Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits

by Tavakoli, Janet M.

“Not quite,” Michael said. “Did you notice anything in his mouth?”

  “In his mouth?” She paused. “No, there was nothing in his mouth. I opened it to see if his airway was clear. His windpipe was severed, his neck clogged with blood. He wasn’t breathing. He was still warm—he couldn’t have been dead more than a few minutes—but I knew it was hopeless. Nothing could have revived him.”

  Michael mulled over what she had said. Finally he asked, “How long did all this take?”

  "Just a few seconds. I knew he was dead the instant I saw him. I just wanted to be sure, in case there was a chance. And I was worried about Luke. I still hadn’t found him.” She searched his face. “Do you think the murderer saw us?”

  “I can’t be sure. But he was almost certainly hiding while you were in the Braccia Nuova. Probably in an alcove behind a statue in the Main Hall. He wouldn’t have been able to see you unless he peered out from the alcove and risked being spotted. But he is one bold killer. That much I know.”

  “How do you know he was there the whole time?”

  “Because he tampered with the body after you found it.”

  “Tampered with the body? How?”

  Michael told her. The shock and horror on her face made him regret it.

  “Michael, this seems like La Cosa Nostra.”

  “Possibly.”

  “You promised…”

  “I know. But we’re already involved.”

  “No.” Helena’s voice cracked. “You can’t do this. You promised me you wouldn’t. Not after what happened to Marco and his family.” She went rigid, her gaze at once demanding and searching.

  Michael returned her look. After a pause, he said, “You’re right. I’ll find someone else to handle the investigation. But I still have to ask a few questions.”

  “We can’t be involved,” Helena insisted. “You promised we’d get away from these people.”

  Michael simply nodded.

  “Think of our children,” Helena said softly. “I want them to have a normal life.”

  “I’ll turn this over to someone else as soon as I can. In the meantime, leave the dress at home and do not have it cleaned.”

  Helena gave him a dissatisfied glance, then turned away. He knew she was thinking of all the times she’d heard his vague promises before. “Watch Luke for a moment. I’ll be right back.”

  Before he could stop her, she disappeared into the crowd. Michael scooped Luke up in his arms and scanned the throng. He couldn’t see Helena. Then she reappeared, the blood-stained dress draped over her arm. She thrust it toward him. “Here. You can keep it. I never want to see it again.”

  She stood before him in her slip, heavy silk in a yellow and red paisley and flowered Florentine pattern. Despite the situation, Michael almost smiled. Even on a hot day, Helena always wore a slip when they were in the city. Her world was one of standards and the proper way to do things. The slip almost worked as a fashionable silk shift; she looked like a stylish Milan model. It was just a little too revealing, though.

  He took off his suit jacket, removed his cell phone and wallet, and draped the jacket around her shoulders. “You’d better wrap this around yourself when you walk out of the museum.” He ignored her anger. He knew it was her way of covering fear and nervousness. This wasn’t the time or place to discuss his leaving the Specialists. He focused on what they needed to do next.

  “I want you to take the children and go to the villa at Ostia. Take the nanny, the maid and the cook. You'll have to stay until it’s safe to come back to Rome. I’ll come out tomorrow night, but I’ll stay in Rome during the week.”

  Helena nodded, looking worried again. “What will you do now?”

  “I think it's time I talked to a priest.” Michael folded the dress until it formed a neat square, hiding the bloodstain. Then he escorted his wife and son from the museum.

  ***

  The Red Brigade terrorist activity in Rome had been halted, but Mafia terrorist activity had not. Helena was right, Michael thought; this murder smacked of Mafia involvement. The Specialists had some old books on the Vatican Bank scandal dating back to the early eighties, a few carefully worded blurbs in the Roman papers and a few decades-old articles in Euromoney.

  Michael went to his office and spent the next three hours sifting through the files the Specialists had prepared over the past thirty years. The familiar facts were as grim as ever. The Mafia had long since infiltrated Italy’s political power structure, and investigators risked their families’ safety as well as their own. Italy’s top Mafia-prosecuting judge, Giovanni Falcone, along with his wife and two bodyguards, had died when a bomb exploded on the road to Palermo in May of 1992. The Mafia used cell phones to communicate, and they patiently waited five days for their chance to kill Falcone.

