by Alex Thomas
6
12. October 12, 1984, Chicago, Catholic Primary School for the Gifted
The first time Catherine ever entered the Institute was a rainy, grey and dark October day. A cold storm blew from the North and whipped the rain across the forests. It rumbled and flashed streaks of lightning as if the Institute rested near the gates of Hell. The building was nothing Catherine had ever seen before either on the telly or in books. The tower, that was still under construction, rested atop a hill and stood at the centre of the property. It looked like a gigantic wagging index finger giving warning to the city below. The black limousine with which Father Darius picked her up from school took an entire fifteen minutes to move from the entrance gate to the tower and its surrounding buildings.
"No worries," said the priest as if he could read her mind. "You will meet quite a few very interesting people here. You will certainly make friends. If it becomes too much for you, simply give me the word and I’ll bring you back home."
Catherine nodded in relief as her quickening pulse slowly returned to normal. She could tell by seeing his thoughts that he meant what he said. Darius showed her the premises – or at least the weather-proof part. She then explored the living quarters, which were surprisingly bright, airy and comfortable. Thereafter she went to the study room, the canteen, the gymnasium, the swimming pool, the library and much more. They all seemed filled with scampering, happy children.
Catherine had just started to warm up a bit to the new environment when Darius showed her the building complex that he called the spiritual area. Despite the impressive winter garden and covered courtyard, she didn’t like this area at all. It felt like a combination of renovated monastery, train station waiting room and medical laboratory. No, she wouldn’t stay here for a single day.
They then turned the next corner and Catherine saw the gallery for the first time…dozens, hundreds, thousands of pictures. They were photographs of people, animals and plants. But the pictures didn’t show the actual subjects themselves, but rather their – thoughts!
Father Darius walked up next to her and laid a friendly hand upon her shoulder.
"In this department we ask ourselves: ‘do we recognise the world as it truly is?’ We differentiate between superhuman and supernatural. The gallery’s name is Corona."
Corona. Catherine stared at the photos as if she were hypnotised as one of the doors opened and a woman in a white lab coat walked along the corridor with a young boy. The schoolgirl thought there was something vulnerable about the boy. She had seen his face somewhere.
Father Darius beckoned to him. "Ben! – Ben, come here. There is someone I’d like you to meet."
The boy came hesitantly closer and stopped before the girl and Darius.
"Ben, this is Catherine. Catherine, this is Ben."
"Nice to meet you, Ben." Catherine extended her hand.
Ben simply stared at her until Darius finally gave him a shoulder slap and said with a grin: "She may look like an angel with her blonde hair and sky-blue eyes, but believe me, she can be quite the devil."
The girl realised something else in that moment. "You are the boy with the cross on his back."
Ben nodded without saying a word. He was standing in front of the girl who had saved his life.
7
Present-Day, Upper Bavaria, Mountain above Abbey Rottach
The rain had relented somewhat, but not the wind that continuously swept across Ben’s face. The weather seemed to have no effect on his companion, Brother Andreas. The monk stomped along before him as if he had been accustomed to this type of weather since he was a child.
Ben glanced back at the abbey that appeared to him more like a threat than a work of beauty. How many years had Darius had lived here? Three? If the investigator really thought about it, he couldn’t image that his mentor had wanted to spend the rest of his life here. Far away from any type of academic research, the Vatican and Rome. Was there a reason for his retreating to this place? Is that why Ciban surmised that Darius’ death was no accident?
"We found Brother Darius over there." Andreas pointed to a broader rock spur far below the summit. "He lay exactly here amongst the rubble. If it weren’t for the crows, I wouldn’t have even seen him."
Ben carefully climbed to the location where the body was found to take a closer look. It was improbable that he would find a trace after all the rain, but he might find a clue after viewing the location as to whether the priest had died by accident or if it was murder. After closely examining the location and point of contact where he fell, he looked up toward the place from which Darius allegedly had fallen. Slightly above that place was another rock spur. Ben stared at it for nearly a minute.
How high could the crash site be above this other rock spur? Fifty or sixty metres? Ben was certain if it had been an accident that Darius could have never fallen past that point without hitting this rock spur.
The sun broke through the cloud coverage and Ben felt as if he saw the first ray of sun after weeks of rain. Oh God! He was simply no longer used to such inhospitable weather.
Andreas and he climbed further up the mountain, stomping through mud and rubble to the summit just as an impressive view emerged from the sky. A large white cross with an equally impressive concrete pedestal as its base. Ben estimated the entire thing to be fifteen metres high.
"Brother Darius meditated here often," explained Andreas with a touch of reverent nostalgia. "I think he never quite felt comfortable amongst other people."
Ben said nothing. He knew the monk couldn't be more wrong. Darius had loved people, even the bad ones. He had been through hell and back for more than his share of them. Including for Catherine and himself. In the end, every gift had its price.
He carefully approached the place where the crash site must have been, peered over the valley and then up to the cloud coverage. For a moment he had the feeling he was floating away. He began to understand why the priest found this place high above the world to be so fascinating.
"Be careful," warned Andreas. "Brother Darius was an experienced hiker – and now..." The monk stopped himself.
