by Peter Watson
Rome. Refused permission to land! This was Massoni’s doing, he knew it. And the airport closure meant he had the support of the Italian government.
‘You can speak to the main cabin below from here, right?’ Thomas asked the captain.
The captain nodded.
‘Then could you ask for Elizabeth Lisle and Patrick O’Rourke to come here, please.’
The captain passed on the request. The Holy Father sat immobile, oblivious as the last shards of daylight left the sky. He lit a cigarette. There was a knock and Bess and O’Rourke entered. They were surprised to see the white figure of Thomas in the co-pilot’s seat. ‘Close the door behind you,’ said Thomas and, when Bess had seated herself in the engineer’s place, he told them of the latest development.
For a moment they said nothing, thinking. When Bess did speak it was not to the Holy Father but to the captain. ‘We have to get to Rome. Can’t we chance it? Just ignore their ban and put the plane down?’
The captain shook his head. ‘No pilot disobeys the orders of air traffic control. If one ever did, no flight would be safe again. But that’s not the point. If we approach within twenty-five miles of the airport they will be within their rights to block the runways with aircraft.’
‘What about other airports? This is an Italian aircraft! They can’t stop us from entering Italy.’
‘No. They’ll let us in. But they want to stop us from going into Rome, or anywhere near it. I’m sure they’ll clarify that when they call back.’
Bess looked at her watch. ‘What time is it in Rome?’
‘Six here is nine o’clock in the morning in Rome—ah, here comes the call.’ The captain motioned for Thomas and Bess to put on the headsets attached to their seats. There was no set for O’Rourke.
‘Hallo! Hallo!’ said a voice. ‘Rome calling AZV 001. Are you receiving?’
‘AZV 001,’ said the captain. ‘We hear you, we hear you.’
‘Just a moment, AZV 001. Stand by, please.’
The line went dead. The captain raised his hand to signal they should remain quiet. Thomas drew on his cigarette. Then another voice spoke.
‘Thomas? Thomas? Can you hear me? Thomas?’
‘Ottavio!’ Thomas barked the name as he recognized Massoni’s voice. ‘Where are you? What’s happening? What is this nonsense about the aircraft being refused landing permission?’
‘I’m in the Vatican, Thomas. In the offices of the Vatican radio. On the hill. It is of course the government who have refused you permission to land.’
‘Then why are you calling me?’
And why are you calling the Holy Father by his Christian name? thought Bess.
‘To let you know, Thomas, that later today the sacred college will meet.’
‘What? Who called it? It can’t. I’m thousands of miles away.’
‘Yes.’ Massoni let the silent implication hang between them. After an interval, he added: ‘A letter has been found.’
‘What do you mean? Talk sense, Eminence. What sort of letter?’
‘Diego Giunta found a letter, researching his biography of Pius XIII. In it he appoints Cardinal Salvin as his successor.’
‘Rubbish, Massoni. No one has used that method of choosing a Pope since the earliest times. And Salvin is dead.’
This was obviously the discovery Roskill had referred to.
‘That doesn’t change things. Your election was uncanonical.’
‘It’s disgraceful! The letter could be a forgery—who says it’s genuine anyway? Your duty is to wait till I—’
‘It’s not a forgery, Thomas. It’s genuine. And canon law is quite clear. A Pope may appoint his successor. The fact that no one has for hundreds of years does not rob the method of its validity. You yourself chose to revive an old custom regarding your name. No: your election was uncanonical.’
‘I won’t have it! You are flouting the law, Ottavio, and you know it. What you are trying to do is wrong.’
There was silence at the other end of the line. As Bess listened, shaking with alarm, she realized that, yes, Massoni knew full well that the whole exercise was dishonest, but he was going ahead anyway. It didn’t much matter whether the letter was a forgery or not, and it probably wasn’t. It was just convenient. Had it not been there, they would have found something else. Massoni was speaking again. ‘Thomas, the sacred college, or those of it who can be assembled in time, meets later this morning—in about three hours from now. Either you will have resigned by then, in which case we shall proceed to the election of a new Pope. Or we shall decide on the validity of your election. If we decide that it was uncanonical—and I need hardly add that such is the view of nearly every cardinal I have spoken to in the last thirty-six hours—then we shall say so, and then proceed to elect a new Pope. That Pope will be in Rome and canonically elected. If you persist in calling yourself Pope after that, you will be in heresy and will be deemed, from Rome, as the anti-Pope. Not an enviable situation but, for many of us, preferable to what we have had to endure lately.’
