by Declan Finn
A Pius Legacy
A Political Thriller
by Declan Finn
A PIUS LEGACY
by Declan Finn
Published by Silver Empire
www.silverempire.org
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018, Declan Finn
All rights reserved.
“...it is the inalienable right of every sentient being to live free, pursue their dreams, to address wrongs within their own society without fear of retribution, to believe as their conscience requires in matters of faith, but also to respect the rights of others to believe differently or not at all.”
~J. Michael Straczynski, Babylon 5, atheist
“Any stigma to beat a Dogma.”
~Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Introduction
To start with, this book was originally drafted in 2004. A lot of names have changed since then, though not enough to matter to this particular plot. You will notice that some world leaders are still in charge of their countries, even though they’ve been out of power, and in some cases, I made up who the Presidents currently are.
For the record, as in the last book, I make a distinction between the facts and the fiction. If you think “That can’t be real,” look at the back. We’ll see.
I hope much of what is here is impossible to do. Though, lately, I don’t seriously believe anything is impossible for those willing to disregard the law. Every time I make something up, the world decides to prove me right. When I wrote these books almost a decade ago, I wanted to be entertaining and informative. Not predictive.
Please forgive me if some of the technology works a little bit better than advertised. Some proponents of non-lethal weaponry may take exception to my liberties with the microwave weaponry. As a resident of New York, I’m not legally allowed to be familiar with hand guns, never mind high-tech crowd-dispersal devices.
At the end of the day, I’m just a guy who knows his history, and has collected a whole bunch of other miscellaneous trivia. At the end of the book, I’ll give you a list of what is and what isn’t real. Some authors like to get cute with “can you guess what’s real and what’s not?” I’m not one of them. I’d like to thank my beta readers, Marina Fontaine, John Wallace, Sue Freivald, as well as Margaret and Gail Konecsni of Just Write! Ink.
I’d also like to thank the Philosophy and History departments of St. John’s University for much of what’s in the novel. I bet you didn’t see this coming.
Prologue
Welcome To Rome
Matthew Kovach, author, opened the door to his hotel room in Rome, only to have a silenced .22 caliber pistol shoved in his face.
Matthew ducked, sidestepped and grabbed the silencer almost simultaneously. He twisted the gun up, instead of sideways for fear of merely twisting off the silencer, and pointed the muzzle of the gun in the assassin’s face, forcing him to release it or have his face blown off.
Matthew threw the gun away and jabbed at his assailant’s eyes with the stiff fingers of his left hand. The assassin threw up his arms, knocking it away, and fired a punch for the author’s chest, but Kovach had already backed up, out of the way. The assailant moved forward and fired another killer left for his throat. Matthew Kovach weaved and threw himself forward, inside the gunman’s reach.
Inertia caused the author to head butt his adversary. Opportunity made him jab for his unprotected left kidney. Training caused him to grab hair with his free hand, hook his foot behind the gunman’s, and pull on both, dropping him to the ground.
Matthew pivoted and tossed himself into the room. Grabbing one of the hotel chairs, he whirled, hurling the chair into the gunman as he scrambled to get to his feet and his gun at the same time. The assassin didn’t get the gun, but regained his feet easily enough, even though he was knocked against the wall by the force of the chair. He charged for Matthew, and Matthew obliged, diving as the gunman rushed him. The assassin leaped over the writer as Matthew tucked and rolled into the hall, grabbing the gun. He twisted the silencer off, then fired off to the side, into the ceiling, out of sight of his attacker.
The assassin ducked as Matthew continued to fire. The killer waited until he heard a familiar metallic click.
The assassin stood and came out of hiding. Matthew held the gun in front of him, and the assassin knew what had happened. Matthew fired off shots to get attention, and he wanted to bluff him into thinking that he had enough bullets to hold him.
Oops. The killer moved to his feet, smiling. “You have nothing, signore.”
Matthew smiled. “Try me. And if you think that’s an Italian accent, I’ll introduce you to my Italian family members.”
The assassin reached for another gun at the small of his back.
Chapter I
Pius Research
12 hours earlier
The day that Matthew Kovach was slated to die had started out so well.
Matthew’s medium blue eyes scanned the landscape through silver wire-frame glasses as he wondered how he wound up here, for God’s sake. Then again, God is pretty much the point.
He took the toothpick out of his mouth, noted that if he chewed it anymore, he would need surgery to remove the splinters. He flicked it like a cigarette as he looked out over St. Peter’s Square, sighing gently. He had to go to work soon, but he wanted to take in the view from the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica. He wanted to stay and cling to the doorstep of the fortress of light, as he thought of it.
He smiled and reached for his cell phone. Calling home would be a good thing right about now. He had his finger over the autodial and paused. He sighed deeply. Work first. He changed buttons and dialed his agent.
“Inna Petraro Associates.”
“Hello. Tell Ms. Petraro that Matthew Kovach is calling.”
