by Glenn Cooper
‘It’s too early even for me,’ Cal said. ‘Wouldn’t you like to be a fly on the wall at the Vatican about now?’
There was indeed a pesky fly on the wall of Pope Celestine’s guesthouse office and Cardinal Da Silva swatted at it with his hand when it buzzed his face. They had watched the broadcast with Sister Elisabetta who had asked another of the pope’s secretaries to hold all the calls. The constant ringing as Church officials and government ministers tried to reach the pontiff was driving them to distraction.
‘The only person I want to hear from is Carla Condorelli,’ Elisabetta had said. ‘Find out where she is.’
The head of the Vatican press office, it seems, was out for the morning attending a school meeting for one of her kids.
‘One had the impression that we had not heard the last of George,’ the pope said.
‘But no one expected this,’ Da Silva said.
‘It’s not completely unexpected,’ Elisabetta said. ‘He was behind Professor Donovan’s meeting with the girls.’
‘But a pope?’ Da Silva cried. ‘He not only has the gall to call himself a pope but he takes the name of Peter? Not even Peter II!’
The pope sighed and got up to make himself a coffee. Elisabetta offered to help but he waved her off. He enjoyed the simple task of choosing a pod and placing it in the machine.
‘I can see you are upset, Rodrigo,’ he said, ‘but we must put this into perspective. This is not the first example of breakaway Catholicism. The last report I read had it that over twenty million people belong to schismatic Catholic denominations. And George isn’t the first of the episcopi vagantes, the wandering bishops.’
‘His choice of names for his sect is rather curious,’ Da Silva said. ‘The New Catholic Church. Shouldn’t it be the Old Catholic Church if he’s moaning that we’ve strayed from our traditions?’
‘Well he’s calling us the Old Catholic Church,’ Celestine said, loading up his cup with sugar and whole milk under Elisabetta’s disapproving eye, ‘which I agree is curious and also uninformed. Perhaps he is unaware that this was the name taken by one of the breakaway sects formed in the nineteenth century. The Old Catholics were unhappy about the First Vatican Council. They thought it was too conservative! The world does spin, does it not?’
‘Yes, but has a breakaway group ever tied its formation to a new crop of baby Jesuses?’ Da Silva said.
The pope smiled, either in response to the cardinal secretary or the sweet, milky coffee. ‘I’ll admit that is a wrinkle.’
‘What would you like us to do, Holy Father?’ Elisabetta said. ‘We must make a response.’
As if on cue, Condorelli arrived and apologized for her absence.
‘You are aware of what just happened?’ Elisabetta asked her.
‘I was listening on the car radio,’ she said. ‘I almost crashed. It’s quite the situation.’
Elisabetta challenged her. ‘That’s all you have to say?’
‘That’s all I have to say in front of the Holy Father.’
The pope spoke up. ‘We must be firm, of course, even stern in our response. But I feel it would be a mistake to seem overwrought. We must avoid words like heresy or blasphemy or apostasy. We must be respectful, not so much to George Pole, but to the girls. Their status remains an open question. What is not in question is that they are young and innocent. We are in no position to say how they conceived their babies. Carla, write a press release and circulate the draft. And Elisabetta, let me know as soon as you hear from Professor Donovan about his DNA samples.’
Cal was ending his long day in his preferred manner by sitting in a high-backed leather chair in his library, reading a book in Latin, and tugging on a vodka from a pleasingly heavy cut-crystal glass. His Cambridge house on a tree-lined street – populated by more professors than perhaps any other street in America – was dead silent. It was the time of year when neither heating or cooling was needed; houses were dead quiet and vibration-free.
His insistent ringtone broke the mood. He took another gulp of vodka when he saw it was Jessica. Clearly, he had not done enough in the way of penance and for his sins he prepared for another flogging.
‘Hello, Jessica, I’m still sorry about Nantucket.’
‘I am so over that, Cal. Was that why you thought I was calling?’
‘Thought crossed my mind.’
