“No,” Lucio croaks.
“Are you sure?”
My uncle raises a hand in the air and jabs an accusing finger. His voice tightens. Suddenly I understand that everything is not as clear as I imagined.
“If he did kill him,” Lucio seethes, “it was for you.”
Behind me, Mignatto makes a sound of disbelief.
Nowak is as calm as a priest hearing confession. “To hide what No-gara discovered?”
Lucio is so gripped with emotion, he can’t find the words to answer.
“Please,” Nowak says, “tell me about the Shroud.”
Lucio shakes his head. “Not until my nephew is free and these charges are dropped.”
“Eminence, you know that is impossible. The Holy Father needs to know the truth.”
“The truth? ” Lucio roars, raising his hands. “You swear my drivers to secrecy. You forbid testimony. You let swaths of evidence be suppressed. That is a search for truth?”
Stolidly, Nowak says, “Without these precautions, tonight’s exhibit would have been impossible. You know the difficult situation we find ourselves in.”
“Because of the Orthodox you invited here!”
For the first time, a ripple of anxiety crosses Archbishop Nowak’s features. “This is the Holy Father’s dying wish. His intentions are the very best.”
Lucio lowers his voice almost to a growl. It is a cold, threatening sound I’ve never heard come out of him before. “If Simon killed that man—if he did—then it’s because, at every turn, you told him to keep his work secret. You silenced everyone who found out about Nogara’s exhibit. And now you act as if you can’t see your own reflection in this, when he’s accused of doing only what he saw you do, and what you trained him to believe you wanted.”
Lucio collects himself. He looks stronger. He will do anything, even destroy his own career, for Simon. Never in my life have I felt so grateful to him.
“Now,” Lucio says to Nowak, “I offer you a choice. Free my nephew and dismiss the charges, and I will privately tell you what you want to know. But if you continue to treat him as a criminal, then it will be war between us. The secret you don’t want anyone to know, I will put on the front page of every newspaper in Rome. I will stand in front of the Orthodox tonight and tell them everything. I will punish you for punishing him.”
The silence now is unlike any other. No man in this room can remember someone ever speaking this way to a pope or his representative. No man, except me. It is how the Orthodox spoke to John Paul when he visited Greece. The fury that John Paul accepted and shouldered as his own burden. As I wait for Archbishop Nowak to say something, I pray he has the same wisdom as his master.
His Grace stands. His right arm stretches forward, hand hovering in the air. His voice doesn’t rise or falter. But in his sad, dark eyes is something new. Something I don’t recognize.
“By the authority of the Holy Father,” Nowak says, “I end this deposition. I suspend the trial of Father Andreou. And I transfer this matter to the adjudication of the Holy Father.”
He bows to the judges on the bench. “The tribunal is thanked for its efforts. This court is now dismissed.”
CHAPTER 36
THE AIR TIGHTENS around me. Every sound in the room is choked to silence. The judges rise. They mill around, then drift ghostlike out of the courtroom. The notary stands and then sits again, pecks at his keyboard, seeming to await further orders. After staring at Mignatto in disbelief, the promoter of justice packs his briefcase. At last the gendarmes instruct everyone, by order of the Holy Father, to leave.