by Tom Fox
He walked gingerly through the beds to a small nurses’ station situated midway through the room and leaned down over the military green metal surface, scanning through the day nurse’s shift notes. Nothing unusual. A few scraped knees, a few falls, three cases of recurring daytime terrors. Only to be expected. The children here were orphans, unlike the 127 other youngsters in his study who lived at home with their families. Their blindness was the least frightening thing many of them had experienced, and sudden panic attacks were commonplace.
Dr. Russo opened his clipboard, switching his attention to his own notes.
He heard a cough behind him, the unremarkable noise followed by a shuffling in the sheets. Russo didn’t look up, but when the jostling of the wire-framed bed didn’t cease, he muttered from his notes, “It’s not time to be up. The bell hasn’t rung yet. Go back to your nap.”
A slight hesitation. “Dr. Russo?” The words came with a soft, timid girl’s timbre.
“Yes, Alina,” he answered, recognizing the voice and immediately softening, “it’s me. Go back to sleep. We’ll visit later.”
“Dr. Russo,” she repeated, “I don’t want to sleep.”
He scratched a few lines into his notes with a pencil and was about to answer. But the girl’s next words came first.
“Dr. Russo, what’s that?”
He lifted his head. A strange question, given the circumstances. Slowly he turned to face young Alina. Aged seven, blond-haired, with round cheeks and the beginnings of a dimple at her chin. “Princess Alina” he often called her, her hair flowing in curls that fitted every childhood vision of feminine royalty.
She sat upright in her bed, cross-legged, pointing toward the coffee-stained patch on his white coat.
Her eyes were open. And focused.
Alina could see.
“What’s that on your coat, Dr. Russo? Did you have an accident?”
Russo gaped into her bright eyes, too stunned to speak. A second later, his metal clipboard crashed to the floor.
12
Quartiere San Lorenzo: 5:22 p.m.
The expired body of the young Professor Marcus Crossler had been brutalized.
Alexander Trecchio had never before been confronted with a mutilated body. He’d buried a handful of parishioners during his years as a priest, but that kind of organized, ritualized death was something else entirely. Even as his faith had faltered, he’d always taken comfort in the admittedly fabricated peacefulness of a good Christian funeral. Yes, the coffins looked too much like comfortable beds, and the embalming and preparations made the bodies appear more lifelike and serene than even the most well-tempered among them had been before their passing, but that was as it should be. Hopeful signs of the peace of the afterlife. That they might rest in the heavenly places, where there is neither death, nor sorrow . . . The words of the funeral rite still rolled automatically off his lips.
But what he was confronted with now was death without the slightest trace of hope or comfort. Crossler’s eyes were swollen and red, surrounded by raw blues and blacks. His jaw was horribly contorted. There was a slash through his neck, propped open by the horrible angle at which the man’s head had come to rest. Alexander could see the bone of his spine through the mess of red flesh and blood. The severing of the throat had been so severe it was nearly a decapitation.
And the blood. Alexander stood frozen in place, suddenly aware that his small plot of carpet was one of the few places in the room not spattered with Crossler’s blood. Such quantities, such spread—he had never witnessed anything like it. It seemed intended to make the worst horror-flick scenes seem tame and gentle.
He was suddenly conscious of a pounding in his chest, of the intense clamminess to his own skin. Instinctively he spun around as the shock of observation gave way to the panic of analysis. Crossler had been killed, and Alexander didn’t know by whom. Or why. Or if the killers were still here.
Panic immediately became horror. The physical responses to such a level of fear came all at once: sweat formed on his brow as if from a tap that had suddenly been opened. The urge to cough coursed through his chest as his throat constricted, while the pace of his breath increased and every muscle in his body seemed to tighten and knot. His movements became frantic. He scanned the sitting room with racing speed, looking from one corner to the next. But the room was small, and it was obviously vacant except for Crossler’s body.
Alexander tried to listen for sounds elsewhere in the house. All he could hear was the beating of his own heart, which seemed amplified in his ears.
You’re alone, there’s no one else here. But he needed to be sure. Stepping backward out of the room, avoiding the blood on the floor, he tiptoed through the corridor to the room at the back. A small kitchenette, messy and looking more like it was owned by a college freshman than a professor, but otherwise empty. A little more relief from his fear.
A few minutes later, Alexander had completed a quick survey of the whole two-story house. Whoever had been here was gone. It was only him and the corpse. Finally his heartbeat started to slow.
He extracted his LG mobile from his coat pocket and hit 112 with trembling fingers. The line to the emergency services connected seconds later.
“There’s been a murder,” he announced without introduction. He was back in the main room, staring down at Marcus Crossler’s tragic frame.
“And it looks like it’s not even a few hours old.”
The Polizia di Stato arrived twenty minutes later. Within an hour the late Marcus Crossler’s small rented house was filled with inspectors, forensics officers and the other forces that assembled en masse to deal with an urban homicide. Alexander was directed into an alcove out of the way and told to wait for a statement to be taken. He stood and watched as crews of men, who seemed only too familiar with the ritual of responding to brutal death, worked through their routines.
