Vatican Vendetta: A thrilling battle of power and politics

by Peter Watson

  At the first press conference, given later that day, Brodie was robust in defence of the way Cardinal Pimental had been barred entry. ‘We naturally sympathize with the difficult situation in which the Archbishop of New York and the Holy Father find themselves. But there’s just one point I would like to make in this press briefing, which will explain the FBI’s position in this matter and also address the kidnappers, in case they are watching.

  ‘The Justice Department’s reason for not allowing Cardinal Pimental to enter the country is that the kidnappers – and now I speak directly to them – have said they will deal only with the Vatican. Now, in our view, this crime occurred in the first place only because Cardinal Pimental was kidnapped in Nicaragua and was released after a ransom had been paid. The Vatican claims it sent him here because, on account of that experience, he would now make an excellent negotiator. To us, however, it seems that his presence here might signal to the kidnappers that the Vatican is ready to surrender yet again. And, I have to tell you, there will be no surrender in this case.

  ‘I have to tell you also that the taxi in which the abduction of Cardinal Rich took place has now been found. It has been tested for fingerprints, and one set belongs to an individual whose prints were last found at Oakland airport in Oregon – that’s right, we believe this gang of kidnappers is the same as the gang of illegal immigrants from Sicily who caused an airsmash at Oakland in an effort to extort money from the airport authorities there. The President, therefore, feels very strongly that this case should be handled by the FBI – and I agree with him. This is not just a case of kidnapping: these men are wanted for other crimes too. The kidnappers can talk to Naughton, but they will have to deal with me.’

  The first call came later that night. A man asked for Archbishop Naughton and then, almost immediately, Rich’s voice was heard. ‘This is John Rich, speaking on tape. You will be trying to trace this call so my message has to be brief. I am treated as well as can be expected. The price is twelve million dollars. The next call, tomorrow, will be to Rome, the Vatican. You will know who it is: he will use the code: Punta Raisi. The answer must be yes or no. No in-betweens.’ The line went dead.

  ‘Shit!’ said Brodie. ‘They’re trying to sidestep us. Time I called the President.’

  The President’s orders were clear, if dangerously unorthodox. ‘Don’t alert the Vatican. Don’t let Naughton contact Rome. Keep it in America. Those bastards blew up an American plane on American soil – they’re not going to get round us by talking to the Europeans. Keep everyone in the dark.’

  Brodie raised his eyebrows, but did as he was told. He even slept in the archbishop’s office. A coffee machine joined the telephone taps near the window. No one was allowed in or out of the residence.

  All next day Bess called Naughton every hour, on Thomas’s behalf, but was never put through. At about half past three in the afternoon, Rome time, a Vatican operator took a call from someone calling himself Punta Raisi but he hung up, thinking the man was a crank.

  By dinner time in Rome, when Bess still had nothing to report, Thomas decided to call the President. Bess placed the call for Thomas and was quickly put through to Cranham Hope. The President was with his Chief of Staff at the Pentagon and could not be disturbed. But Hope said he would call back in an hour or so.

  Bess wondered whether it was true or the President was just being difficult.

  An hour later, almost to the minute, the phone in Thomas’s private study began to flash. Bess took the call, recognized Hope’s voice, and handed the receiver to Thomas. ‘Mr President, thank you for calling back.’ There were no pleasantries. Thomas smoked as he talked. ‘That’s right, no news. That’s why I called you. As your advisors must have told you, the longer a kidnap goes on with no news, the bleaker the situation. I want to try a change of tack. Yes, I realize it is an internal US matter. You have made your view on that perfectly clear. But what I am saying is that your approach obviously isn’t working – hear me out, Mr President, please.’

  Thomas took a deep breath, pulled on his cigarette. ‘You may recall that when I toured America some time ago you asked a favour of me regarding the Philippine Islands. I obliged. I also said there would come a time when you could return the favour. That time has now come. I would like you to let me play this kidnap my way. We need to reestablish contact. If you are right and the kidnappers are Sicilian, maybe we can contact their friends or relatives on the island and bring them into the negotiations. It’s worth a try, surely. So that is the favour I ask, Mr President. That you step back, pull Mr Brodie off the case, and leave it to me.’

