by David Perry
“I have nothing against the Anglican Church per se,” said the Archbishop. “However, Roman Catholicism is the One True Faith. More to the point, the American Episcopal Church is a stinking cesspool of immorality and politically correct social experimentation masquerading as a contemporary interpretation of the Holy Gospel. If the Archbishop of Canterbury wants to allow homosexuals, antithetical communist activists, and women onto its altars and into the ranks of its clergy, so be it. It’s not my affair. But, neither will I…ah…will His Holiness allow such in His Church. Not while I—we—draw breath.”
Arnaud, 64, seemed especially concerned that members of the Pope’s personal security detail, the Swiss Guard, had been tainted by the actions of a homo hooker within its ranks, the aforenamed Grigori Morgarten, a 29-year-old native of Fluelen, Switzerland, on Lake Como near Italy’s northern border. Perhaps we should call him the “Homo from Como.”
“Bitch!” they both repeated.
“Well, whatever Grigori did after he left the Pope’s service, he must have come from a good family,” Lee said.
“What do you mean?”
“Not just anyone can apply to be a Swiss Guard. Candidates have to be devout, practicing Catholics and of the highest moral virtue.”
“Yeah, well,” Adriano said with a smirk, “thankfully, Grigori failed that test. Would have been a terrible waste with that body.”
“I didn’t think you’d noticed.” Lee frowned.
“I’m married, not blind,” Adriano said.
Lee motioned for him to finish.
After undergoing the most rigorous of physical and military trainings, the Swiss Guards swear an oath to lay down their bodies to defend the life of the Pope and his cardinals. To hear Bishop Arnaud tell it, our working girl/boy toy Grigori did indeed lay down, and with quite a few live bodies.
The Swiss Guard—easily identifiable around the Vatican by their medieval (and according to legend, Michelangelo-designed) uniforms of blue, red, and orange—are popular with tourists. Evidently in the case of G. Morgarten, his popularity was voluntary. Unnamed sources have spoken with this reporter about sordid tales of prostitution, bisexual orgies within the guard barracks, and even the propositioning of a young visiting monsignor. According to the story, verified by witnesses, the prelate was approached by Grigori at a popular Roman café during the guard’s off-duty hours, along with a group of other new recruits. When asked if he would be joining them for dinner, Grigori replied, “Yes, and I’m the dessert.”
“It’s all complete bullshit,” Lee said, taking the paper from Adriano and putting it back in Andrea’s desk drawer. “This is not the first time a sex mess rocked the Vatican. Just a few years ago, there was a huge scandal involving the Swiss Guard. A young soldier shot his married lover, the Swiss Guard’s commander no less, turned the gun on the wife, and then knelt and put the trigger in his own mouth. The Vatican was in full press crisis mode. They swept up the three bodies like it was a minor car accident. I’ve never heard of a story shut down quicker, much less a ménage à trois murder. Since the Vatican is a sovereign state, the Italian police could do nothing. The Vatican Press Office declared the case closed and blamed it on the young guard’s mental instability. It was Gorgeous George’s first attempt at PR spin. He gives my profession a bad name.”
“So, you think Lady Peg is telling the truth about Grigori?”
“About Grigori being a hooker?”
“All of it.”
“Nastiness aside, it could explain a lot,” said Lee. “Grigori uses his obvious assets to make a few extra bucks while working in Rome, likely with members of the Curia as clients. He gets caught. The Swiss Guard quietly fires him, and he comes to Orvieto to regroup with his friend Andrea, a nice, young priest he met while on duty in Rome.” Lee remembered the photo of the two of them, both in official garb.
“Once here, free from the prying eyes of the Vatican, they do what young people do.”
“They fall in love.”
“Possibly.”
“Absolutely,” Lee reiterated. “The pictures don’t lie.”
“Gossipy Lady Peg finds out, writes her blog post. Someone in the Vatican finds out, your PR friend, Gorgeous George, perhaps.”
“The Vatican is already awash in scandal. Vatileaks, pedophile priests, gay communion parties…”
“…and they decide to make an example of Andrea.”
“And it’s all too much for him and he jumps.”
