On the floor is a red Persian rug the size of a small courtyard. The walls are gold damask. So are the doors, upholstered like jewelry-box tops to make them disappear into the walls when they close. The chairs and footstools and candelabras are gilded. Simon has told me about places in the Secretariat where the tapestries are gifts from Renaissance kings and the gold was brought back by Columbus from America. But the priest-secretary makes no effort to dazzle me with facts. He just leads me to a negotiating table in the middle of the library. He instructs me to wait at my seat, one arm’s length away from the chair at the head of the table. And then he leaves.
A moment later, a door on the far side of the room opens. And a great black form enters the room.
CHAPTER 32
WATCHING CARDINAL BOIA approach is like standing in the path of a steamroller. He fills the doorway, bullies the light out of the room. “Prepotente,” people call him: high-handed, overbearing, bullying. A man the size of two men, with the ego of three.
I rise from my chair. A cardinal always presents himself to inferiors for a bow or a kiss of his ring. I don’t want to start this conversation groveling, but it would be worse to ignore protocol.
Yet Boia doesn’t bother. He walks straight to the table, lowers a stack of papers and a tape recorder, and says, “The exhibit begins in twelve hours. If your brother wants my help, the window is closing.”
“Eminence, I won’t help you unless I can see him first.”
Boia rakes a hand through the air, waving my words away. “My offer is this. Give me what I want, and I protect your brother from prosecution. Anything less, and I see to it that he’s dismissed from the priesthood.”
I don’t know what to say. Everyone knows what kind of man Cardinal Boia is. His cousin was arrested in a tax evasion scheme in Naples. His brother, a bishop in Sicily, was sentenced to prison for enriching other relatives with Church property. Cardinal Boia himself throws his weight behind the pet projects of rich religious groups who thank him with envelopes of cash. He is the face of the old Vatican. For more than a decade he has flattened every other cardinal who cast an eye toward his job.
He puts aside the tape recorder, as if he’s decided not to make a record of what we say here. His fingers begin crawling through the stack of papers. Fat as sausage casings, they lift layer after layer of sheets until he finds what he wants. Finally he slides two folders across the table. The labels say ANDREOU, S. and BLACK, M.
Already I feel myself losing ground. Mignatto has been trying to get his hands on these two personnel files for days.
Then Boia slides a white square of paper between us. A paper sleeve containing a disc. On the front of the disc is written SECURITY CAMERA B-E-9.
I feel his eyes on me as I stare at it. He wants to see the weakness register in my face. This is the key piece of evidence that never surfaced. I’d assumed this footage from Castel Gandolfo was in the hands of Simon’s guardian angel.
“These are all copies,” he says. “The originals are on their way to the tribunal, to be entered into evidence if I don’t get what I want by the end of this meeting.”
My traction is fleeting. “I know my brother’s here,” I say. “I want to see him.”
Cardinal Boia growls, “Your brother is not here.”
In my coolest voice I say, “The Swiss Guards at the checkpoints saw his car drive into this palace. I know he’s here.”
Boia barks a word. I barely recognize it as a name: Testa. Instantly his priest-secretary appears at the door.
“Father Andreou wants to see his brother,” Boia commands.
The monsignor hesitates. “But Eminence . . .”
“Show him. Now.”