God's Spy

by Juan Gomez-jurado

  “Thank you, Sister. Go ahead with Antun, because I am going to need a few things. Tell him that I will rejoin you in five minutes.”

  Dante took that to mean that their meeting with Casey was over.

  “Thank you for everything, Your Eminence. We’re ready to leave now.”

  “You don’t know how sorry I am. The novena masses will be celebrated in churches all over Rome and in thousands of others throughout the world they will be praying for the soul of our Holy Father. It’s an immense undertaking and I am not going to step back from it just because somebody shoved me.”

  Paola was about to say something, but Fowler discreetly grabbed her elbow and she swallowed her question. She too waved good-bye to the cardinal. Just when they were about to exit his room, the cardinal asked them a very compromising question.

  “Does this man have anything to do with the disappearances?”

  Dante turned around very slowly to respond to the cardinal’s question, ladling thick syrup onto every syllable.

  “Absolutely not, Your Eminence. It’s nothing more than a provocateur. Probably one of those young people caught up in the antiglobalization movement. They frequently dress up in order to attract more attention, as you already know.”

  The cardinal sat up a little bit more, until he was now upright on the bed. He was facing the nun.

  “There is a rumor running around among a few of my brother cardinals that two of the most preeminent figures of the Curia are not going to participate in the conclave. I hope that both of them are well.”

  “Where did you hear this, Your Eminence?” Paola was surprised. In her lifetime she had heard only one voice that was so smooth, so sweet and humble as the one Dante employed in his question to the cardinal.

  “Ah, my child, at my age one forgets many things, such as who whispered what between the main course and dessert. But I can assure you that I am not the only one who knows it.”

  “Your Eminence, most assuredly it is only a baseless rumor. If you will forgive us, we must get busy looking for the agitator.”

  “I hope you find him quickly. Too many disturbances are taking place in the Vatican already, and perhaps this is the time to change the direction of our security policy.”

  Casey’s veiled threat, as well concealed under a sugary glaze as was Dante’s, did not pass unnoticed. It froze the blood in Paola’s veins, and she was someone who detested every member of the Vigilanza she knew.

  Sister Helena left the room with the others and continued down the hallway ahead of them. A heavyset cardinal was waiting for her at the stairway. It was Pauljic, and the two of them walked down to the next floor together.

  As soon as Paola saw Sister Helena’s back disappear, she turned around to face Dante, a mocking look on her face.

  “It seems your damage control isn’t working quite as well as you thought.”

  “I swear to you I don’t understand it.” Dante had a weary expression on his face. “At least we can hope they don’t know the real reason. That will not be possible later on. As things stand now, even Casey could be the next man to wear the red sandals.”

  “At the very least, the cardinals know that something strange is going on. In all sincerity, nothing would make me happier than if the whole bloody mess blew up in your face so we could do our job the way it should be done.”

  Dante was just about to tear into her when someone came up the marble stairway. Carlo Troi had decided to send the one man he considered the best and most discreet of UACV’s personnel.

  “Good afternoon, everyone.”

  “Good afternoon, Direttore Troi.”

  The time had come to take a close look at Karosky’s latest piece of theater.

  FBI ACADEMY

  Quantico, Virginia August 22, 1999

  “Come in, come in. I suppose you know who I am, yes?”

  For Paola, meeting Robert Weber made her feel the same way an Egyptologistwould if Ramses II had invited her to tea. She walked into the conferenceroom, where the famous criminologist was handing out grades to the four students who had taken the course. He had been retired for ten years, but his footsteps still inspired a reverential respect in the FBI hallways. He was the man who had revolutionized forensic science by creating a new method of tracking down criminals: the psychological profile. In the highly selective course that the FBI offered, the purpose of which was to develop new talents in various parts of the world, he was always in charge of giving student assessments. He made a tremendous impression on students, who were able to sit face to face with someone they greatly admired.

