The Fifth Gospel(55)

            I think of the photograph from Ugo’s apartment. “I understand. I just want to keep my son safe.”

            He lowers his voice and drops a long breath into the receiver. “Hard to believe you got a kid of your own. You were seven when I started working with your father.”

            Not with, I think. For. But there’s something touching about the way he says it. When my father took him home for the first time, to introduce him to the rest of us, Michael brought a gift for me, a Bible embossed with my name. He thought, mistakenly, that Greek Catholics celebrated first communion   at age seven, as Romans do.

            “You name him after your dad?” he asks.

            “No, after Simon.”

            This strangles the warmth out of him. The conversation turns.

            “Well, down to business,” he says. “What I wanted to tell you is, I met that curator. The one who was killed.”

            I’m caught off guard. “Ugo?”

            “He came to visit your brother at the nunciature. I only talked to him once or twice, but the people who broke my nose thought I knew him. They threatened me. They wanted to know what he was working on.”

            “That’s . . . impossible.”

            The silence bristles, as if he mistakes this for skepticism.

            I ask, “What did they say to you?”

            “That he was working on an exhibit about the Holy Shroud. Is that true?”

            “It is.”

            Michael goes quiet. Maybe he’s surprised to hear that the Shroud really has been resurrected after so many years. Or maybe, like anyone reading the newspapers this summer, he imagined Ugo’s exhibit was on the Diatessaron.

            “What did they say about it?” I ask.

            “That Nogara was hiding something he found, and they wanted to know what it was.”

            “He wasn’t hiding anything. What did you tell them?”

            “To ask your brother. He was the one who would know.”

            My teeth are clenched. “You told them about Simon?”

            “He and Nogara were thick as thieves.”

            “Michael, I worked with Ugo myself. Simon doesn’t know anything. Who were the people who did this to you?”

            “Priests.”

            “Priests? ”

            It never seriously entered my mind that a cleric could’ve done this.

            “Romans,” he says, “not beards. Since I’m sure that’ll be your next question. They must’ve followed me from the nunciature.”

            Everything is slipping through my fingers. The motive I’ve been trying to piece together. The logic of what happened at Castel Gandolfo. Even in Rome, almost no one knew what Ugo was planning. I don’t know how this could’ve begun among priests one thousand miles away.

            “Did they catch anyone?” I ask.

            “The Secretariat did some kind of investigation, but it went nowhere.”

            I’d assumed the break-in and murder were committed by the same person, if they were related at all. Now I wonder if two or more people were working in coordination. The facts even hint at this, since so little time elapsed between the attacks.

            “How could they have known where to find you?” I ask.