“I met Gunnison at your ordination as bishop,” Nora said. “What struck me was the complete absence of kindness in his eyes. They had some life in them, but no kindness.” Looking straight at her brother, she added, “Gunnison is not a compassionate man. That’s the least we should be able to say of a priest or bishop, that he is a man of compassion, a man who projects kindness.”
Bryn closed his eyes momentarily. When he opened them he was looking straight at his sister. Yes, a priest must be kind.
He let Nora’s insight sink in. Gunnison, and now that he thought of it, Kempe, were men incapable of real kindness. Both were more church bureaucrats than anything else. They thought little of mercy—they were legalists, moralists, building walls of spiritual security around their precious certainties. Their staunch orthodoxy was a cruel perversion of the gospel. They had made dogma the supreme center.
Bryn tried to recover his focus. He had to stay with the moment, with this meeting with Ian and Nora.
Landers sipped his tea, looked at Nora and Bryn, and took a deep breath.
“I’ve been studying the Combier papers I mentioned the other night, the ones Nora led me to at the Carmelite monastery. I’ve translated those in Italian and French.” Landers paused and lowered his voice. “Bryn, you and Archbishop Cullen should know that the Brotherhood of the Sacred Purple, at least the Brotherhood of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was capable of violence if they believed the church’s ‘supreme center,’ as the Brotherhood put it, was under attack. In fact, they were quite capable of murder.”
18
Mark Anderlee stood ramrod straight, as if at attention before roll call, at the picture window of his seventh-floor harbor-front condo. He loved Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and living at its edge. Yet giving it up would be but another minor sacrifice. He drew energy from the movement far below of parents pushing their children’s trams, of office workers on their lunch breaks. Only in the darkest hours of the night was the harbor really quiet. The dark stillness was his passionate companion, his lover. It was in the dark stillness of a patrol in Iraq that he had come to understand his true mission. He focused his attention on a thirty-something figure in a business suit, the smug financial adviser type, waiting for a client at the door to Phillips Restaurant. It occurred to him how easily he could take him down if he were still a sniper. The suit below, anticipating a midday martini and crab cakes, was but one more anonymous target.
On the coffee table behind him lay two weapons Anderlee had bought just weeks before, a Sig Sauer P226, the standard issue hand weapon of most law enforcement agencies, and a Remington 700 rifle with a Leupold scope mounted on its frame that could take down an elephant at 300 yards. Moments before, he had confirmed the decision made two years ago on the still streets of Tikkrit. It was time. He had teased Gunnison into a state of terror. Now it was time. In a few days he would be out of there. He would move south, maybe find a place in the same city as his mother. Maybe even get married. Anderlee had grown tired of living alone. The loneliness and the decades of anger rose in his chest, threatening to explode. Now that the decision had been made, he might finally find relief.
Anderlee’s Aunt Margaret, wrapped in the sweater her godson had given her, stiffened as a damp, ghost-like vein of air crept through the wool of her wrap. The chill, more a dank emptiness, hadn’t left her since Mark had told her of his abuse at the hands of Wilfred Gunnison. Not only was she cold night and day, she had no appetite to speak of. And she slept poorly, sometimes lying awake half the night.
She sat in the chair at her front window watching for Ella Landers’ car to turn into her driveway. It was less than an hour since she had phoned, asking her best friend to come right away, no questions asked. Before Landers stopped her car in the driveway, Margaret had opened the front door. Getting out of her car, Ella’s concern mounted. Margaret looked smaller and older, her eyes watery but focused, her pinkish, Galway skin now gray and drawn.
“Are you all right, Margaret?” Ella asked before unbuttoning her coat.
“Not really, Ella. It’s about my godson, Mark.”
They sat at the kitchen table, Ella reaching over to hold Margaret’s hands as she listened to how the retired archbishop had abused Mark when he was just a boy.
“Mark finally decided to tell me. He knows I know Gunnison, that I’d ‘given my life to the church,’ as he put it.” She was silent for a while. “I saw Gunnison a few days ago—he had a very private meeting with my boss in Kempe’s office—just the day before Mark came over to tell me what he’d done to him.”
