Prince of Peace

by James Carroll

  "Father Michael," Cardinal Spellman said, beaming up at him.

  Michael bowed smoothly from his waist to kiss the prelate's ring, then said, stiffly, "Your Eminence, let me introduce you to some friends."

  Carolyn and I each managed to kiss his ring. It was a gesture that couldn't have come less naturally to me, but Carolyn accomplished it smoothly, with a graceful half-curtsey. Still, she blushed furiously, and when Spellman, still holding her hand, said, "We've met before, dear, haven't we?" I thought she was going to faint.

  What would have happened to Michael's new career if she'd said right then, "I'm Sister Mary Felony, Your Eminence. You saw my picture in the paper."

  But she stammered, "You administered my Sacrament of Confirmation, Your Eminence." She forced a smile. "That was fourteen years ago."

  Spellman put his hand on her forearm and asked, as if it was important to him, "What parish was that, dear?"

  "Saint Peter's in Bronxville, Your Eminence."

  He nodded. "And did I meet your parents?"

  "Yes, you did, Your Eminence."

  "And your mother is as beautiful as you are, if I recall." He smiled at her endearingly. He was like an old pol working the crowd, shuffling through what we all knew was his routine, but still we were affected, charmed even. His touch was light, and he held on to Carolyn's arm as if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to do so. He seemed benign, fatherly even, and I found myself softening toward him. I was nearly won over when he said to Carolyn with real feeling, "It is the great privilege of my position to administer sacraments to handsome young people like you. And then..." He grasped Michael's arm, while holding onto Carolyn's, an ironic if unintended linking. "...to think it is my honor to ordain God's new priests. Every night I get down on my knees to thank Him." He grinned suddenly. "Oh, but goodness, you don't want to hear an old priest boasting about being on his knees!" He looked at me. "And aren't you proud of Father Michael today!"

  "Yes, I am," I said.

  Spellman dropped Carolyn's arm to press Michael's with both hands. "We're proud of him too. It's not often the Church receives a man like Michael Maguire into her service." He was looking at me as he said that, but I sensed that Spellman was addressing Michael. He'd have been aware of Michael's war record, of course, and it would have carried great weight with a soldier-worshipper like Spellman. Now he was manifesting his attachment to Michael, though, of course, like all priests, he could only do so indirectly. "We expect great things from this young man." Spellman still did not look at Michael, or else he might have witnessed the look Michael exchanged with Carolyn. There was apology in it, as well as misery, embarrassment. Michael's standing was considerable, obviously. But it had begun with his refusal to stand by her. With his standing, he felt, on her.

  "And has he told you what we've planned for him?" the cardinal asked.

  I nodded. "About relief work?" I couldn't remember the name of the agency.

  "The most important work in the Church," Cardinal Spellman said. "Father Maguire is going to pick up where Doctor Tom Dooley left off, aren't you, Father?"

  "It would be an honor to think so, Your Eminence."

  I knew that the heroic doctor had died only months before. Spellman had been at his bedside. Spellman had pronounced him a saint.

  The cardinal said, with a sudden fierceness, "Tom Dooley's people are suffering more than ever, aren't they, Father?" Michael nodded.

  "And Father Maguire is coming with me to see what can be done to help them."

  "Where?" Carolyn asked, despite herself. Tom Dooley had worked in Laos or someplace. Hadn't Michael just said the Far East? But what was that to her?

  Cardinal Spellman looked blankly at her. "Vietnam," he said.

  FOURTEEN

  IT was one of those steaming mornings of the monsoon when the air over the lush terrain grew hot faster than the air over the bordering South China Sea. When the resulting massive thermal draft began to rise it sucked at the wet sea winds which then moved steadily inland, across the low coastal hills to the rugged mountains that formed the spine of the country and separated it from the Kingdom of Laos. And everywhere the rain fell.

  The convoy of seven black Citroens sped along the glistening paved road that would come to be called Route One when the Americans came, the only proper name for a north-south coastal highway. Affixed to the bumper of each automobile, although not to the escorting military vehicles, were two flags; the red-striped saffron flag of the Republic of Viet Nam, and the yellow-and-white flag, displaying the triple tiara and the keys of Saint Peter, of His Holiness the Pope. The tires of the automobiles hummed a steady sibilant, but the passengers for the most part remained silent.

