Vatican Vendetta: A thrilling battle of power and politics

by Peter Watson

  It had been a mortar attack, mounted from – of all places – a nearby churchyard. The church, it turned out, contained the entrance to a seventeenth-century secret passage which exited in a cave a quarter of a mile away. Locals had known about the passage but, for some reason, the security men had not been told. The cave was outside the security ring drawn up around Ardglass, but the churchyard was within range, as the tragedy proved.

  It was, however, the motive for the attack that chilled David. It wasn’t just a random attack on a British minister. The IRA had delivered an ‘official’ statement by telephone to the Irish Times in Dublin late on Sunday night. Using a special code word to prove his identity, the telephone spokesman said the attack was in retaliation for ‘The cowardly way in which Protestant construction firms in Northern Ireland have responded with arson and murder to simple commercial competition on the part of Catholic building firms in the area’. It was a clear reference to the fire in Belfast when the night watchman had been burned to death. And to the St Patrick’s Fund.

  Ned, when David reached him, was well enough, considering the circumstances. The school were not pressing him to attend classes, but he still shared a room with the same boy they had chosen to help him through the worst of his depression. Everyone was conscious that the episode could trigger Ned’s illness all over again, but the headmaster judged – quite rightly in David’s view – that Ned needed some familiar routine to his life.

  When David arrived, around lunchtime on Monday, he found Ned not in his study but in the school workshop, alone save for an assistant master. He was sitting at a high bench with a mass of gold wire in front of him. David could see that Ned had been crying but, when he arrived, the boy seemed absorbed in what he was doing. Clearly working with his hands gave him comfort.

  David stood by his son and put his arm around him. Ned, still seated on his workbench, leaned into his father. After a moment, David felt Ned’s body shake with silent sobs. For minutes, father and son remained there, unmoving, unwatched.

  At length, David murmured gently, ‘The school say you may come home if you like, or you can remain here and I’ll stay in the town. It’s up to you.’

  Ned reached into his pocket for a handkerchief. He didn’t have one: David gave him his. Ned wiped his eyes and blew his nose. ‘I’d feel lonely in London, Dad. Can you stay here?’

  ‘Sure,’ David said quietly. ‘I’ve already booked into the George Hotel, so I can see you every day.’

  Outside the weather was fine so they decided to go for a walk. Across the playing fields, into the woods, then towards the river. David wasn’t so sure that this was a good idea but Ned seemed to know where he was going so his father said nothing. They walked for two hours that afternoon and went without lunch. At first David thought his son should get something to eat but then he realized Ned was trying to tire himself out, so he could sleep. They parted around four with Ned already in bed. David left the hotel phone number with the housemaster and went back to the George. His own way of coping with grief was much the same as Ned’s: busy-ness. He called Sally at the office for his messages and then spent a couple of hours on the phone, catching up, before he got through to Bess in Italy. It was good to have her to talk to and this made him realize how alone Ned was. He had no brothers or sisters to share his feelings with, and no one like Bess.

  In his room in the George on that Monday night David tried to gauge his own reaction to Sarah’s killing. He tried to put some order into his feelings. It took him quite a while to admit to himself that he didn’t actually have many. He was sorry for Sarah, that was true enough. But he felt no panic about what he was going to do without her. His main thoughts concerned the effect her death would have on Ned. He would need to call Dr Wilde tomorrow to find out what reaction to expect.

  David also admitted to himself, cautiously at first, that if his first thought had been for Ned, his second had been that he was now free to marry Bess – whatever the Holy Father said. It was a disgraceful reaction, he told himself, and he put it out of his mind, reflecting, as he got undressed, how quickly a relationship dies. That was what made him saddest, in fact. That his feelings about Sarah’s death were no stronger.

