the Holy Alliance. The arrival of Paul VI on the throne of Saint Peter in 1963 came amidst the most fraught international situation the world had ever seen. Less than a year before the world had been a few inches away from atomic war. And a few months later, Kennedy, the first Catholic president, was assassinated. When Paul VI learned the news, he ordered the Holy Alliance back into action. The network of spies, although diminished by time, recovered. The tricky part was recreating the Hand of Saint Michael. Of the twelve hands who had been recalled to Rome in ’58, seven were fit for service in 1963. One of them was put in charge of rebuilding the organizational structure to train new agents. The job took about fifteen years, but they succeeded in forming a core of thirty agents. Some of them had absolutely no prior experience, and some came from other secret services.”
“Like yourself: a double agent.”
“In fact, I was considered a potential agent. That’s someone who normally works for two allied organizations, but in which the first is unaware that the second adds to or modifies the directives of the assignments in each mission. It was my job to use what I knew to save lives, not to take others. Almost every mission they sent me on involved getting people out: saving endangered priests in difficult places.”
“Almost every mission.”
Fowler nodded.
“We had a complex mission where things got bent out of shape. I stopped being a Hand that very day. They didn’t make things easy for me, but here I am. I thought I would be a psychologist for the rest of my life, and look where one of my patients has led me.”
“Dante is one of the Hands, no?”
“Years after I resigned, there was a crisis. Once again there are very few agents, from what I’ve heard. All of them work far away, on missions where extracting them would be very difficult. The only man available was Dante, and he is not known for his scruples. In reality, a perfect fit for the job, if my suspicions are right.”
“So Cirin is the head?”
Fowler looked straight ahead, unperturbed. After a minute Paola decided he wasn’t going to answer, so she asked him another question.
“But why would the Santa Alianza want to make a mess like this . . . ?”
“The world is changing. Democratic ideals are taking root in people’s hearts all over the world, and I include in that group some of the very callous members of the Curia. The Santa Alianza needs a pope who steadfastly supports them or they will disappear. But the Alianza is a divisive idea. What the three cardinals have in common is that they were decided liberals; as liberal as a cardinal could be, when all is said and done. Any of them would have dismantled the secret service, maybe for good.”
“Take them out of the picture, and the threat is gone.”
“And in doing so you increase the need for security. If the cardinals just turn up dead, there would be a lot of questions. The Alianza would never be able to make it look like an accident: the pontificate is naturally paranoiac. But if you are certain about something . . .”
“A killer in a disguise. Jesus, this is making me sick. I am glad I put so much distance between myself and the Church.”
Fowler moved closer to her and, kneeling down in front of the chair, took both her hands in his.
“Don’t make that mistake. Behind this Church, made out of the blood and bricks you see before you, there is another Church, infinite and invisible, whose flags are raised towards heaven. This Church lives in the hearts of the millions of the faithful who love Christ and his message. It will be reborn from its ashes and fill the world. The gates of hell shall have no dominion.”
Paola’s eyes bored into the priest.
“You really believe all that?”
“I do believe it, Paola.”
Both of them stood up. He kissed her tenderly and slowly, and she accepted him as he was, with all of his scars. Her anguish flowed into his pain, and came undone there, and over the course of the small hours of the night, they discovered what it means to be happy.
DICANTI FAMILY APARTMENT
Via della Croce, 12 Sunday, April 10, 2005, 8:41 A.M.
This time it was Fowler who woke up to the aroma of fresh coffee.
“Here you are, Padre.”
He glanced at her, puzzled by her formal tone. She looked at him unwaveringly, and he understood. Hope had given way to the clear light of morning, which already filled the room. He said nothing and she had no expectations. There was nothing he could offer her except pain. Even so he felt a little better, comforted by the certainty that both had gained from the experience, taking strength from each other’s weakness. It would be easy to think that Fowler had strayed from his calling in those early hours of the morning, but it would be wrong. The truth was something else entirely: he was grateful to her for taming his demons, even if only for a short time.
