by Rene Fomby
It didn’t help that the sudden storm had completely thrown off his regular morning ritual—coffee on the rooftop of his apartment listening to the early morning call to prayers by the muezzin at the nearby Nasr Mosque, then a leisurely ten minute walk to the Embassy along the Rue Bani Meskin. With the cold rain and high winds brought in by the storm front, he’d been forced to drive over to the office in his government-issued, government-gray Peugeot 301, parking in his assigned spot in the secure garage beneath the Embassy. A spot that had largely remained empty ever since the FBI had banished him to this Godforsaken remote outpost duty almost a year earlier. An assignment intended to punish him for his mistakes in the William Tulley matter, where he had managed to crack the case wide open, only to watch helplessly as Tulley and his daughter Mary Ellen slipped effortlessly through his clutches and vanished into the night. And the situation had only gotten worse over the past few months, as the one man most responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people in America and around the world had managed to slip through his grasp as well. Peter Boucher. The Butcher. If it hadn’t been for Samantha Tulley’s intervention, appealing to the pope himself to ask the FBI to name him head of security for the secret project they now simply called the Project, Gavin had no doubt that he would already be out on the street, knocking on doors and trying to scare up some fading semblance of a rescued career.
Fully frustrated and with nothing productive left to do for the rest of the day, he opened up a game of solitaire on his computer. He was just settling into his fourth game when a red alert started blaring on every computer screen on the Embassy’s second floor. The alert popped up on his own screen, and he quickly signed in to pull it up.
The news was brief, only a few lines, but it promised to change the troubled arc of his life immediately and forever. The pope was dead. He snatched up his cell phone and keyed in the number by heart.
4
Siena, Italy
Samantha Tulley had just settled down at her desk, a steaming cup of American coffee in her hand and Barley, her doe-eyed Australian Shepherd, curled up contentedly at her feet. Four-year-old Maddie was out in the yard trying to master the arcane art of jump rope, while Sam watched her daughter’s mostly unsuccessful efforts through a picture window from a vantage point two stories above. She still had a few quick emails to dispose of, then she’d head downstairs to see if she could give Maddie a few pointers. Not that she’d ever been all that good at jump rope herself, back in the day.
After all of the craziness of the past few months, months spent flying all over Europe with occasional side trips back to America—all in a desperate, panicked attempt to save her daughter’s far-flung business empire from ruin—Sam finally felt that she could sit back and relax a bit.
Sam looked down at the calendar spread out before her on the desk. It was already football season again, Friday Night Lights shining across the Lone Star State, drawing the entire population of small towns in Texas to the local stadiums like moths to a flickering flame. It was hard to believe that over a year had gone by since she’d kissed Harry goodbye on a warm summer’s day under that old oak tree back in Blairton. And kissed her old life in Texas goodbye, as well. But now, with the Ricciardelli family bank back on solid ground—and deposits actually on the rise once again, thank God—Sam could stop daydreaming about returning to a more conventional life back in Texas and start doing something about it.
She made a note to herself to get Claudia working on a house hunting jaunt to Houston, maybe sometime in about a month. That would definitely get the ball rolling on pulling up the few roots she had set down here in Siena and get Maddie and herself settled into a much more sustainable and refreshingly simple lifestyle, far from the sycophants and blood suckers that were constantly underfoot at the castle in Siena.
She was just logging off her computer when suddenly her cell phone began vibrating angrily on her desk. The screen said Gavin Larson. She plucked it up quickly, mildly alarmed. Historically speaking, phone calls from Gavin were almost always a thing to be avoided. Nothing good ever seemed to spring from them.
“Gavin! How you doing, old man?”
“Old?” he chuckled. “I don’t have much more than a decade on you, if that, young lady. But, to answer your question, I was sitting at my desk this morning as usual feeling rotten about my sorry life, until somehow my day managed to get even worse. I just got a red alert from Washington. I’m not sure that I’m really supposed to let the cat out of the bag yet, but you being you —”
“Out with it, Gavin,” Sam sputtered. “What’s going down?”
