God's Spy

by Juan Gomez-jurado

  DOMUS SANCTAE MARTHAE

  Piazza Santa Marta, 1 Thursday, April 7, 2005, 6:37 P.M.

  Dante and Paola stepped into Troi’s car, which was sitting outside Saint Martha’s. He was going to drop them off at the morgue before heading on to UACV to work on determining the weapon of choice in each of the murder scenes. Fowler had just opened the door to the car when he heard someone calling his name at the entrance to the building.

  “Father Fowler!”

  The priest spun around. It was Cardinal Casey, who waved him over. Fowler retraced his steps.

  “Your Eminence, I hope I find you in better shape now.”

  The cardinal forced a smile.

  “We have no choice but to accept the proofs the Lord gives us. My dear Fowler, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank you personally for your timely rescue.”

  “Your Eminence, you were already in the clear by the time we arrived.”

  “Who knows? Who knows what might have happened if that lunatic decided to pay me another visit? You have my wholehearted appreciation. I will personally see to it that the Curia learns what a good soldier you are.”

  “It really isn’t necessary, Your Eminence.”

  “My son, you never know when you are going to need a favor, or when unfortunate things are going to crop up. It’s important to have money in the bank, as they say.”

  Fowler looked at the cardinal. He tried not to reveal what he was thinking.

  “Of course, my son,” Casey went on, “the Curia’s appreciation could be even more complete. We could even call you back here, to the Vatican. Camilo Cirin seems to have lost his luster. Perhaps someone who could make sure that this scandal was utterly erased could fill his shoes. Someone who sees to it that it just goes away.”

  Fowler was beginning to catch the drift.

  “Your Eminence, are you asking me to see to it that a certain dossier is lost?”

  The cardinal smiled and shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of complicity both childish and extremely incongruent, given the subject under discussion. He was very close to getting what he wanted, or so he thought.

  “Precisely, my son, precisely. ‘A dead body revenges not injuries.’ ”

  Fowler smiled with malicious pleasure.

  “Well, well. A quotation from Blake. I never thought I would hear a cardinal reciting ‘The Proverbs of Hell.’ ”

  Casey pivoted; his voice became more inflexible. He didn’t care for the priest’s tone.

  “The ways of the Lord are mysterious.”

  “The ways of the Lord are the the exact opposite of the Adversary, Your Eminence. I learned that in school as a child. And it has yet to lose its validity.”

  “A surgeon’s tools will sometimes be stained with blood. And you are a very sharp scalpel, my son. Let’s just say that I am aware that you represent more than one interest in this case.”

  “I’m a humble priest, nothing more,” said Fowler, attempting to look stunned.

  “I don’t doubt it. But in certain circles they speak of your . . . abilities.”

  “And in those circles do they not also speak of my problem with authority, Your Eminence?”

  “Yes, of that too. But I don’t doubt that when the moment arrives, you will conduct yourself as you ought. You won’t let the good name of the Church be publicly dragged through the press, my son.”

  The priest responded with cold, hostile silence. The cardinal gave him a few paternalistic slaps on the shoulder of his impeccably clean street clothes and then lowered the tone of his voice to just above a whisper.

  “In times like these, who doesn’t have a secret or two? It could be that your name turns up on other pieces of paper. For example, in the notes at the Sant’Uffizio. Once again.”

  And without another word, the cardinal spun around and walked back into Saint Martha’s. Fowler got into the car where his friends were waiting for him. The motor was running.

  “Are you all right, Padre? You look upset,” Dicanti asked.

  “I’m perfectly fine.”

  Paola studied him closely. It was a patent lie: Fowler was as white as a sack of flour. He looked like he had aged ten years in a minute.

  “What did Cardinal Casey want?”

  Fowler turned to Paola, a mirthless smile on his face. Things were quickly becoming unbearable in the car.

  “His Eminence? Nothing. He merely sent his regards to a mutual friend.”