“I’m so very sorry,” Ella said in a whisper. The pain in her friend’s eyes brought tears to her own. But Landers saw something else in Margaret’s eyes, something she had never seen before in the many years of their friendship—a cold emptiness. Or more accurately, perhaps, an empty coldness. Whatever was going on, something had turned in Margaret.
“I feel like such a goddamn fool, Ella.” The profanity surprised her friend. “I’ve given my life to the church,” she said, repeating Mark’s tribute. “And, believe me, I’ve been loyal and discreet. The bishops and priests I’ve worked for are as human as the rest of us.” Margaret went silent, then went on, her voice now lowered and her pace sharp, her words sounding like staccato notes. “I’ve seen arrogance, ambition, envy, jealousy, routine unkindness, ingratitude, addictions of all sorts, including pornography. Even when the abuse scandals broke, I tried not to judge. Most of the priests at the Catholic Center don’t seem to be very happy. They seemed rather solemn, lonely men, living for their days off and their vacations. I always tried to see the good most of them do.” She paused again, then said in a softer tone, “Bishop Martin is a friend, a dear friend. Bryn is different. And so is Archbishop Cullen. But most of that crowd are ciphers, zeroes—bland company men. And now I know I’m working for a real snake—Monsignor Aidan Kempe, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore—and that his buddy, Wilfred Gunnison, abused my dear Mark.”
Comiskey rose from the kitchen table and went to the thermostat to turn the heat up. She was shivering now with rage. Landers remained at the table, coming to grips with Margaret’s inner convulsions.
Returning to her chair, Comiskey said coolly, “Kempe and Gunnison belong to a spooky group of priests that meets monthly. I’m not sure what they’re up to, but it’s all hush-hush. And they have a budget that seems to be limitless. Ella, listen to this, they call themselves ‘The Brotherhood of the Sacred Purple,’ for God’s sake. And I’m almost certain my boss, the chancellor, not Archbishop Gunnison, is their real leader.”
“This sounds like something out of one of Ian’s lectures,” Ella said, remembering the dinner conversation two weeks earlier.
“Yes,” Comiskey said, a weak smile lifting her face, “when Ian told us about the Fideli d’Amore, this Brotherhood of the Faithful in Love, the first thing that came to my mind was this Brotherhood of the Sacred Purple. Kempe has a file drawer in his desk that only he has the key to. I’ve seen it open when he’s working on God knows what, but it’s definitely top secret. Kempe is the chancery official who has investigated and handled most of the sexual abuse cases in the archdiocese. He’s made a lot of them go away quietly. Payoffs mostly. The victims have to sign a letter promising to keep the settlement confidential. And the checks seem to come from some private fund controlled by Kempe. I’ve overheard him refer to it as the ‘purple purse.’”
“That’s got to be one of the cheekiest things I’ve ever heard, Margaret. Not only is it cheeky, it’s probably criminal.”
“Yes. Criminal,” Comiskey said. “And where does the money come from for these payoffs and his trips to Rome and his dinner parties at the best restaurants? But right now I don’t give a damn about where the money comes from. I’m convinced he has records and documents in that file drawer relating to sexual abuse—records that show Baltimore’s retired archbishop is a child abuser. And this ‘Most Reverend’ pervert is going to celebrate his fiftieth ordination anniversary n
ext week as if he were Jesus Christ himself.”
“I saw something in the papers about his jubilee,” Ella said. “It’s quite a celebration according to the article. Even the nuncio, Archbishop Tardisconi, is going to attend.”
The two women sat without speaking. Finally, Comiskey looked into Ella’s eyes and said calmly, “I’m going to ask you to do something outrageous, Ella, something that itself is, quite certainly, criminal.”
19
Professor Ian Landers scanned the twelve graduate students seated in leather swivel chairs around the faux mahogany conference table in the Johns Hopkins seminar room. They were all on time, in fact early, in a display of motivation and earnestness. Ellen Stark and John Pointer, the two doctoral students in the seminar, sat at opposite ends of the table. Except for the two seminarians wearing black wash pants, they were all in jeans. Three of the men were clad in well-worn sport coats. Landers, dressed in a dark blue blazer and oxford blue shirt with a paisley maroon tie, sat erect in his usual chair at the center of the table on the side closest to the whiteboard. The British-bred professor was unfailingly both polite and reserved, and no less approachable and generous with his time than his American colleagues in the history department.
