Master of Ceremonies

by Donald B. Cozzens

  Kempe thought he would have screamed if Foscari had added another, “Is that clear?”

  “You are to wait for my call for the time of my meeting with his Excellency. I have your mobile number.” Without another word, Foscari, his carry-on bag over his shoulder, lifted a checked bag from the carousel, extended the collapsed handle, and walked like an Italian gentleman of the Vatican court toward the final customs checkpoint.

  Kempe, humiliated and frightened, stood frozen in place next to his own bag until Foscari was out of sight.

  The chancellor of the Archdiocese of Baltimore would have been even more distressed had he known how Giorgio Grotti had come to the personal service of Bishop Pietro Montaldo. Grotti had been a pious but sensual young boy, dreaming one day of the priesthood and the very next day of the dolce vita of an Italian playboy. To his mother’s great—and tearful—delight, the boy entered the seminary when he turned eighteen. But three years later, to her tearful disappointment, Giorgio was expelled for nearly beating to death a fellow seminarian who had made sexual advances. For a short time Giorgio worked as a waiter, earning enough money to indulge—as a veritable prodigal son—in Rome’s vibrant night life. But his sense of vocation, to Grotti’s surprise, welled up once again. He wanted to do something useful, even meaningful, with his life. If he couldn’t save souls, he could save lives. Giorgio Grotti would be a policeman. Without as much as a second thought, he joined the Carabinieri. His superiors soon enough noted his intelligence and toughness, but missed the violent vein in his temperament. Less than two years later, Grotti was promoted to the Carabinieri’s Special Forces Group, the GIS. The GIS, some one hundred or so troops trained in counter-terrorism, were the Carabinieri’s elite unit, superbly conditioned, highly disciplined, multilingual—and renowned for their marksmanship. Grotti’s file indicated he was fluent in English and Arabic.

  That Grotti was one of the best of the best became clear when he was chosen for a high-priority, top-secret mission. He was to eliminate a suspected terrorist linked to al’Qaeda who was, according to hard intelligence, recruiting and training a network of subversives in a suburb of Naples. The assignment was Grotti’s alone. No backup, no tactical support if he botched the kill. Moreover, there would be absolute deniability from the Italian Ministry of the Interior if things went wrong.

  The terrorist, Grotti reported to his superiors, never knew what hit him—two shots, the first to his chest, the second to his head. Grotti was almost in his car as the target hit the sidewalk, he said, trying not to sound boastful.

  Grotti felt the warrior’s satisfaction of a mission accomplished—and a strange, surprising sensual pleasure that baffled him. But he hadn’t slept well the night he brought down the terrorist. Nor did he sleep well in the weeks that followed. And worse, his sex life had turned decidedly weird. He now could have sex only if it was rough, punishing, and bordering on violence. The word soon spread among the circle of women who regularly shared his bed. For the first time in his life, Grotti had to pay for it. And getting rough with prostitutes could be dangerous.

  “I can’t sleep. I don’t have much of an appetite,” was all Grotti said to the Carabinieri’s psychiatrist. He left with prescriptions for sleeping pills and anti-anxiety meds, which he refused to fill. Finally, the Carabinieri’s capo granted him a three month leave of absence with pay. It changed little of his inner misery. “The assignment,” as he referred to his assassination mission, was justifiable. He had done nothing wrong, but something was wrong. Something was wrong with everything.

  His mother, finally over her disappointment in not having a priest for a son, now took pride in Giorgio’s status as a member of the Carabinieri’s elite Special Forces Unit. Still, her smothering attention irritated him, and his visits home became more irregular. In fact, Grotti found most people irritating. What made him morose, he had to admit, was the sad truth that there was no longer any easy pleasure, any easy laughter, only a ready-to-erupt restless anger—and a disturbing inclination to inflict pain.

  One morning, sitting under the awning of a trattoria watching women his mother’s age buying their groceries and cuts of veal at Rome’s ancient market, the Campo de’ Fiori, Giorgio found himself praying to the Virgin. Holy Mother of God, please help this dumb ass. I am so screwed up. He opened his eyes and looked again at the women in the market place. They were doing what women do at market—visiting with friends, whispering gossip, haggling with the merchants—and often laughing. Giorgio couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed. He wanted to be happy again, like the ordinary people across the street shopping at the Campo de’ Fiori.