  Lying in bed he had a third reaction. Perhaps he was hypersensitive, since he worked for the St Patrick’s Fund himself, but he knew that sooner or later other people would make the connection he had already made. That Sarah’s death had been, however indirectly, provoked by the fund. The fund had helped to create the conditions under which Foley’s flourished at the expense of Protestant firms. You couldn’t blame Thomas: the link was indirect and the fund had done a great deal of good in the province. But you could say that Thomas was indirectly responsible for Sarah’s death, just as you could say that David was too, since he helped administer the fund himself. The news from Nicaragua, the slump in Vatican attendances, and now this murder in Northern Ireland were all bad blows for Thomas, ammunition for his enemies. If Bess was right and the Syrians did mount an attack on Beirut soon, that might be another area where the pontiff would come under fire. It was ironic – worse, it was tragic – that Thomas should face such a prospect so soon after his triumphant tour in America . . . David fell asleep.

  Next day Ned seemed more subdued. David was worried. He’d called Anthony Wilde but the psychiatrist was away on holiday. This time Ned and David went for a ride. They drove up on to Salisbury Plain, about three quarters of an hour away, where it was windswept and the sky was vaster. Ned’s eyes had taken on a staring quality which perturbed David. ‘Are you sure you want to stay at school, Ned? Wouldn’t you rather go abroad somewhere?’

  ‘No.’

  That’s how it was all day. A one-sided conversation.

  David didn’t want to leave his son after their drive but there were things he had to do. Everyone was being very understanding in his London office but David was chief executive. He couldn’t just stop working. It was a busy time, too: mid July. The season was winding down and there was a lot to get out of the way before the summer arrived. For one thing, in the wake of the Dead Sea Scrolls’ sale, opposition to the royal sale had intensified in Britain. It had, in fact, passed into the public’s general consciousness. Everyone in Britain knew the sale was coming in the autumn, and everyone English knew there was vigorous opposition to it. That opposition showed itself in a variety of ways. For example, with the arrival of summer a new crop of T-shirts made its appearance. They depicted details of paintings the Queen intended to auction with, underneath them, the words: ‘Don’t sell me!’

  David stayed at the George until Sarah’s funeral, which was on Friday in her home village of Kingsparish in Somerset, where her mother still lived. David and Ned drove down together. It was a bleak day of rain and wind as if the English summer was already over. With Ned’s heavy silence next to him, David needed to fill the car with sound. He switched on the radio and turned it to an all-news channel. As they swept down the M4, it soon became clear that the Syrian push in Lebanon had finally started. The fighting was heavy.

  David had always got on well with Sarah’s mother, who felt her daughter had treated him badly. And she adored Ned. So that part of the day was comforting. But Greener was there and that was more awkward. He was swathed in bandages from the blast.

  Still, watching the coffin being lowered into the ground, all four of them, David, Ned, Sarah’s mother and Greener, found a sense of community in their sorrow. David held one of Ned’s hands, Sarah’s mother held the other.

  In the car on the way back to London Ned said: ‘Do you believe in God, Dad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I talked about it a lot with mother. We couldn’t see the point.’

  They drove on in silence.

  Then Ned said, ‘I don’t believe in religion. It doesn’t tell you things. It doesn’t help you to understand things.’

  ‘But at least you enjoyed meeting the Pope.’

&nb
sp; ‘That was great. But all that money the Pope gives away, dad. The fund thing you work for. It’s terrific and you’ve got to do it, but it’s bound to go wrong.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Charity can’t replace politics, Dad.’

  ‘You think that’s what the Holy Father is trying to do?’

  ‘I reckon he’s aiming too high. Charity should help twos or threes, little groups of people who can’t help themselves, like the disabled say, or the blind.’

  ‘What about the poor?’

  ‘Difficult. They’re not really a group. They’re different in each place where there’s poverty. Can I have a Coke, Dad? I’m thirsty.’

  They stopped at a garage shop. David bought the Coke, filled the car with petrol, and they drove on.

