The Fifth Gospel(156)

            “Please, Your Grace,” I say. “It’s important.”

            Nowak doesn’t move. He says, “Yes, I know, Father Andreou.” And one last time, he makes the gesture, extending his arm.

            Finally I understand. He’s inviting me into his car.



* * *



            MY HEART DRUMS AS I crawl inside. My cassock is unwieldy. I pull it tight around me and slide to the far edge of the back seat to leave room for His Grace. The driver offers him a hand. I remember when my father would grab me by the shoulder and point out Nowak as he passed us on the village streets. The archbishop was almost as young then as Simon is today. Now he is sixty-five. His body has the same leaden heaviness as John Paul’s, the barrel-like neck and cumbrous volume about the face, the eyes that haven’t surrendered but have somehow retreated. He still smiles, but there’s a sadness even in those smiles.

            He says nothing as the driver closes the door after him. Nothing as the car gets under way. Just for an instant I see Mignatto leaving the courtroom. His eyes meet mine through the windshield as the sedan pulls away, and I see his mouth open.

            “I remember you,” Nowak says at last, in a fatherly voice. “As a boy.”

            I try my best not to be awed, not to feel like a child again.

            “Thank you, Your Grace.”

            “I remember your brother, too.”

            “Why are you helping him?”

            He leans over slightly, lessening the distance between us. His drooping eyes follow mine as I speak, showing me that he is listening.

            “Your brother did something extraordinary,” Archbishop Nowak says, inflecting this last word, this un-Polish word, with his accent. “The Holy Father is grateful.”

            So Nowak knows about the exhibit. About the Orthodox.

            “Your Grace, do you know where my brother’s being held?”

            This is a more emotional question than I mean to ask. But he seems so solicitous, so invested in what I feel.

            “Yes,” Nowak says with a downturn of his eyes, acknowledging that this must be a painful subject for me.

            “Can’t you set him free? Can’t you stop the trial?”

            As we pass through the first entrance of the papal palace, the Swiss Guards stand and salute.

            “The trial has a purpose,” Nowak says. “To find the truth.”

            “But you know the truth. You know he invited Orthodox here, and you know why. The trial is just Cardinal Boia’s way of pressuring Simon for answers about the exhibit.”

            One by one we slip past the security checkpoints. The sedan never slows.

            “Father,” Nowak says quietly, “before the exhibit opens tomorrow, it is important that we know the truth about why Doctor Nogara was killed.”

            As if to underscore the importance of this question, he asks the driver to stop the car. The final branch of the palace—John Paul’s and Boia’s—is before us. We are idling in the courtyard of the Secretariat.

            “My brother didn’t kill anyone, Your Grace.”

            “You know this for certain, because you were at Castel Gandolfo?”

            “I just know my brother.”

            A pair of Swiss Guards marches up, sensing something amiss, but the driver waves them off.

            “If I could set him free from house arrest,” Archbishop Nowak says, “would you tell me the reason Doctor Nogara was killed?”