by Glenn Cooper
Calipari clapped his hands in delight. ‘Of course! This is the very first time that I, as a physicist, have been sworn to confidentiality. Consider me your physics confessor.’ He abruptly wiped the pleasure from his face. ‘I’m sorry, signorina. Your brother is a priest. I don’t wish to make light of his precarious circumstances.’
Irene assured him she took no offense and told him about the bilocations, the visions, their shared experiences of pain and breathlessness that seemed to emanate from Giovanni.
Calipari squirmed in his chair. ‘Look, I don’t know what I can tell you. As far as I can see, you are sober, credible observers, not a couple of new-age seekers. One could certainly say that both of you seem to have some sort of psychic connection to your brother. But to invoke quantum entanglement? This can be no more than an hypothesis that cannot be proven. The question I would pose to you is why Giovanni Berardino? What makes him this rare individual who is capable of making these kinds of connections, entangled or otherwise? And are his famous stigmata related in your way of thinking or are they a red herring?’
Cal asked Irene if he could take a stab at answering and she willingly agreed.
‘We think everything – his stigmata, the bilocation, the connectivity – all trace back to something Giovanni was exposed to,’ Cal said.
‘And what might that be?’ the physicist asked.
‘One of the venerated relics of Christ.’
Calipari looked out the window at a grassy area where students were enjoying the summer day. ‘Look, I’m not a particularly religious man but I’m not an atheist. I know there is much I don’t know. Atheism implies a certainty I simply don’t possess. But if I can accept the possibility that this miraculous phenomenon of Christ’s resurrection actually happened, then I can also accept that a physical object – one that was in contact with Christ – might be the trigger for a most dramatic demonstration of quantum entanglement, rippling across time and space. One that includes a man in the twenty-first century developing the same wounds of crucifixion that a man in the first century suffered.’
Giovanni had been enjoying the sublime respite of one of his visions. It had taken him away from the hot, fetid room and interrupted the constant ache of his stigmata. The familiar face he saw was so kind, so loving that he wished it was to be the last image he ever saw. He didn’t want to go back.
But then Gerhardt unlocked the door, announcing, ‘It’s disgusting in here. How can you stand the smell?’ and the vision ended as suddenly as a soap bubble bursts.
The priest was lying on his blood-crusted bed, dirty and dazed. He turned his face to the wall.
‘This can all end,’ Gerhardt said, pressing a wash cloth to his nose. ‘All you need to do is unburden yourself of this secret of yours. What are you even protecting? A piece of iron? What does it matter who possesses it? Why are you the better custodian than me?’
Giovanni whispered something.
‘What did you say?’
He turned his head toward his tormentor. ‘I said, I made a promise.’
‘To whom? To the old monk, Augustin? Did I tell you he’s dead?’
‘Dead?’
‘Yes, quite dead. I killed him, you know. He wouldn’t talk. Of course I can’t kill you because if you go, the secret goes with you. So I have to keep you alive. But that doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy your life. I will keep hurting you until you talk to me. Today I have a choice to make. Do I make pain or do I give you the water board? Maybe you can help me with my choice. Which one should we do?’
‘Please, leave me alone.’
‘I can’t do that. My colleagues grow impatient.’
‘Just tell me why these people want it?’
Gerhardt pulled up the chair and sat on it back-to-front, folding his arms over the back and resting his head on his hands.
‘This is good. This is the first time you’ve acknowledged ‘it.’’
‘I’m very hungry.’
‘I’m sure you are. We have excellent food in the kitchen. Chicken, steak, roasted potatoes. I’m not such a good cook but my friend has a talent. All you need to do is talk.’
‘Please.’
Gerhardt stood and overturned the chair with a kick. ‘I thought we were making nice progress. But I see you’re stubborn. I’ll be back soon with my friend. My decision is made. The solution was so simple. First we’ll do the water board and then we’ll make the pain. The very best of both worlds.’
Giovanni looked at the ceiling and mouthed a few words.
‘I can’t hear you.’
