by Glenn Cooper
‘So this is what you think this priest saw in the crypt?’ Celestine asked.
‘Can I prove it? No. Do I believe it? Yes. Look, I know that, by definition, Church doctrine holds that miracles require no explanation other than divine intercession. But there’s an interface between mysticism and science that personally I find intriguing. Have you ever heard of quantum entanglement?’
The pope had not, but five minutes later, he thanked Cal for the lesson.
‘I do find this modern physics to be quite fascinating from what of it I can understand,’ Celestine said. ‘Very few theology students have a mind capable of delving deeply into all this mathematics, all these complex equations. But I must tell you, I do not believe one has to invoke a certain interface between science and faith. I believe that all of science, all that we know about the physical world, all we will learn about the physical world in the future, is a manifestation of divine creation. God has given us this glorious universe of matter and energy. If this quantum entanglement is real, as you suggest it may be, if Padre Gio has stigmata from his contact with a relic that had contact with Jesus Christ, then it doesn’t matter what name you put on it, miracle or science. It is marvelous. It is awesome. It is divine. Tell me, professor, what will you do now?’
‘I’m going to try to find Giovanni.’
‘I hope you do. The young priest is in trouble and if a good man such as yourself and a good woman such as his sister can help him then I give you my blessings.’
‘Thank you.’
‘But before you go, tell me one thing. Why are you devoting yourself to him? Why did you return to Italy, perhaps to your peril?’
Cal thought for a few moments before he simply said, ‘Because he touched me.’
The pope nodded his large head and extended his hands. ‘Professor, I understand completely.’
TWENTY-THREE
They were waiting at the baggage carousel at Munich airport for Irene’s old-fashioned suitcase, the kind without wheels and too large for the overhead bins.
She apologized for the delay. ‘I’m not much of a traveler,’ she admitted.
‘Not a problem. We’ve got nothing on for tonight beside checking into our hotel and finding a place for dinner.’
‘Can you tell me how you know this man we’re seeing tomorrow?’
‘Klaus Langer was on a panel with me a few years ago at an academic conference in Paris. The subject was the Cathars. I know a fair bit about their history. He’s an expert on Nazis and neo-Nazis and their links to Cathar mysticism.’
The bag appeared. He lifted it off the carousel and carried it outside. Once they were in a taxi to the city center she admitted she didn’t know the first thing about the Cathars.
‘They were a twelfth-century Christian sect from the Languedoc region of southern France. On the fringes of mainstream Christian thought, they were a group of dissident pacifists who believed that an evil deity had created the material world and a good God all the invisible rest. Since the evil God created all visible matter, including the human body, they thought our bodies were tainted with sin. They believed that human spirits were the genderless manifestation of angels trapped within the physical creation of the evil God. They thought that they were cursed to be reincarnated until the Cathar faithful achieved salvation, through a rather complex purification ritual.
Their clergy were known as Perfecti. They came from all walks of life – aristocrats, merchants, peasants – you name it. Women could also become Perfects.’
‘Ahead of their time,’ she said.
‘Perfects also had to be celibate and vegetarians. As you can imagine, the sect was condemned by the Church as heretical.’
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘Pope Innocent III tried to end Catharism by sending missionaries to Languedoc and persuading the local authorities to act against them. When Cathar assassins killed a particularly hated papal legate, Peter of Castelnau, the pope had the ideal pretext to launch a crusade against them. A papal army marched in and indiscriminately slaughtered twenty thousand men, women and children, many Cathars, many not. His order was, ‘Kill them all, God will know his own.’
‘How awful. But what do they have to do with Nazis?’
‘The Nazis had some natural affinities to Catharism. They both viewed Jews with contempt. In the case of the Cathars, they believed that the God of Israel (who was the God of the Old Testament and therefore of the Jews) was the same as their evil God who created the material world. A Nazi academic and member of the SS named Otto Rahn was obsessed with the Cathars. Klaus Langer’s the Rahn expert. Pretty much everything I know about him, which isn’t a lot, I learned from Langer’s talk.
Rahn was sort of a Holy Grail nut and a Cathar nut rolled into one. He was convinced there was a factual basis to Wolfram von Eschenbach’s narrative poem about the Grail, Parzival and that the poem was based on long-forgotten Cathar ballads. Basically, he thought that the Cathars had been in possession of the Grail and whoever possessed it or came into contact with it would have eternal life. He roamed around the Languedoc area and the old Cathar fortress of Montségur, looking for the Grail – unsuccessfully I would add. He also visited a lot of other places in Europe and Iceland, looking for other relics for Himmler and Hitler who were said to subscribe to beliefs about the actual power – or at least the psychological power – of possessing the relics most-associated with Christ.
We know the Nazis wanted the Grail but never got it. We know they wanted the Holy Lance and were able to get it from the Austrians who had it for centuries. Anyway, since the war, there’s been a cottage industry of conspiracy theories connecting the Nazis to the Cathars. The most common is that Hitler, Himmler and other high-ranking Nazis were part of a neo-Cathar pagan secret society and that these secret societies exist today. That’s where Langer comes in. He’s got the world’s most complete database on neo-Nazis and their iconography.’
