New Rome Rising

by Rene Fomby

  The painful lessons from that incident still resonated deeply with all of the cardinals assembled in the chapel, and the Cardinal Dean had no intention of presiding over a repeat performance. Especially given how the 1958 election had impacted the Church, with large sections of the faith peeling away, claiming that the election had been a fraud and that the Holy See was now being occupied by an agent of Satan himself. The so-called sedevacantist movement. Looking down at the three piles of ballots, he reached down and swirled them all together.

  “Brothers in Christ, I regret to say that the previous election was unfortunately flawed. During the unexpected collapse of our dear friend and colleague Cardinal Orso, in violation of our rules the ballots were left unattended for a brief time. As a result, I cannot as Dean of the College of Cardinals in all faithfulness certify that these are in fact the true ballots cast by this group. I would therefore ask that we conduct one more ballot to confirm the result. Then we can all leave here certain that our Lord’s will has been done, and the Holy Spirit has indeed directed us in the election of the correct man to lead our Church.”

  “But what about Cardinal Orso’s vote?” a voice called out from the back of the chapel.

  The Cardinal Dean nodded. “We who are assembled here shall vote without him, and, if it turns out that his one vote could make a difference in the final result, we shall send the Infirmarii to collect his vote, if he is in any condition to cast one. But I would suggest, given the necessity of repeating a vote that we have just concluded, time is of the essence. Any further delay might serve to taint the previous scrutiny.”

  The cardinals murmured their general consent, glancing all the while rather obviously in the direction of Cardinal Chang, who they were all aware had won the previous vote by a landslide. There was a minute possibility that another vote might overturn that result, but after a moment’s hesitation he raised one hand to get their attention. “My brothers, I fully support the recommendation of our illustrious Dean. Surely the will of the Holy Spirit cannot be so fickle as to change His mind simply because one of us has been stricken with illness. Let us vote!”

  The Cardinal Dean gave Chang a brief nod of appreciation for helping so generously with the unforeseen but potentially combustive situation, then began the process of conducting a new scrutiny. This time the result was even more conclusive, with Cardinal Orso’s pile of ballots almost inconsequential. As the Revisers painstakingly checked the ballots and the names on the three Scrutineers’ lists to make sure that no error had been made, Cardinal Chang began to make the rounds, thanking the other cardinals for their support and mentally steeling himself for the next step—La Sala de Lacrima, the Room of Tears. Finally, the Cardinal Dean made the results of the election official. The ballots were gathered up by the Scrutineers and burned with the assistance of the Masters of Ceremonies and the Secretary of the College, and the new pope was led outside into the hallway for the formal process of agreeing to his new post, then on to the Room of Tears—a small red room sitting adjacent to the Sistine Chapel, where the new pope would dress himself in a white cassock, rochet, and red mozzetta, before finally appearing before the masses out on the central balcony. Chang already had an outline of his speech scribbled onto a piece of paper he held crumbled in his hand, a passionate invitation for the world to join him in the unification and comity of all of mankind’s religions in reverence and service to the one true God.

  31

  Leonardo da Vinci Airport, Rome

  Lost in his thoughts of the near future, rehearsing the next few minutes of his life one more time in his head, Yusuf jumped slightly when the tower came back with their final departure instructions. “Turkish heavy Tango Kilo 369, Roma Tower. Take position and hold runway three four Romeo. Cleared into Ankara Esenboğa via the Tiber Six Bravo departure, then as filed. Climb maintain five thousand. Departure frequency one-three-one, decimal five, squawk four-seven-six-three.”

  Scribbling the instructions down on his kneepad, Yusuf keyed the mike and repeated it back. “Roma Tower, Tango Kilo 369. Position and hold three four Romeo. Cleared into Ankara, Tiber six bravo. Climb maintain five thousand. Departure one-three-one, decimal five, four-seven-six-three.”

  “Tango Kilo 369, readback correct.”

