Dominus

by Tom Fox

  Gabriella made no attempt to keep the smile from her face. “Admit it, Alex, you walked in there expecting to be stonewalled and dismissed at every turn. Cynic!”

  Alexander raised his hands in mock surrender. “Guilty.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a new pack of MS Filtros bought at the same time they’d purchased their new phones, and lit up. “That went nothing at all like I was expecting.”

  “Later, you and I are going to have a conversation about your attitude toward the Church, Mr. Trecchio,” Gabriella said. “Enough experiences like this and I have hopes of bringing you back into the fold.”

  Alexander smiled as they approached the mid-sized, wretchedly orange Opel. The locks clicked open. She was talking about a future.

  “That being said,” Gabriella continued as she sat, “the bank’s openness was a little worrying.”

  “Good to know there’s some suspicion left in you.”

  She shook her head. “Only a suspicion that we might be on the wrong track entirely.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Precisely because of the president’s candor. Crossler and Tosi thought they were exposing secrets, and we’re following their path on that assumption. But Holtzmann apparently had nothing to hide. He produced the bank’s bloody liaison list without a moment’s hesitation!” The sign of the cross was again in motion.

  Alex raised a brow. The prim and professional facade of Gabriella Fierro occasionally slipped enough to let some of her police gruffness through, together with her personal quirks, and he liked it.

  “Don’t be so sure,” he answered. “That list means nothing until we check it out and confirm what it is we’ve really been given.”

  “I’ll manage that,” Gabriella answered, nodding. “You just drive us by a coffee shop. Holtzmann may take whisky before ten, but I could go with a latte. And put out that cigarette. My aunt will complain about the insult to her car’s upholstery for months.”

  Alexander smiled, flicked the half-smoked cigarette out the window and started the engine. But before he could put the car into gear, his new mobile began to ring. He fished it out of his pocket, and when he saw the number on the display, his face contorted in surprise.

  The series of digits were those he’d texted earlier. He and his uncle had kept a kind of running dialogue on their lives by SMS since text messages had become commonplace, and he’d texted him earlier chiefly out of habit. Since they’d discussed the absence of access to the IOR in the past, Alexander had thought that news of his being there would interest his uncle.

  But given the current situation in the Vatican, and his uncle’s status there, he hadn’t expected a reply. In the circumstances, the call shouldn’t even be possible.

  He clicked answer with an unusual hesitation. “Hello?”

  “Alexander, is that you?”

  “Uncle Rinaldo, I almost didn’t believe my screen. I thought you were all cloistered. How are you calling me?”

  “The cloister has been in effect since the call went out to all the Cardinals yesterday afternoon. I was already here, so the trip was quick. Others have been flying in from all over the world.”

  “We were told you were completely isolated. No calls taken, none going out.”

  “That’s true, Alexander. But please, stop asking questions.”

  The nervousness in his uncle’s voice was throwing Alexander. It wasn’t an emotion he was used to hearing there.

  Rinaldo Trecchio had been a cardinal for sixteen years, a loyal and dedicated prince of the Church. He’d also been a caring and compassionate uncle as long as Alexander could remember.

  As Alexander’s own faith had weakened, bit by bit, until his conscience finally approached a threshold he’d never anticipated nearing—the realization that he could not continue as a priest—his uncle had stayed by his side. By the time Gabriella had entered the scene, Alexander’s decision was all but taken, but even then Rinaldo had continued to show him love and kindness, while the rest of his deeply Catholic family had reacted with anger and disappointment. He was sure his uncle had felt those same sentiments, but to his credit he had never let them interrupt the care he showed his nephew.

  “Where are you right now?” Rinaldo’s voice pressed through the phone.

  “I’m in a car, not far from Vatican City.”

  “And why have you changed your phone number?” The question sounded anxious, not curious.

  Alexander wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’ve been involved in a bit of an . . . incident. The change was prudent.”

