Blood Symbols

by Izak Botha

  ‘Maggiore!’

  Santori took a deep breath. He had to calm himself. He walked to the entrance of his suite, unlocked the door and twisted the knob.

  *****

  Father Berti Franco clutched his heart.

  ‘Oh Jesus, you are hurt,’ he yelped.

  He tried to come to his superior’s aid, but his legs would not obey him. Commanding punishment and reform in the Holy Roman Church and prosecuting the wicked to eradicate sin had made Cardinal Santori the most feared man in the entire Holy See. Through the sacrament of penance, he had afforded sinners absolution. Those who would not atone he excommunicated. With his thinning, grey hair cut close to the scalp, his brawny stance and his feared position as Major Penitentiary, he had earned the reputation of Vatican gladiator. For Franco, seeing the older priest distressed and covered in blood intensified the image.

  ‘Summon His Eminence Cardinal Cardoni,’ Santori snapped. ‘It’s urgent.’

  Franco could not focus. He clasped his hands tightly to his chest and stood staring, motionless.

  ‘Did you hear what I said, Father? Get the cardinal and no one else. Just him!’

  ‘Your Eminence ...’

  Santori’s eyes flashed. ‘Tell him. He must come at once.’

  Franco’s commitment to God stemmed from obedience, not bravery. He had to do as he was told. He lifted the receiver from the phone on his desk. ‘Should I call security? They’ll know what to do.’

  ‘Get it together, Father,’ Santori growled. ‘Let no one in here other than His Eminence the Cardinal, and I mean no one unless it is the Holy Father himself.’

  Franco’s trembling fingers fumbled repeatedly as he dialed the library offices.

  Santori turned towards his own office, yelling as he closed the door, ‘No one.’

  Father Franco stood rooted to the ground, frozen.

  Chapter 4

  ‘God punishes instantly.’

  Jennifer’s mother had warned her every time her rebellious nature surfaced.

  Her mother was right.

  Jennifer had blundered, and now she felt foolish. In her zeal, she had forgotten the ethics of her upbringing. Her mother was probably apologizing to Saint Peter right now. Had her mother been alive, she would have been deeply shamed by her daughter’s dishonesty. It seemed only yesterday Jennifer had stood beside her mother’s deathbed. The doctors had summoned her urgently. Fragile and weak, drawn and pale, her mother had lain crumpled, one hand hooked to an IV, the other tethered to a heart monitor. This was her mother dying in intensive care.

  Jennifer remembered holding one of her mother’s hands in hers. ‘Momma, don’t go,’ she had sobbed softly. ‘I love you so much. Please don’t.’

  Her mother had squeezed her hand lightly. ‘God sometimes takes one person before the other, that’s all. … We don’t know why He does it. … My time has simply come before yours and Daddy’s. … Look after your father for me. … He needs you. …’ There was a long pause, and her voice became fainter. ‘I’m sorry I won’t be there for you when you’re older. … One day you will find a beautiful husband as I did. … I so hoped to be there for your children. …’ She had struggled to keep her eyes open, but at the last they fluttered shut. ‘Send me photos as they grow up. … I’d like that. … I’ll ask God to forward them. … I love you more than words ...’

  And that was the last her mother said; although Jennifer remembered pressing her forehead to her mother’s hand and praying as she had never prayed, the older woman’s eyes remained closed never to open again. She had desperately needed her mother to squeeze her hand just one last time, but there had been no miracles that day.

  Jennifer’s father had let her have her mother’s last few moments. Afterwards, he had held his daughter close for some time. When the nursing staff arrived to care for the body, they were asked to leave.

  Jennifer had not been to a funeral before. She hated every minute of it. If it were anyone else, she would not have gone. Despite what her mother had raised her to believe, death seemed so damn permanent. She was impatient for the ritual to end so she could escape to the ocean. She had needed to be alone awhile but, instead, had spent time with her dad. For someone who had just lost his wife, he seemed calm, and Jennifer never saw him get emotional after that day, nor did she ever see him look at another woman. It seemed he had decided no one could take her mother’s place. Her parents had had such a beautiful marriage that perhaps a memory of perfection seemed preferable in her father’s eyes to any possible future with another.