‘I’ll tell you what you want to know if you promise me something.’
‘What would you like me to promise?’
‘That you won’t hurt my family.’
Schneider was in a meeting of the supervisory board of his bank when his little-used second mobile phone began to vibrate in his jacket.
He excused himself and went across the hall of the executive suite to the privacy of his office.
‘Yes, Gerhardt, what news?’
‘I know where it is.’
‘I see. Where?’
‘Francavilla. It’s where he’s from.’
‘I want you to go there. I won’t trust the job to a contractor.’
‘I’ll need some local men. I don’t speak Italian.’
‘I’ll arrange it.’
‘His mother and sister live there. He doesn’t want them hurt.’
‘I’m sure he doesn’t. If they’re at home when you come calling we can’t have them talking to the police.’
‘I understand.’
‘Is he still alive?’
‘He’s alive.’
‘Keep him that way,’ Schneider said. ‘We’re not finished with him, not by a long shot.’
TWENTY-TWO
‘Now what?’ Irene asked.
They had wrapped up their meeting at the University of Rome and could think of nothing better to do, than find a sun-splashed bench on one of the college greens where they watched a carefree game of Frisbee. The disk floated over a student’s head and landed at their feet. Cal tossed it back hard. It sailed over the grass with laser-like accuracy, earning him a few ‘Bravos.’
‘If Giovanni was given a nail relic in Croatia he must have hidden it somewhere,’ he said. ‘Whoever took him tore up his room in Monte Sulla looking for it. We’ve got to assume they didn’t find it. We’ve got to figure out where he hid it, why he hid it and why they want it.’
‘It would be worth a great deal of money. Isn’t that enough of a reason?’ she said.
‘There’s easier ways to get money. You rob a museum, you rob a bank. You don’t kidnap a priest for his relic.’
‘Maybe it has something to do with this entanglement,’ she said.
‘Who knows?’ He unfolded his drawing of the lance and SS bolts. ‘But this has got to be important.’
His phone rang and when he saw the caller ID his face brightened.
‘Klaus, hello! I was just thinking about you. Thanks for getting back to me.’
Two hours later, their travel arrangements to Munich in place, they checked out of their hotel and climbed into Cal’s rental car. They were half way to the Fiumicino Airport when his phone rang. This time it was a number he didn’t recognize.
Irene watched the puzzled look on his face as he listened to the caller.
‘When?’ he asked. He listened again and registered a look of surprise before ending the call with, ‘Yes, of course.’
‘What is it?’ Irene asked.
‘We’re going to have to get a later flight,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘The pope wants to see me.’
Pope Celestine IV had a nickname that secretly amused him: Pope Buddha. It had nothing to do with his philosophy and everything to do with his Buddha-like figure. With one, continuous penstroke, starting with his high forehead, flowing to his prominent nose and fleshy lips and ending with his balloon of a belly, an artist could perfectly captur
e his physical essence. His religious essence had always been somewhat harder to capture.
Few who knew him as the Archbishop of Genoa or the Secretary of State and Cardinal Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church could have guessed at the pope he would become. He had always been seen to be an archly political cardinal, a master of the Curia game, attuned to the sensibilities of the previous pontificate. His predecessor had been a traditionalist who relished all the pomp and formality the Vatican could muster. The Holy See, if left to its own devices, was naturally labyrinthine, brimming with opaque fiefdoms and intense political wrangling. Pope Clement XV, it was wryly said, had presided over the most byzantine Vatican since the Byzantine Empire. And as the secretary of state, Cardinal Aspromonte, had been the pope’s right-hand man, implementing the conservative and doctrinaire policies that were the hallmark of Clement’s reign. The conclave that had chosen Aspromonte to become the next pope had most certainly believed they had chosen a man who would give the Vatican a decade or so of, in essence, a continuation of Clement’s firm and traditional grasp of the Church apparatus.
