He could exact censure and punishment.
It was with those impeccable credentials that Sixtus VI turned the locomotive of the Church onto a new track, a track headed straight into the depths.
Samson knelt next to Peter, the Pontiff placing his left hand on his shoulder.
“Terry, I’ve always had hope for you. And I still do. I want you to promise me you’ll never do it again.”
Samson squeezed his eyes shut. “I promise.”
“Which?”
“I promise never to miss mass on Easter again.”
“And?”
“I promise I’ll never fool around with a married woman again.”
“And?”
“Peter, I’m really sorry.”
“You don’t have to promise you’ll never fool around with a married woman again.”
Samson opened his eyes. “Really?”
“Just promise me that the next married woman you fool around with is your wife.”
Samson sighed. “I’m not married, Peter.”
“I know. But you ought to start thinking about getting yourself into a more permanent relationship. Kimberly is dead, Terry. It’s been over three years. Remember? I was there. I said the mass for her.”
A tear rolled down Samson’s cheek. Just the mention of her name was enough to cave him in, let alone coming from Peter. Yes, Peter had officiated the requiem held at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Creek, where they’d also said their vows. The cathedral where he said his final good-bye to the one woman who somehow had found him and loved him for who he was, not for what he did or who he knew. And he had loved her with a desperation he’d never known, one gone now, but for which he continued to wish.
Peter’s grip grew tighter. “I know you’re looking for some magic tunnel of love. But maybe you’re looking in the wrong places.” He paused. Gave a tug. “Maybe you’d be better off looking around in your hometown. My hometown.”
While those professed religious inclined to sexual liaisons and those married members of the Church inclined to extra-marital affairs applauded the decision of Sixtus, most Catholics wanted nothing to do with it. But the announcement at the papal audience was just the beginning.
A month later, Sixtus directed all priests to perform the sacrament of matrimony for any two individuals who requested it and were not currently bound by an existing Catholic marriage, whether a civil license was in existence or not. A few weeks on he ordered the Vatican Library’s pornography collection—by far the largest and most comprehensive in the world—be moved to a separate building owned by the Church in suburban Rome and turned into an extremely profitable tourist attraction. The centerpiece featured its mint collection of over 850 Playboy Magazines under which sat a life-size XL3D holographic Hugh Hefner, seated in an easy chair, dressed in a silk robe and pajamas, smoking a pipe, pleasantly and randomly reciting the names, months and years for each of the Playmates of the Month, the matching covers illuminated as he did.
He next began selling off considerable holdings of art and books and maps and jewelry and prime real estate, as billions of dollars flooding into the Vatican coffers. The Matrimonial Tribunal published a list of different grade annulments: the higher the grade, the greater the cost, the quicker the service. All forms of birth control, as well as abortion, were sanctioned.
Sainthoods became available to anyone with enough money to purchase high profile immortality for a deceased loved one. In the United States, 900 lines were established for phone-in confessions. For an additional fee, penance could be obtained for future sins. He began a costly legal struggle with the Patent and Trademark Office over his rejected application for trademark status for the cross. Those one in 900 or so Catholics who backed him began to draw together in what became the Cult of the Six, an organization that was granted every franchise there was to license the valued tag Official Supplier of and to the Roman Catholic Church.
Eventually, 170 retail products sold with varying degrees of success. Though the neon Crucifixes, the Rosary Bead Bean Soup Mix and the Sounds of the RCC CDs never caught on, some items flew off the shelves including Lourdes Sparkling Water in six fruit flavors, gold or silver beveled stone chipped from St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel, and the Baby Jesus Wee Wee Dolls, available in pre or post circumcision versions. The limited edition Another Mother Cabrini Martini cocktail kits—including four glasses, four olive spikes and an aluminum shaker engraved with the nun’s visage—became instant collector’s items. The runaway best sellers, however, were the macabre Shroud of Turin bed linen sets packaged in black and white, sepia, or computer enhanced full color.
Twenty months after the election of Sixtus, the United States cardinals met secretly in Chicago and chose its then-archbishop, Nicholas Cardinal Avillion, to represent them. The demand to the Pope would be simple: resign or lose America.
“For your penance, uh, let’s see,” Peter said as Samson wiped the tear away. “Three things. First of all, I’m going to give you a new… some new work outside the usual stuff. I’ll explain it tomorrow and I want you to put your best into it.”
“Okay.”
“And I’m going to say mass in my private chapel tomorrow and I want you to be there.”
“Yes, sir. What time?”
“Six.”
“Oh.” He hated getting up early. But as opposed to burning in hell for all eternity, not a bad quid pro quo. “What’s the third?”
“Mary Beth is in town for a few days and I’d like you to spend a little time with her.”
“Peter,” the penitent moaned. “Please? You tried this once before and…”
“And things have changed a lot since then. For both of you.” He paused. “Now you both have a little more in common.”
“Okay.”