“You may pick up your papers on Bishop Barbiano at the end of our session. Barbiano’s letter to Cardinal Colonna, a few of you noted in your American vernacular, was blatantly schmoozing. I’m sure you won’t use this colorful Americanism in your theses, though it is spot-on accurate. And most of you judged Barbiano’s proffer of Ascanio Sforsa for the Cardinal’s personal use as a sad case of how far some medieval churchmen would go to satisfy their ambition.”
“What I won’t forget about the Barbiano letter,” John Pointer said cynically, “is the closing: ‘kissing the sacred purple.’”
Nolan Connors, one of the seminarians, frowned at the remark.
“All right,” Landers continued, “today we’re going to look at another example of ecclesiastical ambition—the rise of Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga. The English for Ercole, as you no doubt assumed, is Hercules. Although historians might judge him a decidedly minor player in the world of ecclesiastical life of the sixteenth century, he managed to live up to his name. Cardinal Gonzaga possessed the strength of will to be a successful reformer of his diocese of Mantua in northern Italy and an effective president or presiding prelate at the Council of Trent. And like Bishop Barbiano, what we know of Cardinal Gonzaga’s personal life is drawn primarily from his correspondence. All right, you’ve read the first five chapters of Ruling Peacefully, Paul Murphy’s book on Gonzaga—it was originally his doctoral dissertation—what struck you about the man?”
Nolan Connors spoke first, offering a safe question: “Was he related to Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, the Jesuit that the university in Washington is named after?”
“He was,” Landers responded crisply. “A distant cousin.”
“The whole business,” Ellen Stark said, “reminds me of American politics. If you’re thinking of running for the presidency you better have a lot of money and a family with political connections. The Gonzaga’s had all that. An ambitious family—his mother was something else—noble status, land, an army, and unbelievable wealth. And the family ruled Mantua from the fourteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth. This was one powerful family.”
Before Stark could continue, Pointer cut in, “You mentioned his mother, Isabella Gonzaga. Talk about a pushy mother, on the day of Ercole’s birth, she said he would make ‘un bella papona’—a fine pope. Instead of buying an Orioles baseball cap for him, she buys her dear Ercole a cardinal’s hat.”
“And,” Stark said, regaining the floor, “she succeeded in getting him named a cardinal and almost succeeded in buying him the papacy. He missed being elected pope in the conclave of 1559 by just a few votes.”
Landers’ mind wandered briefly to Monsignor Aidan Kempe and the Brotherhood of the Sacred Purple. Kempe hadn’t the wealth and military strength of Mantua’s ruling family but, like the Gonzagas, he had connections at the Vatican, and he had control of the purple purse. “All right,” he said coming back to the moment, “we have a snapshot of Gonzaga’s social position, his powerful family, and the post-Reformation chaos that his church was struggling with. What surprised you about this medieval prince and churchman?”
“What surprised me,” Pointer said, “aside from the fact that Pope Leo X named him administrator of the diocese of Mantua when he was only sixteen, was his apparent sincerity as a reformer of his diocese, especially of his priests and the vowed religious. Murphy gives him credit for cleaning up a lot of corruption in the church and the local government.” Pointer paused, glancing at Nolan Connors. “So, how do you figure this good administrator fathered five illegitimate children? This was no big secret. Yet Pope Julius III goes and names him papal legate and president of the Council of Trent. That’s a big deal.” Pointer looked at his professor, “Didn’t the bishops and cardinals of Trent squash proposals to do away with obligatory celibacy?”
“You’re right, John. Remember that it wasn’t until the Council of Trent that celibacy was generally accepted and practiced by most of the clergy.”
Joe Constanza, the other seminarian, blurted, “Wait a minute, Dr. Landers. Celibacy was made universal law for the Latin Church in the twelfth century. Are you saying priests and bishops still didn’t practice it a couple centuries later?”
“There’s evidence that many, maybe most, didn’t honor the law of celibacy, Joe,” Landers said gently. Both seminarians tried to hide their disbelief and resentment at such a scandalous notion. The two students from St. Mary’s Seminary looked as if Pointer and Landers had slurred the memory of their sainted grandmothers.