  They stared out the half-open windows and let the rain-soaked breeze refresh them, and they eyed the green blur of jungle, watching steadily. For wild animals? The spirits of ancestors? For friendly farmers? Every hundred or two hundred yards, even in the desolation of that countryside, a government soldier stood at present-arms, but with his back to the cars as they passed. No mere honor guard, those soldiers were outfitted for combat and charged with preventing an attack on that convoy. They had swept the highway for mines and booby traps. Now they were watching for signs of the guerrilla force that totally controlled the scummy swamp world in the delta region far to the south, around Saigon, making travel outside that city a nightmare. The guerrillas lived, as one of their slogans said, like owls in the night and foxes in the daylight, and they were known for striking, almost mystically, just when a traveler thought himself most safe. In addition to ambush those on foot had constantly to beware their punji traps, concealed pits with dung-encrusted bamboo spikes. Vehicles regularly tripped mines and hidden grenades, and once-innocent obstacles like fallen trees or collapsed culverts now certainly meant attack. In less than a year as an organized force the Communists had already assassinated more than four thousand village heads and district chiefs. But their random assaults were even more fearsome. On the road it didn't seem to matter whether their victims were women or children or even supporters of the Great Struggle, and that capriciousness only made the terror they inflicted more stunning. In Saigon in those days Americans were famous for refusing to leave the city. Government officials did so only with escorts, and the rich landlords who had to visit their holdings disguised themselves as peasants.

  But here in the northernmost region between Hue and the border with North Vietnam, the population was loyal to the government and the guerrillas had yet to make an impact. But the three brothers who ruled South Vietnam, President Ngo Dinh Diem, his counselor, Ngo Dinh Nhu, and Ngo Dinh Can, the viceroy of Central Vietnam, were prudent men. The sentries they had posted all along the road from Hue to Quang Tri were members of their crack personal guard. The Ngos were taking no chances this morning, not on such a great occasion and not with such guests.

  In the first car, but behind the military escort, Cardinal Spellman rode with his old friend, the fourth Ngo brother, Archbishop Thuc. Riding on the jump seat, facing them, was Monsignor Timothy O'Shea, and in the front seat, beside the driver, was Father Michael Maguire. The three Americans had arrived from Manila only the night before, and now they were speeding to Quang Tri, the northernmost city in South Vietnam, where Spellman and Thuc would preside at a ceremony attended by the elite of the country, marking the dedication of the huge new basilica of Our Lady of La Vang.

  Archbishop Thuc, between puffs of his cigarette, said, "It will be like Lourdes, Eminenza." He spoke with a pronounced French accent, though the title he used to address Spellman was the Italian. "La Vang will be the spiritual bastion of the country."

  "All you'll need are the miracles," Cardinal Spellman replied. Michael caught a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror, and looked for signs that he was being facetious. There were none. Thuc nodded smugly. The miracles would come.

  "We have built this shrine," Thuc said, leaning toward Spellman, "with the donations of all the people, even peasants. They gave their
sous to thank Our Lady for the deliverance of her Catholic children."

  Michael wondered, Would these "peasants" be at the dedication? Not likely. He had an American's distaste for the word, and it told him what he didn't like about the Vietnamese prelate. He carried himself like an Oriental Richelieu, and in his thin, ascetic visage, his dark, brooding eyes it seemed to Michael there was something merciless.

  Thuc touched Spellman's hand familiarly. "Who would have been thinking fifteen years ago we would be together today, with my brothers serving the people? We owe our success to you, Eminenza."

