The Swiss Guard and the two nuns brought the total of Karosky’s victims to at least eight. Paola swore to herself that these would be the last. Without giving it a second thought, she crossed the open space between where she was and the door, stepping around the bodies. The pistol was in her left hand, and her right arm was raised, with the pistol resting on the forearm. She walked over the threshold.
She had entered an octagonal room with ceilings some thirty-six feet high, suffused with a golden light. Directly in front of her was an altar standing between columns, with an oil painting hanging above it: the descent from the cross. Standing against the sublime, wonderfully polished marble walls were ten armoires fashioned out of India wood and myrtle, inside of which hung the sacred vestments. If Paola had glanced toward the ceiling, she would have seen a cupola adorned with beautiful frescoes, through whose windows the light flooding the room entered. But Paola’s eyes were watching the two men standing on the other side of the room.
She recognized Cardinal Casey first. The second was also a cardinal. He looked vaguely familiar, until at last she recognized him. Cardinal Pauljic.
The men were standing together at the altar. Pauljic, behind Casey, was almost done adjusting Casey’s robes when Dicanti barged in, her pistol pointed directly at them.
“Where is he?” she shouted, her voice echoing in circles around the cupola. “Have you seen him?”
His eyes riveted on Dicanti’s pistol, the American cardinal spoke very, very slowly. “Where is who, miss?”
“Karosky. The man who slaughtered the Swiss Guard and the two nuns.”
Fowler entered the sacristy before her last word was out. He stood next to Paola. He looked at Casey, and for the first time, he and Pauljic exchanged glances.
There was fire, and recognition too, in those eyes.
“Hello, Victor,” said the priest, his voice deep and hoarse.
Cardinal Pauljic, better known as Victor Karosky, put his left arm around Cardinal Casey’s neck. With his right hand he took out Maurizio Pontiero’s pistol and placed it against the cardinal’s temple.
“Don’t move!” Dicanti shouted, and the -ove echoed in succession throughout the room.
“Don’t you move a muscle, Miss Dicanti, or we’ll get a good look at the inside of the cardinal’s head.” The killer’s voice hit Paola with the force of anger and fear simultaneously, the adrenaline pulsing through her veins. She remembered how angry she had been when, after she had taken a good look at Pontiero’s body, the beast had called her on the phone.
She aimed carefully.
Karosky was more than thirty feet away, and at this moment only part of his head and his forearms were visible from behind Cardinal Casey, his human shield.
Even with a revolver and good aim, an impossible shot.
“Put the gun down on the floor, Ispettore, or I’ll kill him right here.”
Paola bit her lower lip to keep from screaming. She had the killer right in front of her, and she couldn’t do a thing.
“Don’t do it, Dottoressa. He would never hurt the cardinal. Isn’t that right, Victor?”
Karosky tightened his grip around Casey’s neck.
“Of course I will. Put the gun on the ground, Dicanti. Put it down!”
“Please, do what he asks,” Casey groaned in a quavery voice.
“Excellent stage acting, Victor.” Fowler’s voice was shaking with rage. “Remember how it had seemed to us that it was impossible for the killer to have escaped from Cardoso’s room, which was locked up tight? As hard as it looked, that part was easy. He never left at all.”
“What?” Paola was stunned.
“We broke down the door. We didn’t see anyone. And then a very opportune cry for help reaches us about some crazy attack taking place by the service exit. Victor was in the room, no doubt about it. Were you under the bed? Hiding in the closet?”
“Very astute, Padre. Now put down the gun, Ispettore.”
“But this cry for help and the description of what his attacker looked like came from a trustworthy source, a man of faith. A cardinal. The killer’s accomplice.”
“Shut up, Fowler!”
“What did he promise you if you’d take his competitors out of the picture completely, in his search for glory he hasn’t deserved for a very long time—”
“That’s enough!” Karosky looked like a madman, with his face drenched in sweat, and one of the fake eyebrows he’d glued on dangling precariously over his eye.
