Carlos smiled. “Goes with the job, boss… er Holiness.”
“And I’m not sure about everyone calling me Holiness, either. I’ve been Pope what, a week? How do they know I’m holy? Maybe after a few weeks they’ll start calling me Your Shitiness.”
Carlos laughed. “Haven’t heard that one… yet. But the Conclave said you’re holy. That’s why they elected you Pope instead of Cardinal Agretti.”
The first Mexican Pope surprised the whole world, with most commentators saying it was in direct response to the bombing of St. Peter’s. Some said the Church was finally taking a leadership role in the struggle against radical Islam, while others worried it sent the wrong message to the moderate elements in the Muslim world. In any case, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Agretti, a solid backer of the last Pope’s conciliatory stance, was firmly rejected in favor of the man who had faced down the Mexican drug cartels.
“Where are the papers?” The Pope looked around. “And get a computer with an Internet connection in here. This is nuts.” The Pope rose and went toward the door.
“Boss, don’t. Wait. At least not yet. Let me do it. You already have half these folks on the edge of a nervous breakdown. There’s a newspaper guy and he’s been getting the papers ready for forty years. I’ll fix it. That’s what I do. Now, sit down and eat.”
“Ok. Ok. Just get the damn papers. And tell them if anyone comes in here with a roll of toilet paper hanging around his neck…”
Carlos laughed and left for the papers.
Sanchez walked to the leaded windows and looked down on St Peter’s Piazza. He had lots of things he wanted to do, but he was smart enough to know he didn’t know half that needed to get done. But the ceremony, tradition, and bureaucracy of this place were choking him. Everything moved in slow motion, slower than even the Mexican bureaucracy that had so infuriated him.
Things would change, he promised himself. They had sure changed for him. He came to the Papal Conclave to elect the new Pope, and had left the Conclave as the new Pope. How on Earth did that happen? He didn’t want to be Pope. He hadn’t campaigned, hadn’t schemed with allies, hadn’t made any promises, and had appeared on nobody’s radar. He hadn’t spent the ten years preening before the world press. But, they had elected him, so now they were stuck with him. Things would definitely change. He wondered how many Popes before him had said the same thing.
He had shunned most of the traditional activities of a new Pope, and instead visited hundreds of people injured in the bombing. Phone calls from world leaders went unreturned, the press was ignored, and no calls for world peace went out from the papal office. He flattened the pecking order of the Cardinals by ignoring them all.
But after the first week the world press caught on to a story, a big story. Here was a Pope who was doing things rather than sending messages. They filmed him pushing wheelchair-bound victims around the block, sitting with families in hospital waiting rooms, comforting surviving family members, and even taking one small boy who lost his father in the bomb to a father/son soccer match.
When he returned to the Vatican at 10:00 PM each night, the head of each Vatican department gave him a quick summary report. He asked all the temporary department heads appointed by Agretti to remain in their positions until confirmed or relieved. But he made no promises.
Carlos came back and tossed the papers on the table, opened a cabinet that hid a plasma TV, and flicked the remote. “Ever hear of the Treaty of Tuscany?” he asked the Pope.
“No, what is it?”
“It’s what everyone is talking about today. Must be a slow news day.” He flipped channels until he hit Sky News. They were reporting on a cricket tournament.
Carlos opened a Rome daily and jabbed a finger at a story. “Everyone has it this morning. It looks like a few of your predecessors stepped in it, and now you get to clean up the mess.”
The Pope scanned the article, then looked up when the Sky News anchor reported on it. “Find out everything we have on this thing, Carlos. I don’t believe it. Even those guys back then weren’t that stupid. Let’s get this out of the headlines. Get me a copy of it if it exists.”
He ran a hand through his thick dark air. “Agretti’s supposed to know about treaties. He’s the Secretary of State, isn’t he? I’ll give him a call.”