‘Does the Italian government realize it is breaking the law in barring me? Under the terms of the Lateran Pacts all Popes were to be allowed freedom of movement.’
‘Yes, Thomas, but I am afraid the Italian government has two answers to that. In the first place, they consider you abrogated the Lateran Pacts with your sales of Vatican treasures. Second, since you are no longer Pope, the Lateran Pacts do not apply anyway. You must have realized, Thomas, that this move has the support of the Italian government—you are deeply unpopular with them—and of the Americans—you don’t need me to tell you what Roskill thinks of your policies. They will recognize the new Pope immediately and, I think I can be sure in saying, many of the other western states will follow suit pretty quickly.’
‘All sewn up, eh?’
‘You can’t keep travelling, Thomas. The heart of the Catholic church is in Rome. You pay the price, otherwise. As you see.’
‘Ottavio? Are you proud of what you are doing? Do you think it is God’s will?’
‘Look what your sense of God’s will has got us: a divided church.’
‘No, Ottavio. We are a controversial church—but in the best sense, because we are working for change. Change is always unpleasant for some.’
‘It is the poor who usually suffer when the world changes.’
‘Reactionary propaganda, Ottavio. A businessman’s credo. You only have to ask the poor whether they want change. If they didn’t, it would never happen.’
‘Are you going to resign, Thomas? Please.’
‘And leave the field free for the forces of reaction, Ottavio? No. No. We are judged by our works. I am happy to be judged by mine, Ottavio. And you?’
Massoni ignored the challenge. ‘I don’t expect the conclave to take long, Thomas. I will call you back in a few hours. You had better get some sleep.’ The line went dead.
For a while Thomas sat quietly in the co-pilot’s seat, an incongruous sight in his white robes, skull cap, and earphones. His cigarette had gone out. Neither the captain nor Bess dared speak. Even O’Rourke had heard enough to know what was happening. At length the Holy Father took the headset off and rose to leave the flightdeck. ‘Who do you think they will elect, Elizabeth?’
But it was a rhetorical question. They both knew the answer.
Even very busy people have many quiet, lonely moments, brought on as often as not by the enforced idleness associated with modern travel. But for Bess nothing compared with that long night over the Indian Ocean. For a couple of hours she went back to the main cabin: Thomas would want to be alone. She discussed their predicament with O’Rourke—he was distraught—and then she pretended to sleep—otherwise the rest of the contingent would have been able to tell from her face that something was wrong. After that she wandered forward again, ready to be with the Holy Father whenever he needed her. She tried to work at her papers but, knowing what she knew now, it was hard.
After about three hours Thomas appeared do
wn the stairway. His face was grey. Together they ate a sandwich and drank a small glass of red wine. She had never seen him so drained. O’Rourke was in the back of the plane.
Thomas caught her looking at him. ‘What is it, my dear?’
‘Sometimes, Holiness, I wish you were an ordinary man, a regular boss. Then I could put my arms around you, and hug you.’
He smiled, sadly. ‘And there are times, I can tell you, when I wish I was an ordinary man, too. One makes choices, of course. But at this particular moment, Elizabeth, I envy you the marriage ahead of you.’
She was reminded of something that had long been at the back of her mind. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, Holiness, that petition, from David Colwyn, for the dissolution of his marriage—if there hadn’t been the accident, if his wife hadn’t died, would you … would you have granted the dissolution?’
