The Blood of the Lamb

by Thomas F Monteleone

  “Father Orlando will return for you at half past three. When you get here you will be interviewed by the committee. We are also arranging for you to be examined by our physician. I trust that is acceptable to you?”

  “Yes, I think so,” said Peter, arranging his questions in his mind. “Do you think you could tell me more about this Curial Committee for Miraculous Investigations?”

  Lareggia shrugged. “What is there to tell, really? The Holy Mother Church has always been interested in validating any evidence of the Hand of God in our daily lives. What better way to support the faith than to prove the existence of miracles?”

  Peter nodded. What a bunch of self-serving, party-line rhetoric…It was obvious the Cardinal wasn’t going to tell him anything important. Maybe he ought to just go to his room and let the jet lag overtake him.

  He decided to push a step farther.

  “One more thing,” he said. “Why were you in such a big hurry to see me?”

  The Cardinal smiled, this time more genuinely. “Because I was sincerely interested in meeting you, Father Carenza. For some reason, your case fascinates me.”

  The fat man spoke so openly and with such obvious truthfulness Peter was practically overwhelmed by his sudden candor. It made Peter feel embarrassed. His instincts were telling him something was amiss, but he wasn’t even close to figuring it out.

  “I see…” he said after a pause. “Well, thank you. I guess I should be flattered.” He leaned forward. “But I have to tell you, what happened to me was very unpleasant. Horrible, actually.”

  Lareggia waved his puffy hand in the air in a gesture of dismissal. “Ahhh! There will be plenty of time to discuss things like that.”

  He buzzed the intercom and called for Father Orlando, who appeared at the double doors almost instantly.

  “Yes, Your Grace?”

  “Escort Father Carenza to his apartment, please.”

  “Very well,” said the priest.

  Lareggia stood up, shook hands with Peter.

  “Four o’clock,” he said in farewell.

  The apartment at the College was decorated in Italian Provincial, which seemed very much like French Provincial except for the antique white and gold worked into the grain of the furniture. Despite being ornate and formal, the bedroom proved comfortable enough. Peter fell asleep and napped into the early afternoon. When he awoke, he was initially disoriented, and hungry. Armed with the map and some lire that Orlando had given him, he entered the back streets of Vatican City.

  Exiting the building and strolling a bit, he found himself on the Piazza dei Protomartiri. He was facing the southern side of St. Peter’s Basilica; to his right lay the Arch of the Bells, which led to the huge Bernini colonnade and St. Peter’s Square.

  Peter decided to avoid the huge crowds gathering with the squadrons of pigeons in the Square, which was not really a square but an enormous, encapsulated circle. He paused to take in the grandeur of the Basilica, then decided upon a route which would give him a brief but thorough education in Vatican geography. It was probably best to get the sightseeing in while he had the chance. If he had to spend a lot of time with this Curial Committee, he might not get to see much of anything.

  And so he walked west, crossing the Via della Fondamenta, then north along the Viale Del Giardino Quadrato, which borders the maze-like beauty of the Vatican Gardens. He bisected the Viale Vaticano, turned left and followed the winding road as it circumscribed the city. The walk took more than an hour and was a calming experience. There was less traffic on the periphery; the slight elevation of the road afforded Peter a composite view of the Vatican. He was able to pause at will, fix various landmarks in his mind, and slowly orient himself to his new environment. It was a beautifully clear day full of bright contrasts—the blue sky against the white stone of the buildings, dark green cypresses dotting the sandy hills.

  Finally coming full circle, he entered Saint Peter’s Basilica, amazed by its truly awe-inspiring dimensions. It was undoubtedly the most flamboyant Catholic church in the world. Tagging along with a tour, Peter learned that the Basilica was not the Pope’s parish church—that was the little church of Sant’ Anna, by the gate of the same name. St. Peter’s had started out as a small memorial chapel that Constantine had urged built to honor the first Pope. And somehow, through the ages, it just kept getting bigger—just like the Catholic Church itself.