But that’s just it, thought Ben, without telling his companion. Darius was healthy and fit. He was an experienced hiker and climber – and now he was dead. It made no sense at all.
He walked to a safe point on the edge and peered directly into the abyss, all the while thanking God that he wasn’t afraid of heights.
The first rock spur really did cover the view of the second one. Ben took a thick, heavy and stubby branch he had brought with him from far below and tossed it into the abyss. After an impressive areal dance through the sky, the branch landed on the next rock spur. Ben was now convinced that Darius had not simply slipped from the edge of the rocks. If that had been the case, he would have landed on the first rock spur and most likely would have survived the fall.
But his mentor had landed on the second rock spur, a deadly fall that had only one explanation: someone much larger and stronger than the old priest had grabbed him and tossed him well beyond the first rock spur.
8
Present-Day Rome, Apostolic Palace
On some days His Holiness Leo XIV wanted to tell the apostolic constitution and all living cardinals of the Roman Curia to go to hell. On others he wished, with all due humility and respect toward the true believers and upstanding doubters, that he had rejected the elected office as Pontifex maximus, the representative of Jesus Christ on Earth as the head of the Catholic Church.
But he hadn’t. He had stood in the Sistine Chapel beneath Michelangelo’s ceiling frescos and had answered the Camerlengo’s question with "Yes, I accept the conclave’s decision," just as one of his closest friends had predicted.
Leo naturally sensed what his conservative predecessor Pope Innocence had meant during their rare visits to the Vatican palace as he spoke of the impotence of power and the nightmarish helplessness he had experienced. It was only after he took on the position as Pope behind the Vatican
walls that he remembered the wise saying that there is a clear difference between believing you know something and actually knowing it. The past Popes had left behind a heavy legacy. Leo was the head of an enormous bureaucracy that called on God and the truth, but whose sincerity only seemed to be a pesky detail to most of his brothers.
Leo lifted himself from the pew and bowed before the cross. The traditional morning reflection, Mass, praising God and the first hour of prayer had never lost their spiritual meaning for him. He enjoyed using the early hours of the morning to think and meditate. He left the little private chapel, went to his bedroom and glanced at the latest report from his security chief and Grand Inquisitor Cardinal Ciban. As always his report was short and to the point, wasted no time and simply stated that the ongoing investigations in the multiple murder case were at a standstill, which meant that His Holiness was the only one who could change the situation.
Leo knew it. Ciban never minced matters. Ever. Not even with the Pope Himself. Leo took a deep breath. Should Father Darius truly have been assassinated, that would mean they were now dealing with three murders. They thought the first one was an accident. Sister Isabella Rodik from Koblenz, a skilled driver, lost control of her VW Beetle whilst on a tour through the Swiss Alps and fell hundreds of metres to her death. Three months later, Father Sylvester André, a long-distance swimmer, was washed ashore off the cost of Southwestern France on the Cote d’Argent, dead. Both nun and priest had belonged to a secret society: the Congregation of His Holiness.
Leo was taken aback by Cardinal Ciban’s question as to whether the dead were two of his council members. On the one hand he had sensed his slacking mental capacity for some time now. On the other he had suppressed the feeling and had continued working as if nothing were wrong. But now, in retrospect, he knew why it had been so difficult in the past few months to absorb and manage all the information that had collected on his desk in various languages. It was hard to make decisions. Two of his mental supporters were dead! And now Father Darius…
At the same time, Leo kept asking himself how Ciban could make the connection so quickly between these two simple religious people and the secret congregation. Neither Sister Isabella’s nor Father Sylvester’s profile contained a single clue about their extraordinary personalities. Although the secret was passed down from Grand Inquisitor to Grand Inquisitor, the identities of the papal congregation were only known to the community and to the head of the Church itself.
Just as his predecessors had done, Leo made a sacral oath to never reveal the anonymous members of the congregation. That is, unless one of the members was dead. The oath was an essential part of the contract. Several dark chapters in the Church’s history told of what could happen if the covenant were broken. Then the highest of all heavens would no longer be godly light, but rather enshrouded in a penetrating darkness.
The first thing Cardinal Ciban asked for were the names as he connected the deaths of Sister Isabella and Father Sylvester with the secret society. "Holiness, I desperately need the names and locations of the living if I am to prevent further murders. The names of the dead are useless!"
"Sorry, Marc, but the names of the dead are the only thing I can give you."
Leo refused to pass along any information. It was one of the hardest tests. As much as he would have liked to help the man, he simply could not. But Ciban wouldn’t be Ciban if he had given up that easily. In the midst of their hapless conversation Leo had yet another dizzy spell. He would never forget the look on the face of the otherwise stoic cardinal as he forbade him to call the doctor.
A half-day later the news of Darius’ death arrived. Ciban had immediately sent one of his best employees to Rottach, an abbey in Southern Germany. The young American with Irish lineage went by the name of Benjamin Hawlett.
Leo now awaited the result of his investigations.