‘Well it shouldn’t. Joe Murphy told me I should forgive you and I have.’
‘He told you that in confession?’
‘No, over drinks. So, I just got the DNA results.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Are you ready for some seriously weird shit?’
TWENTY-TWO
When he was alone, as he was this night, Cal usually crawled into bed by one in the morning or later, and assisted by his spirit animal, the goose – as in Grey Goose – he would quickly tail off. But the DNA results he got from Jessica had jazzed him up and were too provocative to put into an email, so he stayed up until two thirty to place a call to Cardinal Da Silva at a time he would be arriving at his Vatican desk.
‘Yes, the Holy Father has been asking about the DNA results,’ Da Silva said. ‘But it’s awfully late at your end.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
‘All right then, tell me.’
‘Recall that I got saliva samples from each baby and hair samples from each mother.’
‘I remember.’
‘OK, here it is. All the babies had identical DNA.’
‘Not similar – identical?’
‘They are identical triplets, born to different mothers,’ Cal said.
‘Well I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘Me neither.’
‘And the mothers?’
‘None of them shared any DNA with the babies. They were all complete biological strangers. Genetically unrelated.’
‘What can this mean?’
‘It means you can understand why I couldn’t sleep. I guess the only way to start to answer the question is by asking another one: what would Christ’s DNA look like if we could have tested it?’
There was a longish pause that Cal didn’t step into. He figured the cardinal was composing his thoughts. ‘We may go back to the fourth century for the answer to that,’ the cardinal said.
‘The First Council of Nicea,’ Cal interjected.
‘That’s correct,’ the cardinal continued. ‘From that gathering, the doctrine of incarnation was elucidated, holding that Christ was fully God, begotten but not created by the Father, and fully human man, his flesh arising from the Virgin Mary. So the first thing I’d say, Professor, is that Christ would have indeed had DNA! He was flesh and blood. He was born, he grew to manhood, he practiced his vocation as a preacher and he was killed for it in a most mortal way. Now, as to the matter of maternity and paternity, we can be sure that Mary was his mother. The Bible is clear as glass on the point. And we are certain from the Gospel of Matthew that Mary’s husband Joseph was not the father and that the Holy Spirit was.’
Cal had his Bible open to the section which he read aloud, ‘Matthew verse twenty: “But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.’ ” ’
‘Yes, there you have it,’ Da Silva said. ‘So, you’ll have to indulge me in a thought experiment that I can honestly say I have never before performed. To give effect to the science of genetics, there can only be these possibilities: the Holy Spirit’s DNA combined with Mary’s DNA to produce Jesus, the mortal being; all of Jesus’s DNA came from Mary; all of Jesus’s DNA came from the Holy Spirit; or all of Jesus’s DNA came from somewhere or someone else entirely.’
Cal had a note pad by his side with the same possibilities.
‘So, we can scratch the one where all the genetic material comes from Mary,’ he said. ‘Jesus was male. Mary could only contribute X chromosomes.’
; ‘All right,’ the cardinal said, ‘I see that.’
‘So, what about the idea that all the DNA came from the Holy Spirit?’ Cal said. ‘Well, I suppose it’s not a stretch to impute a maleness to God – that’s a traditional if sexist view. But what about the Holy Spirit, which is conceptually a breath, a wind, God’s animating force in action? There are no theological interpretations that imply that there was some kind of actual physical contact between the Holy Spirit and Mary. Otherwise the conception couldn’t be virginal. But, can a breath or a wind be said to have something as mortal as DNA? Can God be said to have a genetic code? Seems like a bridge too far, but what do I know? And what if the answer is otherness, that Jesus’s DNA came from somewhere else entirely? This too seems outside the realm of science as we know it.’
‘So, what are we to make of your DNA results, Professor?’
Cal looked wistfully at his empty vodka glass. ‘That the results of these Marys and these Jesuses are probably as unfathomable as the results would have been if Holy Mary, mother of God, and Jesus Christ had been tested.’