For a moment a look of pain clouded Thomas’s face but then he said, firmly, ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘There was nothing in canon law to forbid it. But canon law, even Catholic canon law, is not written in stone. The case took advantage of a loophole and a rather absurd loophole at that. There are times when the technicalities of the law aren’t enough—one has to consider the intention behind the law. And obviously the intention was never that. There was another reason, too—’
But just then the co-pilot appeared again and beckoned. Together Bess and Thomas mounted the stairs to the flight deck. Thomas clambered into the co-pilot’s seat and put on the headphones. As before Bess listened in from the engineer’s place.
‘Hallo? Hallo? Thomas? Ottavio here.’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you changed your mind?’
‘Tell me your news first.’
‘The college has met. A Pope has been elected. The announcement is being kept confidential, since it is so unusual, until after this conversation. To allow you one more chance to resign. Will you, Thomas?’
‘Tell me, Ottavio, who has been elected?’
A pause. ‘I have, Thomas.’
Thomas said nothing.
‘Only because I am old, Thomas. I won’t last long, then they can try someone else.’
‘I am Pope, Ottavio.’
Now there was silence at the other end. Then, ‘Thomas, the announcement about the uncanonical election of yourself, and the news of my elevation, will be released later today. Since you will not stand down, you know what must happen. Henceforth you are to be regarded as Anti-Pope and, as such, the Italian government will in no way sanction your presence on the Italian mainland. They also point out that you are travelling in an Alitalia aircraft, the property of the Italian state and they wish to repossess it. If your captain is listening, as I assume he is, then I say to him that you will be granted permission to land in Palermo, which is the only Italian airport outside the mainland that will take 747s. You, Thomas, will be allowed to stay in Palermo for forty-eight hours, during which time you must make your own arrangements for your future. Your personal belongings will be sent on to you. Now Thomas, both I and the Italian government would like your assurance that you accept these arrangements.’
Thomas was slumped in his seat. Bess was crying. After a pause, Thomas, not remembering where he was, nodded.
‘He accepts, sir,’ said the pilot with unconscious irony. ‘The Holy Father is nodding.’
‘Very well. Will you now please change course for Palermo. A specially chartered aircraft will meet you there. I’m told you are about five hours flying time from Sicily. I will speak to you again before you land. After the official announcements have been made.’ Again the line went dead.
For a while longer Thomas stared in front, and into the night, while behind him the tears ran down Bess’s cheeks and would not stop. The instrument lights were low on the flight deck, little specks, as if the stars were here inside. The glow, reflected on the undersides of their faces, gave everyone a surreal look, sallow and pale. From time to time the captain reached forward to turn a switch, or adjust a dial. But the aircraft kept steady, burrowing deeper and deeper into the night. Thomas sat very still and, now and then, Bess wondered whether he had fallen asleep. What was the other reason, she wondered, why he would not have allowed David’s dissolution? She might never find out. Lights winked at the ends of the aircraft’s wings, their reflection flashing off the instruments in front of her.
Minutes passed. An hour. A stewardess brought coffee. Thomas sipped his but still didn’t speak. Bess lost count of the cigarettes he smoked. Sometimes there were lights below them but mostly it was just black. The engines, sensed through their vibration rather than heard, turned on and on. The massive aeroplane hurtled above the earth in a smooth, clean path, cutting a line across the sky like a razor on the skin before the blood flows.
Thomas stirred. He turned and, incredibly, through the cold tears that still stuck to the corners of her eyes, Bess could see he was smiling. It was a small smile, a sly grin as much as anything. He patted the instruments in front of him. ‘He’s slipped up, Elizabeth. Massoni’s overlooked one thing. The good Lord hasn’t abandoned us entirely.’ He patted the 747’s instruments a second time. ‘He’s delivered this monster into our hands. Massoni thinks he can have it all his own way. He’s wrong.’ Thomas made for the door out of the flightdeck. His movements were awkward; his leg was hurting again. ‘Come on, Bess. Stop crying. There’s work to do!’
David had intended to spend the rest of his time in Rome at the Central Institute for Restoration while he waited for Michael Stone. They were familiar there with Renaissance pigments and, he hoped, would agree to examine the Leonardo formula he had found in the Vatican Archive, to see whether it pointed towards the ‘Virgin of the Rocks’ in Paris or London. But the news from the Vatican overtook everything. For a long moment the entire western world held its breath.