“Did he come to see you at the Institute, Victor? He’s the one who sent you there, isn’t that so?”
“Enough of these absurd insinuations, Fowler. Tell the woman to put the gun down, or this madman is going to kill me,” Casey said in a commanding voice. He was clearly desperate.
“Tell us His Eminence’s plan, Victor,” Fowler said, ignoring Casey. “You had to pretend to attack him right in the middle of Saint Peter’s? And he would dissuade you from carrying it out, in front of all of God’s people and the television cameras?”
“Stop talking, or I will kill him! I’ll kill him!”
“You would have been the one dead. And he would be the hero.”
“What did he promise you in exchange for the keys to the kingdom, Victor?”
“Heaven, you fucking son of a bitch! Eternal life!”
Karosky lifted the gun from Casey’s temple, aimed at Dicanti, and fired.
Fowler shoved Paola to the floor and in the process her gun slipped out of her hand. Karosky’s shot just missed Dicanti’s head and instead hit Fowler in the left shoulder, shattering the bone into a dozen pieces.
Karosky let Casey go, and the cardinal scurried off to hide between two of the armoires. Paola, with no time to look for her gun, threw herself headlong at Karosky, her hands balled into fists. Her right shoulder smashed into his stomach and flattened him against the wall, but she did not succeed in knocking the air out of him: beneath his flowing robes he had worn extra padding to make himself look heavier. Pontiero’s pistol bounced onto the ground with a hollow metallic echo.
Karosky beat Dicanti on the back. She cried in pain, but she managed to get to her feet and smash Karosky in the face. He looked dazed and came very close to losing his balance.
And then Paola made her only mistake.
She looked around for the pistol. Karosky seized the moment to hit her in her face, her stomach, her kidneys. He grabbed her around the neck, just as he had done with Casey. But this time he was holding a short object which he brushed back and forth across Paola’s face. A common fish knife, but a very sharp one.
“Ah, Paola, you have no idea how much I am going to enjoy this,” he whispered into her ear.
“Victor!”
Karosky turned around. Fowler was sitting up, one knee positioned on the marble floor, his left shoulder destroyed, blood spilling from his arm, which hung inertly, scraping the floor.
His right hand held Paola’s revolver. It was aimed directly at Karosky’s forehead.
“You’re not going to shoot, Fowler.” Karosky was breathing heavily. “We’re not so very different. The two of us shared the very same hell. And in your vows you swore you would never again take a life.”
Making a tremendous effort, his face flushed with pain, Fowler managed to lift his left hand to his priest’s white collar. With a single gesture, he tore it off and threw it into the air between Karosky and himself. It spun in circles, the starched cloth an immaculate white save for one reddish splotch, where Fowler had pressed his thumb and torn it loose. Karosky watched it, hypnotized, but he never saw it hit the ground.
Fowler fired once, a single, deadly accurate shot that hit Karosky between the eyes.
The killer fell to the ground. From far away he listened to the voices of his parents, who were calling out to him. And he went to join them.
Paola ran toward Fowler, who looked pale as death and very lost. As she crossed the room, she tore off her jacket in order to use it as a tourniquet for Fowler’
s wound.
“Lie down.”
“It was very bad before you got here, my friends.” It was Casey’s voice. He had recovered his courage sufficiently to get back on his feet. “That monster had taken me hostage.”
“Don’t stand there, Cardinal. Go tell someone—” Paola started to say, as she tried to help Fowler stretch out on the floor. Suddenly she realized exactly where Casey was headed: to the spot next to Karosky’s body, where Pontiero’s pistol lay on the ground. It struck her that she and Fowler were two very dangerous witnesses. She felt around for her revolver.
“Good afternoon,” said Inspector Camilo Cirin as he walked into the room with three agents of the Vigilanza in tow. He hastened over to the cardinal, who was leaning over to grab the pistol on the floor. He immediately stood up.
“I was beginning to think you were never going to get here, Inspector General. You must arrest these two immediately,” Casey said, pointing at Fowler and Dicanti.