  Yusuf glanced over at the pilot, who nodded almost imperceptibly before easing the throttles up and rolling the giant airplane forward onto the runway. Turning hard to the left, he pulled back on the throttles and tapped the brakes lightly, stopping the plane precisely on the centerline.

  A few seconds later, the tower came back on the radio. “Tango Kilo 369, cleared for departure, three four Romeo.”

  “Tango Kilo 369 departing,” Yusuf answered as the pilot pushed the throttles forward and the 747’s four engines sprang to life, accelerating them rapidly down the runway before finally flinging them into the air. As the plane gained altitude, the pilot reached over to switch frequencies even as he glanced to the left for traffic, ready to start the wide left turn that would place them on the Tiber Six Bravo standard instrument departure route. With the pilot’s attention diverted, Yusuf knew that this was the best opportunity to make his move. Pulling a thick pen out of his shirt pocket and flicking off its cap, he reached over and yanked the plug to the pilot’s green David Clark headset out of its socket, while in the same motion jabbing the pen forcefully into the pilot’s right thigh, the tip of the pen collapsing as the needle inside penetrated deep into the pilot’s unsuspecting flesh. The pilot spun around, his eyes going wide with surprise and fear. He looked down at his stricken leg that was even now sending streaks of white-hot fire stabbing up into his body, then looked back at his co-pilot, who was busily activating a pre-programmed flight plan in the autopilot, a flight plan that had them leveling off in a hard right turn. The pilot tried to speak, to cry out in pain and anger, but his lungs had become detached from his brain as the neurotoxin spread rapidly throughout his body, his heart pounding valiantly in his chest before finally giving out as well. The pilot slumped back in his seat, his eyes quickly glazing over, locked forever in a final, fitful accusation toward his treacherous copilot.

  ※

  The air traffic controller responsible for monitoring Turkish Airways flight three six nine had switched his focus to the next plane in line for departure, so it took him almost half a minute to discover that the plane had veered off course, turning right instead of left and no longer climbing. His calls to the plane on the tower frequency had gone unanswered, so he switched to departure control’s frequency, but still the plane was not responding. He contacted departure control on their inside line and discovered that the pilot had never checked in with them after leaving the tower’s airspace. Even worse, the plane’s onboard transponder had gone dark.

  On his screen, the aircraft continued to travel north and east, and was now already over the Tenuta dei Massimi Nature Reserve, heading straight into the heart of Rome. Picking up his phone, he called in the emergency, prompting all of the other flight controllers in the facility to start diverting incoming traffic away from the area and sending fighter jets scrambling into the sky from the nearby Practica di Mare airbase. The plane continued to pick up speed, and now appeared to be descending. None of it made much sense. Had something traumatic happened to the airplane’s electronics just after takeoff, something that had disabled its radios and transponder while also crippling the plane’s flight controls? He tried to think through what little he knew about the instrument panel on a Boeing 747, but couldn’t come up with any ready explanation for the failure of multiple critical systems simultaneously. All he knew for certain was that the Turkish heavy’s current flight path would take it somewhere into the heart of the city of Rome, still full of fuel, a potential catastrophe on an unthinkable scale.

  ※

  The crowd packed into St. Peter’s Square gasped collectively as they witnessed the first wisps of smoke slowly wafting from the tiny chimney perched atop the roof of the Sistine Chapel. Not a word was spo
ken as they waited with bated breath to find out if the smoke would turn black once more—for the seventh time since the conclave had begun, meaning the world still didn’t have a new pope—or whether it would emerge white, signaling a new era for the papacy. The first swirls were uncertain, especially set as they were against the low leaden skies overhead, but finally the result became abundantly clear to all the thousands of Catholics and random tourists squeezed into the square and the many millions watching from home on their televisions, phones and computer screens—the smoke was white!