Da Silva agreed and said, ‘Now we must wait for the next shoe to drop. Who knows where Pole is going with this and how many people will follow him?’
‘I’m not prepared to just sit and wait,’ Cal said. ‘I want to find out where the cathedral is. I want to go back there and confront Pole about the girls. I think they were coerced into coming to America. I think they’re virtual prisoners. I think the whole thing stinks to high heaven.’
‘If the stink reaches that high,’ the cardinal said, ‘then perhaps God will assist you.’
Before he finally went to sleep he fulfilled his promise and texted the DNA results to Sue Gibney. He also threw in a question. He asked her to divulge where the cathedral was located.
For whatever the reason, she never replied.
The key to finding the girls had to be George Pole. That’s what Cal concluded over his morning coffee. He knew he needed help. He was good at tracking down clues to medieval mysteries in the dusty archives of the world, but finding a man wasn’t high on his list of skills. What kind of person was good at this? Private detectives and investigative journalists came to mind. He hopped online and quickly got disillusioned about detectives. Mainly, they were local players. He scanned the detective agencies in Houston, Pole’s home city, but the cathedral (or Pole) could be anywhere. Then he gave newspaper journalists a try. A few papers had a national reach, but like detectives, most worked their local patches. He thought about the reporter from the New York Times who’d interviewed him in Cambridge but then, on a whim, he went to the Houston Chronicle website and searched for George Pole. The search window lit up with dozens of articles about Pole and one reporter’s name. Amanda Pittinger.
He clicked on Pittinger’s link and shot her an email telling her who he was and why he was contacting her. He ended with his phone number. No more than a minute later, it rang.
‘This is Amanda Pittinger calling for Cal Donovan.’
‘Wow, that was fast,’ he marveled.
‘You typed the magic words,’ she said.
‘And what were they?’ he asked.
‘George Pole.’
Amanda Pittinger had covered George Pole for years. A veteran reporter for the Houston Chronicle, Pittinger had always found Pole to be a reliable newsmaker. Pole and the media had always had a mutually beneficial relationship. Journalists found his controversial positions and outspoken views fodder for their stories and Pole found them to be convenient megaphones. Perhaps no one in the Houston media scene was closer to the former cardinal than Pittinger who often got exclusives in return for front-page, top-of-the-fold stories – accompanied by a flattering photo, of course. The symbiosis was so evolved that she even had Pole’s mobile number which she used freely.
Pittinger spilled plenty of front-page ink covering the cardinal’s resignation but in the past two months he hadn’t rated a single story as he faded into the no-man’s land of yesterday’s news. That changed in dramatic fashion with his appearance at the altar of the mystery cathedral and her assignment editor literally begged her on his knees – the man actually fell to his knees on the newsroom floor – for her to track him down and get an interview or, absent that, find out where the cathedral was located, who built it, who funded it, etcetera.
Pittinger had had to help her portly editor to his feet. ‘Find Pole, find the church, find the girls, Amanda, before he makes his announcement and everyone knows,’ he said. ‘Someone’s going to get the Pulitzer for this story. Why not you?’
Pittinger told Cal she knew who he was. She’d read the Times article about him and the girls.
‘As it happens,’ she told Cal, ‘I’ve been looking for the good cardinal, or should I say, pope?’
‘Any luck?’ Cal asked.
‘None. I started at the obvious place and called his mobile number and got a voicemail-box full message – apparently, he’s given his number out a little less exclusively than he led me to believe. Then I called everyone I know who knows him. Nothing. I’ve been wracking my brain but I really don’t know where to go.’
‘I was there,’ Cal said.
‘Where?’
‘At the cathedral. With the girls.’
‘Then you know where it is!’
‘Actually, I don’t.’
He told her about the pains taken to prevent him from learning the location.
‘All I can tell you is that we were airborne for about three hours forty-five minutes from Nantucket,’ he said.
‘And you’re sure you stayed in the United States?’
