by Morris West
Malachy O’Rahilly laughed.
‘Not so well that I’d give him a good-conduct medal. Not so badly that I’d want to see him bumped off. You’d have to agree there’s that risk.’
‘I don’t have to agree anything of the kind. You met de Rosa. I didn’t. Besides, if you wanted to eliminate every possible threat to your Sacred Person, you’d have to make pre-emptive arrests up and down the peninsula. Personally, I’d be inclined to ignore the whole thing.’
‘I’m the man’s secretary, for God’s sake! I’ve got a certain special duty to him.’
‘Wait a minute! There may be a simple way to handle this, with no extra grief to anyone. Let me think it through while you order another bottle of wine. Make it a decent red this time. This house Frascati is so thin you could keep goldfish in it.’
While Malachy O’Rahilly went through his little fandango over the wine, Matt Neylan sponged up the last sauce from his pasta and then delivered his verdict.
‘There’s a fellow who works for our security people here in Vatican City. His name is Baldassare Cotta. He owes me a favour because I recommended his son for a clerk’s job in the Post Office. He used to be an investigator for the Guardia di Finanza and I know he moonlights for a private detective agency in town. I could ask him to check out de Rosa and give me a report. It would cost you round about a hundred thousand lire. Can you touch the petty cash for that much?’
‘Wouldn’t he do it for love?’
‘He would, but then he’d have the arm on me for another favour. Come on, Mal! How much is the Bishop of Rome worth?’
‘It depends on where you’re sitting,’ said Malachy O’Rahilly with a grin. ‘But it’s a good idea. I’ll underwrite it from somewhere. You’re a good man, Matt. They’ll make you a bishop yet.’
‘I won’t be around that long, Mal.’
Malachy O’Rahilly gave him a swift, appraising look.
‘I do believe you’re serious.’
‘Dead serious.’
‘What are you trying to tell me?’
‘I’m thinking of giving the game away, just walking out, like our friend de Rosa.’
‘To get married?’
‘Hell no! Just to get out! I’m the wrong man in the wrong place, Mal. I’ve known it for a long time. It’s only lately I’ve put together enough courage to admit it!’
‘Matt, tell me honestly, is there a woman in it?’
‘It might be easier if there were – but no. And it isn’t the other thing either.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘After the steak, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to choke in the middle of my own valediction.’ ‘You’re taking this very lightly.’
‘I’ve had a long time to think about it, Mal. I’m very calm. I know exactly what Luther meant when he said, “Here I stand, I can do no other”. All I’m trying to figure is how to make the move with as little upset as possible … Here’s the steak now, and the wine. Let’s enjoy ’em. There’ll be plenty of time to talk afterwards.’
The Florentine steak was tender. The wine was soft and full-bodied and for a man facing a drastic change in his life and his career, Matt Neylan was singularly relaxed. Malachy O’Rahilly was forced to contain his own curiosity until the meat dishes had been cleared away and the waiter had consented to leave them in peace to consider dessert. Even then, Neylan took a roundabout route to deliver the news.
‘Where to begin? That’s a problem in itself, you see. Now, it’s all so simple and matter-of-fact that I can hardly believe the agonies I put myself through. You and I, Mal, had the same career, chapter and verse: school with the Brothers in Dublin, seminary at Maynooth, then Rome and the Greg. We paced it out together: Philosophy, Biblical Studies, Theology – Dogmatic, Moral and Pastoral – Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Exegetics and History. We could put together a thesis, defend it, turn it inside out like a dirty sock and make it into heresy for the next debate in the Aula. Rome was right for us, we were right for Rome. We were the bright boys, Mal. We came from the most orthodox Catholic country in the world. We just had to run up the ladder, and we did, you to the Papal Household, me to the Secretariat of State, attaché first class … The only thing we missed was the thing that we swore brought us into the priesthood in the first place: pastoral service, the care of the people, Mal! We didn’t do any of that worth a tinker’s curse! We became career clerics, old-time court abbes from the monarchies of Europe. I’m not a priest, Mal. I’m a goddam diplomat – a good one, too, who could hold his own in any embassy in the world – but I could have been that anyway, without forswearing women and marriage and family life.’
