The Debt
Page 13
The cardinal, busily writing, didn’t look up from his paperwork. ‘Yes, what is it?’
Parizo had a thick envelope in his arthritic hand. ‘A courier delivered this today. It is from Tizziani.’
Antonelli put his pen back into its holder and stared at the envelope. ‘Have you opened it?’
‘I believe it is intended for your eyes.’
The cardinal opened the envelope with a small knife and pulled out the papers. There was a short letter and two contracts.
Eminence,
By this letter I give you my personal assurance that the vexing problem of your debt is resolved. You do not need to know how this was accomplished. I return your copies of the contracts to do with as you see fit. An offer was extended to grant me an audience with the Holy Father and I will call upon your good offices when next I travel to Rome.
Tizziani
Antonelli breathed hard and nodded.
‘It is done,’ he told the priest, his relief palpable.
Returning the papers to the envelope, he told Parizo to take them away and burn them. Then he rose and adjusted his zucchetto.
‘I’m off to tell the Holy Father,’ he said. ‘All too frequently it has fallen on me to deliver bad news to him. Mercifully today is different. Join me for supper tonight, Raffaello. I will open a good bottle of wine.’
The old priest had painstakingly made his way to his tiny office, clutching the fat envelope under his arm. By the time he settled behind his desk he was short of breath and feeling chesty. He attributed the burning sensation in his chest to the rebellion of a luncheon sausage.
When another priest, a young functionary at the beginning of his bureaucratic career, amiably poked his head in to see how his venerable colleague was doing, he found a frustrated Parizo trying to reach a metal waste bin under his desk.
‘Here, let my help you, monsignor,’ he said, rushing in.
‘Thank you. That’s very kind. Please place it on my desk.’
‘As you like,’ the priest said. ‘Is there anything else I can do for you?’
‘Matches. I can’t remember where I put my matches.’
The young priest searched around and found a box tucked away behind a picture on the mantelpiece.
‘What are you going to do?’ the young man asked.
Parizo chortled. ‘I am going to make something disappear. Like a conjuror.’
When Parizo was alone he laid the three documents – a letter, a contract, and its annex – on his desk and started with the duke’s letter, striking a match and setting the corner alight. Holding it over the bin until the last moment, he waited a second too long and had to drop it in pain. He thrust his inflamed thumb and forefinger into his mouth but just then his chest began to burn more fiercely. He pulled his fingers out and rubbed his hand on his sternum. When his discomfort ebbed he turned his attention to the large annex. He would take care of it first then finish with the contract. He began to burn one page at a time but his chest started aching again so he decided to speed up the process to get back to his dormitory and rest. He hurriedly applied a match to the corner of all the remaining pages and the sheaf erupted strongly. When he dropped the pages into the bin they blazed fiercely and threw a cloud of thick smoke straight into his face.
Parizo inhaled one full breath of the noxious vapor and began to cough. He felt his throat tighten. His chest felt like someone had placed a millstone on it. In a panic he tried to get up from his chair but he could not. Instead, he felt himself helplessly pitching forward.
An hour later, the young priest happened by again, and seeing the old man slumped on his desk, his sooty head half in and half out of the toppled bin, at first he thought he had simply fallen asleep. But it didn’t take him long to realize that Monsignor Parizo was dead.
A bevy of monsignors and even a couple of bishops answered the young priest’s calls for help and proceeded to debate the administration of last rites, finally deciding that there might still be at least a small last breath inside the old man’s breast. When the sacraments were delivered, his body was carried away.
‘Do you know what he was burning?’ a bishop asked the young priest.
‘Only some papers.’
Just then a grave-looking Cardinal Antonelli entered. Seemingly relieved that the body was gone, he sniffed at the sooty air and asked whether they had found any burned documents.
The priest, in some awe at being in the presence of the cardinal secretary, volunteered that he had been with Parizo when he was about to burn some papers.
‘Where? Show me?’ the cardinal asked.
He was shown the metal waste bin and the pile of ashes inside. Satisfied, Antonelli made a rather generic statement about the fragility of life and the need to always maintain a devout attitude, then left.
‘What would you like me to do with all the rest of his papers and correspondence?’ the priest asked the bishop.
‘You should do what we always do in these circumstances. You attended to Monsignor Moreno upon his passing, I believe. Do the same and see to it immediately. This is a good office. I have a monsignor I would like to take occupancy tomorrow.’
The next morning, the chief archivist at the Vatican Secret Archive sighed when he saw the two large crates of documents that had been left on his desk the previous evening with a paper marking them as the contents of the office of M. Parizo. It was clear that his day would be consumed with an unexpected filing job. Reaching into the first box he took out an envelope containing something that looked like a contract. He put it back, glancing at the name on the envelope: Duke Tizziani of Romagna.
He tossed the envelope on to his large table. He did not know who this duke was and he wondered if it would be necessary to make a new file box in the section of the archive reserved for the minor nobility of the Vatican States. The archivist yawned. Probably no one would ever look at it again once it was consigned to one of his shelves.
