The Fifth Gospel(53)

            “You know what?” I say. “Forget it. Enjoy your vacation.”

            I’m about to hang up when he shouts, “You asshole, my nuncio ran me up the pole for not being able to answer his questions. I don’t need it from you, too. If you want to know what happened, go ask the Holy Father.”

            I falter. “The Holy Father?”

            “That’s right. He’s the one who ordered it.”

            I’m caught by surprise. So that’s why Simon can’t tell me. There are oaths, and then there are oaths.

            But an uncomfortable feeling scrapes at me. John Paul would have no reason to silence something like this.

            “Michael, I—”

            Before I can speak another word, though, the line goes dead.



* * *



            THE KNOCK COMES A moment later. Standing at the door is Leo, bearing a basket of food.

            “Who’s the stiff ?” he murmurs, stepping inside. He nods in the direction of Agent Martelli, who hovers a few feet beside the door.

            “The security detail my uncle got us.”

            Leo wants to say something disparaging—the Swiss Guards and gendarmes are old rivals—but he holds his tongue. Instead he lifts a ceramic dish from the basket and says, “From the wife.”

            I thought he would pick up food from downstairs. Instead, Sofia has cooked us a meal.

            “How’s Little P holding up?” he asks.

            “Scared.”

            “Still? I thought kids were supposed to rebound fast.”

            Fatherhood has many surprises in store for him.

            I enter the bedroom with Peter’s food, only to find he has fallen asleep. I close the wooden shutters to dim the room almost to black. Though the autumn afternoon is warm, I pull the counterpane over him.

            “Come on,” Leo whispers, handing me a plate of food. “Let’s talk.”

            But just as we sit down, my mobile phone begins to ring. The voice on the other end is gruff.

            “Alex, it’s Michael again. I’ve been thinking about what you said.”

            He sounds different. More on edge.

            “I didn’t know you had a kid,” he goes on. “There are some things you deserve to hear.”

            “Then tell me.”

            “Go to the pay phone outside the walls, near the train station.”

            “We’re safe. This is my mobile.”

            There is rampant fear in our country of talking on bugged lines. Some Secretariat men won’t use phones at all, except to set up face-to-face meetings.

            “I don’t trust your idea of safe,” he says. “Go to the phone on Via della Stazione Vaticana. It’s near the billboard by the service station. I’ll call you there in twenty minutes.”

            The place he is describing is almost immediately behind the Casa. I could be there in five. I turn to Leo and mouth, Can you stay with Peter for a few minutes?

            When he nods, I say, “Fine. I’ll be waiting.”



* * *



            THE SERVICE STATION IS a dump with spray-painted walls and metal grates behind its porthole windows. On the billboard, a woman with football-size breasts advertises phone service. The dumpster across the street gapes at her with a half-open lid. From here I can make out the rear of the Casa over the Vatican walls, and towering above it, the dome of Saint Peter’s. What catches my eye, though, are the train tracks in the distance.