Now lacking the will to visit the СIR, or the inclination to wait in Bess’s apartment, he installed himself in Gina’s, in front of the television like half the neighbourhood. Roskill, who had obviously been given some inkling of what was afoot, responded quickly to the news. Within hours the United States officially recognized the new Pope, just as Massoni had predicted. In Gina’s, meanwhile, as elsewhere in Italy and around the world, they watched their televisions for news of Thomas’s arrival in Sicily.
And it soon became apparent that, whether or not he had had any choice in the matter, it had been a grave mistake for Massoni to send Thomas to Palermo. Thomas, in that dark night, had eventually realized that the 747, by landing in Palermo, would deliver him into the hands of friends. Through the Vizzini fund, he had put Sicily high on his list of priorities. He had been phenomenally successful in dealing with the violence there. He was disliked by the Romans and by the Italian government. All that made him supremely popular on the island.
No sooner had Massoni made his announcement, to the fury of the average Sicilian, than they started to converge on the airport. No one knew why exactly, except that Thomas was still Pope to them and deserved a special welcome. By the time the green and red colours of the 747 became visible, descending out of the midday sky, thousands had already arrived at the airport and the roads serving it were clogged by many more.
The Italian government, trying to be clever, had banned RAI, the state television service, from covering Thomas’s arrival in Sicily. But this was Italy: there were countless private TV stations which the government couldn’t control and they delightedly sold their pictures, via satellite, to anyone who wanted them.
Gina sat next to David, keeping him fortified with cups of black, bitter coffee. He noticed that her make-up had run: she had been crying. Together they watched the television screen as, the scene being Sicily, the people who descended on Punta Raisi, Palermo’s airport, were not content merely to wait on the observation deck, behind barriers, but spread all over the airport, even up to the runway. As the captain of Thomas’s aircraft got the runway on visual, he must have been appalled to see, virtu
ally alongside the strip, rows of cheering spectators.
It was dangerous to land in such circumstances. The captain decided not to land the first time but to come in low, survey the scene, give the crowd a taste of the ferocious noise the jumbo was capable of, and then go round again. Air traffic control did what it could to respond to his request for the people to be pulled back but the airport was simply not equipped to deal with this size of crowd. And there was no chance of the army helping: they could not get to the airport with the roads still choked.
Eventually some sort of order was established, with most people keeping back fifty yards or so from the runway. A new cheer went up as the Cardinal Archbishop of Palermo, Francesco Ligorio, arrived, just ahead of the second run by Thomas’s aircraft. A member of the commission which administered the St Patrick’s Fund, he was one of Thomas’s strongest supporters. Now the welcome would be complete.
And so the aircraft came in, low and slow. There was a small puff of blue smoke as the tyres of the 747 punched the tarmac on the runway, a blood-curdling roar billowed into the ears of the crowd as the engines were thrust into reverse, and the huge aircraft lurched to a stop, then immediately turned off the runway to the taxiway. Before it could reach the apron, however, the people, so many of them, simply would wait no longer. They surrounded the aircraft so that the captain just had to give up, and switch off the engines.
The archbishop had commandeered an airport truck carrying a flight of steps. Standing on the top of the steps, he managed to steer the driver through the crowds towards the door in the shoulder of the jumbo. After some manoeuvring, the door was opened, the steps moved alongside and the archbishop disappeared inside. There was a short delay and then the crowd below glimpsed, first, the scarlet of the archbishop’s cassock, and then the white of Thomas’s.
Immediately, the cry of ‘Papa! Papa! Papa!’ went up, soon becoming a chant as the two men emerged from the plane together and waved.
The archbishop’s black limousine had, by now, fought its slow way through the crowd and had reached the foot of the steps. Seeing it arrive, the cardinal led Thomas down the steps. Thomas had to allow his hand to be kissed many times by the crowds surrounding the car. He smiled and waved his blessing.