SEVENTEEN
Cal returned from the small basement toilet where he had doused his face with a handful of cold water. Returning to the stacks he read The Times of London article one more time.
Fire at the Sassoon Bank
Proprietor Dead in Blaze
Shortly before midnight a passerby on Cannon Street saw flames leaping from the windows of the merchant bank Sassoon’s and notified the fire brigade. Thanks to a rapid response that included a large engine, a hand engine and a leathern pipe sufficient water was delivered to save the building and the nearby residences. However, on inspection of the smoldering premises the charred remains of the proprietor of the bank, Mr Claude Sassoon, the prominent Jewish banker, were discovered. Apparently, Mr Sassoon was in his office late at work when the fire erupted, perhaps caused by an unattended candle. Superintendent Wheeler of the Metropolitan Police has stated that there was no indication of arson. The bank houses an abundance of documents which, with certainty, provided fuel to the blaze. Mr Sassoon is survived by a wife and a son, Andre. Tragically, he had recently been informed of the death of his eldest son in the city of Venice.
So, they killed Mayer Sassoon and started a fire. The thoughts raced around Cal’s brain. The Vatican had to be in some way responsible for these murders. The loan had been made under duress. There had never been an intention to repay it.
Then he checked himself. These weren’t conclusions a professional historian ought to be making. These were working hypotheses at best. But in his gut he knew where the truth lay.
The giddy excitement of discovery rapidly gave way to a gloomy sense that those responsible for the fire had probably either stolen the loan contracts or torched them. What were his chances of finding them now?
Again, that faint rustling at the rear of the basement interrupted his thoughts. A foraging rodent, no doubt, but just in case he called for Mrs Gomes again. It was getting too late for her to come. He wondered if he ought to give her a call or better yet, a text, to let her know he’d be staying on, possibly until morning.
‘Hello?’
He rose, ready to dismiss the sound as a product of his imagination, but when he heard it again he couldn’t ignore it.
‘Hello? Mrs Gomes, are you there?’
He began to head toward the elevator through a corridor of stacked file boxes from the 1890s when he noticed an entire shelf labeled in bold calligraphy.
Mr Wilkins – Materials for Restoration
The faint smell of smoke tickled his nostrils.
He was torn. Should he investigate the high-pitched sounds or the Wilkins shelf?
He chose the latter, pulling down a box at random. As soon as he opened it the nature of these materials became clear enough. There were batches of papers, all of them significantly more fire-damaged than the ones he’d encountered in the chronological stacks. Each document was protectively encased in its own acetate folder. Some pages were practically destroyed, some looked to be so brittle they might turn to dust with handling, others were more lightly affected. The archivist, Wilkins, had probably done a sort in the 1920s, triaging the damaged documents and filling several shelves with boxes of papers that were too fragile to remain in the stacks. But restoration work was time-consuming and expensive and he could well imagine that the Sassoons of Wilkin’s era might have balked at the cost.
He delicately flipped through the acetates, looking to date the papers.
1827, 1838, 1852, 1858.
None were later than 1858, consistent with the account in The Times.
The papers weren’t in strict chronological order but the shelf was ripe for exploration. Parking away any thoughts of the faint noises, he got a chair and began a systematic search.
It was eleven o’clock. He thought it would take an hour or two, to make it through the section. At twelve thirty he was still going when there was that rustling again. This time he completely ignored it and opened a new file box, this one positively reeking of old smoke.
And there it was, visible through the yellowing acetate, written in English in a thickly lettered script. He’d seen a copy of this document before, the loan contract he’d found in the Vatican Secret Archives.
Agreement between the Sassoon Bank of Rome and London and the Sancta Sedes for a Loan with a Face Value of Three Hundred Thousand Pounds Sterling
He couldn’t contain his excitement.
‘Yes!’
The triumphant shout filled the basement.
He hurried back to Gomes’s desk with the folder and found a pair of tweezers in her desk drawer. When he extracted the first scorched page of the brittle contract from the acetate about an eighth of it crumbled away. The next page was only half-intact. He laid it next to the first page and read what he could. Then he extracted the third page. Two inches were missing from its bottom. The signatures of Claude Sassoon and Cardinal Antonelli were burned away.
This was worrisome but it wasn’t a problem. He had already found an intact copy of the contract, complete with signatures.
But what of the annex?
The next page in the folder was only partially readable through the discolored acetate; he couldn’t be sure what it was. Holding his breath, he tweezered it out. The bottom of this sheet was also scorched, and to his horror another inch disintegrated in front of his eyes as he set it upon the desk. But the upper parts of the paper were fine.
Then he read the bold header.
Setting Forward the Terms and Conditions of a Loan Between the Sassoon Bank and the Sancta Sedes
Cal would have pounded the desk in triumph if the brittle papers hadn’t been there.
The annex was much longer than the underlying contract. He removed the sheets one by one; the state of damage varied significantly from page to page. One of the middle pages was all but destroyed with only a fragment intact. The penultimate page was also in terrible shape so he used the tweezers to take both remaining sheets out of the plastic together.
The make or break moment was here.