“The pope is dead. They found him in his personal apartment this morning. He apparently had a heart attack sometime during the night.”
“The pope! Are you sure?” Sam felt momentarily short of breath.
“Unfortunately, yes. I’m watching the news right now, and the Cardinal Camerlengo just announced it live on Vatican TV.”
Sam’s head was already starting to spin, filled once again with all of the problems she had hoped were finally behind her for good. But now it looked like all of that would land right back on her all-too-weary shoulders one more time. “Shit! That is seriously bad news. I really liked him. He was a truly inspiring man.”
“I think just about everyone liked him, other than your shiftless father-in-law.”
“Ex father-in-law,” Sam corrected him. “But, yeah, Wee Willy Tulley doesn’t really care for anyone or anything but himself. Other than that crazy daughter of his, of course. But—the pope dead. That means—”
“That the Project may be in serious trouble, just when we thought we had everybody lined up and fully committed to the game plan.”
“Yeah. The biggest part of that being the new pope, whether he’ll go along with honoring our agreement. How does that work, anyway? How do they pick the new guy? Draw names out of a hat or something?”
Being Jewish, Sam had never really paid much attention to how popes were selected. And even though Gavin had been raised Christian, he was a life-long Presbyterian, so he was scarcely any better prepared to understand all the Byzantine nuances of papal selections.
“I guess that’s something we’re all going to hear about in great lurid detail over the next few weeks,” he suggested. “Meanwhile, maybe we should get with Mehmed and lock some things down, just in case.”
Sam chewed on that for a moment. “Right. Well, the good thing is, right now only five people alive know the real skinny about what’s hidden in those jars. And you and Mehmed have done a bang-up job creating a cover story for the whole thing, selling it as just a run-of-the-mill antiquities project. Instead of perhaps the greatest trove of Christian documents in the history of the church. Not to mention the most dangerous.”
“So I guess that means, until we get a good handle on this new pope, on how he thinks, we should probably keep him in the dark about the whole operation.”
“Good idea,” Sam agreed. “But meanwhile we need to get word to Mehmed to keep his eyes open and his ears tuned for any signs of trouble. And, of course, we can’t have that kind of conversation with him on an open line, particularly not one that ends up deep inside the Vatican.” She checked her watch. “Look, it’s still early. I have just enough time to catch the next train down to Rome. I can meet up with him midday, and still be back in Siena in time for supper with Maddie.”
“Why not take your jet? Wouldn’t that be faster?”
“Maybe, although for such a short trip it’s close to a wash. But the thing is, all kidding aside, I’m a little concerned about security around this place. Some things have happened that just seem a little too coincidental—”
“You mean you may have a mole inside the castle?” Gavin asked.
“I don’t know for sure. But just in case, if I grab Maddie for a little day trip in the Alfa, and instead sneak over to the train station, no one around here will be the wiser. And the storm that went through last night has cleared out of the area, so it’s
turned into a pretty nice day for an outing. Except for being a bit chilly.”
“Yeah, I think we’ve got your storm out here right now.” Gavin glanced out through the wall of windows to his left at the unending sheets of rain now blasting away against the Embassy walls. “But that sounds like a great plan. Get Mehmed in the loop, so he doesn’t get blindsided. And—Sam—would you mind checking back with me at the end of the day on this? I may have some updates on the pope situation by then.” He hesitated. “Oh, and one other thing. Have you heard from Andy recently? She didn’t call this weekend, which is unusual for her. She’s typically punctual to a fault. Do you know if she’s pissed at me about something?”
“No, and no,” Sam answered. “But I’m sure she just got blindsided herself and forgot. Harry and I have run into the same thing all the time. Life just hits you hard and you lose track of time.”
“Yeah. Sure. You’re probably right.” Gavin didn’t sound completely convinced, but he didn’t have a lot of options in that regard other than just continuing to try to reach her. “Well, have a safe trip south, and don’t forget to call me later.”