  David wasn’t sure, when he reflected on this exchange, what it added up to. But it made him uneasy. Ned was obviously grieving for his mother but, that apart, he had decided views about Thomas and his schemes, had probably discussed them in class at school. He, David, had been given a glimpse of how the rest of the world might see the Holy Father’s activities. Not for the first time, it occurred to him that Thomas’s programme was complicated and its effects were fearfully unpredictable. Massoni had been right about that. After David had dropped Ned off at his school he called Bess from the hotel. He couldn’t get through at first but, around nine, ten in Rome, he tracked her down to Gina’s.

  ‘How was the funeral?’ she asked.

  ‘As grim as funerals always are. But Ned stood up well. Amazing how resilient children are – more than adults at times, I think. We had an interesting chat in the car on the way back. Just as amazing what goes on in young minds. But forget all that for the moment; what’s your news from Beirut? Is it as bad as the BBC says it is?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what the BBC’s saying but it’s bad, darling, very bad. The Syrian attack was savage, and around lunchtime the Israelis joined in. Two Israeli planes have been shot down and seven Syrian Migs. I’m told there are burning armoured personnel carriers everywhere – and the Christians really took a battering: heavy artillery, rockets, strafing from planes – you wouldn’t believe the smoke and the rubble. And – this is the worst from our point of view – a very careful destruction of all the clinics and the camps that Thomas had built months ago.’

  ‘How’s he taking it?’

  She sighed heavily. David could hear Gina shouting orders in the background. ‘Part of him knows that what’s beginning to be said in some quarters has some truth to it – that he is, in a sense, responsible for all the things that have gone wrong lately.’ Her voice changed. ‘Yet the biggest part is still the old Holy Father, the crusader, the American who believes that what he’s doing is right and who’s determined to fight for it.

  ‘Ironically, we’ve had two pieces of good news today. The China trip has finally been agreed. He’s going there in November – while the American election is on as a matter of fact. Even more exciting, you remember Thomas created a new cardinal in petto, in secret, some time ago? In Eastern Europe.’

  ‘Yes, yes I do.’

  ‘We now have a secret report from Hungary. The number of people receiving mass has nearly doubled in the past year. Apparently Thomas’s appointment of the cardinal really sparked something. An enormous underground movement seems to be growing and the authorities are furious.’

  ‘That’s good to hear. So what now?’

  ‘Thomas is giving a general audience next week. He will announce the China agreement, and the developments behind the Iron Curtain. And then, despite what I have been telling him, he is determined to go forward with this Vietnam offer.’

  ‘You mean the flood relief?’

  ‘Right. He’s sending ten million dollars, David. Ten million. The Americans won’t buy it. He’s going to destroy all the fruits of that marvellous tour. Think what Massoni will make of that in his newspaper column. And you haven’t heard the worst yet!’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I was at a reception at the Villa Stritch the other night. That’s where all the senior Americans attached to the Vatican live. One of the curial priests there, who works in the Secretariat of State, had heard the rumours about the Vietnam gift. And he reminded me of something I had forgotten. Dong An, where the dam and the mine are, is not fifty miles from Da Nang. Does it ring any bells?’

  ‘No. Should it?’

  ‘If you were an American it might. Da Nang is where Roskill’s son was killed in the Vietnam war. Thomas is going to help the people who killed the President’s son.’

  *

  Thomas delivered his statement, about Russia, China and the Vietnam flood relief, just as Bess said he would. The Wednesday audience was packed, the Nervi hall brimming with pilgrims. Scores of children, the lame and the sick were brought to him for his blessing. This included a party of blind schoolgirls from Brazil, from a special school in Rio. When they arrived, late, there were no seats left so His Holiness had them brought to the stage where they were allowed to sit at his feet while he made his speech and afterwards prayed with them.

  His speech that day, the vivid words he used to describe the plight of secret Catholics in the Eastern Bloc – he called them the ‘Invisible Vatican’ – was, for those present, a moving experience. But for the American journalists in the Nervi hall, his speech had a rather different impact, and one that Bess had accurately foreseen.

