The Pope's Assassin

by Luís Miguel Rocha

  "Why not?"

  "They're well protected inside the walls of the Vatican."

  They let the silence spread over the cases full of human history, a true hymn to their existence. Ursino sat down on a small chair to rest his bones. Jonas beat his foot nervously on the floor in a rhythm only he knew.

  "Can I smoke?" Jonas asked.

  "Outside," Ursino said, pointing. "That habit is going to kill you."

  "The doctor's given up on me," Jonas said calmly.

  "Is that right?"

  "Yes. I've got a life expectancy of only seventy or eighty years," he joked.

  "You rascal," Ursino said. "How long are you going to be here this time?" He changed the subject.

  "Only tonight."

  So little time, Ursino lamented silently. He liked having a friend around. Normally Ursino came in without speaking and left silently. Days passed without speaking a word. After a long time, he ended up almost grunting like a caveman. Sometimes he shouted just to give his larynx some exercise. A telephone call left him smiling the rest of the day. Yesterday and this morning were exceptions that proved the rule.

  "Where are you going next?" Ursino wanted to know.

  "Do you know a priest named Rafael Santini?" Jonas asked, ignor ing his friend's question.

  Ursino was surprised by the question. "I do. Why?"

  "I need to find him. Do you know where he lives?"

  "Do you?" Ursino asked apprehensively.

  "I don't. That's why I asked."

  "You can't," Ursino answered abruptly. Partly he felt jealous that Jonas wanted to meet him, but that wasn't why he'd been brusque. "Who told you about him?"

  "He's here on the list," Jonas said, tossing a paper down on the desk.

  Ursino picked it up and read it. He found Rafael's name after his own.

  "Why is my name on this list?" He didn't understand. "And what does this mean at the top?" He referred to the title dominating the upper part in big letters. It said Deus vocat.

  "God calls," the other said.

  "Yes, I know. It's Latin."

  Jonas approached him and lit a cigarette.

  "Don't forget what I told you about smoking in here," Ursino cried, getting up also.

  Jonas stuck the piece of fibula from some unknown saint into his friend's eye. The holy relic also served as a weapon. Ursino gave a brief cry and sank heavily to his knees, while Jonas drove the bone deeper.

  "Jonas," Ursino whispered with a sad grimace.

  "Dead men don't talk," the other said, suddenly yanking out the bone and stepping aside to avoid the blood that gushed from where there had once been an eye. Ursino, or his corpse, remained kneeling for a time before tumbling over, his legs sprawled under him.

  "Ad maiorem Dei gloriam," Jonas murmured. "Your Jonas died today with you."

  The man looked at the body as if for the fi rst time.

  I know well what you can do and none of your desires will be denied.

  He blessed himself before picking up the piece of paper and leav ing the holy Relic Room, where the silent witnesses of history reposed.

  37

  It was strange how decorative fi gures—static, immutable—could change their expression depending on the scene they were witness ing. The same rebellious, mischievous cherub, who held his fi nger over his lips to ask the Reverend Father Hans Schmidt to restrain himself, now seemed wide-eyed in the silent call for judgment.

  "Your theory is that the mind is our enemy," Cardinal Ricard, another counselor, said with a sarcastic smile.

  "Let's say the mind possesses us," Schmidt added serenely.

  "Do you mind explaining? Lay it out, please."

  "Certainly. Our mind, a voice we have inside our head telling us to do one thing or another, that judges and reacts to situations, was made for a specific purpose. To aid us in a practical way. Just as our immune system recognizes the characteristics of an aggressor to overcome con stant attacks, the purpose of our mind is the same. We never stick our hand in the fire because we know it burns. How do we know that? We store that information. Unfortunately, we corrupt the whole purpose of the creation of the mind by letting it possess us."

  Everyone looked at Schmidt with evident interest. A few shook their heads in a gesture of disapproval, but listened to him attentively.

  "Aren't we the ones doing the thinking?" the same cardinal countered.

  "No, Your Eminence. We are the ones who know, who have the idea of thinking, which is very different. If we can listen to our thoughts, then we are the ones who listen."

  "Does that mean that someone thinks for us?" another counselor spoke.

  "No. It means we give too much importance to thinking. Thought exists for practical purposes, not for speculation. Thought exists for me to say that it's cold outside, and so I have to dress warmly, not for saying, Oh, damn, it's cold outside. The hell with the weather."

  "But through thought I know who I am, who I was—I have a no tion of my history," the first cardinal argued.

  "A false notion of self. A false notion of your own history. The self is the root of the problem."

  "What are you saying? Why false?"

  "Because everything is mixed up here," Hans said, pointing at his head. "The real, the unreal, the imaginary, the past, desires, dreams."

  "Can we not distinguish between reality and dream?"