“Will do,” Sam agreed, hanging up and buzzing her assistant Claudia to get the car ready for her impromptu trip. The news about the pope—a man she had quickly come to think of as a close personal friend—was finally starting to sink in, and she felt a familiar pang of loss and emptiness settle into her chest. But he was old, and had enjoyed a life full of joy, a life that had changed the world for the better. Hopefully the changes he had made would stick, and the old pattern of good pope, bad pope might be broken this time around. She shook her head to reset her thoughts. She needed to stay focused on the present, not the past.
Two stories below, Maddie appeared to finally be getting the hang of it. A girls trip to Rome was actually starting to sound like a very good idea, Sam thought. It was about time she focused more energy on her increasingly precocious daughter, before she woke up one day to discover that her baby girl had grown up and moved on without her. Now that the Ricciardelli bank was back on solid ground and the rest of the family trust was finally starting to recover from William Tulley’s plunder, maybe she could begin to plan for that move back to Texas, where Maddie could grow up halfway normal, far away from the poisonous Ricciardelli bubble. But first there was this nagging little matter of the pope, and what if anything she needed to do to protect the treasure of the Templar Knights …
5
Sienna
Checking her computer, Sam was surprised to learn that no trains led directly to Rome from Siena. Instead, she would have to hopscotch her way across Italy, a process that could take most of the day just going one way. Irritated, she decided that her best alternative was to drive straight to another city that had direct train service to Rome. Even then, only one option made sense. She could take the SS223 to Grosseto—normally about an hour by car, but just forty minutes in her Alfa with her foot pressed to the firewall—then just barely catch the ninety-minute train ride into Roma Termini train station. But, given the risk of high speed driving on the winding Tuscan roads, that meant she had to leave little Maddie behind.
Her daughter was still outside, now tossing a tennis ball for Barley. Sam picked up her phone and relayed her plans to Maddie’s nanny, then grabbed her purse and bolted for the door.
The Targa top on the candy red Alfa Romeo 4C Spider was still down from her last drive. As much as she loved the exhilaration of top-down driving, that could wind up being a distraction today, plus a little too chilly given the cold front that had moved through earlier, so she took a few moments to raise the top and secure it to the windscreen. She tossed her work bag into the passenger seat and roared out of the garage, down the short road from the castle through the vineyards and out onto the main road. In minutes she was on the Strada di Pescaia, then through the roundabout to the SS223. Traffic was thankfully light as she raced south past the Riserva Naturale Basso Merse, then Paganico, and finally into Grosseto itself. The train station was located in the Piazza Guglielmo Marconi, near the center of the city, and she quickly wound her way there, pulling up to park with still ten minutes to spare. Rushing into the largely unremarkable brick and stone two-story building, she purchased a one-way ticket and raced through the building to the tracks. The train to Rome was in the final stages of boarding, so she located the first-class cabin and jumped aboard.
“Do you have any luggage?” an attendant asked in Italian.
“No, no, solo questo,” she answered, holding up her work bag for a second before aiming for an open seat.
“Molto bene.” The attendant turned away to help an elderly couple up the steps as the train conductor signaled they were about to depart.
Sam slumped down to catch her breath. The dash across the Tuscan countryside had left her slightly on edge. She always loved pushing the Alfa to the razor’s edge on the challenging Italian country roads, but today she had pushed it perhaps a bit too much. Still, any slower and she’d have been left waiting another two hours for the next train.
The train started pulling out of the station, so she sat back for a while to admire the sights of the soft Italian landscape sliding across her window, sights she hadn’t had time to appreciate very much with her white knuckles gripping the steering wheel of the little roadster. Before long the train began to hug the coastline into Rome, so she switched seats to get a better view of the seascape. Soon, however, even that became just more and more of the same, so, thoroughly bored, she pulled out a notepad and began jotting down some thoughts on what the death of the pope might ultimately mean to the Project.
Just over two months earlier Sam and Dr. Timothy Hall—an archeologist friend currently heading up the restoration of Stabiae, near the ruins at Pompeii—accidentally uncovered the lost treasure of the Templar Knights, 144 sealed amphorae holding the Library of Solomon and the Library of Eusebius, the oldest and most precious records of the teachings of Jesus and the earliest days of the Christian church.