  Michael strained to hear what Spellman said. In Manila, just days before, he had heard an Australian priest refer to Ngo Dinh Diem as "Spellman's seminarian." The priest explained that Diem had been forced into exile in the late forties. Ho Chi Minh had murdered one of his brothers, so Diem was fiercely anti-Communist, but he wouldn't support the French either. He'd had nowhere to go until his brother Thuc intervened with Cardinal Spellman. Spellman liked Diem's personal style—he was a pious, ascetic Catholic who attended Mass daily and who'd taken a private vow of chastity—and he took him under his wing. The Australian priest claimed that Diem had lived in one of Spellman's seminaries from 1950 until 1954. Michael was skeptical and said so. Hadn't he begun his own seminary course in 1954? And in Spellman's diocese? But the Australian insisted it was true, and in fact it was. Though Diem spent most of 1954 in a Belgian monastery, before that he had lived at Maryknoll, just a few miles from Dunwoodie. It amazed Michael that he hadn't heard of Spellman's connection with Diem before. The Australian had seemed to think there was something sinister in it, but, if it was true, Michael thought well of it. What should the Church use its influence for if not to bring to power worthy politicians who were inured to corruption and dedicated to Christian moral principles? Michael had said as much to the priest.

  Spellman shook his head. "We are mere instruments, n'est-ce pas? We owe our success to Providence."

  Thuc nodded, patting Spellman's hand. "And to Our Lady."

  "With a little help from the U.S. Navy," Monsignor O'Shea put in gruffly. Spellman withdrew his hand from Thuc's and laughed, as O'Shea knew he would. As a cigar-chomping, tough-talking Irish ex-chaplain, O'Shea took more latitude with the cardinal than most priests, but that was why Spellman liked him. Frankly, Archbishop Thuc's deference bordered on the overweening and that never went far with Spellman. What O'Shea and Spellman knew was that if the Catholics of Vietnam had been delivered by Our Lady, she had made damn good use of the navy ships that brought a million of them from North to South after Dien Bien Phu. Tom Dooley, whose books had made that exodus famous, and had made the support of Catholics in Vietnam good politics in America, had begun as a navy doctor.

  Spellman pointed to O'Shea. "And, I might add, a little help from Monsignor's Catholic Relief Service. How much do you calculate CRS put up for the early refugees, Monsignor?"

  "Thirty-five million dollars, Your Eminence."

  Spellman looked at Thuc. "And now the U.S. government has asked CRS to oversee the increased aid the president promised."

  "Food, clothing and supplies," O'Shea said. "But also money. Some people aren't wild about the idea."

  Thuc leaned toward O'Shea. "But we need those things. Our people need them."

  "I know that, Your Excellency. But some people are a little nervous about our serving as a government channel. We've been raising our own funds up to now, as you know. In America we have this little thing called separation of Church and State."

  Spellman grunted. "Forgive Monsignor O'Shea, Archbishop. He has an immigrant's zeal for American institutions." Spellman chuckled. "We natives understand there's a certain flexibility."

  Thuc shrugged. "It is only sensible to use the Church for aid. In my country only the Church is everywhere."

  "That's the point," O'Shea said. "That's why we've agreed."

  "And I'm going to depend on you, Peter Martin..." The archbishop's Western name jarred Michael, but he realized at once it shouldn't have. It was his version of an Oriental's plastic surgery on his eyes. "...to see that all goes well. President Kennedy does not want any confusion, any scandal. He wants to make an impact on the problem, and fast. That's why they're not waiting until the aid distribution structures are established between the governments."

  "You can depend on me, Eminenza. And on my family. You know that."

  Spellman nodded. "I told our secretary of state that Vietnam would be the only country in the world where the ruling class didn't get rich off Uncle Sam. He said to me, 'How can you be so sure of that, Cardinal Spellman?' And I said, 'Because Diem and his supporters are my people.' I told him, 'The Ngos are a great and ancient Catholic family. They're not lackey converts who submitted to baptism to win favor from the French.' I said, 'The Ngos are real Catholics, Mister Secretary. They're incorruptible men of their word, absolutely trustworthy.' And do you know what he said to me? He said, 'Your Eminence, your endorsement carries a lot of weight in this office.'"

  Monsignor O'Shea gestured with his unlit cigar. He was dying to smoke it, but Spellman wouldn't have it in the car. "Your Excellency," he said, "what the cardinal intends to emphasize, if I may speak..." O'Shea looked quickly at Spellman, who nodded. "...is the delicate position we are in. The new administration—a Catholic administration—has asked for assurance that the emergency aid program can efficiently and securely be administered through the structures of the Catholic Church. The last thing Jack Kennedy needs is a Church-related snafu, if you'receive my meaning. And no black market. We want your personal assurance, Excellency. You should understand Cardinal Spellman's position with his own government. We are talking tens of millions of dollars here. Cardinal Spellman is depending on your government and on your family, Excellency. But first he is depending on you. Does that state the case fairly, Your Eminence?" O'Shea plugged his mouth with his cigar.