It was perhaps only the few old-timers who had known Aspromonte as a fledgling, starry-eyed Genovese priest, who had an inkling that the rotund cardinal with an impish smile had been hiding his true colors during his ascent to the College of Cardinals and beyond. As soon as he slipped on the Ring of the Fisherman, he began to chart a new papacy, one that reflected the simmering idealism of his youth.
‘The Church is difficult to change,’ he had said in an interview for America, a weekly Catholic magazine, ‘in the same way that a big ship is difficult to steer. But if a dangerous storm is in the way, the ship must change course or it will flounder. The storm in our way is poverty, hopelessness, the erosion of faith. The pope is the captain of our ship. Through humility, love and a devotion to social justice, I want to steer the church, little by little, into calmer waters where the poor are treated with the dignity that God surely requires.’
The Vatican hierarchy knew to buckle their seatbelts when Celestine refused to move into the papal apartment (opting instead for the Domus Sanctae Marthae guest house), when he sold his fleet of limousines and when he closed the Vatican Radio transmission center and converted it to a hostel for Rome’s poor. And to his brethren who elected him pope, he told those who had the temerity to ask him to his face, ‘I haven’t changed my spots, I merely covered them so I could faithfully serve Pope Clement in his mission. Perhaps I was able to subtly influence his attitudes and soften some of his positions. Now I am pope and I expect you to serve my mission faithfully. You may also try to influence me. We shall see if you are able.’
The pope was waiting for Cal in the small room at the guesthouse that he used for conducting official business. It wasn’t any larger than Cal’s own office and, with the exception of a special ergonomic chair for the pope’s bad back, the furniture was more modest than a Harvard professor’s. Celestine rose from this chair to greet him. His face was overly fleshy, as if a sculptor had used way too much clay for effect, and his eyes seemed to dance with excitement and mirth. Unlike the previous pontiff, who reached deeply into the papal closet of vestments and regalia to emphasize the tradition rites of the Church, this pope preferred to wear a simple white cassock and sensible shoes.
‘Professor Donovan,’ he said in English, extending a plump hand. ‘We finally meet.’
‘Your Holiness,’ Cal said in Italian. ‘It’s a great honor for me.’
‘Ah, perfect Italian. This is easier for me. Sit, sit. Coffee? Tea? Water? I have everything right here, even a mini-fridge, and now I have the coffee machine with the capsules. I am quite self-sufficient.’
‘I’ll take a coffee if only to tell my friends the pope made it for me.’
Celestine bellowed with laughter and inserted a pod. He mentioned he wasn’t supposed to have any so late in the day but he was going to give into temptation.
‘It is as much temptation as a pope is permitted,’ he said. ‘Now, let me issue an apology. I should have seen you when you sent me your report. I was persuaded by Cardinal Lauriat to perform finesse like a bridge player and avoid any controversy and your report was quite controversial. This was a mistake but I don’t blame him. When I had his job I gave similar advice countless times.’
‘May I ask you something?’ Cal said.
‘Of course, anything. You take sugar? Milk?’
‘Black, thank you. Why did you want a formal investigation at this time? It struck me as rather odd. Padre Giovanni hasn’t even had stigmata a full year.’
The pope added milk and a generous spoonful of sugar to his cup. ‘I’ll answer your question with a question – my friends the rabbis like to do this. Was it not your impression that the Vatican wished to suppress this priest, to chop the feet out from under him, to eliminate the cult of personality that was forming around him?’
‘Yes, it was. And not just me. His friends and family leapt to that conclusion. I think he did too.’
‘Well, that was the official thinking promulgated by my friends in the Apostolic Palace. But it wasn’t mine. You see, I find that I can think more clearly in this quiet corner of the Vatican away from the entrenched interests of the Curia. When you try to live a humble life you tend to have humble thoughts. And what can confer greater humility than opening your heart to the possibility of miracles? Miracles, after all, do not come from man. They come from God. We do not control them, we merely experience them with awe and gratitude. I do not fear miracles, I welcome them. Without miracles, religion is just philosophy. If this young man, Padre Gio, truly bears the stigmata of Christ then I am overjoyed. A miracle such as this would not overshadow the Vatican or the papacy; it would strengthen our institutions and our faith.’