  Bess watched Thomas as he listened to the President’s reply. The Holy Father’s hand gripped the receiver tightly. Gently, he scratched the side of his nose with his other hand. His eyes seemed to focus on an area somewhere in front of his shoes. He bit his lower lip. The cigarette burned, unsmoked in his fingers. Then, very slowly, without saying anything, he lowered the receiver. Bess could hear the President’s voice still coming from the earpiece until, gently but firmly, Thomas placed it back in its cradle. The Holy Father got to his feet and went to the window. The tufo, the sound of the Rome traffic, seemed especially loud tonight.

  Bess tried to make it easy for him. ‘He’d forgotten his promise, I suppose?’

  Thomas turned back. ‘Oh no, he remembered all right. But he said he wasn’t keeping his promise. He said the election was too close to let a – and then he blasphemed – Pope interfere again. Then he laughed and said I could hear his confession after it was all over. I don’t know what else he said. I put the phone down before he had finished.’

  Four thousand miles away, Roskill was barking down the direct line to the archbishop’s residence in New York. ‘That Pope hung up on me! D’ya hear that Brod? The man hung up! No one hangs up on me! Nofuckingbody! Anyway, that settles it. If there’s any comeback I can always say he refused to cooperate.’

  Brodie grinned into the phone. He enjoyed a fight, especially when he knew in advance he was on the winning side. He put the phone down and ordered some dinner. The archbishop’s residence wasn’t too far from Daniel’s Deli on 49th and Lex so he sent out for some pastrami and pickles and a six pack of Miller light. Then he settled down to wait. The FBI was good at that.

  It was another twenty-eight hours before there was any news. And then it didn’t come over the phone. There were no more telephone calls from the kidnappers in the matter of John Rich. Just before dawn the next night a motorist in the Park Avenue tunnel between 40th Street and 31st Street noticed what looked like a bundle of rags laid out along the edge of the driveway. At first he took it to be a tramp, trying to keep warm in the October nights. But the tunnel was too dangerous for that, surely. He slowed, and saw the tiny patch of white collar at the man’s throat. An avid reader of newspapers and magazines, the driver braked to a halt. He had a dreadful feeling he had stumbled on the fringe of an historic event. He was right. With a curiously excited shudder, he recognized the dirty, mutilated and dead face of Cardinal John Rich.

  *

  David was already in Rome when the news of Rich’s death came through. He was with Bess, lunching at Gina’s when she was called to the phone. From where he was sitting he couldn’t hear what was said, but he could see the change that came over her face.

  She came back to the table physically altered by the news, and close to tears. ‘I’m frightened, David. This battle between Roskill and Thomas has become very personal, very bitter. And it has cost John Rich his life.’

  David said nothing, but put his hand over hers across the table. She was again wearing the green shirt made from the Venetian silk he had bought her. He hoped it wasn’t always going to bring her bad luck.

  ‘Thomas was so close to John Rich. He had an anti-kidnap device – sewn into the lining of his skull cap. It must have been dislodged.’ She sighed. ‘Thomas will be shattered.’ For a moment she seemed lost in a private memory. David too was shocked. He had liked John Rich.


  ‘Thomas has been changed by Roskill, you know,’ said Bess. ‘He never intended they should fight, it’s just developed that way. But Thomas will never be the same again. And I reckon he’ll blame Roskill personally for Rich’s death.’ She moved her other hand so that David’s was held between both of hers. ‘I’m worried what might happen now.’

  David said softly, ‘Roskill might lose a lot of support, don’t forget, for messing up the kidnap. It could damage his campaign.’

  A waiter brought the pasta they had ordered but Bess no longer felt like eating. ‘The way things are, David,’ she said after the waiter had gone, ‘I don’t think Thomas will wait long enough to see how Roskill’s standing is affected. We’re meeting this afternoon, officially to consider Cardinal Rich’s funeral. But I’ll bet Thomas will sound us out on his next move against the President.’