He waited a moment and finally stood, stretching to his full six-foot height. He looked down and saw his gut, wondering what it would take to remove those last few pounds.
He sighed and started walking. The pigeons really like moving targets.
“Matthew,” Inna Petraro answered, “how are you?”
“Not bad, my lovely young agent. How’s life in the big city?”
Petraro gave a little “eh” sound. “Still the same.”
“Your life sounds boring,” he joked. “Sean in LA again, guarding some super-star?”
“Actually, he’s in Rome, at the Vatican, training the priests to do … something.”
Matthew Kovach chuckled. “I just hope it’s not his usual death, doom and destruction. Otherwise, we really will have killer priests, like in all of those bad films … So you get up this early just to get work done, ah, you’re depressin’ me, lass, you’re so Protestant in your work ethic.”
Petraro laughed. “I am not the one who traveled to Rome.”
“Oh, so shoot me. I need the research, not to mention the tax write off. Besides, you and I both know that more people learn history, or what looks like it, from novels rather than textbooks. I mean, look at Catholic
Paranoid novels—I’ve never seen so many people believe so much crap: the Knights of Malta, Knights Templar, the Church suppressing the truth about … well, everything that happened before the Enlightenment—as if we were ever that organized. Anyway, if I’m going to write a historical novel about Pius XII, I’ll need more than my shiny doctorate in history. I need the archives.”
Petraro sighed. Writers …there are days I think I need a leash on him. “You have given me this speech before, Matthew.”
Matthew paused, then let out a breath. “I know … I know. Listen, give my best to the office, and I’ll do the same for your future husband, should I eventually run into the madman, okay?”
“Done and done. Bye.”
Matthew disconnected as he walked out of the square, then turned his attention to the next autodial button. He thought about it a moment, and then hit it.
“Hi, Matt,” his wife answered on the first ring.
“You were up?”
“Yes, working on the djurus.”
He smiled, imagining his wife going through the penjakt silat motions in the middle of their living room, her long red hair down her back like a line of fire, her sparkling eyes glowing with amusement.
“How’s the research going?” she asked.
He walked toward his hotel, and walked past several rolls of crime scene tape cordoning off the street in front. I wonder who decided to jump?
He looked up and spotted the ruined window. He went through the glass? That had to hurt.
“I found some really cool stuff! I think I’m on the right track now.”
“Really? Hold on a second.”
* * *
Half a world away, Matthew’s wife put a bluetooth connection in her ear, and clipped the phone to the waist of her shorts before turning to three of her bigger, brawnier students at her studio. The bluetooth device was specifically made so she could practice and listen to her husband at the same time. It was common – Matthew feared that if he didn’t tell her every little thing he did, he would most likely fall into writing and research, and never come out.
So, she had a bluetooth device specially made so she could talk – mostly listen—to Matthew, while at the same time not worry about it falling off at moments like this.
She smiled at the students and said—to them and to her husband—“I’m ready. Come on.”
Matthew chuckled—he loved being onto something. “After the Nazis took over Rome in World War II, Pope Pius XII ordered all ecclesiastical buildings opened to shelter Jews in Rome, and he hid over three thousand Jews in Castel Gandolfo, his personal palace.”
Moira charged into a roundhouse kick, knocking her student off his feet. She dropped to one knee, slapping the mat, and swept a foot meaning to trip another. He jumped over it, and she spun to her feet, hitting him in the gut with a strong uppercut that doubled him over. She mimed a hammer elbow to the back of his head and stepped back, eyeing the others. “Didn’t US Intelligence report that when they bombed Gandolfo, they injured a thousand and killed three hundred because it was crammed with refugees?”
“Exactly,” Matthew told her. “You remembered. I knew about fifteen thousand went through Gandolfo, but I just found out that Pius was the only one who could have authorized it.”
A third student fired a right hook. She blocked it with her left, jerked down and then around and up the arm, locking it in place before she pivoted her entire body, putting her full weight behind it, using his locked arm as leverage as she dropped him to the mat. The other students rose. She smiled at them.
“Not to mention,” Matthew continued, “the Palatine guards; in 1942 – there were only thirty, and in December the next year, there were four thousand of them, and 400 were Jews. Pius dealt personally with 150 to 200 refugees ’tween 1939 and 1944, and between four and six thousand more got passports, travel cash, ship tickets or letters of recommendation for a foreign visa on papal orders. Pius also arranged for three thousand ‘non-Aryans’ to go to South America, away from the Nazis.”
Moira smiled, happy to hear her husband so excited. The first student fired off stiff fingers of his left hand for her solar plexus. She side-stepped to her left and pivoted out of the way, grabbed his wrist with her left, and stabbed her own fingers into his throat—just enough to let him know she was there. She stepped around and behind him, switching the hand she held his arm with, and pushed her hand into her student’s face, taking away his line of sight. She locked his arm straight across her chest, using the arm to maneuver him, using him as a shield.
