The Assassini

by Thomas Gifford

  Peaches had gone to the window, stood watching the falling snow, the way it drifted gently into piles and cast soft midnight-blue shadows. He’d jammed his hands into the pockets of his baggy corduroys but couldn’t keep from clenching his fists. He wished he’d never heard of the goddamned papers.

  “Sure, I’m following you, sir. But—”

  “But nothing, as they say. Come here, Peaches, I can’t see you over there.” He watched him turn from the window and walk back to stand before him. “Now, come on, boy. Did Traherne ever tell you about these papers? Or Father Kilgallen, your immediate predecessor, did he ever take you aside and say listen, sonny, there’s a little secret I’ve got to tell you about …?”

  “Absolutely not, sir.” Peaches felt himself blushing, a hot flush across his face like a passing shadow.

  “Well, you found the papers on your own—is that the way it was? You stumbled across them, wondered what they were, had to take a look … was that what happened? It’s no crime, you know. He wrote it forty years ago.”

  “Mr. Driskill, seriously, I don’t know what—”

  “Father, Father.” Hugh Driskill was smiling faintly, as if the emotion caused him pain. “You don’t have the first quality a priest needs. You cannot tell a lie, never could. You’re an honest man. You know about the papers, don’t you, Peaches?”

  “Mr. Driskill, it was an accident, honest to God—”

  “I understand, son. Believe me, I do. Now, I’ve got some more questions for you. Just relax. You all right, Peaches?”

  “I don’t know, sir. And that’s the truth.” Peaches was wondering where Father Dunn was, what advice he’d have.

  Half an hour later Peaches was back in his banged-up old car, wishing he’d, put on his snow tires, heading for New Prudence. He had his orders. Go get the D’Ambrizzi manuscript and bring it back. Tonight. The hell with the snow. There was something about Hugh Driskill. There was damn near no arguing with him.

  Her first night back in Rome, Sister Elizabeth went to the flat on the Via Veneto after paying a quick call at the home of the Order at the top of the Spanish Steps. Driskill and Dunn had tried to get her to join them for dinner at the Hassler, also at the top of the Spanish Steps, but she’d said she was tired and wanted to check in at the home office. They had watched her go, she’d felt their eyes on her retreating back. She’d also rejected Driskill’s suggestion that he and Dunn accompany her to the flat for a quick look around the place, just a precaution against possible villainy. She was having none of that, either. She’d killed one man, she would kill another if need be: she tried to sound hard and indifferent and knew her performance was laughable. It would, however, have to do. She wanted none of their company.

  But by the time she stood alone in the hallway outside the door her heart was beating a tattoo and inside the flat she was turning on lights as quickly as she could. Bright lights, no shadows, that was the point. And when she went to the bathroom door she knew a leisurely bath was out of the question. No stretching out in the tub, no dozing off with the steam rising around her, no loss of control. She showered instead with the shower door open, as well as the bathroom door, so she could see the length of the hallway. It was a very brief shower.

  In her robe, she poured a glass of wine, boiled linguine and made a sauce, then settled on the couch in the living room with an Ennio Morricone film score on the turntable. But nothing could keep her from thinking, nothing could keep her from replaying the scene with Ben and the aftermath, over and over in her mind.

  She’d been light-headed with anger and frustration when she had whirled away from him and knocked over her chair and made her dramatic, empty gesture, her exit. She was nearly blind with tears of humiliation as well as the anger and the furious, overpowering frustration with the man and his crazy, impenetrable hatred of the Church, its servants and, apparently—she had the evidence of her eyes and ears—of herself in particular. His hatred was so visceral, unforgiving, unreasonable: she was exhausting her supply of offensive adjectives. How, how could he hurt her the way he had? When she was vulnerable and had spoken of her life with such trust? What was the point? Simply to wound?

  But, of course, if it were mere cruelty, Ben Driskill was a jerk and a swine.

  And she knew that was not the case.

  His hurt and his pain, hidden however deeply they might be, were greater. Greater than the damage done to her ego, the boot applied to her pride. The question was, could she in any case help him?

  It seemed unlikely.

  Yet he’d said—my God, had she heard him correctly?—he’d said he loved her.…

  Where did she go from there?

  Whatever she did, she always made everything worse. She thought she’d truly been offering her openness, her trust, and she’d been certain he would accept it, accept it as read. But whatever she did, she always made everything worse.

  Nonsense! Not everything. Just when it came to this damned Driskill.

  Driskill had looked pale and shaky and half broken during the meeting with Kessler. Dunn, however, was his usual unfathomable self. Whose side, she wondered, was he really on?

  Ambrose Calder. Now, there was a piece of work. Dr. Strangelove’s first cousin. How much of his rambling did Ben and Dunn take at face value?

  D’Ambrizzi as Simon Verginius was preposterous.

  But back to square one: who was behind” the assassini? It simply couldn’t be D’Ambrizzi because what they were talking about in the present—if not the past—was pure evil. She knew D’Ambrizzi. He couldn’t be evil.…

  Then, who could it be?