  Suddenly his uncle’s tone was chilled with warning. “Alexander, listen to me closely. You have to be careful. Very careful.”

  A rock formed in Alexander’s stomach. “What are you talking about?”

  “I know you’re investigating the healing of the Pope and the arrival of this man at St. Peter’s,” Rinaldo answered. “I also know you’re looking into the deaths of two professors.”

  Alexander blanched, his grip tightening simultaneously around the mobile phone and the steering wheel.

  “How do you know that? Are you having me monitored?”

  “It’s not important how I know, Alex. It’s better that you don’t. It’s only important that you listen to me when I tell you that there is far more going on than you can possibly understand.”

  “Am I being followed?” Alex demanded, confused. “Watched, by the Vatican?” Was this what the magisterium did with priests who resigned? With the press?

  “Alex, please. There’s no time to go into details,” his uncle answered, pleading. “But the further you step into this, the more of a threat you become to, to . . .”

  “To who, Uncle?”

  Rinaldo hesitated, then spat out the words: “To men who will have little hesitation in eliminating those they view as threats.”

  Alexander swallowed hard. He glanced at Gabriella, who by this stage was looking up from the paperwork they’d received at the IOR. She was aware that something strange was taking place in Alexander’s conversation but was only able to hear his half of it.

  “You’ve got to tell me more than that,” Alexander demanded of his uncle. “Who are we dealing with?”

  He waited for an answer, but none came.

  “Uncle Rinaldo?”

  He glanced at the phone. The line was dead.

  33

  Central Rome: 9:51 a.m.

  “What was that about?” Gabriella asked impatiently. Alexander had sat silently for several long seconds since the call with his uncle ended. Something obviously wasn’t right.

  Suddenly he reached forward and switched on the car’s radio. He scrolled through the stations disinterestedly, landing on the first with solid reception, as if he craved nothing more than background noise to distract him from his thoughts.

  “Alex,” Gabriella persisted, “talk to me.” She reached out a hand and laid her soft fingers across his knuckles. The sudden human contact seemed to calm him.

  “You know my uncle’s a cardinal,” he finally said, “so you know where he is right now, and what he’s privy to.”

  “Has he met the man, the stranger? Did he share anything with you about him?”

  “Nothing. He barely mentioned him. He only warned me about our investigation.”

  Now it was Gabriella who paused. “How does your uncle know what you’re investigating?”

  Alexander’s head was shaking. “I don’t know and he wouldn’t say. He only warned me that there are people out there who know what we’re looking for. People we don’t want to get on the wrong side of.”

  “It’s a bit late for that. I’d take last night’s gunfight as a pretty solid sign that we’re already on their bad side.”

  Alexander stilled at Gabriella’s words. As she’d often found she was able to do before, Gabriella could read the thoughts on his emotive face as if they were words printed on a page. Someone is obviously after us, but how could my uncle possibly know that? Was his warning just a hunch—a voice of
general concern that happened to coincide with the most traumatic experience of my life? But she knew that Alexander didn’t like coincidences. Certainly not of this magnitude. How could he know what we’ve been investigating? How could he know who was after us? And more than that, why would anyone be after us at all?

  Gabriella broke through his thoughts. “Did your uncle say who these people were?”

  “I don’t think he could. It sounded like he was taking a risk to make the call at all. He wanted to keep it short.”

  Gabriella peered down at the papers on her lap. “Then urgent or not, his warning isn’t a lot of help.” She glanced up again and saw the disconcerted expression on Alexander’s face. She was suddenly keen to divert him from a train-wreck of increasingly convoluted, speculative thoughts that would lead nowhere. Diverting the topic seemed her best option.

  “Why don’t you drive, Alex? I’ve glanced through the list of institutional affiliations from the IOR. If it’s meant to provide us with anything, I’m not seeing it.”

  Alexander put the car into gear and pulled forward, but his head was shaking again. “There’s got to be something in there.”