‘So now we come to it!’ said Malachy O’Rahilly. ‘I knew we would, sooner or later. You’re lonely, you’re tired of a solitary bed, bored with bachelor company. No discredit in that, boyo. It comes with the territory. You’re riding through the badlands just now!’
‘Wrong, Mal! Wrong, wrong. Rome’s the easiest place in the world to come to terms with the flesh and the devil. You know damn well you can sleep two in a bed here for twenty years, with nobody any the wiser! The point – the real, needle-sharp point, old friend – is that I’m not a believer any more.’
‘Would you call that one back to me, please?’ O’Rahilly was very quiet. ‘I want to be sure I’ve heard aright.’
‘You heard me, Mal.’ Neylan was calm as a lecturer at the blackboard. ‘Whatever it is that makes for faith – the grace, the gift, the disposition, the need – I don’t have it. It’s gone. And the strange thing is I’m not troubled at all. I’m not like poor Lorenzo de Rosa, fighting for justice inside a community to which he’s still bound, heart and soul, then despairing because he doesn’t get it. I don’t belong in the community because I don’t believe any longer in the ideas and the dogmas that underpin it …’
‘But you’re still part of it, Matt.’
‘By courtesy only. My courtesy!’ Matt Neylan shrugged. ‘I’m doing everyone a favour by not making a scandal, carrying on the job until I can arrange a tidy exit. Which will probably take the form of a quiet chat with Cardinal Agostini early next week, a very polite note of resignation and presto! I’m gone like a snowflake.’
‘But they won’t let you go like that, Matt. You know the whole rigmarole: voluntary suspension a sacris, application for a dispensation …’
‘It doesn’t apply.’ Matt Neylan explained patiently. ‘The rigmarole only works when you believe in it. What have they got to bind me with except moral sanctions? And those don’t apply, because I don’t subscribe any longer to the codex. They don’t have the Inquisition any more. The Papal States don’t exist. The Vatican sbirri can’t come and arrest me at midnight. So, I leave in my own time and in my own way.’
‘You’ll go gladly, by the sound of it.’ O’Rahilly’s tone was sour.
‘No, Mal. There’s a sadness in it – a misty, grey kind of sadness. I’ve lost or mislaid a large part of my life. They say that an amputee can be haunted by the ghost of a missing limb; but the haunting stops after a while.’
‘What will you do for a living?’
‘Oh, that’s easy. My mother died last year. She left me a smallholding in County Cork. And last week, on the strength of my experience of Vatican diplomacy, I signed a two-book contract with a New York publisher for better money than I’ve ever dreamed of. So I have no financial worries, and the chance to enjoy my life.’
‘And no conscience problems either?’
‘The only problem I’ve got, Mal – and it’s too early to know how adjust to it – is how I’ll cope with living in neutral gear, without the creed and the codex.’
‘You may find it harder than you think.’
‘It’s hard already.’ Matt Neylan grinned at him across the table. ‘Right now! Between thee and me! You’re inside the Communion of Saints. I’m outside it. You’re a believer. I’m a miscredente, an infidel. We look the same, because we wear the uniform of a pair of ship’s officers on the Barque of Peter. But you’re
still carrying the pilot. I’ve dropped him and I’m steering my own ship; which is a lonely and perilous thing to do in shoal waters.’
‘Where are you thinking of living afterwards? The Vatican won’t want you hanging around Rome. They can make things quite uncomfortable if they want, as you well know.’
‘The thought hadn’t entered my mind, Mal. I’ll go first to Ireland to settle the legacy and see that the property’s well managed. Then I’ll take myself round the world to see how it looks to a simple tourist with a fresh mind. Wherever I end up, I hope we can still be friends. If we can’t, I’ll understand.’
‘Of course we’ll be friends, man! And to prove it, I’ll let you buy me a very large brandy – which, after this shock, I damn well need!’
‘I’ll join you – and if it makes you any happier, I’ll get you the report on de Rosa for nothing!’