‘But I imagine the Church would not be well served if he was found to be a fraud.’
‘Yes, indeed, professor. My brother cardinals have vigorously voiced this concern. They expected the investigation to reveal a disturbed young priest who was self-harming and deliberately or subconsciously deluding his parish. But that was not your conclusion.’
‘It was not.’
‘In my reading of history, the Church badly bungled the investigation of Padre Pio. As you, yourself, documented in your book, Pius XI first had him scrutinized in the nineteen twenties and found him to be suspect. The great Franciscan friar and physician, Agostino Gemelli, labeled Pio as a self-mutilating psychopath who probably kept his wounds open with carbolic acid. Some of Pio’s writings describing his mystical experiences were copied verbatim from the letters of the nineteenth-century stigmatic, Gemma Galgani. Pope John XXIII was not a believer. Privately he called him a straw idol. Yet, his successor, Paul VI dismissed all accusations against Pio and John Paul II, as you know, declared him venerable and the rest is history. Now, he is Saint Pio of Pietrelcina. He has become one of the world’s most popular of all our saints. There are more than three thousand prayer groups dedicated to him around the world with three million members. More Italian Catholics pray to Padre Pio for intercession than to any other figure. This is impressive, no?’
Cal agreed.
‘But in your book, you are rather noncommittal.’
‘Since I never met the man, all I could do as an academic was deal with the historical record, present all the glorious ambiguities and allow the reader to draw his or her own personal conclusions.’
‘But you met Giovanni Berardino.’
‘I did.’
‘And you believe he is genuine.’
‘I do.’
The pope spread his arms expansively and even though their chairs were a meter apart, Cal felt as though he was being embraced.
‘And there we have it,’ Celestine said. ‘This is why, when I heard you had returned to Italy, that I decided I must speak to you in person. When I seek the opinion of Lauriat or Gallegos they speak to me in eloquent circles. With them I need a map to find my way to the truth. Before I was pope, I was quite good at talking a lot withou
t saying anything. Frankly, this was required of me when I was in the secretariat of state. But now I cannot seem to train these old dogs of mine to do new tricks. Professor, I want you to give me what I believe you Americans call ‘straight talk.’ My dear friend, Cardinal Da Silva, recommended you highly. I’ve read your book. I’ve read your report. Now we have this puzzling and traumatic kidnapping, I need to know, more than ever, what we are dealing with.’
It was an offer Cal couldn’t refuse. The pope wanted things unfiltered and he was going to oblige.
‘I don’t know how to say this other than just to say it,’ he began, ‘but I’m of the opinion that Giovanni Berardino is a living and breathing, thoroughly astonishing miracle man.’
The pope showed his surprise. ‘You seemed to be leaning this way in your report but here, today, you’re sounding quite definitive. Were you holding back in your report or have new facts emerged?’
‘Some of both but mostly new facts, Holy Father. Many new facts.’
He didn’t leave anything out. He was speaking to the spiritual leader of over a billion people, a man with a direct line of succession to Peter the Apostle. And as a Catholic himself, albeit a somewhat lapsed one, he felt the weight of the moment. First he told Celestine what he’d omitted from his report. He described the vision he’d had when Giovanni embraced him, his suspicion that a monk at St Athanasius had been murdered and his belief that something present in the crypt of the ancient church played a role in the development of the stigmata. Then he talked about his car accident, regretting the melodramatic sentence, ‘I think someone wanted me dead,’ as soon as he’d said it.
‘Terrible, terrible,’ the pontiff said. ‘This is all so troubling. There is more?’
‘Much more.’
He studied the shifting expression on the pope’s face as he laid out the rest of his cards. Bilocation, vivid, multisensory visions, evidence, as far as Cal and Irene were concerned, that Giovanni was communicating with them. He showed him Irene’s sketch of the Holy Lance tattoo and heard him mumble, ‘Nazi SS insignia? What can this mean?’ Then he showed him the photo from the page of The Secret History.