by Neil Howarth
“Okay, Walter.” Fagan finally asked. “So what happened to your nice tranquil life in the Vatican?”
Walter looked up from staring into the fire. “You mean what did I do that ended up tearing your lives apart.”
“Joseph didn’t say that,” Frankie said.
“It’s the same thing. It was my fault.”
“Forget that,” Fagan said. “What are you always telling me? Shit happens. Just tell us.”
Walter took a large gulp of his wine. “First, there’s something else I have to tell you. I should have told you six months ago, but,” he paused and held up a hand in admission. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I knew it would only screw with your head, and besides, there was nothing you could do about it.”
“Now you are screwing with my head,” Fagan said.
Walter looked him directly in the eye. “Brennan is back in the Vatican.”
“What?” A steel vice seemed to tighten in Fagan’s chest. “That can’t be. That murdering son of a bitch. No, why would they . . .”
“I’m afraid it’s true. And it gets worse.”
Walter gave them a quick rundown of Brennan’s new position and his recent elevation to Cardinal, as well as the story of his own downfall.
“How could this happen?”
“It’s called powerful friends,” Walter said.
“Is this the Imperium?” Fagan asked. “Did we have no effect on them at all? I don’t see we made that much difference if Brennan is back in the Vatican, and is now Cardinal Brennan.”
“Don’t underestimate what you did,” Iggy said. “Your little run-in with Dominic de Vaux had wide sweeping effects. All the way from the top down.” He shrugged. “I still have friends out there with their ears to the ground and when Brennan first returned, Walter asked me to do some digging. I cast out my net pretty wide, and with a little help from Walter’s contacts inside the Vatican, we came up with a pretty clear picture.
“The rumor is that the Imperium and the Vatican have had a falling out. The new Grand Master is of the Jewish faith and sees no future in supporting the comeback of the Catholic Church. In fact, he would prefer the opposite.”
“So why are they still trying to kill us?” Frankie asked.
“From what Walter tells me, it would appear that our newly appointed Cardinal was behind that, not the Imperium.” Iggy took a slightly bent and battered cigarette from behind his ear and lit it. “Maybe he holds a grudge.”
Fagan stared into the fire. “He’s not the only one.”
Iggy blew a long plume of bluish smoke into the fireplace. “Is life ever that simple?”
Fagan picked up his wine glass. “Somehow I get the feeling you’re going to tell me it’s not.”
“It would appear that on the demise of Dominic de Vaux someone else stepped up into his place, pulling the strings inside the Vatican. Cardinal Giancarlo Carlucci, the current Secretary of State. Mind you there are those who say he always held the reins in the first place, and De Vaux was just his access to the Imperium, and all the resources they could bring to bear. Rumor has it that he is behind Brennan’s return to the Vatican.”
“Why am I getting a bad feeling about this?” Fagan said.
“If Cardinal Carlucci is behind it, you can bet he has a very good reason. Dominic de Vaux had a plan to put the Catholic Church back in the forefront of the world.”
“And set the world on fire to do it,” Fagan said.
“You of all people know what the Bible says, and you can bet that Carlucci believes it with all his heart.” Iggy took a deep pull on his cigarette and threw the stub into the fire. “I think we can expect that Dominic de Vaux’s grand plan is very much alive, and in the capable hands of Cardinal Carlucci. And for some strange reason, our newly appointed Cardinal Brennan seems to be part of that plan.”
Walter held up the empty wine bottle. “Iggy, have you got any more of this excellent Chianti.”
“You know where it is,” Iggy said.
Walter scooted off and returned with another bottle and refilled everyone’s glasses.
Fagan waited for him to settle before he spoke. “Walter, when you called, you said something about opening Pandora’s box. What was that all about?”
Walter put his wine glass on the coffee table and sat back, tapping the tips of his fingers together, as if wondering where to start. “Since Brennan had me kicked out, I’ve had a man, Carlo, on the inside. He’s been feeding me morsels of information here and there, helping me keep my ear to the ground. Yesterday I received a disturbing call from him. He said they were going to kill him.”
“Any idea who?” Fagan asked.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to find out. He sent me something. It would seem to be the reason someone wanted him dead.”
He got up and walked over to his backpack and pulled out a laptop. It was one he had borrowed from Aldo. He came back and sat down. His stubby fingers danced across the keyboard and retrieved the video footage that Carlo had sent him. He hit play and turned around the laptop so they all could see.
The traffic-cam video appeared on the screen. They sat in silence as it ran through.
“I can slow it down,” Walter said as it finished. “The truck clearly hits the man and knocks him out of shot.”
“No thank you,” Frankie said. “I think we get the picture.”
Walter began typing on the keyboard. “This might look like an accident, but I can prove that it was murder.”
“Murder?” Frankie said.
“If you look closely at the raw footage, you can see it. But Aldo and I have been doing some analysis. We took some stills and used some sophisticated image enhancement software that Aldo,” he paused, “shall we say, acquired from the NSA. We got some interesting results.”
Walter brought up a series of stills from the video footage. The first shot showed the front of the truck and the man who appeared to be leaping out into its path. Walter tapped on the keyboard and zoomed in. Another image appeared.
“This is where it gets interesting.”
