Pontiff (A Thriller)

by Richard Bowker

L'Eau Vive, on the Piazza Sant' Eustachio near the Pantheon, was such an elegant restaurant that it didn't even bother putting its name on the door. If you didn't know where it was, you probably weren't important enough to dine there. It appealed especially to Curial dignitaries because it was not only elegant but religious; the waitresses were all young lay Carmelite women who would occasionally interrupt the proceedings to recite a prayer and sing a hymn to Our Lady.

  Cardinal Valli was quite familiar with L'Eau Vive, although its French cuisine had never interested him. On this evening the proprietress gushed a greeting when he arrived, then led him through the main dining room, with its vaulted ceiling and wooden beams, to a small private room in the back, where several of his fellow cardinals had already gathered.

  They greeted him with relief and something approaching homage: Krajcek, the stern leader of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith; the pale Austrian Rattner, forced into retirement but still influential; the aged, garrulous Rufio, who'd won a surprising number of votes in the early ballots of the Conclave. Valli nodded to them and took the remaining empty seat.

  The others had already started their meal; the food looked sumptuous, as always. "Would you care for a small glass of wine, Marcello?" Rufio asked. "I know you don't normally indulge, but this Merlot is most delightful."

  Valli shook his head. "No thank you, your Eminence. Some ice water, perhaps." He sat silently, waiting.

  Rattner arose and closed the door, muffling the chatter in the main dining room. The three cardinals exchanged glances, then Rattner cleared his throat and began. "You see, Marcello, we are very worried, but we don't know what to do," he said, in his cultivated Austrian accent. "This African must be reined in before he does something that permanently damages the Church. But we are utterly without influence over him."

  "I have tried to speak to him about several issues," Krajcek complained. "The sexuality business is the most obvious, but there are others—collegiality, even infallibility. The other day he was talking about letting local dioceses appoint their own bishops. Oh, he is very polite when you try to steer him in the right direction, and he gazes at you as if what you have to say is the most fascinating thing he has ever heard. But he doesn't yield a centimeter."

  "The trip to America is what terrifies me," Rufio added. "Rumor has it that this is when he will start making public statements about contraception and the like. It is all very well to hold outrageous opinions, as long as they stay within the walls of the Vatican. We have all said or thought things that perhaps we shouldn't have. But once these opinions get out into the world—well, that's another matter altogether. The faithful will become confused, distraught. The clergy will not know what to say to them. It will be like the Sixties all over again."

  "We are still recovering from the pernicious effects of Vatican II," Krajcek pointed out. "Future generations will have to clean up the mess, if we don't take action."

  "What action do you propose?" Valli inquired.

  The three looked at each other again. "It is in your hands," Rattner stated. "You are the one he trusts. You are the one he listens to. You must use your influence now, before it is too late. Convince him to desist."

  "At least persuade him to hold off until he has learned more about the Church," Krajcek said. "He has such a limited, provincial background—practically no training in theology at all. He has no historical context for his opinions. If he can't be convinced that he's wrong, perhaps he can be convinced that he may not be entirely right."

  "You say that you are never able to convince him, Stefan," Valli observed. "What makes you think that I would be able to?"

  "Because you're a diplomat, Marcello. And because obviously you've had some success so far. I think he trusts your judgment—otherwise why would he have kept you on as secretary of state?"

  "Are you aware that the trip to America was my idea?"

  That silenced the other cardinals. Finally Rufio spoke up. "Surely from a diplomatic point of view the trip makes sense," he said. "Gurdani has some fences to mend with the Americans, as they say. And there are all the sex scandals to deal with. So I can see why you would suggest it."

  "Well, what do you think I should do?" Valli persisted. "Should I give him bad advice and make him look foolish, so that the faithful won't respect him?"

  "Not at all, Marcello. But if you could just make him see—"

  "Should I tell him that important cardinals think he's not up to the job? That they're plotting ways to block any proposals he makes, any fresh ideas he puts forward?"