  Spellman nodded briskly. "I go from here to Rome for Vatican approval. Caritas International will be the umbrella agency you'll relate to. It will be a Vatican-sponsored operation, but we'll all know where the relief is coming from. No one will mind the Church involvement if the hungry are fed and the naked clothed. Monsignor O'Shea will coordinate from our end. I have a meeting with Secretary Rusk as soon as I return. He wants my answer."

  "By all means, Eminenza. I give you all assurance you ask. My brothers and I already discussed this. We had indications you might be speaking of such subjects. We are agreed. Aid will continue to be distributed through the Church, under my supervision."

  Spellman stared at Thuc.

  Until Thuc added, "Not through the party."

  Spellman nodded. It was then Michael realized that this was the assurance the cardinal wanted. Michael didn't know it yet, but the party, the Revolutionary Personalist Labor Party of Vietnam, was the personal fiefdom of Diem's neurotic brother Nhu and already there were fears in Washington that he could not be controlled. The idea was to keep power tilted as much as possible away from him, even then. Thuc was seen to have a certain independence and they wanted to reinforce it.

  Michael had assumed that at some point during that car ride he'd be introduced to Thuc, but he wasn't. He was just the junior ADC in the front seat, the guy with the chauffeur. He wasn't supposed to contribute to the conversation, and he wasn't expected to listen. But he had listened, carefully. This was the beginning of his education in new realities.

  He felt somewhat awed when he realized what subtle brokering had been going on, and it excited him to see men like himself— Churchmen —in the thick of international power politics. Vietnam may have been a remote, backwater country, but it was a hell of a long way from Inwood. The more he saw of Spellman the more impressed he was. There was more to the man than the Saint Patrick's Day parades he presided over. If Diem had begun as his protege, wasn't it admirable that Spellman was still working to get him what he needed to succeed? This maneuvering had been going on for a decade or more. While Americans, including Michael, had r
egarded Spellman as an affable but essentially parochial builder of schools and hospitals, he had been building a nation. And Spellman now was like an architect returning for a supervisory check on the structure he'd designed and which was nearly complete. A new nation, and its symbol, a basilica, in fact. Yes, the architect, Michael saw. Tom Dooley was the patron saint. And because of the support generated by the cardinal and the doctor together, the guarantor of that Vietnamese triumph-in-the-making was now John Kennedy.

  The worldwide defeat of Communism would follow quickly upon the heels of the eradication of poverty and hunger, and this generation of Americans and Churchmen had made that their priority. That was why Kennedy excited men like Michael; he represented a country and a Church reinvigorated and on the move. He was the world's equivalent of Pope John. Pope John's hope and John Kennedy's urbane optimism infected the age, and the two strains they represented came together no more elegantly than in one movement, Tom Dooley's movement, and in one man, Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam. Michael remembered how, at his inauguration, just two days after Dooley's death, President Kennedy gave perfect expression to the ideals of the CRS and Medico and activist priests, he suddenly saw, like Spellman, O'Shea and even himself. They would go anywhere, to fight any foe, to pass on the torch of freedom, that God's work on earth might truly be their own.

  The convoy slowed as it approached the outskirts of Quang Tri.

  "Good Lord," Monsignor O'Shea said. The car had just rounded a curve leaving the thick green tangle of jungle behind. The land on either side of the road had been cleared for planting, but the fields were jammed with Vietnamese, thousands of them. The rain poured steadily off their conical hats, veiling their faces with sheets of water. The people waved and cheered, holding aloft rosaries and crucifixes, medals of the Virgin and rain-streaked pictures of the Sacred Heart. The closer the convoy drew to the city, the more solidly packed the crowd was and the louder their cheers became. Umbrellas began to appear as city-dwellers began to outnumber the peasants.