  MUNICIPAL MORGUE

  Friday, April 8, 2005, 1:25 A.M.

  “I’m getting very used to throwing open the doors for you in the middle of the night, Dicanti.”

  Paola’s response was a compromise between courtesy and shock. Fowler, Dante, and the coroner stood to one side of the autopsy table, Dicanti facing them from the other. All four had donned the mortuary’s blue masks and latex gloves. Finding herself there for the third time in so few days made Paola remember something she had read when she was young, something about being sent back to hell, about how that consisted in doing the same things over and over again. Maybe hell was not stretched out directly in front of her but she was getting a close look at the evidence arguing for its existence.

  Cardoso’s body on the autopsy table looked even scarier than it had earlier. Just a few hours before his body had been awash in blood; now it resembled a pale doll festooned with ugly, raw scars. The cardinal was on the svelte side, and drained of blood, his face took on the look of a mask, sunken and accusatory.

  “What do we know about him, Dante?” asked Dicanti.

  The Vatican cop carried a small notebook in his jacket pocket at all times. He took it out and began reading.

  “Geraldo Claudio Cardoso, born 1934, Cardinal since 2001. Well known as a defender of the workers, always on the side of the poor and the homeless. Before being named cardinal, he established his reputation in the diocese of San José. The largest factories in Latin America are in that district.” Dante here mentioned two of the most famous automobile companies in the world. “He frequently acted as an intermediary between workers and ownership. The workers loved him, called him the ‘union bishop.’ Membership in various congregations of the Roman Curia.”

  This time even the coroner was quiet. He had cut up Robayra with a smile on his face, mocked Pontiero’s inability to stomach the sight of blood. A few hours later the man he had made fun of was stretched out on his table. And the day after, another cardinal turned up. A man who, on paper at least, had done much good. He asked himself if the official version and the unofficial were in agreement, but it was Fowler who finally put the question to Dante.

  “Is there anything in your summary besides press clippings?”

  “Don’t make the mistake, Fowler, of thinking that everyone in Our Holy Mother Church leads a double life.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.” Fowler had his game face on. “And now how about answering my question?”

  Dante, simulating the act of thinking, twisted his neck again, first to the left and then to the right. Paola was sure he already knew the answer or at least was very ready for the question.

  “I made a few calls. Almost everyone corroborates the official story. He had two unimportant run-ins, nothing worth digging up. Played around with marijuana as a young man, before he became a priest. Dubious political affiliations in the university, and that’s it. Since becoming a cardinal he has had a few confrontations with colleagues in the Curia, owing to his defense of a group the Curia really doesn’t care for: the Charismatics. The big picture is, he was a decent man.”

  “As were the other two,” Fowler said.

  “So it seems.”

  “Anything new on the murder weapon, Doctor?” Paola got a word in edgewise between the two men.

  The doctor pointed, indicating the victim’s neck and then the cuts on his chest.

  “A short, smooth blade, probably a small kitchen knife but very sharp. In the previous cases, I reserved my opinion, but now that I’ve seen the molds of the incisions, I b
elieve he used the same instrument on all three occasions.”

  Paola made a mental note of it.

  “Dottoressa,” asked Fowler, “what do you think are the chances Karosky tries something during John Paul’s funeral?”

  “Christ, I don’t know. It’s tighter than a drum around Saint Martha’s by now.”

  “Of course it is,” Dante crowed. “They’re so shut in there they can’t even tell if it’s daytime without looking at a clock.”

  “Even though security was elevated earlier and it didn’t mean much. Karosky has shown us his ability to adapt and his unbelievably cold blood. Truthfully, I don’t have the slightest idea. I don’t know if he is going to try something, although I doubt it. In this last incident, he was unable to complete his ritual or leave us a message written in blood, as he did the first two times.”

  “Which means we lost another clue,” Fowler grumbled.

  “Sure, but at the same time, that close call has to make him nervous and even a little vulnerable. But with a son of a bitch like this, you never know.”

