Dominus

by Tom Fox

  The only remaining guards inside were the two men nearest the Pope, and Christoph Raber himself.

  71

  7:29 p.m.

  Once the gunfire had subsided and Caterina’s men had clearly gained the upper hand, a new silence fell over the shattered scene. Particles of wood frame littered the floor; plaster from ancient wall moldings crumbled on all sides; Persian rugs were shredded. And on top of it all were bodies, a few of hers but mostly those of the outgunned Swiss Guard, bleeding a crimson paint on to the abject disarray.

  Caterina’s remaining men—nine of them—swooped swiftly into the room as the dust began to clear, taking up strategic positions around the space. Their threats were few: two remaining guards at the back of the room and their commander. A small huddle. Three guns. Absolutely no chance of overwhelming them with an attack. If any should be so foolish as to fire, they would all be dead in under a second.

  For an instant, time seemed to linger rather than advance. The dust in the air caught the soft light that streamed through the antique glass of the study’s high windows, almost dancing in the oddly serene moment. All that could be heard was the heavy breathing of the men and the occasional metallic jostling of their weapons.

  Finally, another man entered.

  Cardinal Secretary of State Donato Viteri stepped into the papal office with an oddly casual demeanor. He was dressed in his customary finery: crimson-piped simar with red zucchetto, a large gold cross at his neck, a scarlet sash around his waist. The tufts of hair peeking out from the edge of his skullcap looked a little out of place, much as they did on every other day. The only thing that distinguished him from his usual appearance was the unconcealed hardness in his eyes.

  “Donato, how dare you!” the Pope exclaimed, stepping out from the bulky wooden furniture behind which he’d been thrust. Raber’s frame tightened, but the Pope wasn’t being stopped. “You of all people. A leader of the Church!”

  “This isn’t the time to pontificate with me, Gregory,” Viteri answered. There was venom in his voice. “And you, you’re not a man to talk about leading anybody.”

  The Pope was genuinely stunned. “What’s come over you? You’ve always been a loyal son of the Church. How can you betray her in this . . . this vile manner?” He motioned to the bodies littering the floor.

  “I’m more loyal to the Church than you’ve ever been,” Viteri answered. “A son protects the legacy of his fathers, he doesn’t try to destroy it.”

  A flash of realization crossed the Pope’s features. “All this is because you’re upset with my reforms? Donato, I’m only trying to clean up the mess that our curia has become. To free us of scandal!”

  Viteri spat on the floor, his face contorted in disgust. “Always so fond of platitudes, Gregory. But you’ve never understood what you were dealing with. Some things can’t be changed. Shouldn’t be changed. There are ways things have always been done. Some of us hold those sacred.”

  The Pope’s tone was now indignant. “Your hands are stained with blood and you dare speak to me of the sacred! Your only desire is to protect your territory, Donato. Your influence and power. You’re a betrayal to everything the Church has called you to!”

  “Junior bishops shouldn’t lecture their seniors, whatever color hat they wear.” Viteri hissed out his words. “You’ve been pope less than a year, a cardinal less than ten. I was a prince of the Church when you were still an assistant priest figuring out which end of the chalice was up. And you presume to tell me what needs preserving and what needs changing!”

  Gregory suddenly sighed. Through Viteri’s angry tirade a new realization had hit him. “The Fraternity. The group mentioned in whispers. It’s you. You’ve been behind this all along. Plotting against me.”

  “Don’t be arrogant. It’s never just been about you. We work against anyone who threatens what the centuries have created. If it takes a brotherhood of a few dedicated clerics to ensure that the Church’s ancient traditions are preserved, then so be it. We’re willing to do what needs to be done.”

  Their exchange might have gone on, but behind Cardinal Viteri a bold feminine cough cut through the volley of words. A woman, middle-aged but bearing a regal composure, stepped through the chaos. She was tall, her height enhanced by heels, and in her suit she was a commanding presence. Her blue-green eyes were filled with disdain.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” Caterina Amato said, taking another step forward, “but as touching as this is, I haven’t come here to listen to the two of you dispute competing ideologies of the Church.” She smiled wryly for only a second, then forcibly shoved Cardinal Viteri out of her way. She stood face to face with the Pope.

