The Genesis Code

by John Case

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Oh, yes. We have a number of centers in the States.’

  ‘Really.’ Lassiter pulled out a steno notebook.

  ‘And they are growing by leaps and bounds. I can show you the data.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Where the people are: New York, Los Angeles, Dallas.’

  ‘So it’s pretty much an urban phenomenon.’

  ‘As a practical matter – yes. We organize around our schools. But we do have some houses of retreat – in the countryside. Simple places, as you can imagine.’

  ‘And if we wanted to film –’

  ‘You wouldn’t even have to leave the U.S.’ The young man went to a Rolodex on his desk, spun the wheel and smiled. ‘In fact, you could do a lot in Washington. Beginning with St. Bartholomew’s High School –’

  ‘St. Bart’s?!’

  ‘You know it?’

  ‘I used to play against them. In high school. They were in the IAC.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘It’s a sport’s league.’

  ‘Ah –’

  ‘I didn’t know St. Bart’s was . . .’

  ‘One of ours?’ Villa chuckled. ‘Most people think all Catholic schools are alike. But, of course, they’re not.’ He turned back to the Rolodex. ‘Maryland’s near Washington, isn’t it?’ He pronounced the word Maryland.

  ‘Yeah,’ Lassiter said, ‘right next door.’

  ‘Well, there’s a retreat there. And I see we have an outreach program in something called “Anacostia.”’

  ‘It’s part of Washington.’

  ‘Well, then! I’ll give you a list.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘In fact, I have a press information kit, if you’d like.’

  ‘Terrific. That’s fabulous. And – as to Father della Torre?’

  The young man held out a hand and offered a generous smile. ‘How would it be if I get you the printed information that I have available, and check with his secretary. If you’ll just have a seat?’

  While he waited, Lassiter studied a foldout world map. Naples was in the center, stamped with the Umbra logo – from which rays extended to the different parts of the world where the order had centers. He saw that there were outposts in at least twenty countries: Slovenia, Canada, Chile – they were literally all over the map.

  The reverse side had a bar chart of membership by country, and as he began to look at it, the young man returned. He held a loose-leaf notebook, the front bearing the purple and gold Umbra logo and a small sticker that identified the language as English.

  ‘There’s a lot of information in here,’ Dante said, ‘including an article from the New York Times and another one in a Catholic publication, Changing Times.’ A smile. ‘In case you missed them.’

  ‘Terrific.’

  ‘As to Father della Torre . . .’ he said with a beaming smile. He took a quick peek at the fake card Lassiter had given him, which was cupped in his palm. ‘You have great luck, Mr. Delaney.’

  ‘That sounds like my father,’ Lassiter joked. ‘I usually go by “Jack.”’

  Dante smiled. ‘Well, there’s a reception for new members at nine, and an ordination at ten. So he has a window around . . . let’s see . . . eleven-thirty should be safe.’

  ‘I appreciate this.’

  ‘He asks if you’ll be bringing a photographer?’

  ‘No. I don’t –’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. There are a number of glossies in the press kit.’ Dante tossed his hair back from his face and extended his hand.

  Lassiter was beginning to feel guilty about all this goodwill, and not a little disturbed by the slickness of the operation. ‘What time was that again?’ he said, pulling out his notebook as if he had dozens of commitments.

  ‘Eleven-thirty in the morning. And not here – he’ll be at the church. You’ll find him in the office. Here, let me make you a little map.’

  19

  RETURNING TO HIS hotel, Lassiter was tired enough to fall asleep, and might have done so if the taxicab had been equipped with working shock absorbers. But it wasn’t, and so he sat in the backseat, holding on to a frayed leather strap as the cab rattled and bounced past the Teatro San Carlo in the direction of the port. The exhaustion he felt was owing in part to the strain of pretense – lying drained him and always had. But what really got to him was the impossibility of being in two places at once. Grimaldi was in America, but the answers were in Europe, buried in the medieval muck of Umbra Domini’s politics and Grimaldi’s background.