She was happy he understood. She sat on the edge of the bed, a smile on her face. And that was no cheerless smile, because in the last few hours she had overcome a desperate obstacle. The new morning had not brought certainty, but at least her confusion had dissipated. Perhaps she was keeping her distance from him just to be on the safe side, to steer clear of any new pain. Yet even that, as easy as it sounds, would be wrong: she understood Fowler, knew that he kept his promises and was not about to surrender his personal crusade.
“Dottoressa, I have to tell you something, and it won’t be easy to take.”
“Go ahead, Padre.”
“If you ever leave your career as a criminal pyschiatrist, don?
??t open a cafe,” he said, grimacing in the direction of the coffee she’d brought him.
They both laughed, and for a brief moment everything was perfect.
Half an hour later, showered and freshened, the two went over the details of the case. Fowler, standing by the window in Paola’s room; Paola, sitting at her desk.
“You know what Padre? In the light of day, our theory that Karosky is an assassin following orders from the Holy Alliance has mutated into something weird and unreal.”
“Very possibly. Nevertheless, in the light of day, the mutilations of the cardinals, and Pontiero, are still very, very real. And if we’re right, we’re the only two people who can stop Karosky.”
Those words were enough to take the brilliant sheen out of the morning. Paola felt her soul become as tense as a tightrope. She was more than ever aware that it was their responsibility to catch this monster. For Pontiero, for Fowler, and for herself. And when she had him in her hands, she wanted to ask him who exactly was on the other end of his leash. In the mood she was in, she could barely contain herself.
“The Vigilanza is compromised, I understand that much. But the Swiss Guard?”
“Beautiful uniforms, but they are in fact harmless. They probably aren’t even aware that three cardinals have died. I don’t take them seriously: they are traffic police.”
Paola rubbed her neck. She was disturbed.
“So what do we do now?”
“I have no idea. We have no clues as to where Karosky is going to attack, and since yesterday he’s going to find it easier to kill.”
“What do you mean?”
“The cardinals have begun the novena masses for the pope’s soul. They are celebrated during the nine-day period after the death of the pope.”
“You are not telling me—”
“I am. The masses will be held all over Rome, at San Giovanni in Laterno, Santa Maria Maggiore, San Pietro, San Paolo fuori le Mura . . . The cardinals say mass in groups of two, in the fifty most important churches in Rome. It’s the tradition, and I don’t think they will change it for anything in the world. If the Santa Alianza is involved in this, it would be the perfect moment for an assassination. The story has yet to become public, and as it stands the cardinals would rebel if Cirin tried to stop them from celebrating the novenas. No, the masses will take place, come what may. And it could be very bad, up to and including another cardinal who has already been killed without our knowing about it.”
“Damn, I need a cigarette.”
Paola looked all over her desk and felt inside her coat for Pontiero’s pack of smokes. She put her hand in the breast pocket. Her fingers touched something tiny and inflexible.
“What’s this?”
She pulled out a card a few inches long, with the image of the Virgin of Carmen printed on one side. The one that Brother Francesco Toma had given her when she was about to leave Santa Maria in Traspontina. The phony Carmelite, Karosky the killer. She was wearing the same black jacket she had worn last Tuesday morning, and the card was still there.
“How did I forget this? It’s evidence.”
Fowler walked over, his interest piqued.
“A devotional card. The Virgin of Carmen. There is something written on back.”
Fowler read the text out loud. It was in English.
Paola translated it into Italian. She was livid, enraged.
“I believe it is Deuteronomy. Chapter 13, verses 7 through 11.”
“Shit!” Paola said between clenched teeth. “It was in my pocket the whole time. It should have set off an alarm when I saw it was written in English.”
“Stop beating yourself up. A friar handed you a card. Considering your lack of faith, it’s no wonder you never gave it a second look.”
“Maybe so, but we knew who this friar was a short time later. I should have remembered he gave me something. I was too busy trying to remember what I saw of his face in the dark. Even if—”
I tried to preach the word to you, do you remember?