  “Mr. Antonio Pavesi,” she said spitefully, using the pontiff’s secular name without any religious titles, “a man of many offices. Of new roles. Even a new name.” She eyed him up and down. He was a man who bore the kind of power in his world that she seemed determined to bear in her own, and the resentment on her features was plain.

  “There is a difference between your Secretary of State and me,” she finally said. “In some twisted way, he actually cares for your church.” Caterina leaned in until her face was only centimeters from the pontiff’s. Their breath flowed into each other’s nostrils.

  “I, I can assure you, do not.”

  72

  7:41 p.m.

  “What is it you want?” the Pope asked, holding his ground before Caterina Amato’s seething stare.

  “Only what any professional would want,” she answered. “The freedom to do what I wish. To run my business as I wish, without the interference of institutions like yours.”

  “Are you not free?”

  “I’ve amassed wealth, influence, all the trappings. But real freedom means being unencumbered. Unhindered. And there, Mr. Pavesi, you have posed a problem for me.”

  “I’ve never done anything to stop you,” the Pope answered. “Until today, I didn’t even know who you were.”

  “Your attacks aren’t personal, Your Holiness,” she answered, mocking. “Yours is a much more manipulative control. You talk about moral mandates, you hinder the free exploration of scientific advancement. You issue statements condemning financial freedom and you define what’s ethical and what’s not in terms that billions listen to.” She glowered into the face of the pontiff, and for an instant she could almost see her mother’s controlling features there.

  “We only seek to preach what is good in the world,” he answered.

  “What you dictate to be good in the world.” Caterina paused, her neck flushing red, then suddenly stood straighter, her eyes hard. “But I think we can be entirely frank, can’t we? If it were just your political and economic interference that was at stake, I wouldn’t be here. What you really have to answer for, Holiness, is the fact that your sanctimonious palace of righteousness is a hornets’ nest of liars, cheats and far, far worse. And you have the unrivaled audacity to tell others, to tell me, what I can and cannot do, based on your personal visions of right and wrong.”

  “The Gospel is pure. We all know men can be corrupt, but I’ve worked tirelessly to change tha—”

  “Change isn’t good enough! When you have men who take innocence and destroy it, who take boys—who take my brother—and desecrate them.” She wagged a finger at Cardinal Viteri, keeping her eyes fixed on the pontiff. Viteri’s face was suddenly as red as the piping of his simar.

  “Caterina, don’t! You said you wouldn’t—”

  “When that happens,” she yelled, ignoring the cardinal’s protestations, “when men like that are allowed to wear robes like those, then the time has come not to change, but to eliminate.”

  Caterina spoke the last word with fire in her voice, her chest heaving. She scowled at the Pope, hatred radiating from her every feature. And then, a moment later, in an almost instant shift, she’d regained her composure.

  “The simple matter is, I’ve had enough. If it brings you any peace, I hadn’t intended for things to go quite this wa
y. I’d intended your destruction to be less physical. Some man shows up on your doorstep unannounced, God only knows who he is”—Caterina signaled toward the stranger, still standing silently at the side of the room—“and fuck only knows what causes you to suddenly stand upright that morning. Maybe you’ve been exercising, taking some better meds. But by damn if it wasn’t the opportunity I’d been waiting for.”

  “So you staged the rest.” Alexander stepped in. “You saw an opportunity and ran with it. Fake a few miracles, get the Pope to believe, get the people to believe, then expose your own fraud. The Pope is left looking a fool.”

  “A moral authority no more.” Caterina nodded.

  “If you want to discredit the Holy Father,” Raber finally interjected, “just do it. You don’t need to employ such violence.”

