The Fifth Gospel(99)

            “I want to go home,” Peter says.

            Home. What home?

            I lift him into my lap and say, “Peter, I’m sorry.”

            He nods.

            “This is going to be a hard time,” I tell him. “But we’re going to get through it.”

            Ugo’s discovery must be part of the case against Simon. Any Orthodox priests he invited to the exhibit will be aghast and outraged, so no one stands to be more humiliated than my brother. The half-finished exhibit halls even lend themselves to the idea that Ugo was killed to stop the secret from coming out. The threats Michael and I received contain an echo of this, too.

            Tell us what Nogara was hiding.

            Strange feelings skate through me. Thoughts of Mona. Pangs of loss with no object or cause, as if the experience of losing my wife has been reattached to the dread of losing my brother.

            “Monsignor Mignatto can help us,” I say. “Let’s go find him.”

            Peter counteroffers, “Can we see Simon instead?”

            “Maybe tomorrow, Pete.”

            He rolls the soccer ball ahead of him on the cobblestone street and practices his Marseille turn, the dribbling move he imagined Simon would help him perfect. “Okay,” he says. He practices the move again and again. “Maybe tomorrow,” he repeats.

            There is a trace of disappointment in his voice. But only a trace. Life has taught this boy to string nets beneath his hopes.



* * *



            WHEN WE REACH 149, Peter pushes the button, and Mignatto buzzes us to the top floor. “You’re early, Father,” he begins. Then he sees Peter in tow, and with the slightest hitch he says, “But please. Both of you. Come in.”

            The office turns out to be a room in his small apartment. There’s no money in canon law, and men in his position often moonlight as professors at pontifical universities or editors of Church journals, finding dignity in the priestly middle class.

            The office itself is spare but handsome. The oriental carpet, though thinning, shows signs of its former elegance. Most of the atmosphere is supplied by shelves of legal texts and by Mignatto’s desk, a burl-wood table with rococo legs that may be a bona fide antique. It holds the compulsory photo of Mignatto with John Paul. Both are much younger men.

            “Is there a room where Peter could play while we talk?” I ask.

            The edges of Mignatto’s cheeks flush. “Of course,” he says.

            When he leads Peter across the hall, I realize how I’ve embarrassed him. The kitchen isn’t large enough for a table and chair, and the only other room is his bedroom. Its furnishings are stark: a crucifix over the bed, and a tiny TV on a narrow table with a single placemat.

            “May he watch the television?” Mignatto asks.

            “How many channels do you get?” Peter asks innocently.

            The monsignor hands him the remote control and says, “Only the ones that come over the antenna.”



* * *



            WHEN WE’RE ALONE IN his office, I say, “Monsignor, I was just at the museums. There’s something you need to know about Ugo’s exhibit.”

            I explain everything—the unfinished galleries and the discovery that’s about to upend the whole question of who owns the Shroud.

            “I was wrong,” I tell him. “The Secretariat can’t be trying to stop the exhibit. If anything, they’d be trying to make the show go on.”

            Darkly, Mignatto says, “Then we’ve found your brother’s motive.”