  “Since I’m not sure what we’re looking for, it’s hard to know. On the surface it’s just a listing of client and partner corporations. I’d expect to see the same thing from any bank.”

  “Marcus Crossler wouldn’t have had more insider information than this,” Alexander insisted, “but he was able to convince himself of illegitimate activity. Activity he linked to the stranger.”

  “He also had more time and more of a background than I do,” Gabriella answered. “On first reading, the only thing these companies appear to have in common is that they’re big names.”

  “Private clients aren’t in the IOR’s charter. The only individuals who can open accounts are members of the curia and high-ranking church officials. Otherwise, it deals only in the financial ventures of the state.”

  “Well, when it comes to those ventures, the list of the Vatican’s investment partners looks like what you’d expect. Big corporations. Eurobank, the IMF, Celentis, Alventix, CygnaGen, Financia Italia, that sort of thing.”

  Gabriella concluded her listing, rattling off the names. But when she looked up, Alexander was staring at her from the driver’s seat. His eyes lingered with a strange intensity before he switched them back to the road. She wondered, for a moment, whether her touch a few moments before had evoked memories in him that she shouldn’t have teased. But an instant later he swerved the car to the shoulder and pulled to a stop.

  The look on his face wasn’t longing.

  “Read those names again, the ones you just listed.” His expression was curious, and Gabriella turned back to the printouts without asking for an explanation.

  “Eurobank, the International Monetary Fund, Celentis, Alventix, CygnaGen, Finan—”

  “Stop there,” Alexander interrupted. He struggled beneath the safety belt but managed to turn more fully toward her. “Does that list explain the type of relationship the Vatican Bank had with each of the companies?”

  “There’s no indication of euro or dollar amounts. Just the fact of institutional connections.” She gazed into his determined stare. “Alex, what are you on to?”

  “There’s something that at least three of those firms have in common that goes beyond simply being large, rich companies.” His fingers rattled along the gray plastic of the steering column, then suddenly stopped.

  “Let’s start with Celentis. You’ve heard of them?”

  “Of course,” Gabriella answered. “They make the vitamin supplements I see in every supermarket.” See, and buy. Gabriella was a sucker for supplements, to a degree that even she found embarrassing to admit.

  “Vitamin supplements, together with a lot of other things,” Alexander nodded in agreement. “The next was what . . . Alventix?”

  “I don’t know anything about them.”

  “Sure you do. They’re the company headed by the Russian tycoon. The one the protesters are always out to crucify, who fights back on primetime at every opportunity.”

  “Kopulov,” Gabriella suddenly remembered. “I didn’t know the company, but I know the man.”

  “And what was the next one?”

  “CygnaGen. From the name, I’m going to guess it’s involved in some kind of genetic research.”

  “I’ve never heard of them before,” Alexander said, “but I’d assume the same. Which means we’ve got three companies involved in medical research and pharmaceutical production.”

  Gabriella considered the connection.

  “Are there others?” Alexander asked.

  Gabriella dragged a finger down the list of company names. “Europa MediTech . . . GenCore . . .”

  Alexander’s head was nodding as if he’d predicted the answer. As the white noise of the car radio mumbled beneath them, Gabriella took note of the ongoing change in his expression. Where there had been curiosity a few moments before, there was now a mixture of resolve that seemed to merge with worry. His eyes danced a back-and-forth pattern between unknown targets somewhere between his knees. She remembered that expression. Something had him hooked.

  “Alex, at some point you’re going to have to tell me what you’re thinking.”

  He didn’t look up. “I’m not thinking, I’m listening.” He motioned toward the car’s minuscule stereo. At this point Gabriella no longer tried to conceal her confusion. His behavior was becoming bizarre.

  “Alex, this isn’t the time to—”

  “What have we just learned?” He cut her off. When Gabriella gave him only a wide-eyed shake of her head, he answered for himself. “We’ve learned that the IOR maintains ongoing financial connections with a whole suite of medical research firms. We’ve learned that this list of connections was at least in part what lay behind Crossler’s conviction that the events of yesterday are fraudulent and criminal.”

