The Sixth Station(57)

And finally, I pulled out the last clipping, which, if possible, was the strangest of the lot. It was a full-page story with photos from my own newspaper.

Special to The New York Standard

By Joe Michael Dogherty

October 3, 1979

The Sermon on the Mound

Yesterday Pope John Paul II greeted the masses at Yankee Stadium and succeeded in doing what the Bombers have failed to do this year: come up number one!

To a packed house, the pope delivered a stirring message of hope, peace, and tolerance.…

The rest of the long-winded article was a gushing report about a New York event assigned to a reporter who was clearly a Catholic overwhelmed by seeing His Holiness in person.

But, what the hell? What did this have to do with anything I’d asked Dona to find for me?

I read the whole thing and found nothing of interest. Then I studied the photos, of which there were two. The faxed copy had again been reduced to fit 8½ × 11-inch paper, so again, the pictures were very tough to see.

I could barely even make out the caption, but then I saw something that would have made my hair stand up on end if it weren’t already doing so on its own.

Standing next to the pope, as he touched the crowds on a receiving line, was an ordinary priest. Odd, because every other cleric around the pontiff was a cardinal. The caption listed two cardinals—one from Boston and one from India, and then, “Father Paulo Jacobi, Istanbul, Turkey.” Could it be one and the same? I had assumed the name was spelled with a y but that had been just a guess.

This Father Jacobi looked to be in his forties, very thin. Most odd was his body language. While the cardinals and everyone around Pope John Paul II in the photos displayed submissive, adoring postures while gazing in awe at the pope, this Jacobi guy—a mere priest—stood next to him as an equal. Or a close friend.

Blessed is she who comes in the name of the news. Dona—you are one helluva reporter!

I had to laugh thinking of how she wrangled this. God knows what librarian she’d suckered into going into the basement at midnight to dig up and search through all those old files.

Just then, the plane touched down with a tough thump, bringing me back to my senses, and within seconds all the rushing passengers were hopping out of their seats before we were supposed to and grabbing their bags from the overhead compartments. Since I wasn’t sure where the hell I was supposed to go other than to try to get through immigration and, if I managed that feat, to head to the Europacar counter, I took my sweet time.

Customs was fairly easy—especially since again there was a problem that took the attention away from me. I had nothing to declare, and no one asked to look in my carry-ons, which saved me not just from myself but also from the possibility that I would again start in with the Pan Band insanity that had beset me earlier.

I was starting to think that God or someone even more powerful, someone who could play with immigration, which was even beyond God’s control in this day and age of paranoia, was watching out for me. Yes, I said “God.”

First thing I did in the airport was to go to a currency exchange—or in plain English, “money changer”—to convert my dollars into euros. The place charged so much interest it probably qualified as a sin. I kept one hundred dollars in American and converted the rest to euros at the terrible rate of exchange. No wonder Jesus wanted to beat the crap out of their predecessors at the temple.

The next thing I did was to look for the Europacar counter. I hurried along the corridors filled with high-end shops bustling with tourists fat with cash, and stopped at an Internet kiosk, sat down, and logged in to find I had three messages.

Two were from my new Internet best friend, “HotSexyViagraMale,” and one was from Edward.Gibbonsays@libero.it.

Again in Italian. What was with Dona and/or Donald anyway? Whichever one it was sure was digging the cloak and dagger, but meantime, I was in no mood for idiotic games. This was anything but a game.

It said: “Informazione importante dentro l’automobile manuale.” My Italian wasn’t that good. What a pain in the ass this was. The best I could come up with at that hour was: “Information on how to drive a manual car is”—something or other.

Like I didn’t know how to drive stick? Had to be Dona. Donald knew this about me. I had driven everything ever invented.

Europacar had my reservation, but I knew there’d be a hitch—or worse—when I handed them my license, which was under the name “Russo,” even though my passport was under “Zaluckyj.”

“I’m divorced,” I told the clerk, who happened to be dressed in a full burqa with EUROPACAR emblazoned on the head scarf and on the front of her “uniform,” while the other women at the counter were dressed in a modern miniskirted uniform. My luck.