“He jumps,” said Adriano, squeezing his husband’s arm. “It makes sense.”
“Hmmm,” was all Lee offered, but his lips were quivering like a Cessna warming up for flight. Adriano would have called it his Spidey-sense, and he would have been right. The whole thing was at once too complex, and too simple. Andrea commits suicide, and within days one bishop has voluntarily retreated to a monastery, never to be heard from again, and the one non-Catholic ordinate in Orvieto, Reverend Vicky, hightails it to Rome. Not to mention Andrea’s mother, in exile, but not that far away. Bishop Sancarlo. Reverend Vicky. Sofia Bernardone—all fled from Orvieto but still within its orbit. I’d have wanted to get as far away as possible after something like that, Lee thought. And, I did. I fled as far as possible. I went to sea. And the box, what about all those coded prayers?
“What, you think there’s more?”
“What?” Adriano’s question pulled Lee from his reverie. “Yes, I do.” Lee pointed to the hole in the kitchen and then to the purgatory box on Andrea’s desk.
“You have a point,” Adriano said.
“Andrea jumped,” said Lee.
“Or was pushed?”
“Either by a hand or a motivation, I don’t know, but yes, in a sense, Andrea was pushed off that cliff by something. Of that, I’m sure. But, I think the reasons are more twisted than his just having been denied the priesthood. There’s something else going on here.”
“Like what?”
“Like why Archbishop Arnaud gave that interview to Peg.”
“Because he’s a hateful homophobe and wanted to keep Andrea off the altar,” Adriano said, slapping his hands against his thighs. “He wanted to disgrace Andrea totally, and Grigori.”
“He could have done that privately. Why speak to a second-rate blogger, and one from Orvieto?”
“Maybe because he thought Andrea would read it, be so embarrassed that he’d resign from the priesthood, and spare the Church the effort.”
“No,” Lee said, getting up from Andrea’s desk. “No. Archbishop Arnaud wanted to embarrass someone, all right, but I don’t think it was Andrea. I think Andrea just got caught in the crossfire of something bigger. Something much bigger. Oh no!”
Lee looked down to see Clemente padding toward them like a feline way of the cross, bloody paw prints paving the way back to the bedroom where Maryam had been in such agony. “What a mess. Clemente, bad kitty.”
“MeoWWW!”
“Ow! He scratched me!”
Clemente was pawing frantically at Lee’s leg, finding a strategic spot of exposed flesh between sock and jean.
“He wants something,” Adriano observed. “He’s being positively doglike.”
“He’s being positively annoying. Ow! He scratched me again!”
The cat fixed them both with what could only be described as a withering stare, and then turned to retreat through bloody paw prints back to the bedroom.
Lee and Adriano followed to find the cat next to Maryam’s discarded blouse, pulling at an errant string at the hem of the garment, unwinding the thread like a lock.
“Look, there’s something sewn into the fabric.” Lee picked up the blouse and helped the cat pull. A few seconds later, a small leather satchel tied with a cord plopped out on the bed. Lee looked at Adriano aghast.
“How much weirder can this get?” Adriano asked, picking up the tiny purse. “Smells like salt water and fish.”
“Well, Maryam was on a ship for a while. Open it,” Lee said.
The string undone, two tiny scrolls of
parchment rolled on the bed. Clemente purred, as if to say, “OK, my job is done. You have opposable thumbs. Take it away,” and lay down on a pillow away from the mess.
“What do they say?” Lee asked.
Adriano unrolled the two pieces of paper, which offered a scribbled revelation like nothing so much as two playing cards from a board game or a tiny representation of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
“What language is that?”
“They’re in Arabic.” Adriano exhaled. “Except this one line at the bottom of each card in Italian. Il purgatorio è la chiave.”
Lee didn’t need Adriano to translate—“Purgatory is the key.”
It was going to be a long night.
CHAPTER LIII
Bridge of Cries
Monday, December 23, 2013, sunset, Allerona
Death was coming for the Archbishop, but not quite yet. The assassin exhaled, feeling the carefully concealed tools of his trade press ever so gently against his rigorously trained torso. A stiletto. A German revolver. A silencer. A capsule of Cyanide—not for him—for others who might get in his way. Suicide was for cowards. Not for him. He turned his mind to the job soon at hand.