  ‘Next move? What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t want to say. It’s too frightening. A couple of nights ago he and Rosill had a very ugly telephone conversation. And just after he’d put the receiver down Thomas muttered something. I only half heard and I didn’t like it. But I’ve an idea it may crop up again this afternoon.’

  ‘But what is it? What are you talking about?’

  Bess shook her head and would not be budged. Later David drove her to the Porta Sant’ Anna in the Vatican, for her meeting. Then he went back to the flat and, after reading for half an hour or so, fell asleep.

  He fell asleep feeling sorry for Bess and not a little guilty. The fact was that, before the appalling news about Rich had come through, he had had a very exciting morning in the Secret Archive. The file of Giacomo Salai, the most unprepossessing of Leonardo’s assistants, had in the end proved the most productive. Buried within it had been a scrap of paper which, though innocuous enough in itself, stood out, given David’s line of interest. On the paper was a small drawing. It didn’t look much, it showed a woman’s head. She had heavy eyelids and looked down. She appeared contented and sad at the same time. This was exactly the pose of the Virgin in both the Paris and the London ‘Virgin of the Rocks’. But what also drew David’s attention was a small outline of a spoon alongside. Leonardo had occasionally done this to represent amounts of pigment to be used – he had designed his own measuring spoon. The figures next to the spoon therefore represented the proportions of various colours. Scribbled alongside the spoon was the word ‘carne’ – flesh – and a set of figures. What made David sweat with excitement was that the writing was back-to-front, mirror writing, and apparently in da Vinci’s hand. What he had, so it seemed to him, was a new da Vinci sketch, albeit small and crude, and – possibly more important – the master’s formula for the flesh tones of the Virgin in the ‘Virgin of the Rocks’. What was doubly exciting was that David knew the Paris and London versions of the painting differed markedly in their flesh tones. If he was right, and this was a page of Leonardo’s notebooks that had got caught up with Salai’s things, then he might just be able to settle the origins of the two paintings once and for all. And there was more. An archivist had noted on the Salai file that other Salai documents were located, not in the Secret Archive, but in the library of the Montaforno family in the Palazzo Montaforno in Rome. The Montafornos had been a Milanese family who during the Renaissance had provided the Church with a Pope and several cardinals. They had presumably been patrons of Salai. David would have to check their archives.

  This was the excitement that had tired him. Bess’s distress also had an effect and David’s sleep was troubled. He dreamed a vivid tale about a painting which kept changing. To begin with it represented the bridge Ned had jumped from, only in the dream the river flowed not with water, but with molten lava from an underwater volcano. Then the bridge disappeared and he saw Roskill in a pulpit, floating in the river of lava and preaching. Suddenly Sam Averne came drifting down the lava on one of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions which turned into a helicopter and flew away. The helicopter flew right by him, its blades making a knocking sound which grew louder and louder until they woke him and he realised that Bess was banging on the door: she did not have her key.

  Immediately he was awake. When he let her in he could see that she had been crying. He took her coat and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Bess, darling, what is it? What’s happened?’

  She turned and put her arms around his waist, pressing the side of her head to his chest. He could smell her hair and tears. ‘Oh David, it’s awful. I can’t get to Thomas any more. I’ve never seen him so angry. He’s gone all quiet inside. I don’t know what to do. He won’t take any advice, just says his mind is made up.’

  ‘Made up? What do you mean? Made up about what?’

  ‘We hardly discussed the funeral. He’s obsessed with Roskill. Do you know what the kidnappers are saying? They’re saying it’s Roskill’s fault that poor John Rich died. They’re saying Roskill kept us in the dark about the fact that they wanted to deal with us here in Rome. Apparently, they told the FBI man in New York they were going to call us here – they even gave him a code so we could warn our switchboard to put the call through quickly. But Roskill wanted to keep the negotiating in the USA so badly he forbade the FBI man to let anybody tell us. He’s denying it now, of course, but the call really did come through – we checked with the switchboard. And as the operator wasn’t prepared, he didn’t recognize the code so he just hung up.’ The tears started again. ‘It’s wicked.’

