Forgiving Rome

by Clay Ferrill

  As the jet accelerated down the runway and lifted off, Siren finished the first of the explanation of why we’ve been re-routed to Moscow. “The Vladimir are assassins. It’s all they do. All identical. As a singular, he is a full FSB Colonel. Very respected. But there are multiple versions of him active simultaneously and none of them expire at the seventh day of life.” She waited for everything to register and Adam asked me to hand him the files. I looked at Siren pondering the meaning of why someone, one person or a group of people, would want that many assassins roaming the planet. Assassins that don’t time-out and die. No less, completely identical in every way. I can see some value in that, but not a value that considers the weight of the geopolitical fallout that would erupt should they be discovered and publicized as assassins. Adam handed me two large photos then.

  The top one of a Vladimir clone in full FSB uniform. Wow. Really fucking handsome that man. Wow. The next was his naked body slicked with oil. I looked up from the picture momentarily knocked off balance by how the sight of him affected me. I almost felt dizzy from the shock of his body. So incredibly beautiful. They both laughed. “All five senses” they said in unison. I grabbed the folders back from Adam and opened them to begin reading. Science I understand. I’m not sure how or why, but I get science, most any science. How did just looking at him affect me like that? Pheromones can’t do that.

  The Vladimir are assassins, true, but there is a deeper purpose at work here that lies just under the surface. It is menacing, whatever it is. I flipped the page for statistics and see then instantly, the three graphs super-imposed over the top of the other in my mind drawing comparisons to the statistical movement of information. The dots don’t line up, they are mirror opposites. Exactly. I let my mind blur the images together. I lift my head smiling.

  “It’s the genetic bloodlines of the victims of the Vladimir. That is the reason he was created. He kills the progenitor lines so they cease moving forward in any propagation or replication. He ends entire bloodlines. Do you not see? Here. Look at this information and let the images in your vision blur over the another. This is a trick of a calmed and stilled mind. Let your thoughts clear and look here. Do not concentrate. Let your mind drift but do not move your eyes from the graphs. You will see it. The terminations.” Siren’s eyes drifted a bit I could see, but I also saw the recognition cross her face with a big nodding smile. “Mirror opposites.” Same with Adam. I closed the folder.

  “Same farm is producing all of these initiates, the first of their genetic lines. Once created, they can be farmed anywhere from their dead or living cells. We’ll likely find it in the rather inhospitable environs just north of St. Petersburg on the southern tip of Lake Ladoga. Excellent transport lines in and out of Russia from that point across into Finland and then out to central Europe in many directions. That whole area of Russia is commerce-silent I’ll bet. A very large farm is likely there and underground. We’ll need tasked satellites and historic footage back to when it was originally constructed. Adam?”

  He nodded, submitting a request for the geo coordinates he’s seeing over the entire region of western Russia. I don’t think it really matters where those satellite images come from. I continued “and the temperatures in that part of the world are exceptional for lower-cost clone replication. They are saturating major cities across Europe with multiple Vladimir clones. They’re ending entire bloodlines to claim genetic superiority over the entire human race. So … you two, tell me, please. Whether you think I’m totally fucking batshit insane or likely correct in my assessment. Please, either of you, speak.”

  It was Adam that spoke first. “We need a change of ultimate course to St. Petersburg, but we’ll stop in Helsinki until we are able to confirm everything Cole is saying. He’s right, though. I’m willing to bet my life on it.” Siren chimed in then “me too.” Like it’s nothing to commit her life. She spoke aloud into the air. “No.” Not speaking to either of us and looking away. Adam cleared his throat looking at me smiling. “You are extremely intelligent, aren’t you.”

  He had not posed it as a question. I shrugged my shoulders, humbled by the compliment. “I am just now seven days old Adam. I don’t know from intelligent. I just get the science of it. I’m just wired that way. Human cloning is all about timeline once the science is nailed down. It can be used for good, but also, like we’re seeing more and more of now, it can be used for evil. Good needs to win these fights.”