“Forgive me, Your Eminence. I will be with you in a moment.”
Camilo Cirin looked down. He walked over to Karosky, grabbing Pontiero’s pistol on his way. He placed the tip of his shoe on Karosky’s face.
“This is him?”
“That’s right,” said Fowler.
“Fuck, Cirin, a false cardinal,” Paola said. “How did that happen?”
“He had very good references.”
Cirin put things together at an incredible speed. Behind his impassive face there was a brain operating like a diligent machine. He instantly recalled that Pauljic was the very last cardinal named by John Paul II. Six months ago, at a time when the pope only rarely got out of bed. He remembered that the pope had told Samalo and Ratzinger about the naming of a cardinal in pectore, whose identity he had revealed to Casey alone, who would announce the papal choice upon his demise. He did not find it difficult to imagine whose lips had breathed Pauljic’s name in the stricken pope’s ear, nor who had acompanied the new “cardinal” to Saint Martha’s for the first time, in order to introduce him to his intrigued brethen.
“Cardinal Casey, you have a lot of explaining to do.”
“I have no idea what you are referring to.”
“Cardinal, please.”
Casey looked out of sorts, but he soon started to recover his arrogance and his unwavering pride, the very thing that had led to his downfall.
“Over the course of many years, John Paul prepared me to continue his work. You more than anyone know what can happen if the control of the Church should fall into the hands of those who lack the necessary discipline. I trust that in the present instant you will act as best suits the Church, my friend.”
Cirin’s eyes arrived at a summary judgment in a split second.
“I will of course do so, Your Eminence. Domenico?”
“Inspector,” said one of the agents who had entered the room with Cirin. Both his suit and his tie were black.
“Cardinal Casey will go out now to celebrate the novena mass in the Basilica.”
The cardinal smiled.
“Afterward, you and the other agent will escort him to his new residence: the monastery at Albergradz, high in the Alps, where the cardinal will be able to reflect on his actions in solitude. He will also have the chance to improve his mountain climbing.”
“A dangerous sport, from what I’ve heard,” said Fowler.
“Most certainly. Plagued with accidents,” Paola added.
Casey didn’t respond, and in his silence was revealed the depth of his descent. His head hung down, his chin resting against his chest. He left the sacristy without a word to anyone, accompanied by Domenico.
Cirin kneeled at Fowler’s side. Paola held his head up with one hand, while pressing her jacket onto the wound with the other.
“Permit me.”
He moved Dicanti’s hand away. Her improvised dressing was already soaked and he put his own wrinkled coat in its place.
“You can relax. There is an ambulance on the way. Do you mind telling me how you managed to get into this circus?”
“We avoided your ticket booths, Cirin, in preference to those at the Sant’Uffizio.”
Cirin, seemingly imperturbable, raised an eyebrow. Paola understood that that was his way of showing surprise.
“Ah, but of course. Old Gonthas Hanër, a man who never quits. I see that he has relaxed his criteria for admission to the Vatican these days.”
“But his prices are higher,” Fowler said, as he thought about the wrenching interview awaiting him the next day.
Cirin nodded. He knew what Fowler was trying to tell him, and then put even more pressure on the jacket wrapped around Fowler’s wound.
“That could be arranged, I suppose.”
An emergency medical crew entered the room, carrying a stretcher.
While the two medics attended to the injured man, inside the basilica eight altar boys and two priests carrying censers waited at the door to the sacristy for Cardinals Casey and Pauljic. It was now four minutes after twelve. The mass should have already begun. The more senior of the two subordinate priests was tempted to send one of the altar boys into the sacristy to find out what was going on. Perhaps the Oblate sisters, in charge of overseeing the sacristy, were having problems with the appropriate vestments. But protocol demanded that he stay where he was, keeping watch over the participants in the mass.
At the last moment Cardinal Casey appeared by himself at the door that led into the basilica. The altar boys escorted him to the altar of Saint Joseph, where he would lead the mass. The faithful perched closest to the altar during the ceremony talked among themselves, whispering that the cardinal must have truly loved the pope: Casey was in tears throughout the entire mass.