It would be neat, tidy, and if possible, bloodless. Not that he had anything against blood. Far from it. It was just so hard to sculpt a memorable tableau when the scene was coated in sanguinity. There was always an errant shoe print, or a handprint, or, in this case, a medieval tapestry to be stained. He had a healthy respect for history. After all, he had a lineage to uphold. Madrid. London. New York. Washington. Tripoli. Blood on a massive scale was an easily staged chaos, the theater of mere terrorists. Uncreative. Vulgar. Cheap. Bloodless murder was preferable. So much more challenging to undertake. So much more satisfying and memorable. So much more horrifying in its starkness. To first see a collation of tourists or school children coated in blood, that was one thing. But to discover a body that at first appeared to be alive, and then to find it lifeless, that was a double shock to the discoverer. That was a statement. That was le grand opus. That was art.
Yes. Arnaud must die, but not quite yet.
After he was sure there was no information left to extract from the Prince of the Church. After he had retrieved the box. After he had turned Maryam over to her rightful owners. After he had retrieved the final two cards from her clothes—the cards her brother was supposed to have delivered to San Donato. Dawud! His disobedience would have to be dealt with. That one, he might let get bloody. Who would mourn another dirty migrant washed up on the shores of Italy or tossed along the road next to some Winnebago brothel? No one. Nevertheless, he’d make it look like an accident. Pimp killed in a fight with his hooker and a client. That one always worked well.
He took out one of his expensive Egyptian cigarettes, leaned against the wall underneath the railway bridge. All was quiet, a silent night. Suddenly, the masonry of the oft-destroyed, oft-replaced edifice groaned and shook, a violent rape of the night. Dust fell onto the assassin’s face, but he didn’t move. He had seen worse than dust under this bridge. Overhead, the night train to Vienna sped by. As quickly as it began, the assault was over. Silence, restored. He was alone with the memorial of World War Two’s worst “friendly fire” disaster and his memories, his father’s memories.
A train full of prisoners. An aerial bombardment by the Allies meant for Nazis. A lifetime explaining how? Then banishment and, finally, a self-made death.
His memories: A parked car. A bullet to the back of a throat. A night spent hugging his father’s body until a farmer found him the next day. A week later, he was at the orphanage. Ten years later, he was learning his trade—a killer’s skills—in the north of Africa. And now? Now there were other vows to pervert, but only for a little more. Then, this journey would be over.
But, not quite yet. He was in no hurry. His victims would wait through the night. They weren’t going anywhere, at least not yet. They would wait for him, just down the road from this tainted spot. He didn’t have the key, but no matter. Someone would let him in. Italians were so friendly, especially this time of year.
He inhaled deeply and blew out three perfectly circular smoke rings, an infinity of poison. He watched them hover in front of him, and then float upward toward the train tracks above. He watched them rise from his lips, past the monument to the victims of the WWII tragedy that had killed over six hundred British and American prisoners of war, scores of German guards, and more than a few civilian train operators. Of course, the memorial was only to the Allies. Post-war Italy didn’t convene international design competitions to mark the graves of Nazis or Italian workers, oh no. Victors wrote the history books, and American expats funded memorials to fallen fathers, brothers, and heroes whose only courage entailed getting captured and killed. An accidental heroism dredged up for masses and magazines and memorialists.
No one built a monument to my father, the assassin thought with a brief moment of self-reflective bitterness.
No matter. In a few days, his honor will have been restored. He spat onto the ground at the foot of the monument next to the memorial plaque, which read:
On 28 January 1944, while a freight train was transporting British, South African, and American prisoners of war toward prison camps in Germany, the United States Army Air Force bombed the bridge at Allerona just a few miles outside of Orvieto, causing over 600 dead, many never to be identified.
His father had tried to keep the train in Orvieto. The German officials had not listened, especially that arrogant and self-righteous Nazi colonel. Catholic—a Roman Catholic Nazi. They had listened to him and ignored his father, a true Italian. A follower of Mussolini who had restored the Vatican to independence. An Italian. No matter. They had ignored his father. They sent the train on. His father knew. The Americans did not care who was in the train, or if there was a train. The bridge would be bombed.