  “And?”

  “So listen,” Alexander said, waving again at the car’s speakers. A male newsreader’s voice tinned its way out of the low-grade equipment.

  “. . . the sudden recovery of the sixty-three terminal cancer patients in Dr. Tedesco’s ongoing study marks the second mass healing, as they’ve come to be known, to make the news in the past twenty-four hours, following swiftly upon the recovery of the sight of over one hundred permanently blind children in a Pescara hospital ward suffering from a genetic condition for which there is no known cure.”

  Gabriella was suddenly aware of the goose pimples standing at full rise on her arms.

  The voice of the newsreader returned.

  “These events follow the as-yet-unexplained occurrence at St. Peter’s yesterday morning, during which the crippled Pope suddenly stood upright, his lifelong condition apparently healed. Needless to say, in a nation of Catholics, the word ‘miracle’ is floating through the Italian vocabulary today with an unusual intensity.”

  Gabriella peered up at Alexander. Suddenly her face was as white as his.

  34

  The Apostolic Palace: 10:02 a.m.

  “I wish to speak to the world, and I have both the ability and the right to do so.” The words came from Pope Gregory’s thin lips with an air of firm insistence, as if he were anticipating the fervent protests of his Secretary of State. On that front the supreme pontiff was not disappointed.

  “Your Holiness,” Cardinal Viteri appealed, “are you sure this is the wisest course of action?” His aged features were a picture of distress and concern.

  “I am.”

  Viteri looked uncomfortable with the short response, especially when the Pope did not follow it with any explanation.

  “But what could you possibly say to them at this moment?” His face broadcast his increasing anxiety. “Your Holiness has been healed,” he motioned to the Pope’s erect figure standing regally before him, “for which we all stand in immense gratitude before our Lord. But we know not the how, nor the reason.” He hesitated. “You cannot
be intending to speak to the people about . . . him.”

  Gregory peered down at the cardinal, a new position given his change in stature. Prior to yesterday morning, he’d always stood a good three centimeters shorter than Viteri. Today he was the taller man.

  When he spoke, the Pope’s expression was unreadable. “I haven’t yet decided whether to mention anything about our guest. But there are wonderful things afoot, Viteri.” The Secretary of State needn’t know about Gregory’s ongoing questions—the fact that he still had concerns over the identity of this man. The peace that was in the Pope’s heart was strong enough to outweigh his concerns, but since he knew it would be unlikely to have the same effect on Viteri, it was best simply to speak without qualification. “We must not hide the mercies of God.”

  Cardinal Viteri flinched. His body language made clear that “guest” was not the word he would have chosen for their visitor, and that “mercies” were not how he was interpreting the events of the day.

  “If you don’t intend to speak of him, then I ask again, of what?”

  “Am I now to understand that the Pope is to filter his remarks through your office, Donato?” Gregory asked.

  Viteri blanched. “Of course not, Your Holiness. I am simply trying to bring measure and calm to a situation that, beyond these walls, is greatly exciting the masses.”

  The pontiff nodded, understanding. “Do not be afraid, Donato. I will tell the people what they need to hear.”

  Five minutes later, Cardinal Viteri was alone under the small portico, the Holy Father having returned to his study to make ready his remarks for the press.

  Viteri’s expressions of concern and reticence had departed with the Pope. Standing solitary beneath the arched roof, relief now covered his face.

  Had he been adequately convincing? It was hard to say, and he’d had to navigate a fairly tender line. But the antagonism between Gregory and himself had been strong before the new pope’s election, and stronger since. The two men had never liked each other—what a godsend that was today proving to be. He knew Gregory would naturally react against the inclinations of his Secretary of State. Showing concern over any mention of miracles or the presence of the stranger was the best way Viteri could think of to cause the pontiff to react with deeper resolve.