Not an hour after the conspirators adjourned, Avillion received a phone call from Sixtus. The Pontiff had heard of the plots in North America and France and Ireland and Poland and Africa and South America to have him kidnapped or assassinated or tortured or confined to a mental institution. He knew about the meeting and demanded to know who attended. Avillion refused. Sixtus demanded again—with the threat that the Cult of the Six would avenge any insubordination, though the Cardinal would be spared if he handed over the list. Avillion held his ground and was excommunicated on the spot.
And the Sanctuarian Party was born.
“Now make a good act of contrition,” Peter directed, releasing Samson’s shoulder and folding his infallible hands.
“Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the fire of hell.” He paused. “But most of all, because they have offended you, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen.”
There was no formal agenda for the Sancters when they announced their formation, led by Cardinal Avillion, except to reject the madness Sixtus had painted onto the landscape of the Church. There was no proclamation that they were breaking with Rome or forming a new Protestant sect or doing anything else except going about their lives as good Catholics while ignoring the increasingly reclusive Bishop of Rome.
Within days, similar movements surfaced in major centers of Catholicism throughout the world. Most of the cardinals of the Church were excommunicated, as was any Catholic who chose to align with the “renegade, Satan-directed” parties.
Aside from the Cult, the strongest support for Sixtus remained in Asia and near the end of the second year of his reign, he flew to Tokyo to address a large group of loyalists at the Budokan amphitheater. He railed for close to three hours about virtually everything in the heavens and on the earth, finishing with the dare: “And if anything I have said to you is false, may God strike me dead.”
Evidently, the worldwide broadcast was also transmitted into the firmament that day, perhaps the Trinity sitting in a triangle in front of the big screen, munchi
ng celestial popcorn. Sixtus VI got his wish an instant later, a single-bolt stroke sending his soul to seek its eternal reward.
Peter smiled. “At least you remember it. By the power invested in me by the Holy Church, I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father.” He drew the vertical of the cross with his right hand. “And of the Son.” He drew the horizontal. “And of the Holy Spirit.”
Samson reached to Peter’s hand. Stared at the gold ring. Then kissed it.
“Now go get some sleep,” his confessor recommended. “You’re going one step up the ladder in the morning.”
Chapter Three
Samson followed the advice, which was not a difficult task in the face of crushing exhaustion.
He woke with a start the next morning to the large, red digits flashing 4:30 a.m. and his first thought was: Why isn’t Kimberly in bed? Maybe it was the time of year, mid-Midwestern spring, that made her memory fade in and out of his consciousness so clearly. So relentlessly.
After showering and dressing, he made his way down to the kitchen of the comfortable four-bedroom townhouse where he’d lived for four years, with Kimberly for one, in the small neighborhood that occupied the Residential Quadrant of Sanctuary Creek: a four-square mile piece of property in northern Illinois, an hour northwest of downtown Chicago. The first and only colony of a sovereign state to exist within the borders of the United States of America.
Ground had been broken for the retreat during the first year of the reign of Nicholas VI. He wasn’t happy living in Rome and made no bones about the fact that he’d be much happier to spend his life back in the Chicago area where he’d grown up, where his family and many friends lived, where the Sanctuarian Party was based and where he thought of when he thought of Home. That yearning was all it took to get the ball rolling. Two of his closest confidants were Archie Knight and his wife, Annie. Both were devout Catholics, both held influential positions within the Party, and both were phenomenally wealthy: he as the Chairman and majority shareholder of Transponder Electronic Data, she as the heiress of the Maxwell estate.
The northeast quadrant, Residential, was devoted to housing for those persons and their families who would eventually come to work at Sanctuary Creek. There were large single-family homes for the cardinals and top aides, large townhouses for the middle management types and smaller ones for those without position but with big families or well-oiled talismans. Low apartment buildings circled the area to the north and a generous community recreation center sat to the south. A large open area and a lake nestled to the west, bordering the northwest quadrant, Compound: Peter’s residence, along with staff quarters, the Swiss Guard headquarters, the heliport and the Stable.
The southeast quadrant held a huge underground parking lot with subterranean walkways leading to both the Village and Residential. Atop it sat arguably one of the most beautiful parks in the world, and in its center gleamed the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Creek.
The southwest quadrant was officially called Administration, but was affectionately known as Admin Village by those who lived within the high, iron fences of the Creek. The tallest building was nine stories, the shortest two, and the whole operation, thanks to the insistence of Annie Knight, had the feel of a small town. Aside from the administrative offices of both the Church and the Party, there was a pharmacy, a wine/liquor shop, a U.S. Post Office, a small but state-of-the-art hospital, three gift shops, a dry cleaner, a travel agency, a book/magazine shop, a grocery store, two art galleries, a branch of the Vatican Bank, the radio and television studios, a tailor, an emergency power generating plant, a pumping station, the research facility, a fire station, the Vatican Guard headquarters and a half-dozen restaurants, all offering take-out and delivery.
The most recent addition to the Village came on line 14 months after Peter assumed office. Erected on south Bethlehem Boulevard, the 8,000 square foot SC Visitors Center was equal in popularity to the Cathedral for the hundreds of thousands of lucky guests admitted to take The Tour each year. Containing numerous displays and exhibits concerning the papacy, focused primarily from Vatican II to the present, the demand for the standard $20 admissions exceeded supply by a ratio of 30:1. But that was nothing compared to the ravenous appetite for chits to the best of the best: Sister Tiff’s Sunrise Special.