  Then, too, the realization was just beginning to dawn that Kathy hadn’t been Grimaldi’s target – Brandon had. Kathy had been killed fighting for her son’s life, but Brandon had been slaughtered. His throat had been slit from ear to ear, almost ritually – and then, after Grimaldi had made a mess of the fire, it was Brandon who had been disinterred. And cremated for a second time. Brandon. Not Kathy.

  And not by Grimaldi, who’d been in the hospital.

  Someone else had gone to the trouble of exhuming the child and setting the remains ablaze. Which meant that Grimaldi was almost certainly part of a conspiracy. That all but ruled out Riordan’s theory that Grimaldi might be – what was the word that he’d used? A ‘toon’ – someone whose actions were impossible to explain because reason played no part in them. In Lassiter’s experience, madmen did not conspire with one another. They acted. And when they acted, they acted alone.

  It gave him a headache to think about it. To think of the murders as a conspiracy cast them in an even stranger light than before, and made their solution seem even less likely. And what could it have to do with Umbra Domini? Because they definitely were the ones paying Grimaldi. He did have a headache.

  His room was in a small hotel overlooking the port of Santa Lucia. Standing on the balcony with the telephone in one hand and the receiver in the other, he called Bepi to see if they could have dinner together the following night. As he waited, listening to the phone ring in Rome, he watched the sun slide into the Mediterranean like a woman entering her bath, gently breaking the surface of the water and, ever so slowly, disappearing beneath it.

  No answer. He dialed Bepi’s pager, punched in the hotel’s telephone number so Bepi would call him back when he got the message – and that was it. There wasn’t anything else for him to do. And then he remembered the press kit.

  The notebook amounted to a slick presentation of what seemed to be a well-scrubbed and benign organization, a kind of 4-H Club for the soul. There was a list of Umbra’s sister organizations, including its charities, and Lassiter noted that Salve Caelo was among them. But controversy was downplayed, and there was little or no hint of the organization’s extremist views.

  Instead, the press releases concentrated on Umbra’s good deeds and growing membership: There were lots of photos of wide-eyed children playing outside or sitting attentively at their desks in parochial schools that Umbra Domini sponsored. Pictures of youths collecting trash from a littered park, helping the elderly and serving as altar boys. Before and after photos of renovated church buildings vied for space with images of missionaries in the bush. Finally, there was a photo of smiling Muslims working in a vegetable garden at a Salve Caelo ‘refugee camp’ in Bosnia.

  The man behind the good deeds was represented by several eight-by-ten glossies. And if the pictures were accurate, Lassiter thought, Silvio della Torre ought to be in the movies. He was Everywoman’s boyish leading man, with high cheekbones, eyes of a striking sea-blue color, and a broad, sardonic smile under a halo of jet-black curls.

  In addition to the photographs and press releases, the kit contained a handful of newspaper articles about the organization’s good works, and two different puff pieces about della Torre himself. Both articles remarked on the priest’s facility with languages – he spoke six or nine, depending upon which story you read – and his achievements as a kick boxer. As one of the features put it, ‘Father della Torre can compete with the best of ’em. So, wat
ch out, Jean-Claude! Powwww!’

  Finally, there was a ‘mission statement’ of surpassing blandness. Nothing was said of ritual scourging, ‘Islamic imperialism,’ or homosexuals. Instead, the statement emphasized the importance of ‘family values,’ the ‘culture of Christianity,’ and the ‘basic tenets of Catholicism.’

  All in all, the press kit was as effective as a sleeping pill, and Lassiter succumbed to it in his chair.

  He woke up feeling better, but his mood took a turn for the worse when he stopped for a morning cappuccino in the café next to the hotel’s lobby. A tinny loudspeaker hummed with the annoying and relentlessly cheerful cadences of Europop. He’d never understood what people liked about this crappy music. At least the coffee was good.

  The Church of San Eufemio was small and old; the settling earth beneath it had thrown it askew, so that none of the architectural angles were plumb. It was sandwiched between two much larger and newer buildings, and the crooked set of the church made it look as if its neighbors were trying to shoulder it out of the way for good.