  David hugged her. ‘At least if this is true, Roskill’s wrecked his election chances. So what is it Thomas is going to do? What can he do?’

  ‘The worst thing possible. At least for a Catholic. He’s going to excommunicate him.’

  *

  Thomas did not stop at excommunication. Besides releasing the momentous news, the Vatican Press Office also, unusually, revealed the Holy Father’s reasons. It explained how, on the night before Rich’s body had been found, the President and the Holy Father had talked on the telephone. The Vatican statement explained that the President had blasphemed at the Pope and then, in the Holy Father’s view, had deliberately withheld crucial information which could have saved Rich’s life. Instead, Roskill had put politics ahead of humanitarian, Christian compassion. The press communique concluded that James Roskill had forfeited the right to receive the blessed sacraments of the Catholic Church. The excommunication was designed, as was all excommunication, to bring the offender back to God’s ways.

  Naturally, all eyes turned to Roskill. But, as had happened once before, after Thomas announced relief for the Vietnamese dam victims, the President suddenly became inaccessible. He avoided press conferences and cancelled several meetings of his campaign tour.

  Around the world many people, especially in non-Christian countries, were puzzled by Thomas’s action in excommunicating Roskill. Others vaguely approved. Excommunication implied a judgement on the American President which no one else was able to make. Many had not been happy with the way the President seemed to have handled the kidnap. There was a difference between resolve and foolhardiness. Anyone could be implacable: negotiations, on the other hand, involved judgement and Roskill hadn’t shown any. John Rich had been on a mission to help the victims of bigotry, and Roskill had sacrificed him with hardly a thought.

  Those who disapproved of what Thomas had done came mainly from Europe and America, where politicians were accustomed to being treated with respect. Many Americans, who privately may have thought Roskill’s handling of the kidnap rather swaggering, nonetheless could not stomach foreign condemnation, especially from such an anachronistic source as the Vatican.

  In one city above all others there was unanimous opposition to what Thomas had done: Rome itself. The Italian government, never a friend of Thomas’s, knew it didn’t matter that the Pope was himself American: in America the Pope was Italy, and sooner or later, American public opinion would turn against Italy for what the Holy Father had done. And yet he was a Pope who spent almost as much time on his travels as he did in their city, and
whose foreign policy was much better known than the government’s. It was too much.

  The Italian parliament debated Thomas’s action in an emergency motion, and deplored it officially in a vote in which the only opposition came, ironically, from the Communists. That in turn made headlines in America, that only the communists in Italy appeared to support the Pope.

  Massoni weighed in, of course. His column, syndicated around the world, was headlined: ‘Excommunicate me!’ He wrote that, not for the first time, he agreed with the actions of the US President and not with those of the Pope. Admittedly on this occasion the President’s judgement had ended in tragedy: that was very sad but it was not a sin. Massoni then went on to ask Thomas where His Holiness thought sin started. The Bible, he reminded Thomas, said that one could sin in one’s heart. He concluded: ‘Since I agree with what the US President, James Roskill, has done, then in a sense, if he has sinned, I too have sinned. Indeed, I have committed the same sin. Will His Holiness therefore now excommunicate me and the thousands and thousands who agree with me? Has he the strength, the will, the support, the authority? And if he won’t excommunicate me, why then did he excommunicate the President?’

  Thomas ignored him.

  The news from the White House, when it came, was a surprise. There was no speech. In fact, there was no formal announcement of any kind. There was no need: Roskill knew how to make an impact. Instead, on the Friday of that week, journalists who were following Roskill on the campaign trail were given his last itinerary before the election on the following Tuesday. Distracting them completely from the question of the kidnapper’s telephone call, this showed an item for the Sunday which read: six-thirty a.m: Celebration of Holy Mass, Washington, Georgetown Cathedral.