The Assassini

by Thomas Gifford

  “What did you think he’d do to you, Giacomo?”

  “I had it in my head that someday, just for sport, young Richter might take the Luger out of his huge holster and shoot me. Plant a weapon on me and say I’d tried to kill him. Yes, I was afraid Klaus Richter might kill me.” The cardinal sighed, coughed. “For sport. You know, they suspected me of certain activities—they would have had to execute a priest! Never a popular thing to do at such a time, when priests represented sanity in an occupied country.… I got to thinking later that young Richter must have been a terrible liar, he seemed much too young to have introduced Pacelli to anyone. Perhaps he was trying to impress me. In any case, yes, I was afraid, Salvatore.”

  “Then you understand how I feel. I feel as if we are all on some terrible list, suspected by someone of certain activities—I’m at a loss, Giacomo, I don’t know where to begin to find our way out of this … eight killings …”

  D’Ambrizzi nodded. Callistus seemed so small beneath the long robe, so sick, so vulnerable. There seemed to be less of him each day. “You can’t help being afraid. You’re only human.”

  “I’m afraid for what is happening to the Church, certainly. And I’m afraid for myself … I’m afraid to die. Not always but some of the time. Is that shameful, Giacomo?” He waited in the silence. “To think—there was a time when you wanted this job of mine.”

  “That’s not actually true,” D’Ambrizzi said. “My supporters, I admit, were vocal. Eleven votes. That was my high-water mark in the enclave. Then talk of my ‘indispensable gifts’ arose and my support began to fall away. I didn’t mind, you know. I have a good life, Holiness.”

  “How did you vote, Giacomo?”

  “For you, Holiness.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “I thought you deserved it.”

  The pope laughed aloud. “That, my old friend, can be taken two ways.”

  “At the very least,” D’Ambrizzi said, smiling.

  “Tell me honestly,” Callistus said after a moment. “What is this Driskill up to? What can he do? Does he know about all the other victims?”

  “No. The less he knows, the more likely he is to survive, don’t you agree?”

  “Of course. And we can’t have outsiders turning the Church upside down. He’d have to be stopped if he persisted—”

  “Exactly.”

  “Perhaps he’ll get tired after a time and give up.”

  “That is my hope. But I’d have thought that the attack on himself might have dimmed his enthusiasm for the chase. I’d have been wrong, as it turned out.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Egypt, so far as I know.”

  “We don’t know where they will strike again, do we?”

  “No.”

  “I feel as if history is standing still and we all hang in the balance. What is the pattern, Giacomo? Why these eight?”

  Cardinal D’Ambrizzi shook his head.

  Callistus turned away and looked out over the moonlit Vatican gardens. “Do you fear death?”

  “I once knew a woman who was dying young. We spoke of what awaited her. She comforted me, Holiness, took my hand, told me I must believe her when she said that when the time comes you recognize death as your last best friend. I have never forgotten that.”

  “The woman was a saint! She had wisdom … why have I none?”

  The pope stood slowly, his mind already elsewhere, lost in memories of another time. The cardinal wrapped his arm around the smaller man’s shoulders, guided him to the window, where they stood staring into the night. There was no need to speak. Below them in the serenity of the gardens a lone priest walked the pathways, slipping in and out of the shadows, there one second and gone the next, like a phantom, like a killer …

  Back in his bed Callistus’s mind turned restlessly, relentlessly, back to the past, as if it were a magnet too powerful for his steadily decreasing strength to deny. Paris, it was always Paris, too much for him to resist anymore. For so many years he had kept the memory at bay, refused to acknowledge that any of it had ever happened. He had effectively erased the past, but now it was as if his resources had slipped, the situation falling from his control, and, like magic writing, those days and that story were all reappearing at the end. He wondered if the others had forgotten. Had D’Ambrizzi forgotten? And old Bishop Torricelli, had he repressed it all only to have it return as he lay on his deathbed? And what of the taut, austere man from Rome who had come and knocked on his door in Paris, the man with pain and punishment in his eyes … Indelicato, the inquisitor, did he now remember it all or not, as he stood only one step from the Throne of Peter himself?