  “You and I both know we’re well past that,” she answered. She stared Raber down a moment, then turned back to the pontiff. Her next words came slowly.

  “We all know what has to happen now.”

  Gregory stood silently, motionless.

  “You’re going to kill the Pope,” Alexander said aloud, his words barely a whisper.

  “No,” Caterina laughed. “I’m not going to kill anyone.” Then she looked straight into Alexander’s eyes. “You’re going to kill the Pope.”

  Gabriella gasped, but Alexander stood firm with a new resolve. “That’s never going to happen,” he said. “Gregory is a good man. The kind of corruption you speak of—it’s in the hands of men like this that it’s done away with. That things become different. Don’t let the past destroy what could be good in the future.” It was ironic, the ex-priest defending the Pope and the nobility of the Church despite the sinfulness of some inside it. These were the very things that had stirred his own loss of faith.

  Caterina shook her head, vaguely disappointed.

  “No bother,” she said. “We can always make it look like you did it.” She turned to Cardinal Viteri, grabbed a gun from one of her men and held it out to him.

  “Your Eminence, it’s time you killed the Holy Father.”

  Cardinal Viteri blanched. His eyes fixed on the gun dangling before him.

  “This was never part of the bargain!” he cried out. “I’m not a killer! The agreement was for you to frame him, to destroy his reputation!”

  Caterina glared at him, her features hard.

  “Plans change,” she said firmly. “But don’t worry, you’ll be blameless in the end. The guilt will fall on the crazed ex-priest and his woman, whom you’ll also shoot. A perfect story: they kill the Pope, you kill them. You come out the hero.” And Viteri would remain in her clutches, entirely within her control. “I’m not offering you an option.”

  “This is madness!”

  Caterina thrust the gun closer to his face. “I’m losing patience. Take the fucking gun and shoot the goddamned Pope!”

  The world seemed to collapse to only a bubble between them. The cardinal stood in his regalia, sacred and authoritative. The woman was an embodiment of power, anger and command. There was nothing else. No Vatican around them, no past or future—only this moment. Every eye in the room was on them.

  And Viteri knew he could not comply.

  “I will not do thi—”

  Caterina didn’t let him finish. She pulled the trigger twice and pierced two perfect holes through the cardinal’s forehead. Viteri’s face didn’t even have time to register surprise. He hovered a split second, muscle memory holding him upright, and then the longest-serving Secretary of State in the history of the Vatican collapsed on to the floor.

  Plans change.

  “Well, Your Holiness,” Caterina continued, turning to face the Pope, “I guess I’ll have to do this myself after all.”

  But as she turned, Caterina’s heart missed a beat. Where the Pope had stood was only an empty space. He was gone—and so were Raber and his guards, as well as Alexander, Gabriella . . . and the stranger.

  “Where have they gone?” she shouted. She turned to her men. “Weren’t you watching them?”

  And then she saw the inexplicable. Her men were standing where they’d been positioned before, but they were surreally still, as if frozen in place. All their eyes were on Cardinal Viteri’s fallen body.

  “What the hell are you lot doing just standing there?” she shouted, walking over to the nearest one and kicking him in the back of the leg. He buckled, and motion began to return to the others.

  What was with these men? Had they been so captivated by her exchange with Viteri that they’d not noticed their main captives fleeing? How could so many trained men be so distracted? The scene was close to surreal. Almost supernatural.

  “They’ve got away!” Caterina cried. She started searching the room frantically as the realization hit the men, who immediately started in on the same project. Behind the large armoire—nothing. The bookshelves—standard, no hidden doors. Then the nook to the side of the room where the stranger had been standing, with a large mirror in gold framing with—with hinges.

  Hinges.

  Caterina grabbed the side of the mirror and it pulled silently outward, a dark passageway behind it.

  “They’ve gone this way!” she shouted to her men. “Follow them. And kill them all.”

  73

  Corridors behind the papal apartments: 7:52 p.m.