  Jennifer had wept for days on end. Watching her mother die had been horrible. Her passing had brought so much pain—pain that still lingered even now in Jennifer’s soul. She had experienced a similar, but less intense, pain nearly a year ago when she stopped working on her doctorate. Her fear of failure had caused this feeling. Failure had felt so permanent—like death. She had not expected failure to evoke such strong emotions. It had taken months to figure out why she had felt that way. Now, however, she knew; somehow, she had not learned how to fail. Her temperament did not permit failure, so losing her mother and dropping out had the same effect.

  Now, that feeling of despair had returned. Cardoni’s rebuff in the middle of their interview had been yet another failure. The pain throbbed in her chest and inconsolable grief began choking her. At that moment, she hated life. She was stranded a continent away from home, with no career, no money, no return plane ticket to her home country—and, at this point, not even her religion. She stood facing the exit through which Cardoni had fled.

  ‘I can’t fail,’ she whispered. She wiped her tears again, then began praying: ‘God, I’m sorry. I know I lied. I was dishonest. Please forgive me.’

  ‘You can freshen up before you go, Miss Jaine.’

  The voice was Albani’s. Having released her shoulders, the bishop now stood beside her. When she nodded, he pointed her towards the lobby. She followed his directions, closed the restroom door and stopped before one of the sinks, staring at herself in the mirror; her eyes were inflamed, her makeup smudged. In a word, she was a mess. She wondered how she had managed to regress to such a pathetic state. She lifted a towel from a pile beside the sink. Dampening it with cold water, she considered her next move. As she wiped away the smudged mascara, she told herself this was no way to act. She needed to calm down—needed, really, to settle down. Already in her thirties, she had nothing to show for her life. She had not even finished her PhD. Nor did she have any means of income. She had, in desperation, spent everything on her trip to Rome, telling her more practical side that perhaps it would lead to her ‘big break’. Now, what could she do? Slum around Europe? Work at Starbuck’s? She certainly could not rely on her father helping her out all the time. She was not twenty. No, she had to complete this, whatever it took. That, at the very least, was clear. Her eyes flashed a clear steely hue. She would be a damned woman if need be. She would suck Cardoni’s shriveled old balls if that was what it took to see the codex. She would never have another chance. That was about the sum of it. Even if she died in the process, it was preferable to a failed mission—and the answer lay only a couple of hundred feet away in the Secret Archives.

  Jennifer returned to Sisto V, where Albani stood talking to one of the staff with his back turned to her. She still had to fetch her notes in the meeting room. Treading softly, she crept past Albani’s desk and down the corridor. As she lifted her notes from the table, however, she spotted something: a set of keys lay on the floor near Cardoni’s chair. He must have dropped them in his rage and left without noticing them. She picked them up to give to Albani, then stopped. The key ring had an RFID-enabled card dangling from it. His security card?

  She looked around the doorjamb; Albani’s back was still turned towards the corridor. Without a second thought, she slipped the keys into her jacket pocket, and again nearing Albani, glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. The staff, however, seemed too busy—indeed, frantic—with some other task. Then som
ething inside her, a voice not unlike her mother’s, urged: ‘Go. Go find the codex.’

  For Heaven’s sake, what could they do to her if she did? They could hardly burn her at the stake!

  Ignoring the additional trouble which she was about to bring on herself, she slipped past Albani and headed for the staircase. She slowed her pace, hoping to avoid drawing attention to herself. The Sisto V reading rooms contained only bibliographical aids, dictionaries and encyclopedias. There was no chance of finding the Vaticanus there. The Noble Floor above housed the Holy See’s diplomatic correspondences. The Leone XIII reading room was full of documentary material and indices. They would not keep something as significant as their oldest copy of the Bible there either. However, Pio XI, where she had registered with Father Romano earlier, distributed material from the double-story bunker beneath the Cortile della Pigna. Ancient manuscripts would be kept in the bunker—probably a dedicated, air-conditioned, video-monitored, climate- and humidity-controlled and with an alarm system to boot. If it existed at all, the Vaticanus would be in such a place, and she would not get through too many doors before they figured out that she had Cardoni’s key card, so the Pio XI bunker was her best and probably only bet.