  A short walkway led to a pair of enormous arched doors, studded with metal, doors so old that the surface of the wood was a series of ridges, the softer pith between the cambial layers having long since eroded away. He’d seen the doors in a photograph amid the publicity material – thrown open, a bride and groom emerging from the dark interior – and remembered that they were said to date from the eighth century. He touched the ridged wood; it felt as hard as stone.

  But the doors were not open now, and there was no obvious knocker or even a handle – just a large, old-fashioned keyhole. He walked around, looking for another entrance, and soon found it, off to the side. He paused, quickly rehearsing his spiel: ‘Jack Delaney . . . CNN . . . “New Directions in Catholicism.”’

  He rapped on the door, and della Torre surprised him by answering the knock himself. The Umbran leader was dressed in a charcoal turtleneck, brown slacks, and loafers. Lassiter saw that Silvio della Torre was, if possible, even better looking than his publicity photos suggested. But unlike the actors Lassiter had met, men who were somehow smaller in the flesh, della Torre was bigger than he’d imagined. The priest was at least as tall as he, broad-shouldered and athletic-looking. He didn’t look like Lassiter’s idea of a priest, the Platonic ideal which was at least sixty years old, gray-haired, and outfitted in a cassock.

  ‘You must be Jack Delaney,’ the priest said with a smile. ‘Dante told me to expect you. Please come in.’ His English was flawless and unaccented.

  ‘Thank you.’

  They went through another door and into a sparsely but elegantly furnished office. Lassiter sat on a red leather Barcelona chair and faced della Torre across an old wooden library table. Remembering what Massina had said about della Torre’s skill with lighting himself during church services, Lassiter couldn’t help but notice the sophisticated array of recessed lighting set into the old plaster ceiling, or the way the light fell on the priest’s chiseled features.

  ‘I understand you’re doing a piece for CNN. . . .’

  ‘We’re thinking about it.’

  ‘Well . . . great! I sometimes think the major media go out of their way to ignore us.’

  Lassiter chuckled, as he was meant to do. ‘I’m sure that’s not true,’ he said.

  Della Torre shrugged. ‘I think so. But,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘it’s no matter. You’re here.’ Della Torre knit his fingers together, put his elbows on the desk, and rested his chin on the backs of his hands. ‘How should we begin?’

  ‘Well,’ Lassiter said, ‘the idea is to get a feeling for how you’d come across on the air, and also to get a bit of background. If you could tell me a little about the origins of Umbra Domini . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ della Torre replied, settling back in his chair. ‘As I’m sure you know, we’re a product – some would say, a by-product – of Vatican Two.’ For the next ten minutes, Umbra Domini’s capo fielded Lassiter’s softballs with a smile.

  ‘How has the organization changed in recent years?’

  ‘Well, Jack, it’s no secret that we’ve become a lot bigger. . . .’

  ‘If you had to name one program that you’re most proud of, what would it be?’

  ‘Community Outreach – without a doubt. I’m so proud of it. . . .’

  ‘In your view, what’s the biggest challenge currently facing the Church?’

  ‘There are so many challenges. It’s such a difficult time! But it seems to me the biggest challenge Catholics face is what I like to call “the temptation of modernity.”. . .’

  Lassiter nodded thoughtfully at each of the answers, and dutifully scribbled in his notebook. He was getting a feel for his adversary, and what he felt was something like Teflon, but heavier. Teflon and steel. He decided to switch tactics.

  ‘It’s said that Umbra has political ambitions.’

  ‘Oh?’ Della Torre sensed the change, and cocked his head. ‘And who says that?’

  Lassiter shrugged. ‘I’ve got a file full of clips at the hotel. Stories that I downloaded from Nexis. A couple are pretty critical. They say Umbra Domini is tied to right-wing groups like the National Front –’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. It’s true that some of our members are concerned about immigration issues – but that’s a political matter, not a theological one. We’re a diverse organization; our members hold many different views.’

  ‘They say that Umbra’s homophobic.’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘And that you’ve called for gays to be tattooed.’