  Peter wandered through the immense Basilica, hushed by the solemnity of the grottoes, uplifted by the soaring vision and power of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling and the frescoes of Botticelli, Signorelli and Perugino.

  After an al fresco lunch, he kept walking, heading north, into the shadows of the papal palaces, toward the Vatican museums to the east of Stradone Dei Giardini. Time passed quickly. When shifting shadows made him realize how late it had become, he doubled back, wondering if Cardinal Lareggia’s gopher, Father Orlando, was out hunting him down. It was well after three-thirty when he cut across St. Peter’s Square to return to the Teutonic College.

  Like an impatient vulture, Father Orlando waited for him outside the apartment. The man appeared flushed with anger, but still tried to hold his emotions in check, volunteering only that the Cardinal had become alarmed by his absence, and that the committee awaited him.

  Turning without another word, the priest led Peter to a black Mercedes that squatted in wait like a sleek, hard-shelled bug. Peter followed his escort slowly, for some reason feeling the first twinges of fear.

  ELEVEN

  Rome, Italy—Targeno

  * * *

  August 25, 1998

  Targeno didn’t like taking orders from the Jesuit, but he had no choice, really. He did not obey out of friendship. In his special business, Targeno knew, he could have no real friends, could trust no one—especially priests who believed it was occasionally okay to kill people. But Father Giovanni Francesco was so well-connected in the Vatican infrastructure, Targeno couldn’t tell the man to go fuck himself—an act he would love to watch.

  No. It was a time to call in a few favors. That was the way it was in politics and espionage. You always owed somebody. Somebody always owed you.

  Her name was Sister Etienne. She was a nun of the Convent of Poor Clares in Rome. Her real name was Angelina Pettinaro. She’d been born to some poor mameluke in Calabria. No doubt the bastard had been too poor to raise all the kids his stiff cock kept bringing into the world, so he dispatched as many of the girls to convents as his fat wife would most likely let him, thereby easing both his pocketbook and his conscience.

  And the Church still carped about birth control…!

  Targeno shook his head, grimaced to himself as he sat waiting in the convent’s reception hall. He looked at his watch; the day was half gone already. Damn Francesco!

  A door opened at the end of the sparsely decorated room, and a tall, graceful woman in the habit of an abbess entered. She glided toward him with the stylish confidence of a ballet dancer. Although the woman had to be at least sixty years old, she looked attractive. Targeno imagined she must have been a strikingly beautiful woman when she was younger. Why would anyone so full of elegance want to throw it all away in a fucking convent? The world was truly full of twisted people.

  “Mr. Targeno,” said Abbess Victorianna. “I think you can see Sister Etienne now.”

  He nodded, followed the willowy woman through a doorway that led to a flight of stairs. He walked softly behind her, emulating her delicate step.

  “The doctors cannot find anything physically wrong with her,” said the Abbess. “But she has been very upset by her religious experience.”

  “Upset?” Targeno asked in his most velvety voice. “Is she coherent?”

  “It is difficult to say. Father Francesco stopped by earlier and she was not very cooperative.”

  Targeno stopped at the top of the stairs. “What does that mean? Did she tell him anything or not?”

  Victorianna’s eyes met his for an instant. A surge of rep
ressed passion passed between them and she looked away sheepishly. She was embarrassed as much by what she sensed in the agent’s eyes as the message she was about to deliver.

  “When she recognized Giovanni, she became hysterical.”

  “She does not like him?” Targeno smiled. “Well, at least she shows good taste in men.”

  “This is no laughing matter,” said Victorianna. She turned and continued down the corridor, stopping at a linen closet from which she produced a white cotton physician’s coat.

  Targeno slipped off his black jacket, traded it for the white coat. “How do I look?” he asked as he shrugged into it. “Another Dr. Schweitzer, no doubt…”

  Victorianna smiled in spite of the gravity of the situation. “The infirmary is through these double doors. She’s in the first room to the right.”

