Pandora's Ark (Vatican Knights)

by Jones, Rick

  Now with less than a year under his belt and the leading title as the Church’s secretary of state, Cardinal Angullo was positioned to take it all despite talks amongst the Electors that members within his camp had defected. No reasons were given other than that his position had been severely weakened with his major components of support now gone.

  Nevertheless, Angullo’s camp remained strong with Vessucci trying to corral as many of the cardinal’s defectors with powerful politicking.

  Vessucci was gathering momentum.

  By the end of the third day as the sun was beginning to set, Bonasero Vessucci made his way to the papal chamber. The doors were guarded by two members of the Swiss Guards, who were holding traditional halberds. When the cardinal stood before the doors the guards, out of obligatory courtesy, opened them and allowed the cardinal passage into the chamber.

  The doors closed softly behind him, the snicker of the bolt locking into place barely perceptible to the cardinal’s ears.

  The room was large and vast, the scalloped drapery hanging still as Vessucci crossed the floor in a room that appeared more sepulchral than hallowed.

  He stood at the threshold of the balcony that overlooked the city in its glory with the Egyptian obelisk and the colonnades within clear view. People milled by the thousands; vacationers mostly, with their digital cameras and touristy attire. And the sky was a perfect blend of reds and yellows with the onset of a darkening sky.

  He quickly made his way to the stone guardrail, lifting the hem of his garment as he did so, and then laid a hand on the railing. The drop to the street below appeared farther simply by illusion alone. The height was no more than thirty feet. But for some reason it looked twice that.

  He looked over the edge and noted that the blood was gone, the bricks no longer holding any tell-tale sign that the pontiff’s life had leeched out onto the surface below.

  “A shame, isn’t it? That the pontiff should lose his life so early during his tenure.”

  Vessucci started. He did not hear Cardinal Angullo enter the chamber, nor the closing of the doors after the guards let him in. The face that measured Vessucci was oddly hatchet-thin with a snout-like nose and grim lips fashioned above a weak chin. His eyes were so dark they seemed without pupil. And when he spoke, he did so in a discordant twang similar to the strings of an instrument being plucked.

  Vessucci returned the same arduous glare. “Quite,” he simply said.

  “Are you here to reminisce of a time that once was? When you and Pope Pius once stood here talking about the Church . . . And of the dark secrets it held during his reign.”

  Vessucci immediately understood the cardinal’s insinuation. He was talking about the Vatican Knights. The Church’s clandestine op-group of elite commandos who were summarily disbanded under Gregory’s rule, the pope declaring them an abomination to the Catholic faith despite the good they proffered to those who were weak and innocent. “The only darkness is the truth of what really happened to Pope Gregory,” he returned.

  “Oh?”

  Vessucci turned his gaze upon the plaza of Vatican City, then patted the railing with his hand. “I have stood here many times overlooking this city with Pope Pius,” he said. “As I’m sure you have with Pope Gregory.”

  “I have, yes.”

  Vessucci looked at the railing, and at the carvings of angels and cherubs. “Then you know as well as I do that it is quite difficult for a man to fall over this railing, since it is raised to a level to bar a man from leaning too far forward.”

  “It is quite obvious to me, Bonasero, that the railing is not high enough.”

  The cardinal drew closer. The railing reached to the point of his abdomen.

  But Angullo intuited his action. “Pope Gregory was taller than you,” he said.

  “True. But not tall enough for the brunt of his weight to carry him over the side.” He turned to Angullo. “Unless he was pushed, perhaps?”

  The cardinal cocked his head to one side the same way a dog would when trying to grasp the meaning of an uncertain moment. “If I didn’t know better, Bonasero, I would say that you were insinuating that the good pontiff was murdered. And that you, at least by the tone of your voice, believe that it was by my hand.”

  Vessucci stood back from the railing. “Every shiny surface has a little tarnish underneath, Giuseppe. All I’m saying is that the case was closed much too quickly without the benefit of a full objective examination, simply for the belief that nothing truly reprehensible can happen at the Vatican.”

  “Come on, Bonasero. Do you really believe that Pope Gregory met his death by the hand of another rather than by the hand of Fate? He fell. Accidents happen.”

  “To fall over this railing is highly improbable, since the railing was constructed exactly for that reason—as a safeguard to keep one from falling over its edge.” He shook his head. “No, Giuseppe. Either he took his own life . . .” He let his words trail. But a heartbeat later, said: “Or someone aided him in his fall.”

  The cardinal was taken aback. “What you say, Bonasero, is nothing but absolute nonsense—this talk of murder and suicide. Gregory was sound of mind the night of his death. He would never put the Church in such a position by taking his own life.”

  “Exactly. And that leaves us with the other option, doesn’t it?”

  Cardinal Angullo’s nostrils flared the same moment his brow dipped sharply over the bridge of his nose in anger. “The days of heresy have been abandoned by rational thought over the years, Bonasero. But if anything provides a strong case for such profanation, it’s what you just stated.”

  “Is your memory so short, Giuseppe? Have you forgotten the attempt on the life of John Paul the Second?”

  The cardinal bit his lower lip.