  "Marcello," Rattner said, "surely you agree that—"

  "But why does it matter whether I agree or not?" Valli demanded. "Like you, I am pledged to obedience. With the Holy Spirit's guidance, we have elected this man pope. We therefore have an obligation to submit to him, to assist him, to make him successful in any way we can. If we think this is incompatible with our consciences, then we have an obligation to resign and let him find others to take our places."

  "There are limits to everything, are there not, Marcello?" Krajcek responded. "Sometimes our consciences may impel us to action rather than resignation. I suggest to you that this is such a case."

  "I can only speak for my own conscience," Valli said. "And it tells me that it is time to leave." He rose from the table. "Submit," he added. "Obey. The Church has survived much, your Eminences. It will survive even the African. You will see." He bowed to the three cardinals and left the room.

  The proprietress pursued him through the main dining room, wanting to know if everything had met with his satisfaction, but he ignored her, rushing out into the night. He walked quickly away from the restaurant, breathing hard and sweating, despite a cool breeze.

  Submit. Obey. They would be frustrated and perhaps angry with him, he supposed, but they would also feel a reluctant admiration for him. The imperious, distinguished secretary of state, submitting to the little African. If he could bring himself to do such a thing, couldn't they?

  Fools. They looked to him for guidance and leadership. They should look rather to God. God alone understood. God alone would show them the way.

  Every night now he ended up prostrate before the cross, beseeching God to make sure his own way was clear. He tortured himself in order to purify himself, to clear his mind and spirit. And he was convinced that, if he could only keep this up, God would not let him down. God's wisdom would become his own wisdom, and his deeds would be clothed in righteousness.

  Cardinal Valli hurried back to his apartment in the Apostolic Palace, needing to encounter his God once more. Because if God were to desert him now, where would he be? Where would he be?

  Dining in L'Eau Vive, he thought, and despairing.

  * * *

  The meeting with Valli and the pope had left Monsignor Fieri feeling frustrated and powerless. He had never trusted Valli, and he thought that the secretary of state's influence over the pope was dangerous. Valli was too much of a politician, too little of a churchman. The same could have been said of himself, Fieri supposed, but he knew better: he had no agenda, no secret plans. He was a tool, a good and useful thing to have, but nothing in and of itself. For all Valli's protestations, Fieri knew that he was much more than a tool. Tools do not come close to being elected pope, and those who come close do not willingly become tools of the man who defeated them.

  But Pope John seemed willing to let himself be guided by Valli, and Fieri was unable to persuade him that this was a mistake—probably because it was not at all obvious in what way it was mistaken. For all Fieri's concern about the pope's safety, for example, he couldn't convincingly prove that Valli was asking him to take unnecessary risks by appearing in these huge public venues.

  Fieri decided to take out his frustrations on Miranda Cromwell. He called her up and, not unexpectedly, she had no progress to report in uncovering secrets at the Vatican Bank. "It is difficult," she said. "I don't have access to any information outside Payroll, as I told you, and I—I just don't know how
to proceed."

  "Don't you have any friends there? Someone who might gossip over a bottle of Chianti?"

  "No," she replied softly. "No, in fact I have no friends at the Bank, Monsignor. I fear the other women think I'm too... different."

  Fieri wasn't surprised. This approach was beginning to look like a waste of time. "Miranda, perhaps you need to learn how to make some friends," he said. "Maybe then you will be able to assist His Holiness in this important matter."

  He could hear her stifle a sob. "Yes, I shall certainly try," she gasped. "I'm sorry that I haven't been able to be more helpful."

  "I'm counting on you not to let us down," he said curtly. "I'll be in touch." He hung up and closed his eyes. Poor Miranda, he thought. As tools went, she was not a very good one. He felt sorry for her, but he also felt sorry for himself. He needed to convince the pope he could get things done, like this investigation, and she was not helping.

  If she didn't produce in the next few days, he decided, it would be time to try something else.