  Perhaps the idea came from the Virgin. But soon after his prayer, Giorgio Grotti made up his mind to go to confession. His confessor, he would soon discover, was a bishop—Bishop Pietro Montaldo. He had been kind and had tried to assure Giorgio that he had not sinned against the fifth commandment—he had not committed murder.

  “Sometimes, my son, sometimes it is necessary to take drastic action for the good of Italy—and sometimes for the good of Holy Mother Church,” Montaldo told him. “Action that only the most loyal of believers understand.”

  Grotti nodded in the dark of the confessional. He waited, not sure if his confessor expected a response. Then in a hushed voice Montaldo prayed the prayer of absolution, “Ego te absolvo in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” Giorgio started to rise from the weathered leather of the padded kneeler when he heard his confessor say, “I believe you are the last penitent, my son. Would you mind walking with me for a while?”

  Two weeks later Giorgio Grotti resigned from the Carabinieri and entered the personal employ of Bishop Pietro Montaldo at almost twice his GIS salary—a salary that came from Montaldo’s viola borsa, his purple purse. The first lesson Giorgio learned from his new boss was surprising—and yet not really new. Bishop Montaldo now said aloud and with conviction the words he had whispered to him in the confessional. “Sometimes it is necessary to take drastic action for the good of the church.” Grotti soon learned that the good of the church always included the good of an organization he had never heard of, the Brotherhood of the Sacred Purple.

  24

  The modest black on white sign said simply, “Carmelite Monastery.” Bryn Martin turned left off Dulaney Valley Road onto a rolling tree-lined half-mile drive that led to the monastery’s main entrance. Although the monastery was well out of sight, the road itself seemed to share in the spirit of the cloister. Martin invariably felt drawn into the contemplative world of the nuns every time he turned onto the monastery property. Ninety-foot-high red maples, their shorn winter branches now offering a broken yet stately gothic canopy, stood guard as silent porters.

  To his right, the decks of the up-scale homes of the Meadowcroft development were visible in the gray February light. The homes, little more than a decade old, always distracted Martin from the spirit of solitude he felt whenever he approached the monastery.

  He imagined young professionals and rising execs sitting with their neighbors under table umbrellas, sipping white wine before grilling salmon steaks. Even with the houses’ facades out of sight, the landscaped back yards told Martin they were striking. A few of the homes had floor-to-ceiling windows revealing spacious family rooms with two-storied fire places. When he visited the monastery during the summer months, Martin had seen children playing on the manicured lawns. He moved deliberately down the drive, no more than ten miles an hour. Out of the blue, he felt a twinge of guilt—the guilt of a voyeur. No, it wasn’t guilt. There was nothing prurient in his scanning—he was searching for sights of something he would never have. He was looking for glimpses of ordinary family life. If the monastery had its pull for him, so did the homes of the Meadowcroft development. He had idealized these families snuggled into their village-like community, with their suburban comforts and happy children. He knew there is no home, anywhere, without its problems, without its secrets. There were infidelities, divorces, addictions, financial crises, vio
lent arguments. But he was feeling a little regret, a disguised grief. Martin winced at his own attempts to assuage his envy of family life. He knew well that the married bore their own crosses. But he knew even better the crosses of celibate life.

  During his first assignment as a parish priest, Martin had regularly come to the monastery to visit his sister, Nora, a novice at the time. The simplicity and peace of the place, the unpretentious intelligence and welcoming spirit of the nuns, struck a chord with his own natural bent for contemplative spirituality. For more than a decade now, even though Nora had since left, Martin had been coming to the monastery for a retreat day each month.