Pointer had no patience with Landers’ concern for the naïveté of the seminarians. He barreled ahead, “And we can only imagine how Gonzaga felt, what he was thinking, as the bishops at Trent debated celibacy.” Pointer paused for effect. “It appears,” he said with a smirk, “that Cardinal Gonzaga favored allowing diocesan priests to marry.”
“How do you figure?” Ellen Stark asked. “So he reformed his priests, the monks and nuns, and his people, but not himself?”
“That’s one of the issues I want us to consider today,” Landers said, aware of the tension the two seminarians had stoked. “We’re not psychologists, obviously; we’re historians. But let me ask, off the record, you might say, how is it this prelate of noble birth, who apparently died a devout and even inspirational death, who was such a reformer of lax clergy and civil magistrates and, as we’ve seen, a papal legate to the Council of Trent…how could Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga have a private life so at odds with his public life as a prince of the church?”
A jet-lagged Aidan Kempe thought of sinking into the bed in his suite at the Hotel d’Inghilterra, one of Rome’s finest, for a siesta. But an odd restlessness broke through his fatigue. His breathing, shallow now, quickened as a familiar heaviness welled up in his chest. He felt hints of this unsettling force when his taxi reached the outlying streets of the Eternal City. The tightening in his chest, his shallow breathing, the blurring of his reason—these symptoms were hardly strangers to the monsignor. They were, he knew well, the familiar precursors of lust, of sexual neediness. And Kempe understood that the urgent ache in his lower stomach for human contact and comfort—he simply couldn’t name it sexual desire—would grow more urgent no matter how he tried to distract himself from its unruly heat. At that moment, in spite of his jet lag, Kempe surrendered to the mounting heat. He would visit the little bar where espresso and a knowing look could lead to anonymous, soothing comfort and release of the tension that had been mounting from the moment he unlocked his hotel-room door.
The coffee bar, tucked into one of the side streets off the Via Condotti, had been a favorite haunt during his years of study in Rome. Though he could hardly afford it at the time, Kempe had purchased a black suit from the famed Giorgio Armani’s establishment on the Via Condotti. Now he had
three Armani suits in his wardrobe. But Kempe wasn’t interested in yet another designer suit. Instead, he anticipated the connection, the dark, nervous rush of knowing glances. At the coffee bar, he would find a few young men, unshaven, lean in their tailored suits and open-necked white shirts, sipping espresso, waiting for an early afternoon coupling with a paying gentleman of the city, including on occasion gentlemen from the offices of the Vatican.
Kempe stood at the edge of the canopied bed, slowly raised his hands to the back of his neck and unsnapped his Roman collar, placed it over the back of one of the chairs, and walked, trance-like, into the bathroom. After using the toilet, he washed his face, lathered, shaved with a safety razor, and applied a modest amount of cologne. The steadfast man of the cloth, the defender of the supreme center, the leader of the Brotherhood of the Sacred Purple had disappeared. In his place was but another lonely middle-aged man seeking the temporary pleasures of anonymous sex. Moments later, dressed in a black suit and a white silk shirt, the two top buttons unfastened, he walked past the floor-length mirror in the sitting room of his suite, permitting himself a quick, approving glance. In spite of his fatigue, the imperious, purple drug of Eros was now in control. Aidan Kempe gently closed the door to his hotel room, tried the handle to make sure it was locked, and headed for the elevator. A coffee would do him good.
20
Ella Landers couldn’t remember being so upset with her lifelong friend. Margaret should never have asked her to do something so outlandish—and so dangerous to both their good names. But it was clear that Margaret was now indifferent to her own good name and life-long standing at the Catholic Center. Not only had her nephew’s abuse severely shaken Margaret’s faith, she was no longer at home in her Catholic world, the only world she had ever known.
But how could she refuse Margaret’s request? She had never really asked Ella for anything. But breaking into the private file drawer of the chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore was hardly a small favor. She knew she shouldn’t do it. But Ella Landers also knew she could do it. The months of training at Langley and at the other operations facilities for field agents came back to her. And the rush. Landers remembered the adrenalin rush—the challenge, the danger, the exquisite planning and preparation of her few field assignments many, many years ago. Yes, she could do this. And, yes, her months of CIA training had converted her to the secular belief that the end can indeed justify the means.
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