  “Of course I know you, sir. I have to tell you—”

  “Yes, I know already. It’s an honor to know me. Blah blah blah. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that phrase, I’d be a rich man.”

  The criminologist’s nose was buried in a thick folder. Paola stuck a hand in her pants pocket and took out a crumpled bill, which she handed to Weber.

  “It’s an honor to meet you.”

  Weber looked at the bill and started to laugh. It was a one-dollar bill. He put his hand out and took it. He smoothed it out and put it in his coat pocket.

  “Don’t wrinkle the bills, Ms. Dicanti. They are the property of the United States Treasury.”

  But he smiled, pleased by the young woman’s quick-witted response.

  “I’ll remember that, sir.”

  Weber’s face became serious, strict. It was the moment of truth, and every word that followed was like a hammer blow to his young student.

  “You’re weak, Ms. Dicanti. You slipped by on the minimum in the physicaltests and target practice. You’ve got no character. You fall apart quickly. You give in right away. You put up roadblocks against adversity all too easily.”

  Paola was shocked. That a living legend knocks the stuffing out of you in less than a minute is a very difficult thing to accept. It’s even worse when his hard-nosed tone reveals that he lacks even the faintest sympathy for you.

  “You don’t reason. That’s OK, but you have got to make use of what you have inside. And to do that, you have to invent. Make things up, Ms. Dicanti.Don’t follow the manuals to the letter. Improvise, and you’ll see. And be more diplomatic. Here are your final evaluations. Open it after you leave the room.”

  Paola took the envelope from Weber with trembling hands and opened the door, grateful to be able to get out of there.

  “One more thing, Ms. Dicanti. What is the serial killer’s real motive?”

  “His hunger to kill, which he cannot control.”

  The old criminologist shook his head.

  “You’ll find out what it is when you get to the place where you ought to be. You’re not there yet. You’re thinking just like the books again, young lady. Can you fathom the torment that makes a person commit murder?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Sometimes you have to forget all about psychiatric treatises. The true motive is the body. Analyze his work and you will know the artist. The first thing you do when you enter a crime scene is get inside his head.”

  Dicanti ran back to her apartment and threw herself into the bathtub. When she had summoned sufficient peace of mind, she opened the envelope. It took her a little while to comprehend what she read.

  She had received the highest score possible on all parts of the course work. And a valuable lesson too: nothing is what it seems.

  DOMUS SANCTAE MARTHAE

  Piazza Santa Marta, 1 Thursday, April 7, 2005, 5:49 P.M.

  It was just over an hour since the killer had escaped. Paola could still feel his presence in the room, like someone inhaling fumes, metallic and invisible. If she was speaking with others, she was always utterly rational regarding serial killers. That was easy to do, voicing her opinions from inside a comfortable, carpeted office. And that was where she was, most of the time.

  It was a very different thing to walk into a room, taking care not to step in the blood on the floor. Not just to avoid contaminating the scene of the crime. T
he principal motive for not walking around carelessly was that the damned blood would ruin a good pair of shoes forever.

  And the soul with it.

  It had been nearly three years since Director Troi had personally performed the work at a crime scene. Paola suspected he was coming to a degree of involvement where he needed to score points with the Vatican authorities. He really had nothing to gain with his Italian superiors. The whole subject had to be kept under wraps.

  He had walked in first, and then Paola. The others remained behind in the hallway, staring ahead vacantly and feeling uncomfortable. Dicanti heard Dante and Fowler exchange a few words—more than a few of them, she thought, and not exactly civil in tone—but she made every effort to focus on what was inside the room and not on what she had left outside.

  Paola stood by the door, letting Troi go through his routine. First the forensic photographs: one from each corner of the room, from above the body, from every possible side angle, and finally, one of every possible element the investigator might consider relevant. When all was said and done, more than seventy bursts of light illuminated the scene in shades of unreality, blanching the scene white for an instant before shutting off.