  A loud cheer rose from the throng, which quickly became a deafening roar, the television reporters now having to shout to be heard above the noise from the celebrating masses. With everyone’s eyes glued to the tell-tale smoke from the chimney and the papal balcony that would soon give them their first glimpse of the new pope, nobody bothered to look up, and out toward the southwest, where the roar was loudest.

  ※

  Yusuf kept one hand on the yoke and another on the kill switch for the autopilot, just in case the pre-programmed flight plan was slightly off and he would be forced to make a last minute correction. The final few seconds would be tight, a hard right turn just a handful of feet above the ground. He could see his target straight ahead. The autopilot adjusted slightly to the left and began to slow the plane down, pulling up the nose a few degrees to maintain altitude. The seconds ticked by slowly. Finally, just as he was about to switch to manual, the giant aircraft pirouetted to the right, almost as if she was defying the laws of nature, and the four engines came roaring back to life. The next few seconds were all a blur. The plane’s right wing clipped the walls on the northern side of St. Peter’s Basilica at almost the exact same moment that the plane’s custom-reinforced nose impacted the west side of the Sistine Chapel.

  the light at the end

  32

  Vatican City - Tuesday

  The reporters were lined up almost in a row, barely out of camera angle from each other as they breathlessly described the chaotic and impossible scene now unwinding behind them. Ambulances were queuing up to transport the surprisingly few people who had managed to survive the crash and the subsequent explosion. A raging fire blazed unchecked over twenty stories above them, raining burning ash down on the reporters and first responders alike, most of whom looked completely befuddled about how to respond to the unthinkable disaster. The Italian police had pushed the crowd back out of St. Peter’s Square, not a difficult task given the degree to which everyone had been completely and irrevocably crushed by the scale of the tragedy taking place before them.

  The Sistine Chapel lay in ruins, and the Apostolic Palace of which it was an important part was also mostly just a pile of rubble. Next door, St. Peter’s Basilica had also suffered extensive damage from the explosion, an explosion that television experts were already beginning to describe as completely inconsistent with what would be expected from even a full load of jet fuel, while a small handful of engineers were winning an impassioned argument with a team of art historians who were demanding immediate access to the building to retrieve the priceless artifacts stored within.

  Originally known as the Cappella Magna, the Sistine Chapel was named for pope Sixtus IV, who restored it in the late fifteenth century. The most important features of the chapel were its irreplaceable works of art, most notably its ceiling and The Last Judgment, both painted by Michelangelo in the early sixteenth century and now existing only in digital form and in the pages of books.

  Even more devastating was the human loss. With but one noted exception, the entire College of Cardinals that had gathered to elect the new pope were now dead. That one exception lay in a hospital room, recovering from an unexpected illness that had forced him to be removed from the conclave by EMS workers just minutes before the group certified the results of its seventh ballot. Results that apparently had named the next pope. Results that apparently were now lost forever.

  33

  Rome

  Sam was jogging up the Spanish Steps toward her apartment when Gavin caught her on her cell.

  “Gavin! It’s good to hear from you. Although, to be honest, when we first started out together, all you ever seemed to have for me was bad news. So, what’s up, Agent Larson? Any word from Andy?”

  “Well, I think you may have to start screening my calls again, Sam. I’ve got some very bad news for you, and it’s probably best if I tell you in person. You know—the phones.”

  “Uh, sure,” Sam said, immediately on edge. “Are you in Rome? We could meet at my place …”

  “I’ll be there in less than twenty.”

  ※

  For privacy’s sake, Sam dismissed her butler and cook for the evening, handing them each fifty euros and telling them to go out and have a good time for a change. As if anyone could possibly celebrate after the horrifying events from earlier in the day.