  A week earlier, Martin had called Sister Miriam, the prioress, and arranged for a half-day visit to the monastery. Gunnison’s jubilee celebration was now just a few days away and the quiet time would prepare him, he reasoned, for the added stress of protecting an archbishop under threat who was intent on forging ahead with his fundraising Mass and dinner. Martin was relieved to hear that a guest room was available, and he smiled when Sister Miriam mentioned that John Krajik, the pastor of St. Bernardine’s, would also be there, making a week-long retreat. Martin and Krajik had telephoned each other a number of times since the first laser hit on Gunnison. As far as Krajik could tell, the incident at the Confirmation Mass had ceased to be a point of conversation among the relatively few parishioners who had seen the red dot rest momentarily on the chest of the archbishop.

  Krajik had been two years ahead of Martin in the seminary. He was a good student, athletic, with a lively sense of humor. Some thought Krajik looked like a young John Paul II. So did Martin. But he knew Krajik’s theology and vision of the church were more nuanced than those of JP II.

  Martin looked forward to talking to the priest for two reasons—he wanted an update on the incident at the Confirmation Mass and he knew Krajik would have a good reading on the morale of archdiocesan priests. Moreover, John Krajik was one of the few Baltimore priests who appreciated the spiritual resource of the Baltimore Carmelites. Martin could never figure out why more priests didn’t spend some time at the monastery.

  The sister on phone duty rose from the reception desk to let Martin into the monastery. “Bishop Martin, welcome. Sister Miriam asked me to ring her when you arrived.”

  Martin smiled, “Thanks, Sister. I’ll wait in the parlor.” He moved across the hall to a tastefully appointed sitting room, with French doors facing onto the cloister, and sat down on a brocaded love seat facing a framed print of Teresa of Avila in prayer. But the Carmel’s monastic tranquility didn’t hold. The Gunnison affair distracted him. Maybe a few hours at the monastery would give him some perspective. He reminded himself he had taken reasonable and discreet security measures for the Mass and dinner. Additional Baltimore policemen had been hired for security and traffic control outside the Basilica, and the hotel security chief had been directed to pay special attention to the well-being of the archbishop during the jubilee dinner. Still, the laser dots, Margaret Comiskey’s suspicions about Kempe’s special account, the rumors of Gunnison’s messing with young boys, and his own embarrassing encounter decades ago all left him on edge.

  “Bryn, how are you?” Sister Miriam said as she entered.

  “I’m fine, Miriam.”

  The anxiety in his eyes and the tightness around his mouth gave a different response. They exchanged a brief hug. “A little time here will do me good. Things are hectic at the Catholic Center these days. It’s Archbishop Gunnison’s jubilee celebration.”

  “I can imagine,” Sr. Miriam said with a slight raising of her brow. “Let me take you upstairs to your room. John is in the retreatant’s suite just down the hall from you. I told him you’d be here for part of the day. He was happy to hear that.”

  Before leaving Martin to get settled, she added, “Nora was here not long ago with a colleague from the university, a history professor who was quite interested in our archives, especially the papers of one of our earliest chaplains, a Jesuit named Gilbert Combier.”

  “Nora told me. And I’ve met him.” Martin hesitated. “I don’t mean Gilbert Combier,” he said with a grin. “Her colleague’s British and a specialist in medieval church history. A very interesting man.”

  Miriam smiled, glad to confirm her impression that Nora seemed to find the Englishman very interesting indeed.

  An hour before vespers, bundled in coat, scarf, and gloves, John Krajik closed the door to his room and headed for the staircase down to the main entrance as Martin reached the top of the stairs leading to his room.

  “John,” Martin said in greeting. “Sister Miriam told me you were here on retreat.” The two shook hands warmly.

  “She mentioned after Mass this morning that you’d be here for part of the day. It’s good to see you. I’m just on my way out for a walk. Care to join me?”

  “Yeah, I would. Let me grab my coat.”

  Like the monks they so admired, the two clergymen, their collars turned up and chins nestled into their coats, walked in measured steps down the asphalt drive leading to Dulaney Valley Road. Martin was reminded of their silent, solitary walks as seminarians when they prayed the rosary before the evening study period.

  “Bryn,” Krajik said looking straight ahead, “I appreciated your calls after what happened at our Confirmation Mass. Knowing that Gunnison had a similar experience at Immaculate Conception was somehow comforting, realizing it wasn’t a St. Bernardine thing.”