While his stomach turned at the mere thought of Crossler’s nearly decapitated head and he averted his glance every time it risked falling upon the scene, the men in the room seemed disturbingly unfazed by it. They worked over the body, the pools of blood and the other evidence of the crime with the same dispassionate concentration a baker might have as he worked over a cake.
In his corner, Alexander could feel the effects of trauma in himself. His pulse had finally slowed to slightly above normal, but that left the adrenalin in his blood like an agonizing, cramping poison. His joints ached, his chest throbbed and his headache was beyond description. As the threat of danger had evaporated with the arrival of the police, shock had stopped having its dulling effect on his pain receptors and he had been suffering all the more.
When the time for his interview had come, he had relayed everything he knew to the investigating officer—a man whose behavior suggested he ranked particularly high up the police food chain. He wore a wrinkled suit and a five o’clock shadow, with the bleary look in his eyes of a man who’d been on the job far too long.
“You knew the victim?” the officer asked, the question sounding routine, teleprompted.
“Only by telephone. He was a source.”
“A source. You’re a reporter?”
“With La Repubblica. Professor Crossler agreed to meet me this evening for a story I’m writing.” Alexander eyed the officer, his own mind quickly cataloging the subject that stood before him in a series of bullet points. Fat. Sweaty. Combover. Body odor. Seems smugness comes with rank.
“What’s the story?” The question came without any real show of interest. The next page of a prefabricated, well-rehashed script.
“I’m writing about the man who appeared in the Vatican this morning,” Alexander answered, feeling that should probably be enough. The officer peered up from his notes, a brow half raised.
“The one who healed the Pope?”
“The one who’s getting the credit.” Alexander looked curiously at the officer. Instinctively he didn’t like this man, but that was probably just the overly abrupt judgment of
fear and adrenalin. “You’ve heard about him?”
“Course I have. To say it’s the talk of the day would be putting it mildly.” The officer let out a sigh, his eyes falling back to his scrawls. His temporary interest passed as fast as it had come.
“When did you last speak to the victim?”
“We spoke by phone a little after lunch. Maybe two thirty or three o’clock. It was our one and only phone call.”
“He tell you anything useful?”
“Only that he thought today’s hype was something more. He didn’t get a chance to say what.”
“He instructed you to meet him here for the details?”
“At five. I showed up about ten minutes late. The door was open, and I found him like . . . that.” Alexander swallowed.
“Anyone else in the house?”
“No one. I checked.”
That seemed to surprise the officer, whose shoulders tensed slightly. “Did you find anything?”
“What do you mean?”
The inspector gazed up at him. “Anything suspicious. Anything that might be relevant to our investigation.”
Alexander shook his head. He’d only wanted to know he was alone and that the crazed murderer who had slaughtered his source wasn’t still hiding behind some door, like he’d seen in too many films.
The officer paused, back at his notes. His shoulders still seemed to be a little more tense than before. Then, with a dismissive sigh, he said, “Well I guess that’s about all.”
And that had been it: the interview in its fullness. The inspector took down a few more notes. then shoved his small notebook into a pocket with a grunt.
“I don’t know what to tell you,” he’d said in summation. “Looks like a routine homicide. Sorry you had to stumble into it.”
With those words, Alexander’s stomach had rolled all the more. A routine homicide. As he’d stood waiting in his corner, the phrase had echoed over and over in his head. There was a man on the floor who had agreed to talk to the press about the story of the day and who’d been violently killed before he’d had the chance to open his mouth. A routine homicide. Who’d nearly been decapitated. A routine homicide. Whose death was obviously connected, somehow, to whatever information he had. A routine homi—
The echoing phrase became too much. Alexander stepped up to the investigator when the moment looked opportune.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, tapping the man’s arm. It was the same officer who’d spoken to him before, and he looked mildly surprised—and annoyed—to see Alexander was still there.
“What is it, Mr. Trecchio?”
“I’ve been . . . been thinking. Despite what you said, Crossler’s death isn’t routine. It can’t be. I have a theory that it might be connected to—”
The inspector waved a rough, calloused hand, abruptly cutting him off.
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
Alexander’s face became a question. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we don’t need you or anyone else jumping to conclusions, or formulating theories. There are a hundred reasons why this could have happened. We’re the investigators. We’ll figure it out.” He reached into a chest pocket and flicked a business card at Alexander in a manner that suggested he desired nothing less than the idea of ever being contacted by him again. The name on the card read Sostituto Commissario Enzo D’Antonio. A deputy commissioner. Turned out he was precisely the high-ranking figure Alexander had presumed from his demeanor.
“But the timing is suspicious,” he persisted. “Crossler had only just agreed to speak with me.”
“Everything is suspicious in a murder.” D’Antonio’s gaze hung steadily on Alexander’s face, unmoved.
“But you’ll look into it?” Alexander finally asked, realizing this new thread of conversation was going nowhere.
The deputy commissioner sighed, scratching a fringe of salt-and-pepper hair that clung awkwardly to his brow.