  A month later, magistrate Paolo Borsellino followed his friend Falcone to the grave after his car blew up outside Palermo; the five policemen riding with him became his companions in the morgue. The bomb was a gift from the Sicilian Mafia. Mafia thugs were investigated for the crime as late as 2008, yet investigators still didn’t have a clear story and no one was prosecuted. Borsellino’s family claimed it was a State murder.

  In May of 1995, chief investigator Giovanni Tinebra and his family narrowly escaped death when their house was bombed. Tinebra was lucky. He and his wife were in the bedroom of their sick child when the bomb went off. The family fled the building before flames engulfed it.

  Killings, beatings, kidnappings and threats… these were the Mafia’s staple for solidifying control. They seemed immune from prosecution. Michael counted 62 good men who had met their Maker in Mafia attacks during the past two decades. For him personally, last year was the worst. His closest friend and colleague, Marco Tomba, was killed along with his pregnant wife and three-year old son. Forced off the Amalfi road by an SUV. Marco had skidded for 200 yards in a desperate attempt to save his family before plunging over the roadside precipice. The car bounced five times, then landed as a mangled lump of metal 150 feet down the mountainside.

  Law enforcement and magistrates weren’t the Mafia’s only targets. They went after anyone they found inconvenient. Like Roberto Calvi, murdered thirty years ago, a crime for which no one had yet been held accountable. The book on top of the short stack by Michael’s elbow held all the lurid details, but after seven years of digging into Mafia secrets he didn’t need to read it to refresh his memory.

  Roberto Calvi was head of Banco Ambrosiano when it collapsed in 1982, its depositors the victims of massive embezzlement with the Vatican Bank’s complicity. Calvi was part of the scheme and fled Italy with incriminating documents. He was later found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London, along with his expensive watch, $15,000 in cash in a variety of currencies, and a false passport. British authorities pronounced the death a suicide, despite the impossible acrobatics necessary for Calvi to dispatch himself that way and the presence of pharmaceuticals in his hotel room sufficient to produce a quiet, painless death.

  In 1998, Calvi’s remains were found by chance in a cupboard at Milan’s Institute of Forensic Medicine. The Italian courts ordered the remains re-examined using the latest forensic techniques. Medical examiners proved Calvi was murdered, but the remains were so decomposed that they couldn’t determine the exact cause of death.

  In December 2002, a Mafia supergrass named Antonio Giuffre told police that Mafia bosses murdered Calvi out of anger at his mishandling of their money. More indictments came in August of 2003, this time of leading figures in Rome’s underworld, but those too came to nothing as Calvi’s murder trial dragged on for twenty months. In the summer of 2005, Licio Gelli—another officer at Banco Ambrosiano—was indicted for Calvi’s murder. Michael, just beginning his own investigation into the Mafia and the Vatican, had seen the arrest as a spark of hope, but reality soon set in. Gelli used his connections—to Banco Ambrosiano, to the Mafia, and to the P2, a secret society of right-wing Freemasons—to evade all responsibility for Calvi’s m
urder and for the embezzlement scheme. He testified at trial that Calvi’s execution was ordered in Poland for his alleged financing of the Solidarity trade union at the behest of Pope John Paul II.

  The crowning debacle came in June 2007, when Judge Mario Lucio d’Andria claimed the evidence against the defendants was insufficient. He threw out the charges, saying the real murderers were either dead or not in the courtroom. The acquittals were confirmed in 2011.

  Michael’s nose was throbbing and his head ached. He grabbed the books on the Vatican Bank scandal and stuck them in his briefcase, then left his office. Nothing said the murder of the luckless priest had any connection to a thirty-year old crime, but where the Vatican and the Mafia were involved, Michael had learned to take nothing for granted.