* * *
Santini was frantic when Agretti picked up the phone. “I just had the Pope’s personal assistant in here looking for that treaty. The Pope wants a copy.”
Agretti had seen the press reports and tried to remain calm. “So, what did you tell him, Santini?” He held his breath.
“I told him just what we agreed. I said I never heard of the treaty, and was as surprised as everyone else by the news reports.”
“How did he react?” asked Agretti.
“He didn’t give me any problem. He has no reason. I told him we were already working on it, and if it existed, we would certainly find some trace.”
“What about the damn computer?” Agretti asked. “Is there anything at all? Anything? A title, or a page, or whatever? It seems everyone gets tripped up by those things lately.”
“You have to understand the collection with the treaty has now been completely recataloged. Any reference not backed up by an actual piece of paper was purged, so the references to the treaty that were in the computer were deleted.”
“But someone deleted it, and they know.”
“I did it myself when I lent a hand in the effort. And enough time has passed that the backups also contain no reference.”
Santini thought of his own private section of the computer that was not included in the backups, but that was something a politician like Agretti didn’t need to know. He still had a duty to the library and history.
“Ok,” said Agretti. “I’ll deal with the Pope on this. Your job is to make sure the Pope can always honestly say you never told him about the treaty. He needs you to do that. Can you do that, Santini?”
Idiot. “Yes, of course I can.”
* * *
Agretti took the folder from the bottom drawer of his desk and studied the translation of the treaty he had received from Santini. Just one piece of paper, but it could destroy the entire Church. The Church could handle bombs and attacks by whatever group of terrorists were in fashion, and it could handle the political ups and downs that swept across the continents. Rival Christian denominations hadn’t been a problem since the Reformation, and non-Christians hadn’t posed a real problem since the Ottomans were turned back from Vienna in 1683. The Easter bombing was bad, but not in the full stretch of history.
All these challenges had been met because the Church had the loyalty, faith, and trust of its people. And now he held a piece of paper that could destroy all that.
The Church pointed back to Jesus and Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus said, “Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my assembly.” The Church was God’s channel to reach his people, and it was an avenue by which his people returned to God at the end of their days. Without the Popes, the direct successors of St. Peter in that garden, it all fell apart.
Since the Pope was God’s representative on Earth, he couldn’t be wrong on matters of faith or morals. His word was final and correct because it was God’s word. He might be wrong about tomorrow’s weather forecast, oil drilling techniques, or how the pyramids were built, but he couldn’t be wrong about faith or morals.
This doctrine of infallibility was so strong and well developed that in 1870, Pope Pius IX and the First Vatican Council infallibly declared it a basic tenet of the faith. All Catholics were bound to believe in the infallibility of the Pope.
And now he had a treaty signed by two Popes, not just one, a treaty that infallibly declared God wanted Muslims wiped off the face of the Earth. Two Popes verified this as God’s will, and two Popes verified it was a matter of faith and morals and binding on all Christians to the end of time. Who in their right mind would accept that as the will of God? The a
nswer was simple. Nobody would.
So, if two Popes could be wrong about such a serious matter, then all Popes could be wrong about other matters of faith or morals. And that led one to say the Popes had no special knowledge of God’s will. The Pope became the man on the street, stumbling around trying his best to figure things out. They became frauds, poseurs, and charlatans.
Who would keep the faith in that case? How could any apologist, no matter how clever, get out of that mess? How could the Church maintain its position as an unchanging rock to which humanity could anchor itself? How could it defend against the charge that its Popes were really no better than any other mass murderer? Wipe out the Jews? Wipe out the Muslims? Where is the moral difference? Is there a difference?
The ignorant might hang onto the Church, but it would lose the thinking people, and with them it would lose its ability to function. Maybe it could last fifty years, but after a few generations it would be just another curiosity. People would come to gawk at St. Peter’s, admire the skill of its architects and craftsmen, and leave amazed that so many people could have been fooled for so long.