  Chapter 17

  Lieutenant Morelli drove like a maniac, listening to a hard rock station and sipping a coffee from Dunkin' Donuts as they headed out to Framingham to interview Dave Leahy.

  She had picked Hurley up outside his apartment, and for the first part of the ride they had been silent, which gave him plenty of time to examine the mess inside her Jeep—old newspapers, empty Poland Springs bottles, cracked CD jewel cases, even a pair of gym shorts. Had she not cleaned up to send him some sort of message? Or was she oblivious to the mess? What was odd was that the Jeep still had that new-car smell, so it hadn't taken her long to trash it.

  She thinks this is a mistake, he decided. And he was thinking the same thing himself. He was a priest; he gave comfort to people, he didn't interrogate them. And Janet Leahy would be angry at him. Her husband would surely figure out how the police had found out about his link to McAllister, and she would have to live with the consequences.

  He found himself feeling resentful of Morelli's obvious hostility toward him. He was not a bad guy. And he was not responsible for every bad thing the Church had ever done. Couldn't she give him a break?

  And then she started in on him about abortion, and the earlier silence started to seem a lot more appealing.

  They had exchanged a few remarks about the Protectors of the Unborn—he had done a little research on his own and now knew something about the secretive ultra-radical organization, evidently funded by some reclusive Howard Hughes-type rich guy. And she remarked, "Of course, none of this would be necessary if the Catholic Church was more reasonable in its stand on abortion."

  Hurley stifled a groan. He didn't want to debate abortion with her; life was too short. "The Church isn't alone in its position on abortion," he responded mildly. "And nothing I've read suggests that the Protectors of the Unborn are specifically a Catholic organization."

  "Leahy's Catholic," Morelli pointed out.

  "Okay, so shoot us all," Hurley replied, starting to lose his temper. Couldn't she turn the radio down while she was attacking his religion? "You may as well blame us for Hitler too, while you're at it. It's easy enough to make that connection."

  She didn't respond, but instead shifted her attack. "What do you think about abortion, Father? You personally. Do you agree with the Church?"

  Personally, I think that's none of your business. What was the matter with her? "Personally, I would like to see a world where there weren't any abortions. Wouldn't you?"

  "But that's not the world we live in, now is it?"

  "Maybe that's because the world hasn't been paying enough attention to the Church."

  "If everyone paid attention to the Church in the past, there wouldn't be any democracies—and we'd still believe the sun moves around the earth."

  Hurley looked over at her, and he wondered just what the Church had done to her. This felt like more than an intellectual discussion; this felt personal. "The Church is a human institution and has made its share of human errors," he said, falling back on the stock answer. "Certainly we've seen a lot of those lately in Boston. But that doesn't mean we should ignore its positions on matters of faith and morals, where it's blessed with divine guidance."

  "According to the same humans who've made all the other mistakes, who abused children or allowed the abuse to happen. So why should I believe them?"

  "Because, in your heart of hearts, you know abortion is wrong?" Hurley offered.

  "In my heart of hearts, I know that I'm not the one to judge what's in another woman's heart. And neither is the Catholic Church. This is the turn, right?"

  It was. Hurley was grateful for the reprieve. Morelli turned onto Leahy's street.

  He lived in a small ranch with peeling paint and a bedraggled postage-stamp yard. A beat-up white Taurus station wagon was parked in the short driveway next to it. Through a picture window they could make out the flicker of a TV. Along with his nervousness, Hurley felt a strange twinge of guilt at interrupting the quiet suburban evening.

  Janet Leahy answered the door, wearing sweat pants and a plaid man's shirt. "Good evening, ma'am," Morelli said, holding out her badge. "I'm from the Boston Police Department. Is your husband home?" Mrs. Leahy barely glanced at her. She stared instead at Hurley, who could feel himself wilt with shame.

  "Yes," she responded wearily, as if this was only what she had expected. "Won't you come in. I'll see if I can find him." She led them into the living room, switching off Wheel of Fortune as she passed the TV. They sat in shabby wingchairs as she went off in search of her husband. From somewhere down the hallway came the muted sound of heavy metal; there was evidently a teenager in the family, probably listening to the same station Morelli liked.

