The Fifth Gospel(73)
I close my eyes. The papal palace is a heap of smaller palaces built one on top of another by successive popes centuries ago. The Palace of Pope Nicholas III is its nucleus, more than seven hundred years old. It contains the most powerful organism in the Holy See. The Secretariat of State.
My stomach churns. The Secretariat is faceless. Its men come and go. They are recruited, sent abroad, replaced. There’s only one way to know whose phone this is.
When I dial the number, the line rings and rings. Finally an answering machine picks up. But there’s no voice. No message. Just silence, followed by a beep.
I haven’t prepared anything to say. But it comes out.
“Whatever you want from me, I don’t have it. I don’t know anything. Nogara never told me any secret. Please. Leave me and my son alone.”
I hesitate, then hang up. In the adjacent room, through the crack in the door, I see Peter playing a game on Diego’s computer. Fishing. I watch him cast his line and wait. Cast his line and wait.
* * *
THE AFTERNOON FADES AWAY. From the windows of the penthouse I can see everything that happens in this country. Anyone coming from any direction will be visible; nothing can take us by surprise. This helps the panic to drain, replacing it with weary vigilance. Diego finds a deck of cards and introduces Peter to scopa, the game I played with Mona in the hospital after he was born. It’s just past six when Lucio and Simon return from the exhibit. My uncle immediately demands to know what happened, why Peter and I no longer have our security escort. Rather than belabor everything in front of Peter, I let the topic go. The nuns have finished preparing dinner and setting the places, so with a sense of expedition I don’t quite understand, we all sit down to eat. Lucio begins the blessing from the head of the table. We all say it together, four priests and a boy. To the extent that we’ve ever felt like a normal family, we feel like one now.
After dinner comes a lull. Peter watches the evening news with Diego. I find the Vatican yearbook. Almost thirteen hundred pages go by before I find a page titled VICARIATE OF THE VATICAN CITY-STATE—the special administrative unit devoted to our tiny country. The name of the judicial vicar will be here.
To my surprise, the post is empty. All decisions are made by our vicar general, a cardinal named Galuppo. And the first words of Cardinal Galuppo’s profile ring alarm bells.
Born in the archdiocese of Turin.
The man controlling Ugo’s trial is from the Shroud’s city. I wonder if this can possibly be a coincidence. The other Turin cardinal I know of is Simon’s boss, the Cardinal Secretary of State, and he, too, is touched by the shadow of Ugo’s death: the phone number on the back of the photo I was sent at the Casa rings a Secretariat phone, and Michael said he suspected Secretariat priests beat him up.
Hometown networks are important in this city, and cardinals are their hubs. John Paul couldn’t have removed the Shroud from its chapel without the knowledge of Cardinal Poletto, the archbishop of Turin, and I imagine the first men Poletto might’ve contacted were his fellow cardinals from the archdiocese.
I wonder if Ugo’s death can really boil down to something so petty. The feelings of a few powerful men about the transfer of a relic from their birth city. As the sun sets, the trees below are black with roosting birds and loud with their evening chatter. At half past seven the telephone rings. I hear Diego say, “Send him up.”
Lucio emerges from his bedroom looking grim. He shuffles forward on his four-legged cane as the nuns bring a pitcher of iced water to a table in the next room, then make themselves scarce.
A sharp knock comes at the door. Diego steps forward to answer it, and I see Simon close his eyes and breathe.
The man who enters is an old Roman priest I don’t recognize.
“Monsignor,” Diego says, “please come in.”