  The Vatican had moved quickly in response to the tragedy. In less than an hour, the plane had been identified as a 747 that had just recently been purchased by a Turkish airline, and documents leaked online strongly suggested that the attack had the blessing, if not in fact a hands-on role, of Turkey’s extremist Muslim president and parliament. Almost immediately, people of Turkish descent practically disappeared from the streets of Western countries, Turkish embassies all around the globe were locked down, and riots broke out across Europe. The Turkish Embassy in Rome was quickly evacuated, the ambassador transferred by police motorcade to an emergency conference with Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs while the rest of the Embassy staff were placed aboard airliners bound for Turkey. Those airliners were now pretty much the only Turkish flights allowed in the air over the soil of Western countries, and a quick and vehement debate was raging among airspace officials about whether to impose another 9/11-style shutdown across Europe and the Americas while the crisis sorted itself out.

  In the face of all this turmoil, there was very little question that Sam needed to clear out the apartment’s staff for the rest of the evening, other than the armed guards that maintained a surreptitious presence nearby. She still didn’t have a bead on the mole inside her personal staff, and there was no way she was going to have a conversation with Gavin that couldn’t even be discussed on the phone with them lurking about, and almost certainly listening in. Especially since that conversation would almost certainly center upon the events from earlier that morning.

  The servants had just left through the back entrance when Gavin came bounding up the steps to knock on her front door, his knock landing on open air as she flung it open. “Come on in, Gav,” she told him, automatically checking over his shoulder for anyone who might be watching her apartment. And not seeing anyone, but of course that meant very little.

  Sam motioned for Gavin to follow her into the study, eager to find out what this was all about. Pointing toward an overstuffed leather chair, she started talking before he even had an opportunity to sit down. “So what in the world has got you so upset, other than the obvious?” she asked, plopping down into a matching chair situated directly across a small cut-glass coffee table from him. “I mean, you didn’t go all secret spy on me even when you guys got shot up in Marseille. Oh, and by the way, I hope everyone’s all right …”

  “We’re good, Sam. Although my chest still hurts like the dickens, especially when I cough. So I try to keep that to a minimum. But yeah, you’re right, we’ve got a big problem. Mehmed’s been arrested.”

  “Arrested!” Sam jumped out of her seat, almost kicking over the little coffee table. “You’ve got to be shitting me! What the hell for?”

  “Well, in retrospect, we should have anticipated it. He’s a Turkish national, pretty much the last person the Vatican police want to have right at this moment wandering around unsupervised inside their air-tight cordon. Apparently, their thinking was, he was the insider who guided the plane on in to the Sistine Chapel. So they’re holding him for questioning. The kind of questioning that is technically illegal in the States, but yo
u know how that goes.”

  “Fuck! We’ve got to get him out of there!” Sam started pacing back and forth in the small room like a caged beast. “What about Bob Sanders? He’s got more pull than the man in the moon. Surely he can apply some pressure—”

  “No bueno, Sam. You see, the problem is, Mehmed’s a Turkish national. That means the issue is really out of even the president’s hands. It’s between the Vatican and the Turkish government, and I think you can guess how well those discussions are going right about now. So, as far as the Swiss Guards are concerned, Mehmed is suspect number one for the crime of the century. If not the greatest crime in the history of Christianity.”

  “But we’ve got to do something. I’ve got contacts high up in the Italian government—”

  “Which are pretty much equally as useless, given the circumstances. And now the Vatican is floating the idea that the Turks may have actually assassinated the previous pope, based upon information they’ve obtained from unnamed sources. So, unless we can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Mehmed is innocent—”

  “Then he’s guilty as charged. And Italy—sorry, the Vatican—doesn’t even have to pretend that people are innocent until proven guilty. I gotcha.” Sam stopped her pacing to stare into space. “Okay, so I know this seems a bit heartless, but if we can’t do anything at the moment to spring Mehmed, then priority number two is to make sure—”

  “That the Vatican doesn’t wise up to what the Project is really all about and seize all of the amphorae. I’m with you all the way on that. But—how in the hell do we go about sneaking over a hundred ancient, fragile clay jars out of Vatican City without anyone noticing and without destroying whatever’s inside them in the process?”