  “What I say holds a measure of probability. Therefore, I will not turn a blind eye to the reality of what might have been.”

  Cardinal Angullo turned away from Bonasero, his eyes alighting on the landscape of Vatican City. “So what will you do?” he asked. “Open an investigation when there are less than ten days left before we enter the conclave to vote on the successor?”

  “Hardly. I’m simply voicing my opinion.”

  “But you believe the pontiff was murdered?”

  Bonasero remained quiet.

  “You do realize once the newly elected takes the Papal Throne, then you will return to Boston along with your foolish notion.”

  “Unless, Giuseppe,” he faced the cardinal directly, “I’m elected to the pontifical post.”

  There, a laryngeal microexpression, a quick bob of the Adam’s apple, was a sign of fear from Angullo.

  “And if you are,” Angullo returned dispassionately, “then what? You’ll spearhead a quest to find something that does not exist? You’ll just end up like a dog chasing after its tail, Bonasero. There’s nothing out there for you to find. And if you are elected, don’t you think you’d be better suited to apply yourself to the needs of the Church rather than the needs of yourself, since you are newly appointed?”

  “To seek the truth, Giuseppe, is always the need of the Church.”

  Whether Cardinal Angullo shook his head in disagreement or disgust, Vessucci could not determine.

  The cardinal then looked over the railing, then back to Vessucci. “Do what you must,” he told him. “Chase your foolish notions while I seek to better my position with the Electors. If I take the throne, Bonasero, let it be known right now that you will return to Boston and seek the truth from there. And believe me when I say that such notions will fall on deaf ears.”

  Vessucci smiled. “God is never deaf or blind to the truth, Giuseppe. And the truth will always find its way, whether I’m at the Vatican or across the ocean.”

  Angullo began to circle the cardinal, and Vessucci took a conscious step back away from the railing.

  “Perhaps you think me the killer, is that it? Is that how you plan to win the Electors votes, by politicking with foolish and unfounded theories—that th
e good Cardinal Giuseppe Angullo murdered the pope? Is that your strategy, Bonasero?” The cardinal was now standing directly behind Vessucci, who could not see the man through either corner of his eyes.

  Vessucci turned enough to offer a sidelong glance. “I politick with the strengths I offer as a newly elected and nothing more,” he said.

  “I see.” Angullo maneuvered back toward the railing. And then: “I understand that your camp remains strong, even after Pope Gregory sent you to America.”

  “And yours a little less powerful.”

  Angullo smiled, nodded. “It will be interesting when the Electors take to the conclave. But tell me, Bonasero, should you be selected to the papal throne, will you bring these Vatican Knights, these abominations, back to the Church?”

  “Whatever I do, Giuseppe, you will have no knowledge of my stance in any position within the Church, believe me.”

  “As the Vatican’s secretary of state, I’m afraid you’d have no choice.”

  “Oh, but I do,” he returned adamantly. “In the same manner that Pope Gregory has seen me fit to leave my post that you now hold, I would yield the same power of authority to see the same. Perhaps, Giuseppe, Boston would suit you well.”

  The cardinal nodded. “You forget one thing, Bonasero. You seem overly confident when everyone within the Church knows you were summarily sent to the Boston as something punitive. Your camp will dissolve on that tainted issue and your bid to seek the papal throne will end before it even begins.”

  “Is that how you plan to politick?”

  The right corner of the cardinal’s lip lifted into a sardonic grin. “Would I be lying if they learned why you were truly dismissed to America to begin with? That you were summarily dismissed from your post because of these Vatican Knights and the Society of Seven. These clandestine organizations within the Church nobody knew about?”

  He had just played his trump card and the cardinal immediately picked up on it.

  “I see,” said Vessucci. “But you forget one thing.”

  “And that would be?”

  “These Knights were highly beloved by every pope going back to World War Two. And no one loved them or pressed them more into duty than Pope Pius and John Paul the Second.” He now stood before Angullo so that he faced him directly, almost toe to toe with his back to the railing. “Should you use this as a tactic, then you’d be besmirching the good name of John Paul, a man who is being sent up to sainthood.”

  Angullo’s smile widened. “Bonasero-Bonasero-Bonasero, are you listening to yourself? When you speak you do so as a hypocrite.”

  Vessucci appeared quizzical.

  “Did you not just say that ‘the truth will always find its way’?”

  “I did.”

  “Yet it’s all right to keep the truth of the Vatican Knights from the members of the entire College of the Cardinals for fear that they may think of them in the same light as Pope Gregory, as mercenary abominations.”

  Touché.

  Angullo turned away and headed for the chamber door. “There’s no place in the Church for a hypocrite,” he said over his shoulder. “I suggest you think your position over clearly and bow out before your image is so badly tainted that you’ll end up in a parish somewhere in East Africa.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  Cardinal Angullo hesitated at the chamber door, his hand on the knob, and studied Vessucci through obsidian eyes. “My stance with the Church is clear. What I want is clear. If you stand in my way, then I will destroy you.”

  “The same way you destroyed Pope Gregory?” As much as he didn’t want to, he said it.