  Targeno nodded and pushed through the doors. Entering the nun’s room, he was assaulted by the utter whiteness of everything—walls, cabinets, sheets. Sunlight streamed through gauzy curtains and he wished for his dark glasses. The woman lying in the bed stared straight up toward the ceiling, not acknowledging his presence. She had the eyes of a schizophrenic, of someone who looked upon a world not our own. Targeno was surprised by her healthy, youthful aspect. Although he knew her to be in her late forties, her skin was smooth and clear, her dark hair vibrant and full of natural luster.

  Another beautiful woman wasting away in the convent.

  “And how are we feeling today?” he asked as cheerily as possible, stepping into her field of vision.

  She continued to stare upward, saying nothing. Targeno recognized the symptoms of severe shock, and knew he would waste his time with the normal rigors of interrogation. Experience had prepared him for such problems, however, and he reached into his back pocket for what appeared to be a gold cigarette case.

  Opening it, he retrieved a small hypodermic needle and a syringe filled with xylothol, a mild hallucinogenic which made sodium pentothal seem like Kool-Aid. So you don’t want to talk? he thought to himself, smiling. Well, try this for a little wake-up!

  He waited only several minutes, after the injection, before her blue eyes unglazed and she focused upon him.

  “Etienne,” he said softly. “I am your doctor, and you must tell me what happened to you, so I can make you well.”

  “No…” she said, her voice soft, almost elegant. “Nothing can make me well. I have seen the end of the world.”

  “Really…? What was it like?”

  “It was terrifying.” She looked away as though embarrassed. “I cannot tell you.”

  “Yes. Yes, you can. It is all right to tell me anything.”

  Turning back, she looked directly into his eyes—suddenly unnaturally alert. Her features, though calm, were somehow transfigured. “I don’t know you,” she said. “I will tell you nothing.”

  “If you want to get well, you must tell me what happened to you…what you saw that frightened you so.”

  “I don’t care about getting well,” she said forcefully. Targeno had never seen anyone speak so coherently under the influence of xylothol. “And there is only one man I will speak to.”

  “Who might that be?” Targeno could sense failure, but he pressed on.

  “His Holiness. I must see the Holy Father.” Etienne rolled over and faced the wall.

  This was ridiculous. The woman was laced with enough chemical to get a rhino to sing, yet she handled it like sugar water. He’d never seen anything like this; he’d have to be patient. The drug would eventually prevail.

  “Etienne…you must talk to me.” He touched her shoulder, tried to roll her back to face him.

  She looked at him over her shoulder. “Do you believe in God?”

  “I…I’m not sure,” he said honestly. “Why?”

  “Because He believes in you.”

  He chuckled. “I’ve never heard it put quite like that.”

  The woman turned away, stared at the ceiling again. Her lips moved slightly, as though she might speak. He decided to wait her out. Despite her resistance to the drug, she was having difficulty fighting a compelling urge to speak.

  As Targeno hoped, after a short silence, the nun blurted out a tearful confession; “I have committed a terrible sin against man and God. Now I must suffer for that transgression. Even though I believed I was doing God’s will.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That’s what they told me—it was God’s will.”

  “Who told you?”

  “The Cardinal…and the others…”

  Targeno had no idea what she was talking about. The temptation to ignore her words, dismissing them as the ravings of a religious nut, was tempered by a nagging, instinctive feeling that he’d happened upon something fairly big. He’d felt similar hunches all his life, and many times had survived because he relied upon his instincts rather than pure logic. Perhaps he should pay attention to those feelings now.

  “Can you tell me their names?”

  Etienne smiled, looked deeply into him. “Why not? Cardinal Lareggia, Father Francesco, and my Abbess, Victorianna. They came to me a long time ago…when we were all very young.”

  “For what?” he asked softly. The xylothol was working well; she spoke more freely.

  “They needed my help. Without me, their plans were impossible.”

