The Fifth Gospel(121)

            As I scan the darkness for a sign of Gianni and his car, I hear Mignatto breathing into the phone. I wonder again why Simon accepted house arrest. Whether it was to protect the secrecy of his Castel Gandolfo meeting or to protect Peter and me. Maybe, after what happened to Michael, he wouldn’t have made a distinction between the two.

            “Your brother is on the list to testify tomorrow morning,” Mignatto says finally, “after the character witnesses.”

            “Can you file a protest with the court to get him released?”

            “It wouldn’t change anything.”

            “So what do we do?”

            He makes a long, inarticulate sound, then says, “We wait and see how powerful your brother’s guardian angel is.” He thinks a moment longer, then adds, “Very well, be at the Palace of the Tribunal at eight o’clock tomorrow.”

            I hesitate. “Am I testifying?”

            “Father, you’re procurator. You’re sitting beside me at the defense table.”

            Below me I hear the autopark doors open. Instinctively I crouch, in case another driver’s sedan rounds the bend. But it’s Gianni rumbling toward the foot of the stairs. And I can’t believe my eyes.

            “Monsignor,” I say, “I’ve got to go.”

            “If you find out anything else,” he says, “at any hour—”

            “I’ll call you.”

            I hang up and slink down the terrace steps, trying to suppress the nervous urge to laugh. Gianni’s car is a Fiat Campagnola, the white military jeep that the rest of the world knows as the popemobile.

            “Get in,” Gianni says anxiously. “Before anyone sees you.”

            I know the vehicle well. When we were thirteen, Gianni and I spent a whole night searching for dots of John Paul’s blood in the bed, because it was in the back of this truck that he was shot by a gunman in Saint Peter’s Square.

            “Get in where?” I say.

            There’s no room in back, where an armchair has been installed for John Paul. The passenger seat is stacked with a removable plastic tarp that covers the Holy Father when it rains.

            Gianni moves the plastic. “Under there.”

            It takes me a moment to understand. He wants me to crawl into the foot well.

            “And no matter what happens,” he adds in a voice that hums with uncertainty, “don’t say a word. Okay? There’s a gendarme outside the door, but once we get past him, the garage should be empty. I think I can buy you five or ten minutes inside.”

            I do what he says, and Gianni piles the plastic tarp back over the foot well. Then the jeep starts to move.

            The ride is rough. The popemobile is almost as old as I am. John Paul received it as a gift a quarter-century ago when he visited Turin, Fiat’s headquarters, on a trip to venerate the Shroud. Thirteen months later, on the day he was shot in it, a team of Shroud scientists was in Saint Peter’s Square, waiting to deliver their preliminary findings. One of the mysteries of living inside these walls is that there are no loose ends to our lives.

            “Stay quiet,” Gianni says. “We’re close.”

            There’s a jarring thud as we cross the raised barrier into the industrial quarter of town, a grimy area of workshops and warehouses. I see only the flash of electric lights as we plunge through it. Then the jeep slows, and I hear the first voice.

            “Signore! No farther!”