  He tossed and turned, trying not to remember but unable to fight the impulse, and he was back in the small churchyard on the wintry night, crouched shivering by the black wrought iron fence. There were three of them, Brother Leo and the tall blond priest and Sal di Mona, and while they watched there was murder done in the tiny graveyard among the tilted, antique headstones. They had held their breath and tried to keep their teeth from chattering and they had watched one priest kill another who had betrayed them all, kill him with his bare hands, snap him like a matchstick, they all three heard the crack of the bones.

  Monsignor Sandanato was also having a bad night.

  The dinner conversation with Sister Elizabeth had been upsetting though he’d tried not to show his feelings. What did she think she was doing? Who had told her—given her the authority—to complete Sister Valentine’s work? Work that had gotten Sister Valentine killed. What did she think she would do with the results of her digging? So she had identified the eight victims the Church had tried to keep unconnected in the public mind. So she had dug up all the old assassini stuff—who out there cared, in a time when scandals within the Church bank and potential schisms were cropping up more or less constantly? So she thought she was putting two and two together, eight murder victims and the idea of the assassini. What then? Judging from the way things were going, she was asking to get herself killed and he desperately didn’t want that to happen. The Church couldn’t afford to lose an Elizabeth. And besides that, there were all the other feelings he harbored toward her, feelings with which he was increasingly uncomfortable.

  Then there was the problem of Ben Driskill.

  Before leaving his Vatican office for dinner in the cardinal’s apartment, he’d received a call from Father Dunn in New York. Dunn wanted to know if they’d heard anything about Driskill’s travels.

  “No,” Sandanato had said, losing patience, “and I must tell you I resent wasting time having to worry about him. We have enough to worry about without Ben Driskill in Egypt irritating the people who may have killed his sister. He must have a death wish! And he has a wound in his back two feet long and two weeks old—Father, is he mad? Doesn’t he realize this is Church business? Why can’t he let the Church handle it?”

  “You mean the way the Church is handling it now? That’s a question I wouldn’t raise right now if I were you.” Dunn was chuckling, increasing Sandanato’s annoyance. “And I’ll tell you—Church business-as-usual doesn’t impress Ben Driskill a whole lot. And he is rich, he’s spoiled, he gets his own way, all the Driskills do, they always have. He’s not grabby about it, he’s just sort of relentless. I’ve been asking around about our friend Driskill, and I’m getting a picture of this guy—you know what I think? I think he may just kill somebody himself. If you’re worrying about Driskill, my advice to you would be to start worrying about the other guys.”

  “You mean, he’s out of our control, loose, and there’s nothing we can do about it?”

  “You seem to have grasped the essential message, Monsignor.”

  “I’m afraid, whether you are or not,” Sandanato said coldly, “that he will indeed get himself killed.”

  “I’m as worried about him as you are. That’s why I’m calling you, to find out if you’ve had any word from him or about him—”

  “Well, as I said, the answer is no. A
nd you’re telling me he can’t be stopped?”

  Dunn chuckled dryly. “Not by me he can’t.”

  “What do you suggest we do, Father?”

  “Whattaya say we put prayer to the test, my friend?”

  Alone in his spartan apartment, less than a ten-minute walk from the Gate of Saint Anne, Sandanato sat at a small, rickety desk by a window overlooking a quiet back street two floors below. He poured three fingers of Glenfiddich into a jelly jar, swirled it, watching it bathe the glass. He had once attended a seminar in Glasgow and been introduced to the single-malt whiskies. Italians were not scotch drinkers but a Vatican monsignor could lay his hands on most things. The Glenfiddich was one of his few indulgences. He let the first swallow warm his gullet and belly and closed his eyes, digging his knuckles into the sockets and kneading them slowly. Things were going wrong, and getting drunk just might be the only rational response. He was listening to the great recording of Rigoletto. Callas, di Stefano, and Gobbi. Callas was soaring in the “Cara nome” and he waited, marveling at the body she brought to the highest, most rapturous notes.