  “The laser scared the old man, that’s for sure, but he’s hell bent on going ahead with his jubilee. You may have heard that I took Gunnison’s confirmation at St. Ignatius last week. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. Two friends from my parish days, retired FBI and Secret Service agents, were in the congregation, but the confirmation came off without a hitch. Gunnison seems to be banking on the fact that there haven’t been any threatening calls or letters to the Catholic Center and nothing in the media.”

  “You probably can’t say anything, Bryn, but a couple of things make me wonder about Gunnison. There are persistent rumors that he was pretty randy with some of our school boys before he was named a bishop. I wonder if one of his victims might have something to do with this.”

  Martin and Krajik moved to the side of the narrow drive as a car passed heading toward the monastery, the woman driver offering a smile and waving amicably. In a voice close to a whisper, Martin conceded, “I’ve wondered the same thing. And if somebody wants to embarrass or hurt Wilfred, his jubilee celebration would be pretty tempting. It would be far more public than a Confirmation Mass. We’re gonna be as careful as we can be without allowing too obvious a police presence at the Mass or the dinner.”

  Krajik nodded, “Not much else you can do if he is determined to go ahead with it.” The two men moved to the edge of the drive as another car, its headlights winking on in the muted purple dusk, approached the monastery’s main entrance. “There is something else that makes me uneasy about Gunnison,” Krajik continued. “It’s this priest group he’s part of. A number of priests know about it. Kempe, Tom Fenton, Herm Volker, and a couple of the younger pastors meet with Gunnison once a month or so. What bothers me, Bryn, is if you ask any of those guys about it they act as if they don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s not only private, it’s, like, secret.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of it too.” Martin said. “Cullen isn’t bothered by it. When he hears of priests getting together he assumes it’s some fraternal support group. But this group is not only private, it’s exclusive. And I think you’re right, there is something furtive about their meetings. Cullen knows that his predecessor and his chancellor are at the center of it. But he’s trying to think of it as just another support group for priests.”

  “Whether most priests know about the group or not,” Krajik said firmly, “it’s not good for our morale.”

  Martin, again almost in a whisper, said, “I know, I know.” What Martin couldn’t tell Krajik was the group’s possible link to the Brotherhood of the Sa
cred Purple.

  They turned back toward the monastery when the harsh hum of Dulaney Valley rush hour traffic began to drown their conversation. Lights were now on in the family rooms and kitchens of the homes of the Meadowcroft development. Martin caught the movement of a woman busy, he thought, preparing supper. The two walked in silence for a bit as Krajik noticed his companion’s interest in the houses to their right. “Those are really nice homes,” he observed casually, “must be close to a million each. Maybe more.”

  Martin, recalling his earlier examination of conscience, nodded. “They fascinate me, John. Not so much the homes, but the family life I imagine going on inside.” Bryn realized this was the most personal revelation he had made to a brother priest since he had been named a bishop. And then, with a hint of embarrassment, “I get a little sentimental every time I walk by them.”

  “I know what you mean, Bryn.” Krajik paused and repeated, “I know what you mean.”

  It was the way priests spoke of celibacy and the absence of a family life—indirectly and by inference. Neither man could say out loud that from time to time each grieved the absence of a family—and sexual intimacy. Nor was it easy to talk about the loneliness that was part and parcel of their celibate lives. It was part of the clerical code. A priest just didn’t talk about loneliness or sexual neediness. And when those thorny realities were from time to time approached, even peripherally, it was more often than not with locker room humor or an adolescent curiosity.

  When they were less than fifty yards from the monastery, Krajik asked Martin, “You’ve been a bishop now for a few years. What’s it been like?”

  “Like being an acolyte with a miter and crozier,” Bryn replied. “You learn right away there really is only one bishop in a diocese. If you’re an auxiliary, you really are a helper, a minor helper, prelate to the Lord of the Manor. You take your share of the confirmations, maybe take responsibility for a region of the archdiocese as we do here in Baltimore, and do what you can to make the archbishop’s life manageable. And if the boss isn’t insecure, you might be something like an adviser.” Martin paused and looked at Krajik. The glance said, This is between you and me.