The taxi was pulling into the hotel forecourt. ‘And you think he can identify the tattoo?’ she asked.
‘He didn’t make any promises but he told me he’d try to help us.’
Over dinner at a fish restaurant off the Königsplatz, Irene wanted to know if she could ask Cal a question that had been weighing on her.
‘Shoot,’ he said.
‘Why did you come back?’
‘You know why. Giovanni reached out in a way we don’t completely understand and asked for my help. The same as he asked you.’
‘Yes, but people ask others for help all the time and often we don’t choose to respond. Giovanni is little more than a stranger to you. You met him once, for how long?’
‘Less than an hour.’
‘Less than an hour. And yet you immediately flew to Italy. What is it you hope to get out of this? Are you going to write a book about him? Give lectures? Are you planning to monetize the experience?’
At first he was angry, but it melted away when he saw the corner of her mouth twitching. She was holding in a lot of pain.
‘Let me be honest with you,’ he said. ‘I felt a connection to him, a deep connection, actually. He’s not a classically wise man in any way, shape or form. He’s very young, a little awkward, not very sure of himself, but I still felt he had this enormous wisdom. Do you know what I mean?’
She swallowed hard and nodded.
‘He sensed things about my background and my faith that rattled me at the time. He knew my father died when I was young and what he meant to me.’
‘Ours too. When we were young.’
‘He told me. He knew I had an almost unconscious, pent-up desire to give confession and after he took it, I felt pretty damned good. And when he put his arms around me – I can only say it was electric – not only because of the vision it produced, but because it took me back.’
She almost whispered her question. ‘To where?’
He swallowed. ‘To when I was a boy and my father hugged me.’
He wiped at his eyes with his napkin an
d apologized.
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be embarrassed.’
He smiled. ‘I mean I’m twice his age but there was this kind of role reversal. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was he always like that?’
‘Not at all. He was always quite immature, even at the seminary. Only afterwards, when the stigmata began, did he develop this quality you describe. He went from little brother to big brother to father in a very fast way.’
‘Anyway, that’s why I came back. I lost my father a long time ago. I didn’t want to lose Giovanni. Does that make sense?’
‘It does.’
‘Do you believe me?’
She reached across the table to touch his hand. ‘I do.’
Domenica Berardino was rinsing the pans in her sink and placing them in her dishwasher while her sister, Carla, cleared the dinner table and young Federico watched television.
When the door buzzer went off, Carla asked through the door who was there. The reply of ‘Police’ was delivered with an odd accent but she opened the door anyway.
Gerhardt Hufnagel stepped over the threshold, crowding her backwards toward the lounge. Two other men followed him in and quietly closed the door. The intruders wore leather driving gloves.
‘Who are you?’ Carla demanded.
‘You should be calm,’ Gerhardt said in English, pointing menacingly at her son.
Carla didn’t speak the language. ‘What?’
‘Tell her what I said,’ Gerhardt told one of the Italians, a skittish fellow with a prominent scar on his cheek.
‘He said, stay calm. For the sake of the boy.’
Domenica appeared from the kitchen and asked her sister who these men were.
Scarface said, ‘We don’t want to hurt you, but we will if you scream or call out. Which one is the priest’s mother?’
She eyed the telephone. ‘I’m his mother. What do you want?’
‘Are you going to be good? If we have to get rough, she’ll get hurt first, then the kid. Understand?’
Domenica nodded fearfully and said she did. Gerhardt dispatched the other Italian, a stocky man with hooded, brooding eyes, to search the flat. He soon came back and gave the all clear.
‘Ok. This guy’s going to ask questions and I’m going to translate,’ Scarface said. ‘Both of you, on the sofa.’
Gerhardt stood over them and crossed his powerful arms. ‘Where is the Madonna?’ he asked.
Domenica looked too bewildered to answer so her sister replied defiantly. ‘Go to the church. They’ll have one.’
‘Don’t be a smart-ass,’ Scarface said. Gerhardt reacted stonily to his translation and Scarface translated his silence into Italian. ‘You don’t realize the trouble you’re in. Your statue. Your Madonna.’
‘Why are we in trouble, mama?’ Federico asked.
His mother told him the men were just joking but Domenica was chewing on her lip. ‘Why do you want it?’ she asked.
‘This is the last time I will permit you to ask me a question,’ Gerhardt said.
‘We have two of them,’ Domenica said. ‘I’m sorry but I really must ask a question. Which one do you want?’
‘Tell me where both are.’
‘There’s one in my room, on my bureau. Down the hall straight ahead. My daughter has one too. It’s the room across the hall from my son’s.’
Gerhardt sent the stocky man to look for them. From the lounge they heard him tossing things about. He came back with hers, a ceramic statuette, but announced that the other one wasn’t there.
Gerhardt took Domenica’s and threw it over his shoulder. It shattered on the floor. ‘I want the other one.’
Domenica said that if it wasn’t in Irene’s room she didn’t know where it was.