The Church had to present a unified front. The treaty was a hoax, a clever hoax, but still a hoax. There was no choice. Agretti had to see to that.
* * *
Agretti’s secretary rushed into his office. “The Pope. Line one.” Didn’t this Pope understand he was demeaning his office by holding on the phone for subordinates?
“Good morning, Holiness.” The words still caught in his throat, but Sanchez had won and he had lost. But it still hurt. How much longer would the Mexican keep him as Secretary of State?
“Morning, Alberto. What’s this Treaty of Tuscany thing? It’s all over the news.”
“I don’t know any more than what I saw on the news, Holiness. We have no record of it.”
“Well, would you guys have a ready record of something from the Third Crusade? I mean, do you keep all that stuff at your fingertips? If you do, you need some help.”
There it was again, thought Agretti, the not-so-subtle digs. Maybe it would be nice to retire to some quiet parish in the Italian Alps.
“Of course you’re correct, Holiness. We’ve teamed up with the Vatican Library and our best men are on it. If there is something, we’ll find it.”
“Well, I’m sure half the historians in the world are hot after that treaty right about now. I don’t want to get blindsided on this. If it exists, I want to know about it from our own people, not from CNN.”
“Yes, Holiness.”
“Tell you what, let’s bring some help in. See if you can round up people at Catholic universities, people we can trust. Get them looking with the understanding we get the info first. I just don’t like the odds here. I don’t want to have just our team here at the Vatican looking while the rest of the world has ten thousand PhDs looking.”
“I’m not sure we…”
The Pope cut him off, “Well, neither am I, but we have to put this to rest. If it’s a hoax, then let’s expose it. If it’s real, then let’s face up to it. The last thing I want to do is just sit here doing squat and get all tied up by events.”
And what, thought Agretti would the rest of the world find? “Yes, Holiness. We’ll get with our European bishops immediately.”
“Good,” said the Pope. “And remember, if we stomp on these little problems right away, they don’t live to be big problems.”
“Yes, Holiness.”
“And make sure we have a single Vatican spokesman on this. No leaks, none of that usual nonsense. Let’s face this straight on.”
“Yes, Holiness.”
“Keep me informed, Alberto.”
Switzerland - Monday, April 13
“So, Marie, what happens when I finish the treaty? I deliver the product, and you people do whatever you do. Maybe your plan works, maybe it doesn’t. But what happens to me?” Jean poked at the logs in the chalet’s fireplace with a long stick.
“That’s up to you. It all depends on whether you trust us.” Marie pulled a long, felt robe around her knees.
“We sit here forging a papal treaty from the Middle Ages and talk about trust. It is a bit ironic, wouldn’t you say?”
Marie wrapped her hands around her coffee mug and took a sip. “Not at all. We’re trying to accomplish something, and you are part of it. When this is all over, no matter how it turns out, we have to decide if you trust us.”
“Isn’t it more important if you trust me?” Jean looked back from the fire.
“How can we trust you if you don’t trust us? Trust is the foundation of loyalty, and we demand loyalty above all. No trust? No loyalty.”
Jean jabbed the fire again. “Ok. Suppose you trust me. What then?”
“Well, the first would be a new face.”
Jean instantly put her hand to her face and ran her fingers across the crease of her lips. “A new face?” She hadn’t thought of that.
“Of course. How could you do anything in your field looking like Jean Randolph? You wouldn’t last a week. Don’t worry. The people we use are the very best in the world. They do all the work on the people who look great, but look like they’ve never had any work done.”
“Still…” Jean had an instinctive hesitation. “I’ve kind of liked being me.”
“Well, if you want to keep being you, you need a new face. And the voice would have to be tweaked a little, too.”
“Tweaked? Tweaked? What does that mean?” Now she held her throat.