  “We’ll have to pay very close attention to the cardinals,” said Dante.

  “Not only protecting them, but looking for him. Even if he doesn’t try anything, he’ll be there, watching us and laughing. I’ll risk my neck on that proposition.”

  SAINT PETER’S SQUARE

  Vatican City Friday, April 8, 2005, 10:15 A.M.

  John Paul II’s funeral took place with tedious normality. Everything was as ordinary as it could be at the funeral of the religious leader of more than a billion persons, at which some of the world’s most powerful heads of state and royalty were present. But they were not the only ones who took part. Hundreds of thousands of people overflowed Saint Peter’s Square, and every face told a story whose intensity was like the flames behind the grates of a fireplace. Several faces in particular will, nevertheless, play an important part in this story.

  One of them belonged to Andrea Otero. She did not see Robayra anywhere, but the journalist noticed three things while she stood on a rooftop terrace, together with coworkers from a German television team. One, that looking through binoculars for half an hour gives you a splitting headache. Two, that the backs of the necks of the assembled cardinals all looked alike. And three, that there were only 112 red robes seated on those chairs. She counted them several times. And the printed list of electors pressed against her knees clearly stated that there should have been 115.

  Camilo Cirin would not have felt in the least bit comfortable if he had known what Andrea Otero was thinking, but he had his own serious problems to deal with. Victor Karosky, the serial killer whose specialty was cardinals, was one of them. But while Karosky did not cause Cirin any trouble during the funeral, an unidentified plane that invaded Vatican aerial space in the middle of the funeral did. The anguish that overwhelmed Cirin during those moments when he recalled the September 11 terrorist attacks was no less than that of the three pilots who set off after the plane. Lucky for everyone, the situation resolved itself a few minutes later when it became clear that the pilot of the unidentified plane was a Macedonian who had flown off course. The episode stretched Cirin’s nerves to the limit. A subordinate standing nearby later commented that it was the first time in fifteen years he had heard Cirin raise his voice to give orders.

  Another of Cirin’s subordinates, Fabio Dante, was mingling in the crowd. He cursed his luck because people pressed as closely as they could to John Paul’s casket as it was carried past them, and many of those shouted, “Santo Subito!” in his ears. “Sainthood Now!” Desperately trying to see over the tops of people’s heads and the signs they were carrying, he kept his eye out for a Carmelite friar with a bushy beard. He did not lead the celebrations when the funeral was finally over, but he was next in line.

  Anthony Fowler was one of many priests giving communion to the assembled crowd, and more than once he thought he saw Karosky’s face in that of the person who was about to receive the body of Christ from his hands. While hundreds of people filed up to him, Fowler prayed for two things: one was the reason he had come to Rome and the other was to ask the All Powerful to give him strength and illumination to face what he had encountered in the Eternal City.

  Ignorant of the fact that Fowler was seeking the Creator’s help in large part because of her, Paola scrutinized the faces from the steps of Saint Peter’s. She had taken up position in a corner. She didn’t pray. She never did. Nor did she give the people proceeding past her any special attention, because their faces very quickly blurred into one. She spent her time contemplating what motivated a monster.

  Carlo Troi sat behind a desk full of television monitors with Angelo, the UACV’s forensic sculptor. They were getting their feed directly from the RAI cameras in the plaza, before they went on the air. From that vantage, they staged their own hunt, for which they were rewarded with headaches as intense as Andrea Otero’s. Of the “engineer,” as Angelo continued to call him in his happy ignorance, they saw not so much as a trace.

  On the esplanade, the secret service agents attached to George Bush came to blows with agents of the Vigilanza when they were denied permission to enter Saint Peter’s Square. For those who know, even if only from hearsay, the way the Secret Service operates, what happened that day when they were outside looking in, was highly unusual. Never before had anyone ever denied them entrance so completely. The Vigilanza would not let them in. And no matter how much they insisted, outside they stayed.