  The curia? A cabal within the curia? Maybe someone, a single man in a position of great power: Indelicato? Ottaviano or Fangio? Someone she didn’t know at all? Maybe someone outside the official structure of the Church, one of the lay princes, some twisted equivalent of Lockhardt? Archduke? Or the Collector? Who were they?

  Could it, she wondered sleepily, be the pope himself?

  Maybe it was an unseen hand, someone who could never be revealed, a kind of infection, a plague, a symbol … and maybe it would achieve its aim or run its course and the killings would stop and the mystery would slowly fade, generations would pass, until it was time for the assassini to strike again and keep the Church true to the needs of its secret masters.

  Now she sat with her empty plate and her empty glass, staring at the terrace where the man had tried to kill her. She saw him again, the milky eye, felt the glass candle chimney in her hand, felt the impact as it hit his face.… How to kill the memory?

  She’d screwed up everything so badly.

  People didn’t realize how important for a religious were the relationships you made outside the Church. They couldn’t know what such things meant, what connections they implied, in some cases what hopes they could represent.

  The fact was, she’d ruined things with Ben Driskill back in Princeton with her uncertainty and self-absorption and fear. She’d hidden in the Church, taken refuge from a world she wasn’t sure she could control—but the world had reached in anyway, grabbed her, torn her from safety. She had admired and liked and felt drawn to him: she had turned on him not for anything he had done but for her own failures of commitment, her own doubts and fears about the course she had chosen for her life. She was making him pay for her own mistakes, making him pay while she indulged in an orgy of self-doubt and ran to hide in the skirts of the Order.

  The Order had, in a way, asked too little of her, and she had given only what it required, unlike Sister Val, who had given so much more, had enlarged and defined the Order with her determination and commitment to make it something better than it had been. At the moment, she felt unworthy of Sister Val.

  How could she ever explain her own twisted logic to Ben, who saw only her coldness and his own humiliation at her hands in Princeton? She knew he was right: with his sister newly murdered, she had held out her hand to him and when he’d reached out to take it she’d turned away. Maybe now they were e
ven, after Avignon.

  Now, back in Rome, all she wanted to do was sleep. When she woke maybe it would all be over.

  Sleep, however, proved elusive.

  “Would you care to explain just what was going on with the nun?”

  “Eminence, he was never intended to kill her, I made that clear to him, I tried to—”

  “Not clear enough! The whole thing was a mess and it’s just getting worse!”

  “Horstmann said this man could be trusted—”

  “Horstmann hadn’t seen him in thirty years! Horstmann is an old man and a fanatic. He must have gone mad years ago. Maybe he was mad at the beginning. Anyway, it’s not the nun we need to kill … it’s Driskill—”

  “But, Eminence, is that wise? Now that he’s here in Rome?”

  “Don’t presume to tell me what is wise! And may I remind you that you are the one who has let Driskill get out of hand?”

  “We need him now, he needs us … we must listen to him. Forgive me, but that is a fact—”

  “Horstmann should have killed Driskill in Paris … or at St. Sixtus.… Time is running out. The Holy Father could die at any moment. We must be sure of the outcome before that—”

  “Is there still any chance he might make his wishes known?”

  “A two-edged sword, obviously. If I receive his blessing, it’s one thing. If it’s someone else, it couldn’t be worse. Better he should just die. What now? What of Horstmann?”

  “Eminence?”

  “We may need him once more.” He shrugged.

  “Who? It’s dangerous now, more dangerous than ever. Everyone has come to Rome. Whom do you have in mind?”

  “You wouldn’t like it. But it would solve everything—”

  The name dawned on him. “Horstmann would never do it, Eminence.”

  “He will do what he’s told. He was programmed a long time ago and by an expert. He’s not a man. He’s an instrument.”

  “Forgive me, Eminence. But he is a man.”

  “Don’t be a coward now. We’re almost there. Remember, the Church must be saved.”

  * * *

  Pope Callistus paid no attention anymore to matters of night and day, dark and light. The darkness—the personal darkness—was encroaching, coming closer with each breath, each heartbeat. He sensed the systems shutting down. Life had been too short but, perhaps, just long enough. He wondered what came next. He was very tired. And very frustrated.

  He was living more and more in the past, his mind drifting in and out of the shadows, remembering, seeing old comrades once more. Horstmann, little Leo, LeBecq dying in the graveyard, the night of waiting in the snowy mountain night, waiting for the train, Simon … they all seemed to gather around his bed, nodding, paying their respects, the living and the dead helping to see him out.…

  It was too late now to become a new Callistus. Too late to follow D’Ambrizzi’s plan. He’d told the cardinal that there was no time left and the great heavy head had bowed, nodding.

  “Hold on a little longer,” D’Ambrizzi said.

  Callistus was dozing, muttering in his sleep, when his secretary gently touched his shoulder.

  “Yes, yes,” he said, his mouth dry and clumsily working its way around the words. “What is it? More pills?”

  “No, Holiness. I have this for you.”

  Callistus saw the plain envelope.

  “From whom?”

  “I don’t know, Holiness. It was delivered downstairs, by messenger.”