  They waited in silence. The living room was crammed with religious pictures and figurines—the Sacred Heart, the Infant of Prague, the BVM... One particularly saccharine painting showed a seated Jesus surrounded by cute kids of every race looking up at him adoringly, with the caption "Suffer the little children to come unto me." Hurley noticed a framed photo of a crewcut man, probably Leahy, shaking hands with Cardinal Monroe's predecessor.

  Finally Leahy appeared. He was the man in the photo, all right, older but still recognizable; his crewcut had gone gray, but he still had the same narrow face and the same deep-set dark eyes. The eyes of a fanatic, Hurley recognized. There were a few people like him at Saint Jerome's, and they weren't his favorite Catholics—the ones still nursing a grudge at Vatican II, the ones who thought Pius IX's infamous Syllabus of Errors hadn't gone far enough in condemning the modern world. The ones who saw the universe in black and white. You are either with me, or you burn in hell for eternity.

  Leahy looked from Morelli to Hurley and back again as Morelli explained who they were. "Am I under arrest?" he asked. He had a deep, gravelly voice, the kind that could make itself heard at anti-abortion rallies. The flat way he asked the question indicated that being arrested was something with which he was entirely familiar.

  "Not at all," Morelli replied. "We simply want to ask you a few questions. Father Hurley is here as a representative of the Archdiocese of Boston. We're both involved in arranging the security for Pope John's trip to Boston."

  Did something flicker in those deep-set eyes at the mention of the pope? "How can I help?" he asked.

  "You can tell us what you know about a man named Bandini."

  Again, was there a response? Impossible to say. Hurley was surprised at the abruptness of the question; maybe Morelli was hoping to shock him into giving something away. If that was her strategy, it didn't work. "Bandini?" Leahy responded. "I don't know anyone by that name. I don't understand."

  "Did you know a man named Ed McAllister?" Morelli asked.

  "Sure, I knew Ed."

  "We have reason to believe that McAllister had concerns about Pope John's safety on his visit to Boston. We also have reason to believe that those concerns centered on a man named Bandini, and that he shared those concerns with you. And we be
lieve those concerns may have led to McAllister's murder."

  "I don't understand," Leahy repeated. "Why would this have anything to do with me?"

  "We don't know. Maybe it has something to do with the Protectors of the Unborn. You tell us."

  Leahy stared at both of them. "What are the 'Protectors of the Unborn'?" he asked.

  "Did McAllister phone you shortly before his death?" Morelli pressed, ignoring his question.

  Leahy appeared to consider the question. "Yes, I believe he did."

  "Did he warn you about Bandini?"

  "Again, I don't know anyone named Bandini. McAllister and I did chat occasionally. Very occasionally. But never about this man Bandini, and never about the Holy Father. I would certainly remember that. McAllister and I had our differences when it came to the Catholic Church. We avoided discussions of religion."

  Hurley decided it was time for him to jump in. "I'm sure you would want to do everything you can to protect the pope," he said. "So if there's any information you have that can help us do our job, please share it with us."

  Leahy turned his hard gaze to Hurley. "I would give my life for the pope," he said simply. "But I don't know what you're talking about, Father, so there's no way I can help you."

  Morelli tried next. "Why did you think we were here to arrest you, Mr. Leahy? We know you're a member of the Protectors of the Unborn. And we know that they are a terrorist anti-abortion group. Have you done something that you should be arrested for?"

  Leahy shrugged. "I've been arrested before, never justly. I see a police uniform, I see the enemy. That's unfortunate, but it's the way things have turned out in America."

  "I'm not your enemy, Mr. Leahy," Morelli responded. "But if you're hiding information that puts the pope in jeopardy, you better believe that you're in more trouble than you've ever seen in your life."

  Leahy didn't blink. "If you think I would do anything to put the Holy Father in jeopardy," he said, "then you don't understand me at all."

  * * *