‘That’s big of you, boyo. I’ll see you get credit for it on judgement day!’
For Sergio Salviati, Italian born, a Jew by ancestry and tradition, a Zionist by conviction, surgeon extraordinary to a Roman Pontiff, judgement day had already arrived. A personage, sacred to a billion people on the planet, was committed to his custody and care. Instantly, before a scalpel had been lifted, the sacred personage was under threat – a threat as deadly as any infarct or aneurysm.
It was conveyed by Menachem Avriel, Israeli Ambassador to the Republic, who delivered it over dinner in Salviati’s house.
‘Late this afternoon our intelligence people informed me that an attempt may be made to assassinate the Pontiff while he is at the clinic.’
Salviati weighed the information for a moment and then shrugged.
‘It was always on the cards, I suppose. How good is the information?’
‘Grade A-plus, first hand from a Mossad man working undercover in an Iranian group, the Sword of Islam. He says they’re offering a contract – fifty thousand dollars up front, fifty thousand when the job is done. He doesn’t know yet what takers they’ve had.’
‘Do the Italians know about this – and the Vatican?’
‘Both were informed at six this evening.’
‘Their answers?’
‘Thank you – and we’ll take appropriate action.’
‘They’d better.’ Salviati was terse. ‘It’s out of my hands now. I start scrubbing with the team at six in the morning. I can’t cope with anything else.’
‘Our best judgement – that is to say, Mossad’s best judgement – is that any action will be taken during the convalescent period and that the attempt will be made from inside – by tampering with drugs, medications or life-support systems.’
‘I’ve got nearly a hundred staff at the clinic. They’ve got eight, ten languages between them. I can’t guarantee that one of them isn’t an agent in place. Damn it, I know at least three are agents in place for Mossad!’
Menachem Avriel laughed.
‘Now you can be glad you let me put ’em there! At least they know the routines and can direct the people we’re sending in tomorrow.’
‘And who, pray, will they be?’
‘Oh, didn’t you know? The Agenzia Diplomatica got a call late this afternoon for two extra wardsmaids, two electrical maintenance technicians and two male orderlies. They’ll be reporting for duty at six in the morning. Issachar Rubin will be in charge. You won’t have to worry about a thing – and Mossad will pick up the bill. You can concentrate on your distinguished patient. What’s the prognosis, by the way?’
‘Good. Very good, in fact. The man’s obese and out of condition, but as a boy he was farm-fed and farm-worked. He’s also got a will of iron. That helps him now.’
‘I wonder if it will help us?’
‘To what?’
‘Vatican recognition for the State of Israel.’
‘You’re joking!’ Salviati was suddenly tense and irritable. ‘That’s been a dead duck from day one! No way will they back Israel against the Arab world! No matter what they say officially, by tradition we’re Christ-killers, accursed of God. We have no right to a homeland, because we cast out the Messiah and we in our turn were cast out! Nothing’s changed, believe me. We did better under the Roman Empire than under the popes. It was they who put the yellow star on us, centuries before Hitler. During the war, they buried six million dead in the Great Silence. If Israel were dismembered again, they’d be there, scrabbling for the title-deeds to their Holy Places.’
‘And yet you, my dear Sergio, are going to endow this man with a new lease of life! Why you? Why not remit him to his own?’
‘You know why, my friend! I want him in my debt. I want him to owe me his life. Every time he looks at a Jew I want him to remember that he owes his survival to one and his salvation to another.’ Suddenly aware of his own vehemence, he grinned and spread his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘Menachem, my friend, I’m sorry. I’m always edgy the night before a big operation.’
‘Do you have to spend it alone?’
‘Never, if I can help it. Tove Lundberg will come over later. She’ll spend the night and drive me to the clinic in the morning. She’s good for me – the best thing in my life!’
‘So when are you going to marry her?’
‘I’d do it tomorrow, if she’d have me.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘Children. She doesn’t want any more. She’s made sure she can’t have them. She says it’s unfair to ask a man to wear that, even if he’s willing.’