  “All right. Turn on that lamp.” He nodded toward the table at bedside. “Thank you. I’ll ring for you if I need you. Thank you.”

  Alone, he reached into the pocket of his robe and felt the Florentine dagger, pricked his finger on the razor-sharp point. He removed the dagger from his pocket, saw the drop of blood on his fingertip. He put it to his mouth, tasted it, then turned to the envelope. He slid the dagger’s point under the flap and slit it open.

  There was a single sheet of paper, folded across the middle. He opened it and saw the line of handwritten script. Before he put the words together he recognized the hand. Slowly, as he read, a small smile crossed his face.

  You are still one of us. Do not forget …

  Simon V.

  2

  DRISKILL

  It was a curious calm, as if the world stood waiting for the second shoe to drop. Of course, the world knew nothing about it. But I had that eye-of-the-hurricane feeling. We were all waiting for the eye to pass and the heavy weather to hit again. So long as Cardinal D’Ambrizzi remained in camera with the pope, it seemed that the calm would persist. I wondered, is he really dying, the poor old man who presided over a Church that showed so many signs of tearing itself to pieces, or is it just another story I’ve fallen for that will have a surprise ending? Nothing was predictable. For years and years all of my life had been so routine, the matters crossing my desk and the faces of my clients and their inevitable concerns, the unceasing sniping between my father and me, my night sweats when I dreamed of the Jesuits and my leg flared up from my little problem with the chain, the occasional woman I’d meet at one or another charity function and with whom I’d conduct a moderately satisfying, short-term affair. But now—now nothing was predictable anymore. I didn’t seem able to foresee a goddamn thing. I’d never felt so naive and confused in my entire life. And I was up to my knees in dead bodies. And I was armed with a toy gun. And all I wanted to do—or more accurately, was able to do—was think about a nun.

  Finally my resolve to stay away from her, to mind my own business, collapsed. I suppose it was inevitable. I simply could not leave things the way they’d been when we left Avignon. How could I? I’d told the woman I loved her. What had I been thinking of as I blurted it out? Well, I was thinking that I’d fallen in love with her. Obviously. First time in my life. A nun. And now I was suddenly forgetting all the fears that had kept me safe from her so far. Now I had seen the light. That was the only explanation. The fact of the matter was that when it came to two people thrown together by circumstance, nun or not, neither of their minds worked in blissfully ignorant isolation. The fact was, she was a living, breathing woman.

  I called her, full of an unspoken apology, and suggested a walk in the Borghese Gardens. “I’ve got to talk to you before all of this goes any further,” I said. “We’ll go for a walk. And I’m going to ask you to listen very carefully to what I have to say. I owe you an apology. But there’s more.”

  “All right,” she said. I heard the doubt in her voice.

  I felt safe—whatever that meant—in the Borghese Gardens, out in the open, with tourists who had never heard of the assassini strolling and laughing and consulting guidebooks, with women carrying babies and pushing prams. The villa had been built in the seventeenth century for a Borghese cardinal. The park spread away, immense and green, a topography of undulating slopes, small lakes, villas, gentle views, meadows. The great esplanade of the Piazza di Siena shone happily in the sunshine. The pines were everywhere.

  We were walking on the grass, following the shoreline of one of the lakes. Children laughed happily. She couldn’t help smiling at them. Children. Looking at all the dapper Italians in their tight-fitting suits, coats slung over their shoulders, sunglasses, I felt more than ever like a broken-nosed pug who hadn’t won one in way too long. I’d seen the face in the mirror. Eyes dark-rimmed, my face drawn with exhaustion, as if it had been in trouble forever and had only now shown the full extent of the damage. What a gorgeous guy.

  “Well,” she said, “what’s so important that I have to listen very carefully?”

  “Listen, Sister, and you shall hear …” I tried smiling, and she looked off across the flat surface of the lake. “While I was going through the mess in Ireland, I ran headfirst into a couple of things that I’ve got to tell you. They affect both of us. It’s not exactly the easiest thing I’ve ever done, deciding to tell you—”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t, then,” she said. “Think twice, Ben.”

&
nbsp; “I’ve thought a thousand times. It doesn’t seem to get any easier. So … first, I lost my nerve up there. I saw it happen and it was ugly, like I was watching some other poor, contemptible bastard come unglued. Only it was me. Old Ben Driskill was fresh out of guts. I’ve taken my share of beatings, one way or another, believe me, but this was something different, what happened at St. Sixtus.…” I wanted to confide in her as she had in me, something hidden from public view: something to make myself vulnerable. I wanted to put my faith in her. I wanted to show her I could trust her. That was my apology. “I was lost in the fog and the ocean was making the earth shake and I found that little old man with his throat cut in the cave and I was afraid to go back outside … but I finally went. I had to get out of there, but I was afraid he was waiting for me and out there in the fog I wouldn’t be able to find him … Horstmann. He’d see me but I wouldn’t see him and I knew he was going to kill me. I knew I was beaten. Still, I went back out there even though I knew I was going to die. I hadn’t come apart inside yet, I could face whatever was waiting for me.