  “This way, Your Holiness. Watch your step. The descent is a little steep.” Raber guided the pontiff through the ancient corridor that led from the papal study to a small library a floor below. Behind them the stranger followed, along with Gabriella and Alexander. Raber had ordered his two remaining guards to stand watch behind them in the corridor, certain that their means of escape would be noted soon enough.

  “Are you all right?” Gregory asked the stranger, who was just behind him. The man had not lost the sense of serene calm he’d had since the moment the Pope had first met him. Even the chaos of the last few minutes had not changed his demeanor.

  “I’m fine,” he answered, giving the Pope a gentle, encouraging smile in the dim lighting.

  “What happened back there?” Alexander asked from behind. “What kept that woman’s men from challenging us as we left?”

  Gabriella tapped his shoulder gently. “Just accept that we made it out,” she whispered. “Have a little faith.”

  Alexander bit back a response. This wasn’t the moment for discussions of piety. And yet, whatever had distracted their captors, whatever had held their eyes elsewhere as they made their exit, was well beyond anything he could comprehend. Or explain.

  It was something close to a mirac—

  “We go left here,” Raber suddenly announced as they came to a fork in the tunnel. The group followed his lead.

  Shots behind them broke through the quiet space. First the violent report of the Swiss Guards’ unsuppressed firearms, then the lighter pings of the suppressed weapons of Amato’s men. The exchange lasted only a few seconds, then silence returned.

  “It’s over,” the stranger said softly. “Your Holiness, your men are gone.”

  The Pope made the sign of the cross over his breast as they continued to move. The two guards behind them had been their last line of defense. Now they were on their own.

  “Which way did they go?” one of Caterina’s men asked as their group reached the fork in the passageway. Neither direction bore any distinguishing marks—just stone walls curving off into the distance.

  “Half of you to the right, the other half with me to the left,” Caterina instructed. She let her men divide themselves along the two corridors, then took up a position at the back of the three men speeding to the left, kicking off her black heels so she could keep pace more easily. The man immediately in front of her was Umberto, the sole remaining brother from the pair of assassins. She couldn’t help feel contempt for the man who’d failed her repeatedly over the past two days. If it hadn’t been for his incompetence, they wouldn’t be in this mess at all. At least his idiot brother, Maso, was dead in
the pathway behind them. Before the evening was out, one way or the other, she’d make sure Umberto joined him.

  “Up ahead—light,” the man at the front of their troop announced, his voice low. They slowed, and in the distance the glow of electric light bored through the tunnel’s darkness.

  “Keep your weapons up,” Caterina ordered. “If that’s the exit, I expect you to do what must be done on the other side.”

  Raber pulled the Pope out of the corridor and into the minuscule library to which it led, then assisted the stranger and their two companions. Within a few seconds they were all in the brightness of the mahogany-and-leather space.

  “Get away from the bookshelf,” Raber instructed, motioning toward the hinged contraption that served as the hidden door into the tunnel. “The safety lights we saw from the other side will guide our pursuers to this exit, and you can only lock it from the inside.”

  “That seems foolish,” Alexander said.

  “It’s designed not to let people in who shouldn’t be there,” Raber answered, “but the whole point of these tunnels is to give the Pope an escape route, not to keep him locked inside.”

  Gabriella quickly scanned the room. The only door was on the opposite wall, closed. “That way,” she said, pointing toward it.

  “Wait.” Raber shook his head and held up an open palm in warning. “Where we turned left, the men behind us may have turned right. If they did, they’ll emerge only a few dozen meters down the corridor outside. If we head out that door, we could walk right into them.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?” Alexander asked.

  “Just give me a second to thi—”

  Raber didn’t manage to finish his sentence. Automatic fire began from the tunnel behind them, the bookshelf serving as the concealed door erupting in a cloud of shattered paper and shelving.

  Raber drew his weapon, adopted a corner position and pointed toward the door. Then he reached to his back and withdrew a second firearm which he passed to Gabriella.