Fratello che passi, ricorda:
Noi siamo morti qui
Per la tua liberta.
Remember this
All you pass by this place:
We died that you may be free.
28.01.44–28.01.2012
He didn’t need a plaque to remember, and nothing could ever make him forget.
His father had no plaque. His father was barely allowed to have a grave. The beloved pastor of Orvieto’s San Giovanale wouldn’t even bless it, some bullshit about “the soil crying out for justice” and “consecrated earth.”
Don Bello.
Yes, more than all the others, Don Bello must die. But only after he had watched, helplessly, as all the others preceded him. That was the ultimate gift he would leave behind as his legacy, proof of the perfidy and hypocrisy of that supposedly kind and Christian man, Father Nicola Moldadeschi. Don Bello. Proof of the perfidious faith known as the Holy Roman Catholic Church.
He turned away from the monument under the bridge and its scarred, shrapnel-laced pilasters, its concrete spine sticking up from the river bed, from which summer rains still brought forth the skulls and bones and occasional medals of those who had died here. A tidal pool of sun-bleached putrefaction. Two months later, his father had done his duty again, eking out punishment for seven traitors to the Patria. Partisans, the Germans called them. Spineless Nazi. Traitors. His father knew otherwise. Three days after the justified reprisals at the Ardeatine Caves, Orvieto was expected to show its fidelity to the fatherland. The motherland. To Mussolini. And so, his father had done his job, and been cursed for it. And now, every year students trooped to the forest of Camorena to pay tribute to those traitors, martyrs only to a fictional future, fodder for essays about a history that was only half taught.
Enough of this morbid melancholia. The assassin turned away. He had victims waiting for him, including two new ones that he had not yet met, but soon. Two Americans who had stumbled into something they should never have known.
Oh well, it was the Season of Giving.
Merry Christmas.
He turned his steps to the town that had given h
im life, the town that had raised then destroyed his father. The town that had forgotten his name and erased the memory of his father’s. In a few days, they’d remember it again. It was just a ten-minute train ride away, but all the trains had passed for tonight. On foot, perhaps two hours, and he knew the way. He had time, all the time in the world. He laughed to himself. It was the people he’d see in a few hours who were now out of time.
The assassin turned his steps for Orvieto.
CHAPTER LIV
Revelation
Monday, December 23, 2013, 11 p.m., Orvieto
“This is some sort of code.” Lee spoke with certainty. He had done too many acrostics over the years not to recognize a puzzle when it presented itself.
For the last several hours, Lee had poured through the mysterious card catalogue of heavenly petitions, comparing them to the envelope they had lifted from Clarissa Bernardone’s office in Il Torred dei Segriti. Using Andrea’s Arabic/Italian dictionary, Adriano was laboriously translating the two pages hidden in Maryam’s blouse. They didn’t even contemplate the serendipity of the dead deacon’s reading cache so conveniently at hand. Every now and then, Adriano would check something online using Andrea’s computer. Like an abandoned spaceship in one of Adriano’s favorite late-night sci-fi films, the Deacon’s computer was just as he had left it, including being internet enabled. Their lucky night.
“Look at these,” Lee said, scooting a chair next to Adriano. “There are a bunch with these certain phrases repeated over and over.”
Adriano read and translated:
(40) Per quelle che confidate nella misericordia di Dio, facilmente peccarono
For those who trusted in God’s mercy, easily they sinned
(43) Per quelle che frastornarono gli altri alla devozione
For those who distracted others from devotion
(5) Per quelle alle quali particolarmente sei tenuto
For those of your particular intentions
“So,” said Lee, taking back the cards with some pique. “These sentences repeat over and over.” He looked at them intently, as if somehow like a message written in lemon juice, the concentration of his eyes would somehow “heat” the paper and reveal the solution. “I’ve got it.” He snapped his fingers. “It’s like a trigger word or the amen at the end of a prayer! The phrases substitute for something else. The trick is finding the key, the thing that makes it possible to translate the code.”