Now those amphorae were safely ensconced in a laboratory at the Vatican, where they could be professionally unsealed and their contents carefully examined without fear that exposure to modern air would cause them to crumble into dust. That is, all but thirty-six of the amphorae, jars that had been stolen at the very outset of the Project by the very man she had handpicked to run it. Now, she supposed, those jars were probably lost to humanity forever.
As part of the deal giving the Vatican access to this priceless treasure, Sam had insisted that her friend Mehmed be placed in charge of the restoration, and that disgraced FBI Agent Gavin Larson be named to head up security. To make doubly certain that nothing like the double-cross fiasco ever happened again.
And Sam had negotiated one other favor. The 900-year-old Ricciardelli bank was on the brink of failure, and with it would go the rest of the family’s financial empire. All because of her former father-in-law William Tulley, who after her husband’s untimely death had managed to raid the coffers of the entire Ricciardelli trust, and then disappear into thin air. Not even the entire focused resources of the United States government had been able to make any progress in tracking him or his equally devious daughter Mary Ellen to their secret hideout, and now Tulley was free to continue his sordid plans, whatever they might be. Including several recent attempts on her life, and on the lives of her daughter and friends.
But just when her prospects for saving the bank had seemed the darkest, Sam had stumbled upon the Templar treasure. And in overflowing gratitude for being allowed access to Christianity’s greatest treasures, the pope himself personally arranged for the Vatican Bank to swing a financing deal that single-handedly restored the Ricciardelli family bank, BancItalia, to full solvency.
And that was part of the problem. The arrangement with the old pope had been largely under the table, including the financing of Mehmed’s laboratory. The true nature of what was being examined in the laboratory had been revealed to only six people, plus the missing traitor: herself,
Mehmed, Dr. Hall, FBI Agent Gavin Larson, the pope, and, to a lesser extent, her friend and law partner back in Texas, Harry Crawford. With the pope now dead, that left only five people in the loop. And the elections for a new pope were now just two weeks away. Would the new Pontifex Maximus honor the promises of his predecessor, that any decision to release details of the early Church would be governed by a committee composed of Mehmed, Dr. Hall and the pope himself? Even if those details meant exposing aspects of Christianity that could shake the very foundations of the Catholic Church?
She scribbled “what should he know, and when should he know it?” on her notepad, then underlined it. For now, that was the only question that truly mattered.
6
Vatican City
Cardinal Orso wrapped up yet another personal note and, laying it on top of a stack of twenty others, leaned back in his chair and stretched. Technically, campaigning was strictly outlawed in Papal elections, but with so many of the cardinal electors now coming from outside of Italy—and outside of Europe, for that matter—offering to greet them in a small pre-conclave reception and helping with transportation and other local needs were really only simple Christian courtesies. Or at least he hoped they would be taken as such.
Emperor Constantine’s general, Peter Boucher, had assured him that fully half of the delegates were already comfortably in his pocket. With 114 other cardinals expected to attend the conclave, that left nineteen or twenty still on the cusp. Around ten of those were already closely aligned with his own conservative positions on the future of the Church, meaning nine or ten votes still stood between him and his lifelong ambition. The Papacy itself. A prize that would redeem his family’s fortunes once and for all.
The selection of a new pope had not always been handled so democratically. According to Catholic doctrine, of course, the very first Bishop of Rome was the apostle Peter, a claim underlying the Roman Church’s assertion that their bishop was “first among equals” of the five bishops that had ruled over Christendom in the first thousand years of the faith. Early on in the Church’s history, the Bishop of Rome had usually been handpicked by his predecessor or by secular kings. Various forms of elections then popped up from time to time, especially when a particular pope proved to be troublesome, but all in all, the system sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. Rival antipopes were commonplace, as was papal assassination, culminating in the so-called pornocracy of the 10th century, when Marozia, daughter of the Count of Theophylactus, either wedded, bedded or gave birth to seven different popes.