  CHAPTER IV

  Rome

  Sunday, June 16

  Michael woke up frustrated and irritable. After finishing his review of the files, he’d spent the rest of the previous day trying to find someone in the Vatican who could tell him about the murdered priest. The Vatican radio station made no mention of the murder. Michael’s persistence finally drew a terse official comment from a Swiss Guard: “Father Matteo Pintozzi, age 28, orphan, money manager for the Society of Jesus, native of Naples.”

  Society of Jesus. That at least was something. The guard he’d spoken to earlier in the Vatican Museum had told the truth when he said Father Pintozzi was a Jesuit. Money manager was an important position, albeit an unusual one for someone so young. Many of the Jesuits turned over inherited wealth to the Society, and they allowed the Society to use and invest their earnings. The Jesuits seemed obsessed with wealth management. Though what—or if—that had to do with Pintozzi’s murder, Michael didn’t know.

  Helena called to say she and the boys were safely installed at the villa. “Everything’s fine,” she told him. He could hear the determined calm in her voice, her attempt to reassure him as well as herself. “I brought the house staff from Rome, and the gardener and the caretaker and his wife are here, too.” She laughed a little. “I’ve told everyone to be on the lookout for strangers or anything out of the ordinary. You don’t need to worry about us; just take care of yourself.” He’d promised to do so, then rung off feeling slightly better. But only slightly.

  ***

  Michael decided a morning run would ease his frustrations. His cold symptoms had vanished, and his nose felt nearly healed. He’d placed an ice pack on it for over an hour, and only a little residual soreness remained.

  It was only 6:30 but the temperature was already 85 degrees Fahrenheit. He stretched, then ran along the road leading to the Castel Sant'Angelo. A massive bronze statue of the Archangel Michael crowned the huge second-century circular building. The statue was a new addition, relatively speaking, and more than two hundred years of Roman weather darkened the bronze. Michael felt a touch of gloom as he approached. The black angel with its distended wing span and drawn sword evoked the Angel of Death.

  The Castel itself likewise prompted dark thoughts. It had been built as a mausoleum for the emperor Hadrian. The crypt was bathed in centuries of blood. It had served alternately as a fortress, a barracks and a political prison. Puccini even saw fit to have his opera heroine, Tosca, hurl herself from its battlements.

  He reached the Castel and made a left onto the footpath that wound around the west bank of the Fiume Tevere, the Tiber River. The early morning sun glinting off the water made it appear silver. Fortunately, the Tiber, unlike most European rivers, was relatively clean.

  The temperature along the river was a few degrees cooler than the rest of Rome; but it wasn't long until hot air began to burn Michael’s lungs. He stripped off his cotton running shirt and tied it around his waist. It was already soaked with sweat.

  After a couple of miles, he turned right to cross the Ponte Milvio. Once over the bridge, he turned right again to run back along the east bank of the Tiber. When he reached the Ponte Sant’Angelo, he made yet another right onto the bridge and closed the loop for his run home.

  The bridge had statues of St. Peter and St. Paul on either side, each accompanied by five large baroque marble angels designed by Bernini. As Michael ran across the bridge, he looked at the top of the Castel in the distance and saluted his dark archangel alter ego.

  Just up the road, a hundred or so feet from him, Michael saw a young woman. Her long golden hair reflected the early morning sunlight. A slight breeze gently rippled the skirt of her simple blue sundress. She looked familiar, and he realized she resembled Irena as she appeared in his dreams.

  As the woman stood looking out over the river, a young man emerged from the shadows of a pillar along the promenade. He wore a black shirt and black pants. He grabbed the girl’s purse. She held onto it, and they struggled. Then he struck her, and Michael saw the glint of metal in the sunlight.

  He sped up, unwinding his shirt from his waist. As he reached them, he swung the shirt toward the assailant’s knife hand and rammed his right fist into the side of the man’s head. The man turned just enough so that Michael landed only a glancing blow.

  Michael was surprised the thief had anticipated his move. The man took a step back, whirled around, and sprinted away.

  Michael was about to pursue him when the woman grabbed his arm. “Wait, I need your help!”

  He looked at her in alarm. “Are you hurt?”

  “No, but…” She clung to him in desperation and Michael felt warmth rise in him despite already being hot from his run.