Conducted on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 26 weeks a year, kicking off at 6:00 a.m., the Special, conceived and hosted by Sister Mary Tiffany Gibson, was already a legend. Beginning with a four-minute staccato introduction and ending an hour later with a 15 minute Q&A session, no one would deny Tiff could deliver the mail. On her off weeks, she traveled the world in one of the Gulfstreams, often making up to ten appearances to trot out the 50-minute multimedia version. Current bookings for the road show stretched 39 months into the future. The waiting list for the real thing was approaching the 14-year mark.
The intro, that writer Morgan Fitzgerald christened Tiffany’s 240 Seconds of Ecstasy, presented before her audience was trundled onto the 40-seat shuttle bus, was what everybody wanted to experience and nobody could ever forget. Dressed in a well-tailored two-piece white suit over a canary yellow blouse, the hem of her skirt tauntingly above her knees, an uninformed observer might mistake her for an attractive ingénue working the concierge desk at Mandalay Bay. The first words out of her mouth qualified as Level Five and by the time she delivered her final sentence—”And our last stop will be Compound, the magnificent, sprawling 26-room mansion occupied by my master, and the master of the Roman Catholic Church, Peter the Second!”—many thought she was experiencing a trance.
While the Pope was personally embarrassed by the passion and intensity she brought to her mission, as was the Mother Superior of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, he demurred when it came to asking Sister Tiff to tone things down, explaining in the last comprehensive interview for which he’d sat, “There are three entities in the universe I don’t mess with. And one of them is the Holy Ghost.”
Samson picked up his coffee and walked into the den, flopping down onto the immense couch where he and Kimberly had once snuggled in front of the tiled, beehive fireplace during the brutally frigid winter they’d lived there. He reached to a side table and lifted a small, pewter-framed photo, his favorite of the many he’d taken of her. She stood on Eagle Beach in Aruba at sunset, her short, brown hair ruffling in the breeze, the smile on her face indescribable.
Upstairs, in her room, the small enclave where she had often done her composing, the small nook of the house where he’d discovered her blood-soaked body, was his second favorite picture of her. Also in a pewter frame, it was the one of her and him and Peter taken at the wedding reception the Pontiff had held in the ballroom of the mansion. But he hadn’t entered that room since the day she’d died.
The phone beside him chirped loudly. He reached for it, wondering who in hell would also be up so early.
“Terry?”
“Yes,” he replied, sort of recognizing the voice but not sufficiently enough to attach a name.
“Terry? This is Angelique.”
He felt his lungs constrict and the air push out like a frightened flock of birds fleeing a tree. Why was she calling this early in the morning? Why was she calling at all? Why were they summoned to the Creek at the same time? Why did Peter tell him that Castro’s death had only something to do with it?
“Where are you?” he asked, looking about as if someone might be there to overhear.
“I’m staying in one of the condos over on the lake. On Palatine Lane?”
He slowly turned and gazed out the window behind him, across the dark, smooth surface of Knight Lake, to the three-story apartments ringing its northern shore. He could only see lights on in a dozen and wondered which of them held Angelique Caulfield who, after Peter, was the greatest superstar of the Catholic Church in America.
“Do you have any lights on?” he asked.
“As a matter of… why?”
“Well, I’m sitting in the den over here and I
can see most of the places across the lake and… it was just a thought.”
“Do you have any lights on?” she queried. He thought a moment. Perhaps in the upstairs bathroom, but she couldn’t see those.
“No.”
“Why did you want to know if any of my… “ She then sang the title of one of her recent hits. “What did you see when the light came on?”
“That was good.” He smiled as if he were talking to an old friend instead of a woman he’d only met once. “Do you do that for people?”
“Do what?”
“Sing for them.”
“Sing for them?”
“No, I know you sing for people. I meant over the phone.”
“I just did.”
“Yeah, but…” He stopped as he felt curiosity of a different kind, a darker kind, tap. “When did you get in?”
“Last night about ten.”
“What brings you here?” he said, stomach churning.
“Taping a couple of segments for some broadcasts. One for next week, another for next month.”
“Anything else?”
“Some things I gotta do in the city. Interviews, shopping, that sort of stuff.”
“Anything else?”
“You’re certainly curious for so early in the morning.” She laughed in the melodious voice of which the majority of 18 to 39 year-old Americans probably owned a recording.
“I guess,” he replied, as curiosity tapped again. “Anything else?”
“Drop by the mansion and if I’m lucky, have an audience with his Holiness.”
I don’t know if you’re listening, Sir. I have a favor I’d like to ask of you. I would appreciate your generosity and intercession in any conversations between Ms. Caulfield and the Pontiff. To be more specific, I would like you to eliminate any reference during those conversations to a certain event on the West Coast. I think you know the one to which I’m referring. In fact, if there is a way you could kind of revise history so that it kind of never happened, it would make my life much more enjoyable. What do you say? Thanks.
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