  Schmidt stopped for a moment and smiled. "I'll give you an exam ple. Do you remember the last trip you took?" he said to the cardinal.

  "Very well," His Eminence replied.

  "Can you tell us where it was?"

  "Certainly. Croatia. I was in Zagreb a few days."

  "Think of a place in Zagreb where you were."

  "I'm doing so."

  "Where was it?"

  "The cathedral."

  "Now imagine me next to you. Can you see us having coffee on the esplanade of Ban Jelacˇic´ Square?"

  The cardinal said nothing, and a sarcastic smile faded from his lips.

  "We're not able to distinguish what actually happened from what we wish had happened or from a suggestion that might have happened," Schmidt explained with passion. "The past serves for nothing. It's not for remembering or for mentally reviving. It was what it was, and there is nothing you can do to change it. Certainly, it's not worth crying over. It's not worth judging ourselves and others." He paused briefl y. "Salva tion is always in the present. We can only make a difference in our life now. Not yesterday, not tomorrow, only now."

  The room looked at him in silence. The prefect, the secretary, the cardinal counselors shifted their papers and moved uncomfortably in their chairs, impatient, constrained, some dry coughing, others with too much phlegm.

  "I ask myself," the secretary began, "if you realize the outrages you've told this congregation. You've polluted this holy place with a mountain of heresies."

  There was a concurring mutter and shaking of heads around the table.

  "Salvation is always in our Lord Jesus Christ," the secretary added, gaining the approval of the prefect.

  "I agree with Your Eminence," Schmidt affi rmed.

  "But not completely," added Cardinal Ricard.

  "The extent of my agreement isn't important. As I said previously, believing or not believing is equally correct."

  The cardinal got up indignantly. "There is only one belief," he shouted. "In our Lord Jesus Christ. It was He who said the kingdom of God is always at hand." He stuck his finger in the air, as if that sanc tioned what he said.

  Schmidt chuckled.

  "When Jesus said that He was not talking about time."

  "What was He talking about, then?" Secretary Ladaria asked.

  Schmidt looked at his listeners with a genuine smile. He was very amused. "About distance."

  "Distance? Explain that, please." William spoke now. He'd been silent so far.

  "Jesus meant that the kingdom of God, salvation, was near, that is, it was ready, within reach of anyone. But he wasn't talking about
a place or time. . . ." He let his words sink in before proceeding. "He was referring to a state or condition."

  "A state," the secretary repeated, as if awakening from a trance. "And what state was that?"

  "The state of illumination."

  The entire congregation waited for an explanation.

  "Jesus almost always lived in this state," Schmidt continued. "It's what happens when you live free from permanent control of the mind. The mind judges, classifi es, files everything that surrounds it. It's hot, cold, bad, good . . . this one's an idiot, that one's a thief, and everything is conspiring against us . . . Everything that passes before our eyes suf fers instant classification. It happens often we meet a person, and in five minutes we've formed a fixed opinion. We like him or not, accord ing to our mental classification. Nothing is more erroneous."

  Indignation was growing among the counselors. The prefect was the only one who showed no reaction.

  "Jesus didn't judge and classify things. He was in a permanent state of enlightenment. Always in contact with the vital energy of the universe. He didn't make value judgments or predictions, didn't worry about problems that might or might not occur, and never tried to imagine how to correct things, because things never happen as we imagine. Jesus didn't live in the past or in the future, only in the one state in which one can live: the present. Consider the lilies of the fi eld. They neither toil nor spin, He said. There is no other way to live. You can't do it thinking about what is going to happen in five minutes or ten or an hour, a day or a year. We can only make a difference now in the present. Jesus made all the difference living in this way."

  No one said anything for some time. They didn't know what to say. The counselors tried to assimilate the outrageous words that the reverend Austrian father had uttered with such fervent passion. The entire session was a horrendous profanation of the holy, a sacrilege. In a way that Schmidt might have considered disrespectful, if he were a man given to classification, the counselors began whispering among themselves. William stayed out of the conversation in the beginning, but was compelled to intervene when whispering turned into a murmur and, later, into a heated altercation.

  "Gentlemen," the voice of Schmidt, whom everyone had forgotten about, broke in. "Reverend Prefect, Mr. Secretary, and Your Eminences, I understand that you don't agree with me. I want to tell you that my first duty and priority is to the church, which I serve and obey, in humility and abnegation." With those final words he lowered his head in a gesture of submission until he showed his bare neck to indicate he was at their mercy.

  The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith rose from his chair, assumed an arrogant pose that matched his function, and looked at Reverend Father Hans Matthaus Schmidt sternly.