“Sure. The best way to blow a new identity is when someone hears a voice they recognize. They turn, look around, but it’s not who they thought it was. But way down in that primordial limbic core, they know the voice. So, they look again, study the face, look at the height, weight, walk, mannerisms, and then they think, ‘I know! That’s Jean Randolph.’ And it goes to hell.”
Now Marie was feeling her own face, just wondering.
“No matter how much surgery you have, if someone suspects you are Jean Randolph, and they look really close, they will see you in there. The trick is to avoid any suspicion. Don’t let the question be asked. That’s why the voice has to change. We all have an incredible capacity to store and remember voices.”
A new face, a new voice, and a new life. Jean saw the logic, but her own primordial limbic core rebelled at the idea. What a great choice. Give up some of her life or all of her life. Such is life.
“Do I get to choose what I look like?”
“Within the limits of bone structure, muscles, and that stuff. But I assure you, you will be a very attractive lady, just not Jean Randolph. You want a boob job, they can do that too. And that cute little frog on your ankle? Say goodbye.”
“How long does it all take?”
“You’re on the street in three months. The surgeries are usually one day affairs. Then you stay at a private clinic a few weeks, then a place like this, visiting the doctors once a week, for the rest of the healing time.”
“Have you had it done?”
“Me? No. Haven’t had the need.”
“Would you do it?”
“To save my life? In a heartbeat. But to be honest with you, it would frighten me.” Marie curled her legs under her on the couch and pulled the robe tighter around her. “Hey, millions of women all over the world dream of this. Hollywood stars. Billionaires. Face lifts, nose jobs, liposuction, wrinkles. Most of them end up looking like hell. But not you, not with us. You’ll end up looking great.”
She had wanted more excitement in her life, Jean thought, but this was getting ridiculous. “And when I’m all healed up and can walk the streets in safety, what do I do then? Clerk at a bookstore? Work at the Kruger?”
“The Kruger? Good God, no,” she lied easily. “Believe me, that’s not who we work for. Let’s say that’s my day job. But we could get you something just as good, with background, life history, all the proper documents. In other words, a new life. A very good life. I mean it. Not just something to keep you alive, but something
challenging that would make life good.”
Jean jabbed the fire a few more times until she had the glowing logs positioned perfectly. “Ok. What’s the deal with you and Callahan? Is there something there? You know? Besides whatever you people do?”
“Callahan?” Marie looked down into her mug. “To tell you the truth, I’ve been tempted. But… well, I don’t think he’s interested.”
“He’s gay? Married?”
“Callahan? Gay? God, no. Not married either. He was once, but I’m not sure what happened. I mean… I… I don’t think he’s interested in me.”
“I don’t know,” Jean poked the fire again. “I’ve seen him looking. Can’t say what he’s thinking… just seems to appreciate what he sees.” She gave Marie a sideways look. “Is he the guy you were trying to fix me up with in London?”
“Yeah. That’s him.”
“Damn. I wish you had. Like I said, the available pool of men is mighty shallow. Can’t let one like that get away.”
Vatican - Wednesday, April 15
Father Girard leaned an elbow on the bar and pointed to his companion’s empty glass. First rule of press relations, Girard thought, beer for the Americans and Germans, wine for French and Italians, and anything for the British.
“Are you really going on the record to say the treaty doesn’t exist?” asked the CNN producer.
“Of course I’m not,” scoffed Girard. “All good Jesuits learn you can’t prove a negative, at least not very easily. Look, we’ve combed through all our records, and they go way back, and haven’t found a thing. We’ve turned the Vatican upside-down. We have absolutely no known mention of this treaty anywhere in the academic literature. Nobody else has been able to find anything on it. Our enemies haven’t found anything. In fact, the only mention of it is the recent stories in the Arab newspapers.”
“Doesn’t prove it doesn’t exist,” insisted the producer.
“Right. It doesn’t. Go find it then.” Girard laughed. “See if you can find a Unicorn while you’re at it.”
“But you’re not going to deny it?”
The Templar Concordat Page 24