  We did nothing in this part of the world, but would need to call in some very significant assistance. We need more intel, that is certain. Adam lifted my iPad again and keyed in my passcode. I don’t recall having shared that with him, but its easily hackable as 1-2-3-4-5-6. He tapped twice hard and then exploded his pinch to paint the screen with an enlarged photo. “This is the scientist that designed the Middle East or ME-1 dominant genetic strain for Knights of Damascus. Confirmed dead this morning in Moscow.” He showed it to both of us. It was a picture of a Vladimir, just a much older one. A geneticist. He had cloned himself. The ego of that act.

  I reclined my lounge and swiveled away from them to just close my eyes and think. Top-of-mind, Luigi. Last night our first full night sleeping together. Such incredible rest. Peaceful. Taking our rest from our embattled world in each other’s arms. I imagined the data lines again of the Vladimir. Moving in from the right side were my two now entwined timelines with Luigi. As the entwined lines moved closer to the Vladimir lines, my line separates from Luigi. I open my eyes to think about that, freezing that image in place.

  Would the Divine Reparations Council view our actions now, today, as requiring the ultimate request of their Divine Forgiveness? Eternally? We’re just making the same mistakes all over again. We’re just doing it with science now instead of tanks and guns. This cannot be God’s will for man. I pushed the button to upright my lounge and went into the bathroom and closed the door. Impossible to pace here in this small, cramped space. I close my eyes and, in my mind, I pace back-and-forth on the well-worn polished stones of the Vatican gardens. I need to read the files His Eminence sent me. That is a passcode Adam does not have. It requires my thumbprint.

  Stepping out of the bathroom and closing the door I walked up behind Adam and snatched the iPad from him abruptly. “Fucking get your own.” He bristled momentarily until he looked in my face to see the kindness there. “I have to give this back today because, well, tomorrow is tomorrow.” He smiled and went to retrieve his own from his leather satchel hanging by the door on a coat hook. He returned and hugged my head and patted it. I turned my lounge back around and thinking of Luigi, I pressed my thumb into the reader. Spinning colors and then, bam. The file was titled:

  “The Divine Forgiveness Requested”

  My throat thickened. My name in print on the title page as “Father Coleman Livingston, a Priest of God.” Then my throat closed entirely reading the next name. “Father Luigi Berlusconi, a Priest of God.” The small dove there. A sign of the Holy See. Immediately below:

  “Divine Reparations”

  The paired names emboldened “Raphaello Sanzio da Urbino and Giuseppe Allard Archambault, Marquis de Orleans.

  The church was proposing they themselves be granted Divine Forgiveness. In Latin. I closed my eyes to think on whether I should continue without Luigi with me to discuss what’s in this file. I wrestled with the pull and the strength of the commerce of my curiosity. The file had been sent to me, but His Holiness had made his desire clear that I share this with Luigi. I will honor him in this. I closed the flap over the glass tablet and slipped into the seat next to me and reclined my lounge again. I drifted off to sleep then, the faint whining of the jet engines lulling me there quickly. In my mind as I drifted, the vision of a naked and warm young man stretched out on top of a sagging cot in the bright sunshine.

  His face is looking up but his hair is tossed over his face. The smile there. He blows the hair away. It is Raphael. Giuseppe had called him Raffy. How I know this I don’t know, but I log the thought
of him as fact. I will my mind back to the timelines I abandoned earlier. No future, only past showing, but my line is again entwined with Luigi’s.

  I was apparently fitful at some point, because when I woke up I was strapped into my lounge. I dipped my head to look out the window in a down-banking turn, the frozen earth city of Helsinki in winter. I pulled my collar snug and straightened the collar, my visible vesture, and scanned the cabin for either of them. Siren’s laughter from the galley. I unbuckled my seat belt and stood up, probably not the smartest thing to do in a tilted jet, and walked my way back to the galley bracing on anything I could grab onto. I startled as I walked/climbed into the small cubby space to find them both laughing, balancing hot cups of coffee in one hand, perfectly level both, hanging from the secure grips mounted to the fuselage.

  Siren’s hair now a closely-shaved fade mohawk, left long across the top from the front to the back. It spilled over her eyes. I looked at her. “When did you have time to do your fucking hair? Speaking of which, how do you even have hair?” I laughed and they both laughed along with me. Adam offered me some of his coffee and I pinched my face. “No more molten lava, thanks. You look stunningly beautiful Siren. Just saying.” More laughter.