Peeling away the frail upper sheet he saw them.
Two pristine signatures: Claude Sassoon for the Sassoon Bank and Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli for the Holy See.
‘Got you!’ he exclaimed. ‘Hell yes!’
It was nearly one fifteen in the morning, seven fifteen in Italy. From what he knew of the pope’s habits, Celestine would be up and about but he decided to wait to break the news until a more businesslike hour.
It took several heart-stopping minutes to maneuver the brittle pages back into the folder but he needed more padding before transporting them. A quick rummage through Gomes’s desk unearthed an old faculty directory from New York University of the right size to swallow the folder. He slipped it inside the directory and made his way to the elevator with a vision dancing in his head of the chilled half-bottle of vodka in the hotel mini-fridge.
It was the strangest sensation.
He always kept his hair on the longish side, over ears, over the collar. It was as if an intense jet of air parted the hair at his left temple. He instinctively raised his left hand to inspect the spot right after something slammed into the shelf just over his shoulder.
Confused, he wheeled around and saw a small black hole in a file box.
In his rebellious youth, Cal had found what he thought was a damn good way to irritate his parents and assert his independence. Instead of going straight to college after high school he joined the army, an experiment that had gone wrong almost from the first day. Even the army it seemed couldn’t purge his fierce individuality. He stubbornly dug in and lasted for two years and might have made it longer had he not slugged a sergeant over his treatment of a vulnerable private. If Cal’s father hadn’t been friendly with a very influential Massachusetts senator, Cal would have earned a dishonorable discharge. That fate avoided, his next stop was Harvard College.
Even though his army days were twenty-five years in the past, some things stayed with him, like those vivid memories of live-fire drills and the terrifying sensation of rounds impacting all over the drill zone.
He hit the floor like he’d been trained all those years ago and when he was on his belly he slid the telephone directory under a bookshelf.
He was a sitting duck. Whoever was on the business end of the firearm had only to march over and this time he wouldn’t miss.
So he sprang up and ran toward the front of the basement just as another round came from the direction of the elevator and thwocked into a stack of ledger books. He lost his traction trying to navigate a sharp turn at the end of a row of shelving and his shoulder hit a bookcase on the next row. The case rocked slightly and a book on a top shelf tumbled off. He kept running but his shoes, noisily slapping the floor, were a dead giveaway. He paused only long enough to kick them off before taking off on stockinged feet, doing a controlled slide at each turn.
There were gaps in the shelves every ten meters to allow for easy passage from one section to another. He used these gaps, zigging and zagging through the archive, trying to be unpredictable, all the while listening for the chirp of the attacker’s crepe soles. There were only two ways out – the elevator and the emergency stairs – both at the rear. He needed to get to the stairs but the shooter would know that. Could he make a 911 call while running? He brushed over his trousers pocket and didn’t feel his phone.
He silently swore. He’d left it on the archivist’s desk.
So he ran and slid, ran and slid.
From the sound of the shooter’s squealing soles, Cal could tell the guy was a calculating bastard. He was sticking toward the rear of the building to block his exit, probably roaming the ends of the rows to try to catch a line of sight. Each time Cal slid into a new row he glanced toward the rear. If he saw the attacker he’d have to dive through a gap to the next row.
He was on autonomic overdrive. His heart was
thumping. He was panting like a hot dog. It was only a matter of time before he picked the wrong row at the wrong time and a chunk of lead took him down. Playing defense wouldn’t save his skin.
He had to shift to offense.
He came to a sliding halt and listened for the chirping shoes. He heard nothing for several seconds; the shooter was probably listening too. Then there was a squeak to his left so he shot the gap to his right.
His feet caught on something.
He was flying.
Picking himself up he looked back to see what tripped him.
It was an outstretched arm.
Gomes was lying in a puddle of blood, her mobile phone among the spilled contents of her handbag
There was no point in checking her. Her head wound was catastrophic.
He didn’t panic.
He got angry.
All this poor woman had done was go out of her way to be helpful to a colleague and for that her life had been snuffed out.
Ever since he was a boy, when someone crossed him he didn’t stop until he got even. Pity the schoolyard bully. Cal was the vigilante kid protecting the pipsqueak, sending the bully off with a split lip. He’d never outgrown it. Maybe it wasn’t professorial. Maybe it wasn’t Christian. But in his book, assholes had to pay.
There was a new sound.
Books hitting the floor.
The guy was pushing them off shelves to make himself shooting windows.
But these sounds were easier to localize than his squealing shoes.
Cal took off in a run, heading straight for him.
The thudding stopped as he got closer.
He slowed and hesitantly passed through a gap. There was no shooter but a pile of books on the floor under a partially cleared out shoulder-high shelf.
Then Cal coughed.
Not an involuntary cough, a purposeful one.
He edged closer to the shooting window and coughed again.
Two points made a line. He was declaring the direction of his movement.
There was a soft chirp from the man’s shoes, then another coming from the other side of the bookcases. He was going to set up at the window he’d created and when Cal moved past it he’d be a fat target at a shooting gallery.