Paola held her breath. Fowler turned around with the card in his hand.
“Look, Paola, it’s just an everyday card. He stuck a piece of adhesive paper on back—”
Santa Maria del Carmen.
“Which is very helpful in locating the text. Deuteronomy is—”
Take it with you wherever you go.
“A pretty unusual source for a quotation on a card, wouldn’t you say? I think that—”
It will help you find the right road in these uncertain times.
“If I tug a little on the corner, I can lift it off—”
“Don’t touch it!” Paola grabbed Fowler by the arm.
Fowler blinked, taken aback. Not a muscle moved as she pulled the card out of his hand.
“I’m sorry I screamed at you,” Paola said, trying to calm herself down. “I just remembered that Karosky told me the card would show me the way in uncertain times. I think it’s a message, and he put it there to make fun of us.”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s one more of his attempts to throw us off the track.”
“The only thing we know for sure is that we are very far from having all the pieces to the puzzle. Maybe there’s a clue here.”
She turned the card over, held it to the light, smelled the paper.
Nothing.
“The quote from the Bible could be a message. But what was he trying to say?”
“I don’t know, but I think there’s something else here, something we can’t see at first glance. And I think I’ve got the perfect instrument for a case like this.”
Dicanti rummaged around in a nearby closet. After a few minutes she pulled out a box, laden with dust, from the back of the small room. She laid it down carefully on her desk.
“I haven’t used this since I was studying at the Institute. It was a gift from my father.”
She opened the box slowly, reverently. She still remembered the advertisement for the device, about how expensive it was and how careful you had to be with it. She took it out and sat it upright on the desk. A standard microscope: Paola had worked with equipment a thousand times more expensive when she was in college, but none of them had she treated with the respect she showed this one. She liked feeling that way: the microscope was a touching connection to her father, and a rare one at that, especially for someone who constantly mourned the day she lost him. She fleetingly asked herself if she shouldn’t treasure the glittering memories she had rather than holding on to the idea that he had been snatched away from her too soon.
The wrapping paper and plastic had protected the instrument from dust. She put the card under the lens and focused. With her left hand she moved the multicolored card around, slowly inspecting every speck of the image of the Virgin. Nothing remarkable anywhere. She turned the card over.
“Hold on. . . . There’s something here.”
Paola let Fowler look through the eyepiece. Fifteen times their normal size, the letters on the card were stupendous black chess pieces. There was a minuscule white circle around one of them.
“Looks like a perforation.”
Paola took the microscope back from Fowler.
“I would say it was done with a pin. Appears to be done intentionally. It’s too perfect.”
“Where does the first mark appear?”
“In the f of if.”
“Keep looking. Check to see if there are perforations around other letters.”
Paola checked each letter in the first line of text.
“Here’s another one.”
“Go on, go on.”
After eight minutes of looking, Paola had successfully identified twelve perforated letters.
When she had checked that there were no more perforated letters, Paola wrote them out in the order they appeared. What they read shocked them. And then Paola put the pieces together.
If your very own brother secretly entices you: the psychiatric sessions.
Do not spare him or shield him: the letters to the families
of the victims of Karosky’s sexual depravation.
You must certainly put him to death.
She recalled the one name that figured in all of it.
Francis Casey.
AP NEWS FEED
April 10, 2005, 08:12 GMT
CARDINAL CASEY WILL CONDUCT THE
NOVENA MASSES IN SAINT PETER’S TODAY
ROMA (Associated Press). Cardinal Francis Casey will officiate today at the midday novena mass at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. The North American cardinal will enjoy the honor of directing the ceremony on this, the second day of the nine-day mourning period for the soul of John Paul II.
Organized groups in the U.S. have not looked upon Casey’s participation in the ceremony with approval. Specifically, SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) has sent two of its members to Rome to formally protest the fact that Casey has been allowed to officiate at the paramount church in Christendom. “We’re only two people, and we will protest in a peaceful, orderly fashion and tell our stories to the press,” said Barbara Payne, President of SNAP.