  He was fighting a constant battle against the armies of depression he had known all his life. He was losing. Everywhere he looked the darkness seemed to beckon. What he saw happening to the Church burned in his belly like a torturer’s poker. The shadows seemed to be closing in unless, somehow, the Church could be saved in time. He had seen the fear in the pope’s eyes, the confusion, the inability to take hold. Someone else would be pope soon.…

  Sandanato opened his eyes, watched a neighborhood prostitute sidle up to a man in the street. She laughed, a harsh sound like glass breaking or a cat in heat, and linked her arm through the man’s, led him away to the stained sheets and the smells of sweat and dried semen and perfume like garbage. He remembered it, the whore he’d visited once, and he gulped at the scotch to burn away the memory.

  He dribbled more scotch into the thick-lipped jar, stared at his reflection in the glass. He needed a shave. His mouth tasted like a toilet, and he felt as if none of the dinner had been properly digested. Where was Driskill and what was he doing? He slammed the chair back against the wall and stood up, paced the small room. The loneliness was overwhelming. He ought to have spent the night in the Vatican. It was his only real home. His only life lay there, inside the Church.

  He knew where his thoughts were taking him, but his resistance was paltry, a weak-willed thing. Out of his loneliness and frustration, he came to think of Sister Elizabeth.

  He wasn’t entirely sure why and didn’t suppose it really mattered.

  But he was sure he had never known such a woman before. He could identify in her appeal the quality of her mind, the freshness of her candor, her strength. She appealed as a human being, as a representative of the Church, on so many levels. He sat alone, wanting to be with her, in some other room without the pain and longing and frustration that seemed to festoon these four walls like remnants of a madman’s delirium.

  He wanted to hear her talk, to argue with her, to match wits. He sensed that rarest phenomenon, a true meeting of minds. He knew she thought the way he did, that the Church must always come first, that she had the same strength of inner commitment that he did.

  He was sure Sister Valentine had been Lockhardt’s mistress. Cardinal D’Ambrizzi had left him in no doubt of that. But what about Sister Elizabeth? He knew he was being irrational, but he had managed to drive himself half mad with thoughts of Ben Driskill and Sister Elizabeth. There was not a single piece of evidence: it was all in his head and he knew it. But he’d seen them together, he’d watched them.… For a moment he’d been delighted when Driskill had related the unpleasantness of their parting. It had momentarily put his mind at ease. And then he’d begun to see how Driskill was taking it, how badly it had hurt him, how angry he’d become. It was the reaction of a man who cared and it reminded Sandanato of the looks he’d seen pass between them.

  It was evil the way it tormented him. It grew in him like a malignancy. Could anything have happened between them? Driskill had told him how they met before, how much she and Val had liked, loved, each other.… Could she take her vows so lightly, could she have done with Driskill what Val had done with Lockhardt?

  Christ, he hated himself for even thinking it! It was so absurd. Val was murdered, Elizabeth flew to Princeton, and he was suggesting that they immediately fell into bed with each other! An adolescent fantasy, a paroxysm of fear from a lonely man who was a priest … and who had fallen into a mad infatuation with a nun who hardly knew he existed! What a classic performance, the behavior of a dunce—he’d seen it before in priests he held in utter, total contempt.

  She could set his mind at ease. It would be so simple. But he could never ask. He wanted so badly to see her, to learn that she was true to all that gave her life—his life—its meaning. He wanted to trust her, to join with her. He needed her to help him climb out of the dungeon of his dark solitude.

  But was she worthy?

  The very question was hateful, but he couldn’t deny it.

  Finally, with his glass drained, he could restrain himself no longer.

  He picked up the telephone, dialed her number, waited while it rang and rang and rang.…

  Father Artie Dunn stood at his study window staring down at the top of Carnegie Hall and Fifty-seventh Street and Central Park South slumbering under a gray morning fog. The trees in the park were leafless and the lakes looked gray, and every so often brown and gray ducks would take off or land and float toward the reeds. He sighed, put down his binoculars, and poured himself another cup of coffee from the thermos on his desk. He’d dozed off for only three hours and he yawned mightily. The desk and coffee table were cluttered with pieces of paper full of his scrawl. Plotting the “Driskill affair.” The family was everywhere. Everywhere! What an extraordinary bunch!