  ‘Good! I’m glad you raised that question because it gives me an opportunity to clarify this. It’s true, we consider homosexuality a sin – and we’ve said so in – let’s face it – no uncertain terms. In that sense, I suppose there are some who consider us –’ Della Torre made quotation marks in the air – ‘“homophobic.” But it’s also true that Umbra Domini has a pedagogic function. We’re teachers, and as teachers, we sometimes use hyperbole to make a point. That’s what this is all about. Whatever anyone may have said, no one in Umbra Domini seriously believes that homosexuals should be tattooed. Though I do think it’s reasonable that they should register with the police.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Lassiter said, making a note. ‘Another thing I wanted to ask you about: one of the clips mentions a charity – Salve . . .’ He pretended to search for the word.

  ‘Caelo.’

  ‘Exactly. Salve Caelo! And the work they’ve done in Bosnia. They say –’

  ‘I know what they say. They say we ran a concentration camp. And that we did this under the pretext of a relief effort.’

  ‘Mmmm.’

  ‘I’m familiar with the charge. It’s been thoroughly investigated. Nothing’s ever been proved.’

  ‘Is it true?’

  Della Torre looked at the ceiling, as if appealing to a higher authority. Then he turned his gaze on Lassiter. ‘Let me ask you something, Jack.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Isn’t it amazing that faith and devotion inspire attack almost as often as they inspire admiration? These stories you’re referring to, they’re nothing more than envy dressed as gossip.’

  ‘Envy? What do you mean?’

  Della Torre sighed, and when he spoke again, his voice commanded the room, low and passionate. His words were perfectly modulated, his timing masterful, the timbre of his voice deep and rich. ‘Think of Umbra Domini as a beautiful and virginal woman,’ he began, leaning forward and fixing Lassiter with his startling blue eyes. What followed was a speech unlike any that Lassiter had ever heard, a patterned voice-roll or wave of words whose meaning was somehow independent of what was actually being said. Listening, Lassiter felt almost as if he were entering a trance. Indeed, it seemed he was being sung to. And then an extraordinary thing happened in a very ordinary way: The sun moved behind a cloud; a flat, odd light gripped the priest’s face for a moment, and Lassiter saw through the man’s vanity. It was in his eyes. They were the
kind of eyes that pulled you into them, not blue really, but an underwater shade of aquamarine that seemed to have been taken from the Great Barrier Reef. They were beautiful eyes, but they weren’t real. In the strange light, Lassiter could see the too-wet gleam of contact lenses. And not just contacts, colorized contacts. He recognized the shade:

  They were Monica’s eyes.

  He wondered if della Torre had agonized over the choice, as Monica had – vacillating between cerulean-aquamarine and blue-sapphire. Whether he had or hadn’t, they’d obviously agreed on the same color – and probably for the same reason. It was a very seductive blue.

  Della Torre smiled and shook his head. It was clear that he hadn’t noticed the change in the quality of Lassiter’s attention. ‘And so, when I hear attacks on Umbra Domini, when I hear rumors, murmurs of doubt about the order’s intentions – it doesn’t make me angry. I feel sorrow. And pity. The people who speak in this way, who make up these stories, are stranded in the darkness of their own souls.’

  Della Torre ended his speech in the way he’d begun – with his elbows on the table and his chin resting on the backs of his interknit hands.

  Lassiter was silent for a moment. And then the sun came out and the room pulsed with light. He cleared his throat and, without thinking about it, popped the question: ‘And Franco Grimaldi?’

  Della Torre sat back in his chair and regarded Lassiter with a bemused look. ‘Grimaldi?’

  ‘One of your people . . .’

  ‘Yes . . .?’

  ‘He’s wanted for murder.’

  Della Torre nodded thoughtfully. ‘I see.’

  ‘In the States.’

  ‘Hmmmm.’ Della Torre rocked back and forth in his chair. Finally he said, ‘This is the question you came to ask, isn’t it?’

  Lassiter nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well . . .’ The priest shrugged.

  ‘I want to know why he did what he did,’ Lassiter said.

  ‘And you think I might know?’

  ‘I thought that you might.’

  ‘I see. And why would you think that?’

  Give him a push, Lassiter thought. ‘Because you paid him a lot of money.’