“What do you think they pay us for? We’ll look into everything.”
Alexander had never been less convinced of anything in his life.
13
Vatican City: 8:18 p.m.
The meeting of the Fraternitas Christi Salvatoris, the Fraternity of Christ the Savior, was held in utmost secrecy, as always. The usual meeting place of Castel Sant’Angelo was not a possibility, given the unique circumstances that had befallen them, and arrangements had had to be rushed. But the membership were all here and there was no way they could forestall the meeting.
“We’re all gathered, just get on with it.” The disgruntled nudge came from one of the fattest men in the dimly lit room. Most of the members had known him for years—he was like old furniture at their meetings, tired and traditional. Nevertheless, they had all long since grown accustomed to not saying his name, or anyone else’s, during their gatherings, a rule that seemed especially pertinent today. A group with their aims had to maintain secrecy at all costs. One never knew who might be listening from the woodwork.
“This is terrible,” a lankier figure blurted out. Fidgeting with his collar was a nervous habit in which the man indulged with almost fetishistic determination as he spoke. “All our work, everything we are, is jeopardized by this outrage.”
“Keep your voice down,” another brother answered. Of the thirteen men in the small room, he was the most visually striking, his face perfectly proportioned and the silver streaks in his otherwise dark hair giving him a professional, surprisingly handsome look. “And don’t overreact. The Church has had to deal with pretenders before. Those moments passed. So will this.”
“The Guard down on their knees in St. Peter’s!” spat out the lanky brother, his face reddening. “The Pope weeping at the presence of a man who interrupts his Mass and claims to be the second coming.”
“In front of the world!” came another voice, just as repulsed.
“And then he kisses his fucking hand, on live television!”
A fourth man, far younger than the first three, leaned forward from his perch at the corner of the rosewood table. He couldn’t have been more than forty, but his eyes wore the severity of an older life. When he spoke, the words slithered out smooth and snake-like, deliberately slowed for emphasis.
“You need to lower your voices, brothers. Don’t make us say it again.”
“Then tell us what the fuck we are supposed to do with . . . with this fiasco!”
“I’m afraid you are not seeing things clearly.” The voice of the leader of the Fraternitas Christi Salvatoris was calm and measured, his words spoken, as always, as if every phrase had been planned long ago and bore with it the authority of that preparation. Though he talked in little more than a whisper, the twelve other men heard every syllable. They were accustomed to listening closely to his words.
The Fraternity had come into existence over forty years ago, in the months that followed the Second Vatican Council and its ridiculous “reforms.” A collaboration of brethren who knew that not all change was good, and that sometimes the rights and powers of antiquity had to be protected by force. Its current leader knew that never in all its decades of existence had its membership been more nervous than they were now. The very raison d’être of the individually selected group of clerics—to preserve the customs, privileges and rights of the Church’s magisterium in the face of the liberalizing tendencies of the modern world—had known no greater foe since its creation than the current pope. Since his election, fewer than twelve months ago, the Fraternity had been meeting far more frequently than ever before, planning a way forward through the “Vatican clean-up work” the pontiff had declared would be a central part of his mission.
Some messes, the members of this Fraternity believed, did not benefit from cleaning.
They had tried to prevent this. Tried to sway the movement of the conclave before the previous papal incumbent had even died. But not every plan meets with success. A sorely felt loss, to be sure, but not one they were prepared to take as
spelling ultimate defeat.
“Your perspective is short-sighted,” the Fraternity’s leader continued, chastising the group’s most visibly worried member, “though that can be forgiven.” He held his eyes a long while upon the man, who was still twisting his fingers around his collar. “But I assure you, there is another way to look at our situation.”
“Tell us,” came a new voice from the corner of the room. It sounded skeptical, and emerged from a man for whom two words generally constituted complete sentences. When he spoke more, eyebrows around the room rose in surprise. “If you believe there is another way for us to look at this ‘situation,’ explain it, so that the rest of us might understand.”
“Do none of you see how this strange man and his actions might work in our favor?” the leader continued.
Murmurs emanated from all sides.
“Our favor?” the fat brother asked. “I agree with—” He bit his lip before the name of the twitching man beside him came out. “I agree with our brother that this is cause for scandal and the general disrepute of the Church. I am told it’s already the talk of Italy, and most of the world.”
“That is precisely how it might promote our agenda.”
“Brother, all of us here wear black, or purple, or red. We’re not here to destroy the Church!”
“Of course we aren’t. We’re here to defend it, even from those who would feign to lead it. But this man who’s arrived on our doorstep will not destroy the Church. God’s house is stronger than that.”
“Then what, precisely, are you suggesting?”
“Look at the effect our stranger has had on the Holy Father,” the leader of the Fraternity continued. “And I don’t mean physically. The Lord only knows why or how the Pope now stands unaided. It clearly has nothing to do with this man.” Grunts of agreement. God didn’t send vagrants to heal prelates. “Yet the Holy Father seems convinced, at least if his reactions so far are any sign. The stranger has captivated him. And that, my dear brothers, is something we can use.”