‘Didn’t need a passport.’
‘OK, let me get a map,’ she said, continuing to talk. ‘Your typical private jet flies about five hundred miles an hour and if you flew three and three-quarter hours, that would have been a trip of about eighteen hundred miles. From Boston that would have taken you to the Dakotas to the north, or down to Nebraska, Kansas, or my fair state of Texas. I did tell my editor that George would probably stay close to home.’
‘That’s still a lot of ground to cover,’ Cal said. ‘It’s hard to believe that you could build a cathedral without anyone talking about it.’
‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘You’ve got banks and lenders, architects, suppliers, hundreds of builders. Everyone involved must’ve been wrapped up tight in confidentiality agreements.’
‘Suppliers,’ Cal said.
‘What?’
‘Suppliers,’ he repeated. ‘How do you build a cathedral?’
The line went quiet until she said, ‘This cathedral? Steel. Lots and lots of steel. In Watergate they followed the money. Here, we’re going to follow the steel. Aren’t you the clever one?’
‘That’s what my mother tells her friends.’
‘Let me jump on this. Give me a little time.’
‘Okay, but I want you to promise me something.’
‘What’s that?’
‘If we find it, I want to go there with you.’
‘And why is it you want to go back?’ she asked.
‘I want to see the girls again. I think they’re being held against their will. I think their parents were strong-armed into letting them go.’
‘You’re something of a white knight, aren’t you? All right, Cal. I’ll work with you. We’ll be in touch.’
Pittinger dropped everything else she was doing and ran down to the editor of the paper’s business section. He steered her to an online roster of all US steel manufacturers and foreign-steel importers but a fruitless morning of calls left her adrift. No one would violate customer confidentiality and tell her whom they were supplying. Then, in one conversation, someone mentioned steel brokers, people who put bulk steel purchasing deals together. While a broker involved in a particular deal might not squawk, a rival broker who had wind of it might. And that’s how, eight hours into her quest, she had a call with Dwayne P O’Connor, a broker from Pittsburgh whom she knew was a cigar-chomper because she could he
ar the end of it squishing over the phone.
‘Oh, I know exactly who placed the order,’ the broker said, ‘because I got shafted in the process. I was negotiating on behalf of a client in New York City who wanted to build a condo project in Tribeca and the deal was almost there with a German supplier when we got shut down. Someone came along and offered a significant premium for rush product. Same thing happened all over the map. German steel, Japanese steel, domestic steel. It got vacuumed up by one buyer with a super-rush job and very deep pockets.’
‘Who was the buyer?’
‘Hillier Construction.’
‘And where are they?’
‘Vernon, Texas.’
Pittinger called it up on Google Maps. It was in west Texas near the Oklahoma border. About eighteen hundred miles from Boston.
‘Do you have contact info for Hillier you could give me?’ she asked.
‘Sure do, but don’t tell them where you got it. I can’t say for absolute sure but I’ve got a nose for it and I think that church on the news is where that steel went.’
The general manager of Hillier hung up on her, not once but twice. She had a nose for it too and that told her that Hillier was almost certainly involved. Buildings require permits, and large projects like public churches require a raft of permits, so her next call was to the Vernon City Hall where she was soon talking to the manager of the Building Services Department.
She asked about any large construction projects and occupancy permits recently granted in Vernon or surrounding Wilbarger County, of which Vernon was the county seat.
‘I was wondering if someone was going to call about that,’ the manager said. ‘It appears you’re the first. I suppose you’ll want to know the details. I may not want to but I’m obliged to cooperate with you. Matter of public record.’
Cal was at the George Bush Airport in Houston by 10:30 the following morning. Amanda Pittinger was holding a little sign with his name at baggage claim. He immediately liked what he saw – a pretty, frizzy-haired blonde, maybe about his age, with thigh-high boots and a short denim jacket bedazzled with rhinestones. She had a wicked smile and she used it to let him know she liked what she saw too.