  Slipping back down the stairs again, she returned to Pio XI and cut across one of the aisles to the opposite side of the room. Fortunately, the archives had now filled with several researchers, some of them female. Her presence was no longer out-of-place, and emboldened by newfound anonymity, she pressed on. At the end of Pio XI, she slid through a doorway marked, ‘Staff Only’, then pausing in the adjacent foyer, contemplated her next move. A doorway to her left led to the library offices. On her right, a staircase led to the floor above. Recalling the maps, which she had pored over prior to her trip, she realized the hallway ahead of her could only lead to the Pio IV museums. Then, a ping echoed down the recess to her left, followed by the sound of elevator doors opening. She hurried towards the museum entrance and, approaching the doorway, peeked around the corner.

  She drew back. A priest had pushed a trolley laden with documents from the lift and seemed to head for the Pio XI reading room. When she could no longer hear the trolley wheels trundling across the marble floor, she again peeked around the corner.

  Nobody.

  The lift could only go to one place—the bunker. Slipping back into the foyer again, she headed for the lift. She looked for a switch, a button, anything familiar, but saw nothing. Then she spotted a black magnetic-strip scanner set flush into the wall. She plucked Cardoni’s keys from her pocket and, her hand shaking, swiped its back face past the dancing, red laser light. As the elevator’s doors whirred opened, she considered thanking God, but her conscience would not let her. It was only a few minutes ago that she had pledged to pull her life together and, no matter what, to stop lying. To hell with all of it: she was not leaving empty-handed; she had to see the Vaticanus first.

  As the elevator’s doors clanged to a stop a fluorescent light in its ceiling clicked on, revealing another trolley piled with manuscripts. The priest must have left it. He would be back for it once he had made his first delivery. She would have to be fast. Before closing the doors, she thought of pushing the trolley out. At least that way the priest would think someone else had needed to use the lift. Just as she began pushing the trolley forwards, the priest returned from the reading room.

  ‘Hold up!’ he called out.

  She needed the doors closed, but she had already shoved the trolley too far. The doors knocked against the trolley and opened again.

  The priest sprinted towards her. ‘Excuse me, miss, can you hold that for me please.’

  Jennifer instinctively stepped back against the elevator wall. She pulled the trolley back inside just in time to clear the doors and prevent the priest from jamming the doors with his hand. She saw him go for his ID card as the two doors were about to meet. Her heart pounded as she saw them open again.

  ‘I have another trolley waiting downstairs,’ the priest said, waiting for the doors to open. Pushing the trolley aside, he stood next to Jennifer. ‘Since you’re already going down, I might as well get it.’

  As the lift began its descent, she pushed Cardoni’s keys up her sleeve. The priest must not see the cardinal’s security card. Then she saw her reflection on the polished wall opposite her. The card clipped to her breast pocket clearly read ‘Visitor’. How would she explain that?

  ‘Didn’t I see you with Monsignor earlier?’ he asked turning towards her.

  She locked eyes, hoping to discomfort him. ‘I’m helping out at the Capitoline Museum.’ That was feeble, she knew, but her mind was racing and the Lux in Arcana was the only thing she could think of under the circumstances. Her assertiveness must have worked though, because he withdrew his gaze to stare at the opposite wall. But that was where she had just seen her own reflection. To recapture his attention, she continued with her trivial chitchatting. Only this time she spoke flirtatiously: ‘Have you been? It’s quite inspirational. You should come.’

  His gaze returned. ‘Priests aren’t allowed,’ he said, smiling. ‘There are just too many of us. I think you have to work there to have the privilege.’

  His height, fortunately, made her card difficult to read without looking down again. Arriving at the first basement level the priest held the door for her, but she stayed put. ‘I’m going down,’ she said hastily.

  ‘I’ll wait for the lift to come back up again. I don’t think there’ll be enough room for the both of us and the trolleys.’