  “Are you going to tell me why they needed you?”

  She giggled like a schoolgirl. “Maybe…”

  “Does it have anything to do with your ‘vision’?”

  A chuckle. “Oh yes!”

  “Etienne, I am waiting…”

  “…and I am deciding. Whether or not to tell you anything.”

  “You’ve already told me plenty.” He tried an old interrogation trick.

  “I have?”

  He was always surprised at how often it worked.

  “Yes, my dear sister…All about the Cardinal and his friends.”

  “Did I tell you about the doctor?” Hesitancy punctuated her question.

  “The doctor…?” Targeno’s pulse jumped. He was enjoying this. As each new clue fell from her lips, he became more intrigued. “No, you did not. Can you tell me about him?” She looked away, batting her long eyelashes.

  “They brought him in to…to work with me. He was a nice man. Very gentle.”

  “What was his name? You never mentioned it.”

  “Didn’t I?” She giggled again. “It was Krieger. Dr. Rudolph Krieger.”

  TWELVE

  Vatican City—Krieger

  * * *

  August 25, 1998

  So, the time had finally come round, Rudolph thought wearily as he rode in a black Mercedes from Roma Internazionale. All this time, he’d been living quietly in a small village in Switzerland, having all but forgotten the work he’d performed so long ago. No, that was untrue. He would never forget what he’d done. But he had been trying like hell.

  And now it was coming back to him.

  To haunt him? It was difficult to determine. Rudolph shrugged mentally. Whatever, he had made a bargain, and now he was obligated to live up to the remainder of his part. The endless supply of Vatican money had never dwindled, and his life up to this point had been every bit as comfortable and rewarding as they’d promised.

  The Mercedes rolled to a solid, silent halt at a rear entrance to the Governorate, where he was met by Father Orlando, a youngish, extremely reticent priest. Rudolph studied the Old World decor of the building’s interior as the priest led him through the halls. It had been many, many years since he’d been in this place. He was not surprised to discover almost nothing had changed. The Church was nothing if not traditional.

  Up the elevators, down a long hall, and into a conference room where Paolo Cardinal Lareggia sat at the head of a polished conference table that might have served as an aircraft carrier for a small country. The other two were also present, folders and notebooks stacked in front of them. Krieger recognized the nun and the priest easily. Other than the u
sual insults of time, both appeared surprisingly vigorous and healthy. However, Lareggia’s outrageous obesity shocked the physician. Everything about the man was almost perfectly round. He was cholesterol personified, a heart attack waiting to happen…

  “Dr. Rudolph Krieger, welcome!” said the Cardinal, standing graciously, revealing his expansive abdomen. “I trust you remember Sister Victorianna and Father Francesco…”

  “Yes, I do,” said Rudolph, trying to bring a courteous smile to his face. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

  Lareggia nodded. “For all of us. For everything.”

  Father Francesco smiled. “I suppose you know why you’re here?”

  “I have a good idea,” said Rudolph. “I may be an old man, but my memory is still good.”

  “You will have a full staff at your disposal,” said the Cardinal. “Just let me know if there is anything lacking, and you shall have it. Now, please, Doctor, have a seat.”

  “Very well,” said Rudolph, looking across the table and selecting a chair that faced a video projector. It looked as though they were preparing for a board of directors meeting. The Cardinal resumed his seat, nodded at the nun.

  “We want a complete work-up,” said Abbess Victorianna. Rudolph was struck by how beautiful she still seemed to him. “Physical status and psychological.”

  He smiled. “Sister, I’m not trained in the latter…”

  “I’m sure you know enough to be competent,” said Cardinal Lareggia. “Besides, your support staff will include some psychiatric people.”

  Krieger nodded. “Very well, but how is all this activity being explained?”

  “We are part of a Curial Committee investigating miracles,” said Father Francesco, who was smoking a dark-leafed cigarette—much to the displeasure of the nun. “What we are asking of you is standard procedure in these matters. No one will question a thing.”