  "Good . . . this session was without doubt . . . intense." He hesitated to characterize the proceedings. "The prefect and the other counselors will deliberate and—"

  The doors suddenly opening interrupted the prefect's discourse. Four Swiss Guards, in dress uniform, entered and took position on either side of the door. Four more of their countrymen immediately followed.

  "What's going on?" the prefect wanted to know.

  One of the guards, clearly the most senior, advanced to the center of the room.

  "This room is sealed until further notice."

  "How ridiculous," the secretary spoke up. "You owe us respect, Daniel."

  "I'm sorry, Your Eminences, but there has been a breach of security. At this time I have maximum responsibility for the Vatican. I beg your understanding."

  "A security breach? What happened?" the prefect asked.

  Daniel hesitated. He didn't know if he had to answer.

  "Don't keep it secret, Daniel. What happened?" William insisted.

  "A murder within the walls of the Vatican," the commander of the Pontifical Swiss Guard explained.

  "My dear God," the prefect let slip and sat down exhausted.

  "But who?" the secretary inquired.

  "I'm not authorized to say. I am sorry to inform you that no one may enter or leave until further notice." He turned his back and looked at the Austrian priest. "Father Hans Schmidt?"

  Schmidt confirmed with a nod, and then the other three guards surrounded him.

  "I must kindly ask you to accompany us."

  Schmidt got up, blushing slightly.

  "Where are you taking him?" the secretary asked.

  "To the papal apartments. Orders of the Holy Father.

  38

  From the street, the church could not be seen. It was hidden under a dark, filthy viaduct. Above, the constant noise of trains made the foundations vibrate in that same place where it had stood long before there had been trains and viaducts. The church wasn't always set in that kind of subterranean underworld, but within a community, and its tiled roof had shimmered in the weak British sunshine. People came to the small Catholic church for morning services, especially on Sundays. These days it was just a grimy, forgotten building under a viaduct, which sheltered Rafael from the light rain that had begun to dampen London.

  He had abandoned the taxi a half mile from the British Museum, walked another few yards to Tottenham Court Road, and called another taxi, which left him a few hundred feet from the church. He quickly covered the distance to the Church of St. Andrew and found the door, bare of paint from the passage of time, open. He entered without mak ing any noise. No one was there. A candle burned next to the altar. The church couldn't hold more than fifty people, but rarely had that many over the years. Perhaps a handful of faithful still attended, more out of fear of God and respect for the priest than for any other reason. The walls, once white, looked darkened by cars and trains. The light was faint. Next to the candle were one or two low-voltage bulbs.

  Rafael kneeled at the altar, blessed himself, and prayed briefl y.

  "Hello," he heard a voice say.

  Rafael got up and looked at a man with completely white hair. "Hi, Donald," he greeted him.

  "What the fuck," the other cursed.

  Rafael smiled. "You were always gracious."

  "What are you doing here, you prick?" Donald was clearly not enjoying the visit.

  "Seeing a friend."

  "You must have the wrong place. No one is your friend here."

  Rafael didn't give the slightest sign of being offended. Donald greeted all his friends like this.

  "Have you got yourself into a mess, Santini?"

  "Have you ever seen me not in one?" Rafael responded.

  Donald said nothing for a few moments. He looked at Rafael dis dainfully, then looked around the minuscule space and turned his back. "Follow me . . . or get out. Whatever you want."

  The sacristy was to the left of the altar as one approached.

  When Rafael entered, Donald had already poured the golden liq uid of a bottle of whiskey into two glasses. He opened a wooden box from which he took some tobacco and fi lled the bowl of his pipe. He struck a match and held it above the tobacco, sucked vigorously to get it lit, and in less than a minute was relaxing in a chair to enjoy the drink and tobacco. Rafael sat down also, without Donald's invi tation, and grabbed the second glass of malt scotch. He wasn't in the habit of drinking in the morning, but he needed this one. It had been a long night. There were some who drank for fewer reasons than this.

  "How are things in Rome?" Donald asked, finally breaking the silence.

  Rafael sipped a little of his drink before replying. "Same as always."

  Donald frowned. "Still fucked up, huh." The Englishman got up and went over to a closet. "How many do you need?"

  "One."

  "Only one?"

  "Only one."

  "And they? How many are there?" Donald's voice was friendlier as he continued looking through the closet for something, with his back toward Rafael.

  "You never know, Donald."

  "Of course not. That's shitty."

  Donald approached with a package and a box and put them down by Rafael. "Take your ch
oice."

  Rafael unwrapped the tissue around a Glock 19 9mm. He tried it out, chambered a load from the magazine he attached, and aimed. Then he opened the box that contained a Beretta 92FS of the same caliber. He didn't even test it. He put it in his jacket pocket along with two magazines of 9mm bullets. Donald looked at him curiously.

  "Made in Italy," Rafael explained, getting out of the chair. "Has any Jesuit asked for your help?"