  Victor Karosky took part in John Paul’s funeral devotedly, praying loudly. He sang with a beautiful, deep voice at the appropriate moments. He shed a very sincere tear and made plans for the future.

  No one paid any attention to him.

  VATICAN PRESSROOM

  Friday, April 8, 2005, 6:25 P.M.

  Andrea Otero arrived at the press conference with her tongue hanging out. Not just on account of the heat, but because she had left her press card in the hotel and had to yell at the dumbfounded cabdriver to make a U-turn in the middle of traffic to go back for it. Her carelessness was hardly fatal; she had left an hour early. She had wanted to arrive ahead of time so she could have a word with the Vatican spokesman, Joaquín Balcells, about Cardinal Robayra’s “evaporation.” All of her efforts to track him down earlier had been unsuccessful.

  The pressroom was an annex to the large auditorium built while John Paul II was pope. Extremely modern, with room for more than six thousand, it was always filled to overflowing on Wednesdays, the day the Holy Father gave his audience. The door into the pressroom let out directly on the street, where it sat next to the palace of the Sant’Uffizio.

  The pressroom itself had room for one hundred eighty-five people. Andrea thought she’d get a good seat if she arrived fifteen minutes before the hour, but it was obvious that more than three hundred journalists had had the same thought. And it was scarcely surprising that the press room was filled to capacity. Three thousand and forty-two accredited media outlets from ninety countries were covering the funeral, which had taken place that morning, and the conclave. More than two billion human beings, half of them Catholic, had said farewell to the deceased pope from the comfort of their living rooms that very morning. And here I am, she thought, me, Andrea Otero. If only her professors at journalism school could see her now.

  Fine, she was in at the press conference where they were going to explain how the conclave functioned, but there were no seats to be found. She leaned against the wall near the entrance. It was the only way in and out, so when Balcells arrived, she would be able to make contact.

  She calmly reviewed her notes on the spokesman. A doctor who had taken up journalism, a member of Opus Dei, born in Cartagena, Spain. According to all reports, deadly serious, and even something of a cold fish. He was nearly seventy years old and, from what an unofficial source told her, one of the most powerful men in the Vatican. For years he learned what he knew from John Paul’s lips, before passing it on to the larger public. If he decided that somet
hing was secret, secret it stayed. There were no leaks with Balcells. His résumé was impressive. Andrea read the list of prizes and medals he had been awarded: knight of this order, prince of that, member of the Holy Cross of yet another. His achievements needed two pages in full, a different award on each line. He looked like a tough bone to gnaw on.

  But I’ve got sharp teeth, damn it. She was busy trying to hear her thoughts over the din of voices when the pressroom exploded in raw cacophony.

  First one sounded, the initial raindrop that signals the downpour, followed by three or four. Finally, a great outburst of ringing, a strident jungle of sound.

  Dozens of cell phones seemed to be going off at the same time. The noise lasted for some forty seconds. Journalists’ hands went from typing on their computers to holding a cell phone, their heads tilted at an angle. People were starting to complain in loud voices.

  “OK, everybody, we’re on hold. Fifteen minutes, which leaves us exactly no time to edit the story.”

  Andrea heard a voice speaking Spanish a few feet away from her. She elbowed her way over and saw that it was a woman journalist, with brown skin and delicate features. Her accent led Andrea to believe she was from Mexico.

  “How are you? I’m Andrea Otero, from El Globo. Listen, can you tell me why all the mobile phones rang at the same time?”

  “Check out this message from the Vatican Press Office. They send us an SMS whenever there is important news. It’s the latest innovation, the new way to keep us up-to-date. The hassle being the noise when we are all in the same place. The news that Balcells is going to be delayed is what just came in.”

  Andrea was impressed. Getting information out to thousands of journalists couldn’t be easy.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t arranged a cell phone upgrade yet?” The Mexican journalist looked at Andrea as if her wig were askew.

  “Well, not yet. Nobody told me anything about it.”

  “No sweat. See that girl over there?”