“Sounds like the Nazis might have wanted to return the favor,” Moira told Matthew. “If I were master of Europe, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to be stampeded over.”
The author nodded to himself. “In 1944, the Germans raided seminaries in Rome, arresting Jews, military and political refugees. But I think they were pretty lucky; most of them, anyway. Cardinal Roncalli—Pope John XXIII—started as a Vatican diplomat, and he saved 5,200 with false passports. Early in 1944, Pacelli told Angelo Rotta, Nuncio in Budapest, to threaten papal condemnation against Hungary if any deportations of Jews were carried out. He even told Rotta to ‘double his efforts on behalf of Jews,’ and gave Rotta permission to give protective passes to those who were ‘officially’ Jewish converts to Catholicism; over 15,000 protective passes were given out to recipients whose credentials were not examined too closely.”
McShane laughed as two students circled around her, hoping to strike at the right time. “I didn’t know they had Irish cop genes in Rome.”
“Well, the Celts did rape and pillage down here three thousand years ago. Maybe they left some good DNA behind.”
Moira, the daughter of an Irish cop, chuckled. “Possible.”
“Rotta was also the point man in establishing an ‘International Ghetto,’ filled with dozens of modern apartment buildings where over thirty thousand Jews found sanctuary. On October 22, he saved 2,000 Jews from a death march by using as many blank ‘pontifical safe conducts’ as he could lay his hands on. By the end of ’44, Rotta had issued over 20,000 passports; and when communications with the Vatican were difficult and Rotta and his staff’s lives were in constant danger, Rotta asked the Pope what to do, and his answer was: ‘if it is still possible to do some charity, remain!’ The Nuncio hid about two hundred within his palace and ‘urged others to do likewise.’”
Both students charged, and Moira shoved her human shield into one, then sidestepped the other, sweeping his leg like it was a cartoon maneuver. She waited for them to get back up. “Sounds like a nice start to the process.”
“Yeah, isn’t it? Hungary had a whole slew of other efforts. The Church in Hungary alone saved at least 5,072—that’s not counting Rotta’s people”
Her students slowly rose to their feet again. Too slow; she could have finished all of them off by now. Maybe it was time to let them learn a lesson... “You found all that in one day?”
“Yup. Not to mention the relief support. Heck, the supplies, and personnel supplied by the Pope, came through five Vatican refugee camps scattered through Italy, in addition to the Church’s hospitals, clinics, etc, which, all told, assisted over 35,000 Jews, in addition to 90,000 other refugees.
“Also there’s the Papal invention in the case of Ferramonti-Tarsia, an Italian internment camp that sheltered approximately 3,200 Jews. The church took care of them at Vatican expense. Two papal emissaries set up a kosher kitchen, a grammar school, and held folksong gatherings. The Pope even stopped their deportation to Poland, and did the same for three other camps. By the time I’m through with this, I’m going to become the accountant for a pontifical Schindler’s list. These numbers are increasing exponentially.”
The three students came at Moira at once. She lashed out at one student with a right cross, and she decked him solidly, harder than she intended to. She grabbed his shoulder and drove her knee into his gut. She pushed off to put him between her and Student Two, and she side kicked into One, following up with a
light hammer fist to the back of the head.
She cleared her throat and said, “They set up a kosher kitchen? You can get kosher cooking in Italy?”
He paused. “I guess there’s always veggie lasagna. Anyway, in September ’43, Rome’s new Gestapo chief, Kappler, ordered the Jewish population to hand over fifty kilos of gold in twenty-four hours or else. After only getting thirty-five, Chief Rabbi Israel Zolli went to the Vatican. The Pope personally approved enough funds to make up the difference. When Kappler later increased the requirement to 2.5 million Italian lire or else, the Vatican offered to make up the difference in the final tally. The Pope authorized over 100 pounds of golden church equipment to be melted down to help buy off Kappler and friends.
“However, in October, when the Germans double-crossed them, and began a general round up of Jews—no shock there. Pius had the convents and churches opened, not to mention everything I cited a few minutes ago.”
In the time it took for Matthew to say all of that, Moira’s student decided to act like a real attacker and took the risk of unleashing a kick at Moira. She met the groin kick with a side kick against his shin guard, and switch-kicked into his groin cup. He doubled over, and she grabbed his head, and straightened her back, twisting his neck slowly until he tapped her thigh twice to acknowledge that she would have broken his neck.
“Sounds good. How many pages did you go through?”
Matthew chuckled. “Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
A second student rushed her and knocked her over, then strangled her on the ground. She grabbed one hand, tossed a leg over his neck, and scissored her leg down, putting his head on the ground. She tugged on his arm gently, and he tapped out—acknowledging that his shoulder could have been dislocated, and his arm broken.
“Although,” Matthew continued, “I did manage to find text for Pius XII’s 1941 Christmas message which ‘deplored the dishonor to human dignity, liberty and life … which cry out for vengeance.’”