  Cardinal Angullo let his hand fall and took two steps back inside the chamber. He shook his head. “Think what you will,” he told him. “But the man died by accident and nothing more. Worse, you’re beginning to sound like a man of desperation, which is sad since at one time you were highly esteemed.”

  “I still am, otherwise you wouldn’t have come here to share your game plan and intimidate me to fall out.”

  “I came here to talk about politicking, which we did. But you also accused me of possible murder. And that, Bonasero, is stepping over the line. Politicking is one thing, wild accusations are another.”

  In Bonasero’s mind he conceded. As strong a politic as he was, Angullo bested him at every corner, at every turn, his tongue sharp and his reasoning even sharper. He had turned Vessucci’s considerations of Pope Gregory’s death into the possible realm of one man’s desperation, should it be spoken in certain circles. Secondly, in his statement of seeking the truth, didn’t Angullo purposely use the Vatican Knights as the optimum example of why Vessucci’s ‘truth’ was hypocritical since the Knights remained a well-hidden secret from the College? Wasn’t keeping them a secret for fear of internal dissatisfaction within the religious hierarchy in essence a ‘lie’?

  Vessucci was beaten down on a political level, and badly.

  Angullo reached blindly for the knob, his eyes remaining focused on Vessucci as his hatchet-thin face held the winning glow of achievement. “Think about it, Bonasero. Your weakness has become my strength.”

  “I have as much right to the position as you do,” he finally said, but not as self-assured as before.

  “As does anyone else,” he said. And with that he left the papal chamber, closing the door behind him.

  Vessucci exhaled as if he had accumulated his frustrations and vented them with a long sigh in catharsis. Nevertheless, he remained solid in his convictions to believe that Pope Gregory did not fall by his own miscalculation.

  He went back to the rail and peered over the edge to the bricks below. Despite Angullo’s countermeasures, there was no doubt in his mind that he was not a desperate man, but a man of conscience and reason.

  He would politick and try to sway the Electors that he is just as strong a candidate as he was during the last election within the conclave six months earlier. He would once again provide them with his strengths, his weaknesses, and lay everything out as to the direction the Church should head. And then hope that his bidding would secure him the throne.

  People continued to mill about the Square. And once again Cardinal Vessucci sighed. Cardinal Angullo was a strong adversary whose name was thrown into the arena at the last election. And as secretary of state he held the notoriety of being the pontiff’s closest ally.

  This was going to be an uphill battle all the way, he thought.

  And with that thought on his mind he dolefully returned to the Domus Sanctæ Marthæ.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  Kimball Hayden was working the trash canisters along the casino floor when Louie tapped him on the shoulder.

  “You haven’t given me an answer. And we have only five days left.”

  “I thought my lack of an answer was answer enough,” said Kimball, tossing a trash bag into the cart. Around him slot machines and video games chimed their wins and losses with the winning screens lighting up in cartoonish displays of coins dropping into the winner’s trough.

  “There’s a treasure chest lying at our feet,” said Louie, stabbing a finger in the air as if to harshly punctuate his point. “And all you have to do is get into the ring. But you’re kinda giving me the feeling that you’re gutless. Is that what you are, J.J.? Gutless.”

  Kimball smiled at Louie’s adolescent attempt at peer pressure. “Look, Louie, I’m not interested in cage fighting. I never was and I never will be. Okay?”

  “So this is what you want to do for the rest of your life? To pick up trash?”

  “It’s an honest living. I told you that.”

  “You also told me that you’d think about the ring.”

  “I did . . . for about a second.”

  Louie shook his head. “You have all the tools, J.J. You even have the look. What an awful waste.”

  “So I have the look, huh?”

  Another nod. “You look like a warrior, J.J. It’s in your eyes. It’s in the way you move,
the way you walk. It’s all about you and here you are diving into trash cans.”

  “Like I said, it’s just a temporary gig. And then I’ll move on.”

  Louie grabbed Kimball by the elbow. “Can I show you something?”

  “If it moves you—yeah, sure.”

  Louie ushered him to the end of the aisle that led to the Sports Book. Once there he released him and pointed to an aging African-American who looked jaded, his face hanging as if perpetually distraught. Like Kimball, he was shagging trash bags from receptacles and discarding them into carts. “See that man right there?”

  Kimball shrugged. “It’s Tyrone. So what?”

  “Tyrone said the same thing thirteen years ago,” he said. “That exact same thing: ‘It’s temporary.’ But look at him. He’s become someone without hope or ambition.” He turned to Kimball. “And that’s going to be you, J.J.—a man without hope or ambition.”

  “So fighting in a caged arena like an animal is supposed to give me a sense of hope or ambition? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “All I’m saying, J.J., is to give yourself a chance to be what you were meant to be, and to stop wasting your life.” He looked at Tyrone, then back to Kimball. “We both know you were never meant to do this. You were meant to be someone special.” Then in imploring manner, “Don’t become like Tyrone. Don’t waste your life when there’s opportunity knocking at your door.”

  Kimball looked at Tyrone and noted that the man looked older than his fifty years. His face hung with aged looseness. And his back began to take on the fatigued shape of bowing into a question mark.