  He poured his tiny cup over a small glass with ice and handed it to me chilled, piecing in a small rind of lemon as he handed it to me. I took it and sipped. Oh no. This is fucking to-die-for good. Chilled lava. It hit my constitution almost instantly the moment I downed it. My first caffeine as a man a double shot espresso. By the time we landed I had organized and re-organized everything around me. My eyes shot all over the place inexplicably. I felt like I might fucking just short-out. I called out loudly through closed eyes, the rapid-fire sequence of images I’ve seen, Luigi, The Stallion of God, the naked Vladimir. “Jesus Christ Lord have mercy on me! NO. MORE. FUCKING. COFFEE!!” I belted out loudly. Those who keep me safe … safe-ish, sucking in gasps at my outburst. They would now see to it I consumed no more caffeine while they were with me, protecting me from it.

  Finally, the jet touched down on the runway. I was up and out of my lounge the second it felt flat enough to stand, though at least I didn’t feel like bouncing off the walls any longer. That caffeine rush was fucking intense. I just held on as they braked and slowed the air beast. I hugged the iPad to my chest tightly. I would no longer let it leave my hand. Not until I could look at it safely, outside the grasp of such strong temptation, with Luigi. It vibrated, having picked up the signal once we landed. I tapped its face and the post was an update to orders. We return to Rome at once. The sealed document was signed by the Pope himself.

  I walked to the cockpit door and knocked once. Adam’s head popped out of the galley and I smiled at him as I waited at the cockpit door. A moment later a female Captain opened the door in full uniform. I passed her the iPad. She smiled up at me almost whispering “we’ll refuel and then immediately take off again, so strap in please. This’ll be as fast as we can make it Father.”

  I turned back into the cabin, glad to have not troubled myself puzzling through what must be done to stop the Vladimir threat. A respite of sorts. Others would make those decisions now I guess. I rested my hand on their shoulders, still standing in the small galley. “We’re returning to Rome right now. Refuel only. His Holiness has ordered me home.” I returned to my lounge and sat down and again opened the title page only and studied it again. Divine Forgiveness?

  Only so much can be discerned from just this one page of brief text. I swipe my hand right and the next page paints. My name appears and then Giuseppe Allard Archambault, Marquis de Orleans. Paragraphs and bullet points with hyperlinks follow a life timeline for him. Not me because I’m 6 days old. His image captured there as Raphael’s The Stallion, all by month and year. All the missing records that had vexed Luigi in his research. He was correct. It’s all here. Confirmed sightings with witness names list the number of times the pair of young men were spied on, observed, and reported back to the Pope or the College of Cardinals and their many councils. The actual documents of their reports now permanent record and included in the Pope’s plea to God to forgive them for the wrong done so many centuries ago.

  I couldn’t put it down, but I read ahead and absorbed it as science. I did not stop reading even when it pained me to read things without Luigi present. I read here about the man that I had been. The indiscretions, crimes, battles and fights within those battles - all told to the greatest extent possible at that time. All part of the Vatican’s archives from that period. Verified as accurate accounts, all. Wow. The number of times and dates when they were observed in coitus together is, well, prolific comes to mind as an accurate description. All in Rome, though. Their time away from Rome appears to be the only times the coupled men had true peace, unobserved or spied upon. Acknowledgement that the painting of The Stallion, the original title restored to the piece officially by Pope Pius XII in December 1801.

  Giuseppe’s mother intrigued me and I spent a great deal of the flight back to Rome reading about her life as charted out year-by-year, month-by-month. Clearly there in a graph showing all four timelines, the intersection of their initial meeting there and the closely followed progression of the lines representing Raphael and his Giuseppe so closely aligned for a brief period of a few months. Then Giuseppe’s time away in the battles of northern Italy, the Duchy of Milan overthrown. Timelines here intersect to show the alliance of the Sforza family with that of the Duchy of Parma. The two families joined, which at the time was unprecedented, fighting together to take back the lands and titles seized by France by King Louis. Young Giuseppe called to the side of his beloved King Louis, vowing his duty and honor. Offering his life.