  “Wait here.” Michael gently extricated himself from her embrace, then sprinted off after the assailant.

  The thief was surprisingly fit. Given long enough, Michael could run him down, but just barely. He saw the man turn down a side road and redoubled his speed. The attacker was nearly a hundred yards ahead, the gap closing but not fast enough. The man rounded another corner and Michael heard a motorcycle roaring into action. By the time he turned the corner himself, a second man had joined the purse thief. Both were speeding off on the bike, one man driving and the attacker clinging behind him.

  Michael gave up the pursuit and walked briskly back toward the young woman. He thought of her embrace and how it made him feel. She had seemed so grateful and desperate. He wanted to protect her. But when he reached the bridge, she was gone. He looked down neighboring side streets, puzzled. No sign of her.

  His frustration came roaring back. First no word on the dead priest, and now he’d failed to apprehend a criminal. The victim had disappeared, so no complaint would be filed. Maybe she thought he wouldn’t return. Or she was badly frightened and simply wanted to get away. He’d file a routine report on the incident, but there was little to go on. For the second time that morning, Michael resigned himself to defeat.

  ***

  Despite the purse-snatching incident, the run had taken the edge off Michael’s nerves. Exercise always had a calming effect and made him feel focused and alert. He drank two large glasses of cold water, toweled off, and turned the air conditioner up to maximum. He wanted the luxury of cold.

  Next he lifted weights and did some abdominal work and stretches. Finally he took a cool shower and dressed in slacks and a smooth cotton shirt. He fixed himself an espresso with a breakfast of sliced peaches and whole grain cereal. Helena had taken the cook with her to Ostia, but he really didn’t mind fixing his own meal. He was grateful for the privacy.

  He sat down for a few moments and read La Repubblica, Rome’s daily paper. Then he looked at the online version and also perused the Rome Sentinel. There was nothing about the murdered priest. He wasn’t surprised. The Vatican had ways of suppressing embarrassing news.

  Next, Michael skimmed the online editions of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Herald Tribune, Handelsblatt, China Daily, and the Financial Times. More talk of the downturn in the German economy and probable strengthening of the dollar as money fled to relative safety in a crumbling global economy. He would have to give some more thought to shifting around his inves
tments this week.

  Although he loved his work with the Specialists, there were times when Michael wished he were managing more than his private inheritance. Just as he put aside the newspapers, his doorbell rang.

  He walked down the hallway to answer. The inlaid Italian ceramic floor tiles were too slippery for his two young boys, so Helena had created a path with a red silk Sarouk runner. Michael thought the strip of carpet looked like a welcome mat for the guest he was about to greet. An unexpected conviction came over him as he neared the door that the person behind it was already in the room with him. With each step, the air grew a little heavier and warmer. Strange… and stranger still that he simply accepted this, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  He opened the door, and the feeling grew overwhelming. A draft of warm, comforting air seemed to envelop him. The man who stood before him looked around sixty years old. He was five feet ten inches, wearing a priest’s collar and a black suit. Black, wavy hair with silver-grey streaks and tufts of silver at the temples swept back from the newcomer’s face in a thick mass, almost touching the collar. His light olive complexion had the rugged look of long exposure to the elements.

  Most of all, Michael was captivated by the priest’s eyes. A deep blue, almost violet, they looked at him with a knowing gaze.

  “Good morning,” the priest said in accented Italian. “I hope I am not disturbing you.”

  “No, not at all.” Michael couldn’t tear his gaze away. “I just finished breakfast.” Even as he spoke, he had the feeling that the priest already knew this.

  “My name is Paolo de Aragon,” the priest said. “I was wondering if I might have a few words with you in private.”

  “Of course, Father de Aragon. Why don’t you come into my library, where we can talk.”

  As Michael turned to walk back into the apartment, he glimpsed another black-clad figure streaking up the stairs toward them. With one arm, Michael swept Father de Aragon into the apartment. Then he turned, tensed for an attack. The black-clad figure encircled him in a vice-like grip. As he recognized the familiar hold, the rush of adrenalin gave way to surprise and delight. “Father James!”