  ‘I don’t mind being squashed a bit.’ She nearly pinched herself. What was she saying? What if he changed his mind!

  ‘You’re very kind, Miss ...’

  ‘Jaine. ... Jennifer. Just call me Jennifer. I’m sure we’ll see more of each other from now on.’

  The priest let go of the door. Not understanding quite what she had meant, he stared, almost blankly. The doors were about to meet when his gaze fell on her card. The wrinkles in his forehead deepened and he reached forward.

  ‘Excuse me, Miss ...’

  Jennifer heard his nails scratching against the stainless-steel surface and his knuckles crack as they buckled against the closed doors.

  Descending again, she tried to breathe deeply, but her diaphragm’s involuntary reflexes made her gasp in short bursts. She rested her head against the back wall. Closing her eyes, she listened to the sound of the electric motor lowering her down the shaft. ‘I must be crazy,’ she thought. The priest would alert the entire library before the elevator doors reopened, and the staff would catch her as she stepped out. And then what? If, and only if, no one was already in the bunker, would she have the smallest window of opportunity to find the codex. She prayed for that if as she had prayed for her mother—and, for crying out loud, there she was praying again!

  Chapter 5

  Gendarmerie sub-officer, Adjutant Arno Lioni, always reported for duty at seven o’clock. After relieving the night duty officer, he would deploy men at strategic points around the city. Before returning to the command center behind la Porta Sant’ Anna, he would check in at the Governatorato sub-station behind Saint Peter’s Basilica. There he would make sure the officers on duty were ready for the Holy Pontiff’s morning walk. Each morning, at around ten o’clock, the Holy Father enjoyed half an hour’s exercise and leisure in the gardens around the Radio Vaticano.

  Lioni had just entered the Belvedere Courtyard from the archway on the west wing, when the command radio operator called him over his two-way.

  ‘Adjutant Lioni, this is Command. State your location.’

  Lioni unclipped the two-way from his belt and lifted it to his mouth: ‘Just arrived at the Belvedere. Is there a problem? Over.’

  ‘We have a situation at the Penitentiary. Can you investigate?’

  Lioni wasted no time. He changed direction and headed for the entrance on the far-left corner of the courtyard. ‘I’m on my way. Over.’

  ‘Do you have backup?’

  �
��Do I need any? Over.’

  ‘We have a possible intrusion. Screams were heard.’

  Lioni shifted gears. In seconds, his brisk walk accelerated to a sprint. Cutting between parked cars, he waved on the several Swiss guards by the fire station. ‘On the double,’ he called out. By the time he reached the entrance to the library, one Helvetian had managed to join him. ‘I have the Swiss Guard with me,’ he said, the two-way pressed to his lips.

  His breath now shortened by his strides, Lioni leapt up the terrace steps. His navy police uniform made sprinting easier for him than it was for the Helvetians with their puffed blue, orange and red Renaissance attire, and certainly running with a holstered handgun was easier than humping a halberd and sword. At the arcade separating the library offices from the Penitentiary, a perplexed priest pointed them towards Father Franco’s reception desk. His hand on his sidearm, Lioni greeted Franco as he headed towards Santori’s office door.

  Franco returned the telephone receiver to its cradle and slipped clumsily around his desk. ‘You can’t go in there,’ he said, his hand up like a traffic cop.

  Father Franco knew Lioni well. Their paths had crossed several years back. As a boy in his early teens, Lioni had been a member of Franco’s parish. At the time, Lioni had been something of a terror. Hanging out with a pack of pubescent miscreants, he was frequently caught up in street violence, especially after football games. Despite Lioni’s unfortunate circumstances, Franco liked the boy. Just before he relocated to the Vatican, he had encouraged Lioni to become a police officer. ‘If you can’t beat ’em …’ he remembered saying to the youngster. The adjutant had not grown taller in the intervening years. He still stood two-inches shy of six feet, but he had become far more muscular. Indeed, his pugnacious stance, bulging jaw muscles and thick neck reminded Franco of a bullterrier.