  Letting my eyes relax I glared slack-eyed at the page and the lines moved and curved to highlight and linger over timelines that drew my interest back into the data presented there in such tremendous detail. Their separation, the two male lovers and their reuniting in Rome twenty-two months later. A dinner hosted by Giuseppe’s mother, The Marquise de la Orleans and her son The Marquis, hosted then Pope Julius II at a feast hosted in his Divine Honor. Becoming Raphael instead of Raphaello in mere days following, the lines again blurring, always remaining close to his Raphael, his appointment as His Holiness’s resident Artist Painter, as a paid position of significant amount for the time. All unpaid to the artist during his brief life. I read ahead through every document presented in Giuseppe’s dossier, his tragic death at the hands of then Pope Leo X who swung the sword to behead the corpse himself. A Pope did that? Jesus.

  The numerous citations listed against this Pope an impressive amount for any figure of Roman Catholic history. Condemnations, all. Beheadings, public executions, burning people at the stake. The evil of him there plain as day. Satan manifest as a man of God, surely. Posthumously diagnosed as a depressive malignant narcissist.

  I rested my eyes and out of nowhere the images just flooded to me. Perhaps painted on the own canvas of my mind by itself to give figure and form to it. Memories there. Raphaello’s naked body lying on top of the cot. Not my Luigi after all. Hard to describe how they just dripped into my mind’s eye slowly, illustrating themselves, the memories of him. Paint stained, un-scrubbed, hair beautifully wild and free. His smile. His eyes. Luigi’s eyes. Luigi’s smile. The love in them clear from the very moment their eyes first met. I followed a link to a transcribed letter, barely legible now, from “Archy” to his mother the Marquise. Confession of love for another man, their sweet Raphaello. Undying in his eloquent prose. His voice must have sounded liquid like a slow-moving river. His love for their shared “Raffy” will know no resistance. The words there he had written over 400 years ago, professing his love in exactly the same way I communicate to myself about my love for Luigi.

  I am overwhelmed with it. Engulfed by it. Swallowed whole in it. I am this brave soldier, his Giuseppe. The cape, his cape in death, is in the Vatican Archives. I know these colors described. His golden sword sheath and sword as well are there. His journa
ls, all. His life as documented as possible. Turning back to the window away from their gaze, I pressed the center button and the text flashed in front of my eyes a few moments later. “Yes, my son?” His Eminence’s reply. I typed my request.

  “I beg your audience upon my return to Rome with Father Luigi. I wish to see, touch, smell, taste, and hear the sounds of his sword being drawn from its glistening sheath. Giuseppe’s things. I need to see them and gain sensory perception from them. Please allow this Dear Father, mine.” His reply minutes later. “Of course. Already planned my son. Come then you pair, please, to the vault room as planned. I will see you there and we will all talk. I am anxious for you to move among your things again as I have many, many times been in there, waiting for you.”

  All of it so surreal. Fiction still to me. My head was swimming with details and every time I closed my eyes, a lake now, at the bottom of the hill. An image of Raphaello barefoot clad only in leather britches and naked body spattered with brightly colored paint. His leaps into the air so free and willful. Such joy in the sheer grace of him. Rising from the water, his smile mischievous and deeply dimpled and genuine. His expression then changing as I last see him running for a carriage speeding away from him and a place. Short wall covered in yellow roses. Huge ones. The arm and sleeve hanging from the window. He had not looked back into his eyes distancing from him. He couldn’t take it. He had said good-bye to him, his heart breaking in it.

  I woke up when the plane touched down. I rubbed my eyes and fumbled for my satchel. I applied the drops I’m supposed to be using constantly and have not been because they burn. I relax them as the drops burn like hell, processing and arranging the various elements of my dream in the fluid but consistently matched timeline of these two men so long ago. I am so peaceful now in this. They’re just facts lining up by date and adhering to their linear timeline. I welcome more and more of this knowledge. These gaps need to be filled. I feel I know the man he was now. Just a man. A man in love with another man in a time that refused to understand that love, choosing instead to murder it cruelly. I’ll read about Raphael next. But not yet. I need to wait until we’re together.