He sighed, took Ciban’s report and stored it in a small wall safe. He left his bedroom and headed to the nearby dining room. Typically, Leo would have breakfast with both of his secretaries, Corrado Massini and Karl Ritter, who was presently spending his holiday in Scotland. On Sundays, he would eat breakfast with some of the nuns who served in the papal household day in and day out. Today the large dining room table sported two further settings for Marc Abott Cardinal Ciban and Monsignor Ben Hawlett. But Hawlett had not yet returned from Germany. As the Pope entered the room, Ciban stood at the other end of the table and read an article in the International Herald Tribune, one of the local and international morning papers to which Leo had subscribed to remain informed about the happenings in the media. The article seemed to preoccupy the Cardinal. Massini interrupted his chat with one of the nuns and greeted the Pope. Ciban carefully placed the paper back with the others, greeted the Pope as well and joined Leo at the table. They bowed their heads in prayer until one of the sisters entered the room with tea and coffee.
"I hope you had a pleasant night, Holiness." The cardinal’s voice revealed no scorn or ridicule. It seemed as though he had fully accepted Leo’s refusal to reveal the names. He withdrew a pen-like apparatus reinforced with tiny sensors from his jacket pocket and placed it in the middle of the table. The interfering transmitter assured that not a single syllable of conversation could leave the room electronically.
"I imagine none of us slept well last night," answered Leo, knowing full well that a man like Ciban, with all those inquisitorial and criminal cases swimming around his head, never really slept well. He passed around the overflowing breadbasket. He tried to smile, then glanced at the small sensor device whose technological functions were a complete mystery to him. "Always the wary one, right Marc?" Leo had at least found out in the past few months that Ciban thawed out a little when he called him by his first name.
"Wariness is a part of my job description, Holiness," replied the cardinal with a relaxed look in his grey eyes as they rested on the sensor device. The Pope often asked himself what his predecessor Innocence had seen in such a strict, cold and imperious soul as Ciban that he would invite him into the inner circle of his most trusted allies. After almost two years, countless meetings and mutually shared meals, Leo barely knew this man at all. Even now in his simple priest’s cassock, he seemed intimidating, even threatening, as if he possessed the ability to carry the insignia of his noble birth, his eminence and the power associated with it like an invisible, yet perceptible torch. Leo wished his predecessor had told him more about Ciban or at least acquainted them with one another better before Innocence’s death. At the beginning of his office, Leo was only left with the official personal files in order to get familiar with the cardinal. But what was a personal file anyway? What did it say about the true essence of another person? Ciban was in his early fifties and thereby the youngest and most ambitious cardinal in the council. He was born on February 7 in Rome, had grey-blue eyes, was 194 centimetres tall and weighed 86 kilograms. Thereafter, the societal status of the family – or the name of the orphanage – followed. The Ciban clan belonged to one of the richest families in Europe. Schooling, university and career path were next on the list. He had studied in Rome, Paris, Tübingen and London. PhD in theology along with a postdoctoral thesis. In addition, Leo marvelled that he had a degree in astrophysics. He completed everything with "summa cum laude," of course.
The psychological profile included in the file was a total joke in the eyes of the Pope. Either it was completely outdated or patched together from various psychological platitudes and dossiers or Ciban had simply outwitted the psychologists. According to Leo’s impression, obedience was listed as one of Ciban’s virtues only if he considered it of value to the Church. His career path had a few spots on it, which were noted merely as "business trips". Leo now knew that it really meant that in Ciban’s case he was actively employed in the Vatican’s secret service. Under Innocence’s reign and even before that during the time in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, the Cardinal had often been found to be on such "business trips".
Leo cast
Ciban a sideways glance. Wariness was not only a part of his job, but it also had something to do with him as a person. They ate fresh buns, ham and eggs, sipping their coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice while chatting about current events in the world and their meaning for the Catholic Church. They came upon Sister Catherine Bell whose latest book, which was very critical of the Church, had recently been released. Leo learned that it had been given a full-blown positive review in the International Herald Tribune along with an accompanying article about the prominent Catholic author.
The article included a photo of Sister Catherine standing in front of a historic building in Jerusalem. She wore a long black robe and looked directly into the camera with a disarmingly warm smile.
"Her books might be less popular if she weren’t so attractive," one of the elderly Cardinals had once complacently said to Ciban in front of Leo. Ciban remained silent, but the look on his face nipped any further comments from the elderly cardinal in the bud.
Legal proceedings against Sister Catherine had been running for years. They began under Pope Innocence and Ciban’s predecessor Monti. When he was still Cardinal, Leo had shown more sympathy for the smart, courageous nun than Innocence, Monti and the courts of the Inquisition. For that reason, Catherine stood as well as she could under his protection since the latest papal election. Admittedly, it didn’t make his relationship to Ciban any easier, but it appeared that the prefect was professional enough not to let it affect their working relationship.
Massini finally asked: "Any more news about the death of Father Darius?" As Leo’s confidant, he knew about the murders.
"No," the cardinal said tightly.
Leo found it rather discomforting how Ciban distanced himself inappropriately from Massini. Leo had taken on Massini as his private secretary upon Innocence’s suggestion and he saw no reason for Ciban’s cool demeanour toward him. The man was not only kind, but he also did excellent work and treated Ciban with the utmost respect without being subservient.