“Calm down, you’re out of danger,” one of the nurses told him. “We’ll be on our way to the hospital in a minute. They’ll run all the tests on you there, but don’t worry, the hemorrhaging is under control.”
The emergency crew lifted the stretcher, and at that instant it hit Paola: the alienation from his parents, the rejection of his inheritance, the terrible resentment. She stopped the two men carrying the stretcher as they were loading it into the ambulance.
“Now I get it. The private hell you two shared. You went to Vietnam to kill your father, didn’t you?”
Fowler gave her a startled look. He was, in fact, so startled that he answered her in English.
“Sorry?”
“Anger and resentment are what brought you to Vietnam.” Paola spoke in English as well, as quietly as possible in order to keep the others out of the conversation. “The deep hatred of your father, the cold rejection of your mother. The refusal to accept your inheritance. You wanted to cut every family tie. And the interview with Victor where you talked about hell. It’s all in the dossier you gave me. It’s been right in front of my face the whole time.”
“Where do you intend to stop?”
“I get it now,” Paola said. She leaned over the stretcher and gently placed her hand on the priest’s shoulder. Fowler was in shock and wanted to cry out in pain, but he held his tongue. “I understand why you took the job at Saint Matthew’s, and how it made you what you are today. Your father abused you as a child. That’s the truth, isn’t it? And your mother knew the whole time. Just like Karosky. Which was why he respected you. Because the two of you were on opposite sides of the same line. You chose to become a man, and he chose to be a monster.”
There was nothing for Fowler to say. The men carrying the stretcher started toward the ambulance again. Fowler concentrated as hard as he could. He looked at Dicanti and smiled.
“Take care of yourself, Dottoressa.”
In the ambulance, Fowler was fighting to maintain consciousness. His eyes closed for a second, but a voice he recognized brought him back.
“Anthony.”
Fowler smiled.
“Well, Fabio. So how’s your arm?”
“Pretty well fucked.”
“You got lucky on that roof.”
>
Dante did not reply. He and Cirin were sitting on a bench jutting out from the side of the ambulance. The Vigilanza deputy tried to fight off his typically cynical expression despite the fact that his left arm was in a cast and his face was covered with bruises. Cirin for his part wore his habitual poker face.
“And so? How do you intend to kill me? Cyanide in the serum bottle, a gradual loss of blood, or the classic shot to the back of the head? I personally prefer the latter.”
Dante’s smile was joyless.
“Don’t tempt me. Maybe one day, but not now, Anthony. This is a round-trip. There will be a better occasion.”
Cirin, his face unmoved, looked straight at Fowler.
“I want to thank you. You have been a great help.”
“I didn’t do it for you. Or for your cause.”
“I know.”
“In fact, I was certain you were behind all this.”
“I know that too, and I don’t blame you.”
The three said nothing for the next few minutes. Finally, it was Cirin who spoke.
“Any chance you’ll work with us again?”
“None whatsoever, Camilo. You tricked me once. It won’t happen again.”
“One last time. For old time’s sake.”
Fowler thought for a few moments.
“With one condition. And you know what it is.”
Cirin nodded.
“You have my word. Nobody goes near her.”
“Or the other. The Spanish girl.”
“That I can’t guarantee. We still don’t know if she has a copy of the disc.”
“I spoke to her. She doesn’t have it, and she won’t talk.”
“Good. Without the disc, she can’t prove a thing.”
This time the silence in the ambulance lasted longer, interrupted only by the beeping of the electrocardiogram attached to Fowler’s chest. The priest was letting go, little by little. Cirin’s last words came to him as if through a fog.
“You know what, Anthony? For a while there I was sure that you were going to tell her the truth. The whole truth.”
Fowler did not hear his own response, not that it mattered. Not all truths will set you free. He knew that not even he could live with his truth, much less put its heavy weight on anyone else’s shoulders.
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