Gerhardt ordered the men to search everywhere, precipitating an exercise lacking in delicacy. At first the little boy thought all the toppling and rummaging was funny, but when he saw his mother and aunt fighting back tears he began to cry.
‘Keep him quiet,’ Gerhardt said. ‘If you don’t I’ll shut him up.’
Carla held the boy close and buried his face in her blouse.
Before long, the flat was turned upside down.
‘For the last time,’ Gerhardt said. ‘Where is it?’
‘Honestly, I don’t know,’ Domenica said. ‘Maybe my daughter took it with her.’
‘Where did she go?’
‘To Rome.’
‘Why?’
‘To try to find her brother. He’s missing.’
Gerhardt sneered and looked like he was going to say something but didn’t. ‘Did she go alone?’
‘She went with an American professor.’
The sneer melted. ‘Donovan?’
‘Yes, how did you know?’
‘Where in Rome?’
‘I don’t know. She hasn’t called today. Yesterday she was in a hotel.’
‘Which one?’
‘I didn’t ask.’
‘Call her now. Ask her if she has it. Don’t cause suspicion. My friend with the beautiful scar, he’ll be listening.’ He pointed toward Carla. ‘If you alert your daughter in any way I’ll cut her throat. Find out which hotel she’s at. Do a good job and you’ll all be ok.’
Irene’s mobile rang while Cal was paying the restaurant check.
‘Mama, I was going to call you when I got back to the hotel. Is everything all right? Have the police called about Giovanni?’
‘Yes, everything is fine. I’ve heard nothing from the police. I was worried about you.’
‘You sound a bit strange,’ Irene said. ‘Are you sure you haven’t had any news.’
‘Nothing. It’s just the stress.’
‘Have you been eating?’
‘Yes, Carla and Federico came for dinner. They’re going to stay the night. I was wondering, did you take your Our Lady of Lourdes statue with you?’
‘I should have told you. Yes. It’s silly but it seemed like a good idea.’
‘I was just looking for it.’
There was a pause while Domenica read a scribbled note in Italian, dictated by Gerhardt.
The note said: Which hotel?
Irene filled in the pause herself. ‘Professor Donovan and I found some interesting things, mama. Nothing that helps find Giovanni but we think it’s important information. Believe it or not, the professor had an audience with the pope today. He said he is praying for Giovanni’s safe return.’
‘That’s wonderful, wonderful.’
‘We flew to Germany this afternoon. We’re in Munich to see another professor. I’ll be sure to call you tomorrow to let you know how we got on.’
Scarface pointed to the note again. When Domenica hesitated again, Gerhardt pulled a folding knife from his pocket and moved behind the sofa to stare down at the boy’s head.
‘Mama? Are you still there?’
‘Yes, I’m here. Which hotel are you staying at?’
‘The Weisses Schloss. Why do you want to know?’
‘No reason. Just in case.’
‘Ok, mama, I’ve got to go. I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
When Irene hung up Cal said, ‘What’s up? You look worried. Any news?’
‘My mother sounded strange.’
‘It’s probably the stress.’
‘She said the same thing.’
Gerhardt went into Giovanni’s trashed room and called Schneider.
‘Do you have it?’ Schneider asked.
‘It’s not here. The priest’s sister took it with her.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She’s in Munich.’
‘Why Munich?’
‘I don’t know. Believe it or not, she’s with Donovan.’
‘I heard he was back.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You didn’t need to know. Now you do.’
‘Do you have her location?’
‘Yes.’
‘Her sister is here too. With her boy.’
‘Shit. Can they take care of all three of them?’
‘They’re not geniuses but they’re competent enough for the job.’
‘Gerhardt?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m not happy that Donovan is nosing around again. Make sure you finish him this time.’
Scarface and his accomplice amused themselves by watching an old American movie on television while the boy, covered by a blanket, slept on the carpet and Domenica and Carla nodded off in their armchairs. Gerhardt had left hours earlier, after drilling them on the plan. Their orders were to wait until two a.m. before taking the women and boy out the rear service entrance of the apartment building, near where their van was parked. They would drive to the furnished flat they had rented in the outskirts of Rome, arriving before dawn. They would keep the women and child under wraps until they were contacted. They would make no mistakes, or else.
They were still an hour away from their departure time and Scarface said he was hungry.
The other man was absorbed in the movie and ignored him.
‘Get me something to eat,’ Scarface said.
There was still no response.
He threw a coaster from the coffee table and hit the other guy square in the face.
‘What?’
‘I was talking to you. See what she’s got in the refrigerator.’
The man swore and got up with his moodiness on full display.
‘And keep your goddamn gloves on.’
He returned with a Tupperware full of leftover pasta, a couple of plates and forks. They ate hungrily and polished the food off in no time. Time passed and while the credits of the movie were rolling, the brooding man farted and announced he was going to the toilet.
He did his business and reached for the toilet paper roll.
‘How am I supposed to do this with gloves?’ he mumbled.
When he finished up, Scarface was on his feet in the lounge, on his mobile.
‘That was the German,’ he said. ‘He was making sure we were going to leave now.’