  The Chicago Sun-Times headed its report: ‘Cash for the Cong: Pope’s Bad Taste Gift’. The New York Daily News went further, with ‘Pope Tom, the Saigon Sugardaddy’. Bess was in despair. She felt she had let the Holy Father down. She should have argued more convincingly for him not to make the Vietnam gift. But it was too late now.

  Roskill was the man she most feared and he offered no reaction until the following Saturday when he made one of his regular radio broadcasts from his Camp David retreat. Then, in the course of a rambling tour around foreign affairs, he said: ‘One world leader whose foreign policy is attracting a lot of attention at the moment is Pope Thomas. Since he has held high office, His Holiness has changed the face of contemporary diplomacy. Some of his actions have been of great benefit to mankind. The hope, and material assistance he has given to many of the world’s victims has been an inspiration to us all. But even the Pope, as I am sure His Holiness would be the first to admit, cannot do everything. Neither is he, in secular matters, always infallible. We have seen already that his interventions in Florida, Northern Ireland, Beirut and Nicaragua have produced side-effects that have been – well, unfortunate is a generous word for them.

  ‘But it is a more recent initiative that I wish to talk about today. I refer to His Holiness’s decision, revealed last Wednesday, to send ten million dollars for the relief of distress recently caused by the collapse of a large hydroelectric dam in Vietnam. Now, I’m not a hard man and can sympathize, as all Americans can sympathize, with hardship wherever it occurs, and no matter who the victims are. At the same time we have a wise tradition here in the United States which teaches us to look after our friends and our friends’ interests. Likewise, we expect our friends to look after us and to remember our interests and take them into account. And I am bound to say that this gift to Vietnam does not seem to me to be the act of a friend. There are many Americans alive who fought in Vietnam and who still bear the scars of the wounds they received. And there are many, I count myself among this number, who lost loved ones in the years of war there and whose sense of loss will never be erased. The whole nation, this great nation, still hurts from the trauma of that time.

  ‘I cannot believe that His Holiness Pope Thomas intended to hurt and humiliate the American people by this action. But I say this: we are hurt, we are humiliated. We wish our friends to stand by us, just as we would wish to stand by them. And I conclude with this thought for His Holiness: by all means pursue your charity work . . . but maybe you should bring that charity just a little nearer home.’

  Outside Ame
rica, however, the Pope’s gift was seen in a very different light, as evidence that Thomas really was intent on helping the afflicted, of whatever religion. Given the one-time French presence in Indo-China, there were those who suspected Thomas of trying to stimulate a religious revival in Vietnam, as he was doing in the Eastern Bloc. But in general the money was seen as an immensely practical way of solving a serious problem.

  David read Roskill’s speech in Monday’s International Herald Tribune in Rome. Ned himself had suggested that, after two weeks at the George, his father have a weekend away. He gave David a packet for Bess. ‘It’s a new brooch. I . . . I never got a chance to give mum hers . . . so I unwound the gold wire and remade it for Bess.’

  David was touched. He had been in two minds about whether to leave his son. But Wilde, now back from holiday, had offered to visit Ned and it was the weekend of the school play so there was plenty for the boy to get involved in.

  David wanted to be in Rome not only to see Bess, and to discuss their own changed circumstances in the light of Sarah’s death, but also to spend some more time in the archive. If he didn’t keep at it, he would never solve the damn Leonardo mystery.

  As was their habit, David and Bess had dinner at Gina’s. A crowd was watching the television in the back of the bar, leaving them to themselves. Bess was wearing a green silk shirt made up from the roll David had bought her in Burano.

  Before he could raise the subject of marriage, Bess got in first. ‘What do you think of these?’ She held up her wrists to reveal a pair of gold cufflinks.

  ‘Very pretty,’ said David, a trifle impatiently. ‘A gift? From your mother?’

  ‘No. There’s more to these than meets the eye.’ She leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘After the Pimental business, we’ve all been issued with anti-kidnap devices. Minute radio transmitters. These are mine.’