‘She’s wise!’ The Ambassador was suddenly very quiet. ‘You’re lucky to get a good woman on such easy terms. But if you’re thinking of marriage and a family …’
‘I know! I know! Your Leah will find me a nice bright Jewish girl, and you’ll both send us off to Israel for the honeymoon. Forget it!’
‘I’ll move it up in the calendar, but I won’t forget it. Where’s Tove now?’
‘She’s entertaining James Morrison, our visiting surgeon.’
‘Question: does she know about the Agenzia Diplomática, and your other connections?’
‘She knows my sympathies are with Israel. She knows the people you send me to be entertained. For the rest, she doesn’t ask questions and I don’t volunteer answers.’
‘Good! The Agenzia is very important to us, as you know. It’s one of the best ideas I’ve had in my life …’
Menachem Avriel spoke no more than the truth. Long before his first diplomatic appointment, when he was still a field agent for Mossad, he had proposed the notion of a chain of employment agencies, one in each diplomatic capital, which could offer casual labour – cooks, waiters, chambermaids, nannies, nurses, chauffeurs – to diplomats on station and business families serving overseas terms. Every applicant for listing on the agency’s books was screened, bonded and paid the highest rate the traffic would bear. Local employment regulations were meticulously observed. Taxes were paid. Records were accurate. The clientele expanded by recommendation. Israeli agents, male and female, were filtered into the lists and Mossad had eyes and ears at every diplomatic party and business entertainment. Sergio Salviati himself kept places open on his roster for casual staff from the Agenzia, and if he ever had misgivings about the double role he was playing, he buried it under an avalanche of bitter folk-memories: the decrees of mediaeval popes that foreshadowed the Nuremberg laws of Hitler in 1935, the infamies of ghetto existence, the Black Sabbath of 1943, the massacre of the Ardeatine Caves.
There were moments when he felt that he could be riven asunder by the forces thrusting out from the centre of himself – the monomania that made him a great surgeon and a medical reformer, the fierce attachment of every Latin to his paese, his home-place, the tug of ten thousand years of tribal tradition, the nostalgia of psalmodies that had become the voice of his own secret heart: ‘If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning.’
‘I should be going,’ said Menachem Avriel. ‘You need an early night. Thanks for the dinner.’
‘Thank you for the
warning.’
‘Try not to let it worry you.’
‘It won’t. I work with life in my hands and death looking over my shoulder. I can’t afford any distractions.’
‘Time was,’ said Menachem Avriel drily, ‘when a Jew was forbidden to give medical aid to a Christian – and a Christian doctor had to convert the Jew before he could offer treatment.’
It was then, for the first time, that Sergio Salviati revealed the torment that was tearing him apart.
‘We’ve learned well, haven’t we, Menachem? Israel has come of age. We’ve got our own ghettoes now, our own inquisition, our own brutalities; and our own special scapegoats, the Palestinians! That’s the worst thing the goyim have done to us. They’ve taught us to corrupt ourselves!’
In her own apartment on the other side of the courtyard, Tove Lundberg was explaining Salviati to his English colleague.
‘He is like a kaleidoscope, changing every moment. He is so various that it seems he is twenty men, and you wonder how you can cope with so many – or even how he copes with himself. Then suddenly he is clear and simple as water. That is how you will see him tomorrow morning in the theatre. He will be absolutely controlled. He will not say an unnecessary word, or make a redundant gesture. I have heard the nurses say they have never seen anyone so careful with human tissue. He handles it like gossamer.’
‘He has respect.’ James Morrison savoured the last of his wine. ‘That’s the mark of a great healer. It shows. And how’s his touch for other things?’
‘Careful always. Very gentle most of the time. But there are lots of angers in him that I wish he could spare himself. I never understood until I came to Italy how deep is the prejudice against Jews – even against the native born with long ancestries in the land. Sergio told me that he decided very early that the best way for him to cope with it was by studying its roots and causes. He can talk for hours on the subject. He quotes passages from Doctors of the Church, from papal encyclicals and decretals, from archival documents. It’s a sad and sorry tale, especially when you think that the ghetto here in Rome was abolished and the Jewish people enfranchised by royal decree only in 1870.