  The whole business was extraordinary, amazing: it far surpassed any novel he’d written. He’d never have gotten away with it, that was the bottom line. For instance, there was this wild Gothic story Sister Mary Angelina had told him, this little old nun with the big eyes, safely tucked away in her convent, the last stop for Sister Mary Angelina. She’d poured out this story so calmly—more or less calmly, anyway—that she’d been sitting on for nearly half a century. After hearing her out he’d thanked her and what the hell else could he say? A bit of a conversation stopper, not your everyday item of family reminiscence. For one thing, he didn’t know whether or not to believe her. She seemed perfectly sane, but you never knew. In his experience there weren’t a great many wholly sane people who could have kept such a secret for so long a time and then have trotted it out at the end like a prize pet. He hadn’t known what to think, so he’d thanked her and stopped off in Princeton at the Nassau Inn for a burger, the place where it had all started that foul night almost a month before. He decided he needed some kind of confirmation of her story. Which was going to be difficult since Mary Driskill was long dead, Father Governeau was longer dead, and he couldn’t quite picture himself toddling into Hugh Driskill’s hospital room and running through Sister Mary Angelina’s trip down memory lane.

  So, how could he dig up a second opinion? There had to be a way.

  When he got back to New York it was dark and cold and he sat down and began trying to factor Father Governeau’s death into the mass of plot he’d worked out. It was an unholy mess, it needed weeding, but he didn’t know where to start. He longed for the order and control of one of his books.

  He’d eventually tottered off to bed and slept a dreamless sleep, awakening three hours later at seven o’clock when the timer turned on the Today show. The NBC correspondent in Rome was reporting on two Vatican stories: the continuing scandal at the bank which seemed to be resulting in a rash of suicides and, almost as an afterthought, the rumor that Pope Callistus IV might be in ill health since his public appearances, which had decreased markedly during the summer, had come to a complete halt during the past month. The official story—a stubbo
rn upper respiratory infection—seemed to provoke a jaundiced response from the NBC man. Dunn groaned sleepily but couldn’t help grinning. He enjoyed the prospect of the Roman curia having to hotfoot it around the land mines and start dealing with real life. It was surprising that they’d kept the lid on so long.

  Once he’d had his coffee he nudged his problems around with a freshly activated collection of brain cells. And he came up with at least one answer. He needed someone to confirm Sister Mary Angelina’s story. The name came to him.

  Drew Summerhays. If he didn’t know the truth, then no one was going to. He was Hugh Driskill’s mentor, adviser, friend.

  Dunn got the number of Bascomb, Lufkin, and Summerhays and spoke with the great man’s secretary. No, he wouldn’t be in today but tomorrow at two o’clock would be fine. Dunn agreed.

  Making the call, he noticed for the first time that he’d been so preoccupied the previous evening he’d ignored the messages waiting on his answering machine. The only one that mattered to him that morning was one that had come in from Peaches O’Neale in New Pru two nights before. There were two follow-ups during the day when Dunn had been off visiting the convent near Trenton. Peaches was growing exasperated by the conclusion of the third call, so Dunn wasted no time in calling the St. Mary’s parish house.

  Peaches made it to The Ginger Man, a restaurant across the busy intersection from Lincoln Center, for a one o’clock lunch. Father Dunn was sitting at a table in the glassed-in sidewalk café sipping a dry martini when Peaches came in from the cold rain that had blown in across the Hudson. Rain was slapping at the windows like an angry housewife who’s caught up with her bastard of a husband at long last. It bounced on the sidewalk, puddled. Peaches came in shaking his raincoat and sniffling, red-nosed.

  “There is,” Dunn said, leaning back, “a sense of urgency about you, young Peaches.”

  “Ha! An understatement if ever I’ve heard one. You ought to pick up your messages more often. I’ve been going crazy.” He ordered a Rob Roy and opened the rain-spattered black briefcase on his lap. His face wasn’t quite so boyish. He had a cold and looked every day of his age for the first time since Dunn had known him. “Artie,” he said, “hold on to your hat. I think we’ve got something here but I’m damned if I know what. Since you try so steadfastly to give the impression that you are truly wise, here’s your chance to prove it. Take a look at this.”