  She took a deep breath and tried to ignore the smell of blood and the aftertaste it left on your tongue. She closed her eyes and counted from one hundred back to one in her head, very slowly, trying to match the rhythm of the decreasing numbers to the beating of her heart. From the wayward beat of one hundred to fifty was a smooth trot, with a heavy, precise drumbeat ending in zero.

  She opened her eyes.

  Cardinal Geraldo Cardoso, seventy-one years old, was stretched out on the bed. Cardoso was tied to the ornamental headboard with two towels, tautly knotted. His cardinal’s hat, still on his head, was tipped to one side, lending him a perversely comical look.

  Paola recited Weber’s mantra slowly : “Analyze his work and you will know the artist.” She repeated it to herself over and over, moving her lips silently until the words had lost all meaning. The words were engraving themselves in her mind, as if she were dipping a seal into ink and stamping it on a piece of paper again and again until no ink is left and the seal is dry.

  “Let’s get started,” Paola said in a loud voice. She took a tape recorder out of her bag.

  Troi didn’t bother to look at her. He was busy collecting evidence and studying the shape of the various pools of blood.

  The criminologist began to dictate into her tape recorder in exactly the manner she had been taught at Quantico: make an observation and an immediate deduction. What came out of those conclusions seemed to be enough for a reconstruction of how things had unfolded.

  Observation: The deceased’s body is tied at the hands in his private room, no sign of violence to furniture or other objects.

  Inference: Karosky used some kind of subterfuge to gain access to the room, and then quickly and silently restrained the victim.

  Observation: A blood-soaked towel on the floor. Looks wrinkled.

  Inference: Karosky likely put the towel on the victim’s tongue to keep him from shouting and then removed it so that he could continue with his macabre modus operandi: cutting out the tongue.

  Observation: We heard a cry of alarm.

  Inference: What most likely happened is that, once the towel was removed, Cardoso found a way to scream. The tongue is the last thing that Karosky cuts, before moving on to the eyes.

  Observation: The victim still possesses both eyes, his tongue cut into strips. The cut looks like it was done under pressure; there is blood all around it. Victim’s hands are in place.

  Inference: Karosky’s ritual began with the torture of the body, and continued with the ritual dissection. Cut out the tongue, pull out the eyes, cut off the hands.

  Paola opened the door of the room and asked Fowler to join her for a moment. The priest’s face recoiled when he saw the macabre spectacle, but he did not turn away. The criminologist rewound the tape on her recorder and they listened to the last point together.

  “Do you think there is anything special in the order he goes about his ritual?”

  “I don’t know. The ability to speak is the most important thing for a priest: he administers the sacraments with his voice. The eyes have no overwhelming importance in a priest’s ministry, since they don’t participate in any critical manner in the fulfillment of his duties. But nevertheless, the hands do fulfill a crucial role: a priest’s hands are sacred, always, no matter what he is doing with them.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “Even a monster like Karosky: his hands are still sacred. In his capacity of administering the sacraments, he’s no different than the holiest, purest priest. It may not make any sense, but it’s true.”

  Paola shuddered. The idea that someone so abject could be in direct contact with God struck her as repugnant, terrible. She tried to remind herself that this was one of the reasons why she had rejected God’s existence, imagining Him an unbearable tyrant in a cotton-soft heaven. Yet sinking more deeply into the horror, the deprivation of those who, like Karosky, were supposedly called to bring His work to fruition, produced a very different effect in her. She felt the same betrayal He must have felt and for a few seconds put herself in His position. More than ever she remembered Maurizio, mourning that he wasn’t there to try to give some meaning to this wretched insanity.

  “Good Lord.”

  Fowler shrugged his shoulders, without knowing what it was he wanted to say to her. And then he walked out of the room. Paola turned the tape recorder back on.

  Observation: The victim is wearing a full-length robe, completely open. Underneath, a cotton undershirt and boxer shorts. The undershirt is torn up, most likely with a sharpened instrument. There are a number of cuts on his chest, which spell out the words EGO TE

  ABSOLVO.

  Inference: In this instance, Karosky’s ritual begins with torturing the body, and continues later with the ritual of carving. Cut out the tongue, pull out the eyes, cut off the hands. The words EGO TE ABSOLVOwere also found in the Portini crime scene—according to the photographs Dante gave us—and Robayra’s. An unusual variation.

  Observation: There are bloodstains everywhere, splashes of blood on the walls. A partial print stamped on the floor, next to the bed. Looks like blood.

  Inference: Everything at this crime scene is very strange. No way to deduce whether his style has changed or he’s adapted to a new environment. His modus operandi is all over the place, and—

  Dicanti pushed the stop button on the recorder. There was something that didn’t fit, something terribly wrong.

  “How’s it going, Boss?”

  “From bad to worse. I’ve taken prints from the door, from the night table, from the headboard of the bed, but there isn’t much else. There are plenty of partial prints but only one, I think, might be Karosky’s.”

  He pressed a piece of plastic onto the headboard as he spoke, making a halfway decent print of an index finger. He then compared the transparency with the digital impression on Karosky’s ID card, that had come into Fowler’s possession after Karosky fled Saint Matthew’s.

  “A light impression. Similarities at various points. At least I think there are. This ascendant line is characteristic enough, and this deltic . . .” Troi said, more to himself than to Paola.

  Paola knew that when Troi recognized a fingerprint as a good one, that’s what it was. He was famous, an expert in the field. Watching him at work, in his element, Dicanti deplored the slow ruination that had turned a forensic specialist into a bureaucrat.

  “Nothing else, Doctor?”

  “Nothing else. No hairs, no fibers, nothing. This guy really is a ghost. If he’d gone so far as to wear gloves, my opinion would be that Cardoso was killed by a spirit without a body.”

  “There’s nothing spiritual about that severed trachea.”

  Troi looked at the cadaver with a breathless estrangement, perhaps reflecting on the words of his subordinate or
extracting his own conclusions.

  “No, not much. That’s for sure.”

  Paola exited the room, leaving Troi to his work. But she knew that he wasn’t going to come up with anything. Karosky was thoroughly prepared, and in spite of the pressure, he hadn’t left anything behind. A disturbing suspicion continued to circulate in her head. She looked around. Camilo Cirin had arrived, accompanied by another man. A little man, terribly skinny and even fragile in appearance, with a pointed way of looking at people, as sharp as his nose. Cirin walked up to Paola and introduced Magistrate Gianluigi Varone, Vatican City’s only judge. As far as Paola was concerned, he was not in the least bit sympathetic: he resembled a skinny, yellow a vulture in a jacket.

  The judge signed a statement allowing for the removal of the body, which would be carried out with complete secrecy. The two agents of the Vigilanza who had been standing guard at the door had changed clothes. They were in black overalls now and latex gloves. They would take care of cleaning and sealing the habitation after Troi and his team left. Fowler was seated on a small bench at the other end of the hallway, calmly reading his breviary. When Paola untangled herself from Cirin and the magistrate, she went over to the priest and sat down next to him. Fowler could not avoid a sense of déjà vu.

  “Very well, Dicanti. Now you know a few more cardinals up close and personal.”

  Paola smiled, saddened. How many things had changed in barely twenty-four hours, from the time when the two of them had waited together at the chamberlain’s office. And yet they were not so much as even a step closer to capturing Karosky.

  “I thought that macabre jokes were Deputy Inspector Dante’s territory.”

  “Well, they are. I’m just here on a visit.”

  Paola opened and closed her mouth. She wanted to talk to Fowler about something that was disturbing her about Karosky’s ritual, but she was still unable to put her finger on what was bothering her so much. She decided to wait until she had more time to give it serious thought.

  As Paola would have occasion to confirm later on—and bitterly so—that decision was a terrible mistake.