People were crowded at the edge of the sidewalk waiting to cross. But at the point where Walter’s finger tapped on the screen, the picture showed a figure wearing a jogger’s top, its hood was pulled up to obscure the face, but from the build, it appeared to be a man. His arm was outstretched, his flat palm up towards his target’s back with his fingers splayed out.
“My God,” Frankie said. “He pushed him in front of the truck.”
“It gets better.” Walter brought up an improved image and further zoomed in image. “Look at the hand.”
One of the outstretched fingers was clearly wearing a chunky ring.
“We blew it up and enhanced it as much as we could. I think we may be looking at this.” Walter brought up another image. It appeared to be a stock photograph of a ring. “The Golden Crown of Thorns, emblem of the Legion of Jesus.”
“I seem to remember we met them before. De Vaux’s crowd of devoted followers,” Fagan said. “Not very nice people.”
“I suspect they were the ones who came calling at your house in the South of France,” Walter said.
“Have you any idea who the victim in the video is?” Frankie asked.
“Aldo did some checking for me. He identified the street. It’s in Brooklyn, New York. We have a date from the video. So I checked the local newspapers and found this.” He tapped at the keyboard and brought up a newspaper article. The headline read
Local Priest killed in road traffic accident.
“A priest?” Fagan said.
“It gets better.” Walter zoomed in on the article. “Look at the name of the victim.”
Fagan leaned forward and peered at the screen then looked up at Walter, as if not believing what he saw.
“Father Patrick Brennan?”
Walter cocked his head to one side and shrugged. “I did some checking. It took a little while, and I had some help from Aldo. It would appear that our friend Cardin
al Brennan was adopted when he was seventeen years old. Father Patrick Brennan was his adoptive father.”
“Why would a Roman Catholic Priest adopt a child?” Frankie asked. “And is that possible?”
“Well, he was a bit more than a child,” Fagan said. “And it’s not unheard of.”
“Who were Brennan’s real parents?” Frankie asked.
Walter puffed his cheeks and shook his head. “Not easy to find out the names of birth parents. The details are sealed. All we have from the records is they were Catholic, of course, and American.”
“But for a man of your undoubted skills?” Frankie said.
“Alas even for me that’s a problem. A Catholic adoption by someone inside the church? You know how they just love their secrets. If I could get inside the Vatican firewall, I’m sure I could find out, but currently, my replacement has the whole network tied down tight, and he appears to have closed down all my little back doors.” Walter gave her a broad smile. “However the same can’t be said of church records. I don’t have the birth parents details, but I found a note in the local diocese records. It said that before he became his adoptive father, Father Patrick was Paul Brennan’s godfather.”
“Now that could certainly explain why he would take the boy under his wing,” Fagan said.
“From what we know,” Walter continued. “Father Patrick took his parental responsibilities seriously. He took young Paul under his guiding hand and steered him into the Church and on to a stellar career. The rest, as they say, is history. That was until someone decided to push Father Patrick under an eight-wheeler truck. I had Aldo do some more digging. He broke a number of very serious international laws in the process.”
“Aldo does that every day,” Fagan said.
Walter gave him a wounded look. “Don’t take him for granted. He got us some important information. He managed to access the traffic system in Brooklyn and checked the footage for that junction, from all the surrounding cameras for that date and time. They had all been erased for the one-hour period that covered when the incident took place. According to the maintenance logs, there had been a malfunction. But it would seem the video footage we have just watched came from there at that time.”
“So how come your friend Carlo had a copy of it? And why? Do you think he copied the file then deleted the online copies?”
“Carlo would not have been allowed near it. Too far down the food chain. No, it was done by someone in the inner circle. Carlo just did what Carlo does best.”
Frankie gave him a quizzical look.
“At his heart, Carlo is a thief. God forgive him. More specifically he is a cyber-thief.”
“So who stole the video file in the first place? Before deleting the footage from the traffic cameras.”
“Carlo told me he found the video in Roberto’s stash.”
“Roberto?” Fagan said.
“The one who took over my job. One Roberto Calvanini.”
“I still don’t understand this,” Fagan said.
“Well hang in there,” Walter said. “This is way out on the edge of anything that the Vatican could be involved with. But the link is there to Cardinal Brennan. We can’t ignore that. The only person I can think of in that inner circle, who would have the know-how and the access to something like this is Roberto. That is unless they outsourced the work, and you have to ask yourself, why would they do that?”
“Which means?” Fagan asked.
Walter shrugged his generous shoulders. “I wish I knew.”
Fagan peered into his wine glass then looked up. “You said Carlo told you they would kill him for this. Why? Even if this video shows a murder, it doesn’t tell us who did it despite what we surmise about who the man in the hood is. So why would Carlo think that someone would want to kill him?”
No one spoke, then Frankie broke the silence.
“Because he didn’t surmise. He recognized the man in the hood.”
Walter smiled. “I had the same thought. So I took a look at this man. We assume he’s a man from his build. If we look back at the footage, we get a better view of him. We can’t see his face, but he’s well built, he has a certain walk, balanced, confident. We know he’s a member of the Legion of Jesus.”
“I’m sure there are many members in New York,” Fagan said.
“Yes, he could be local, but if we are assuming that Carlo recognized him, we need to look closer to home. Brennan’s adoptive father supposedly dies in a traffic accident. Except it wasn’t an accident. And then you factor in all these other things. I look at the man in the hoody, someone tall and well built. I look at the ring. And I look for the suspects. Someone that Carlo would know.” Walter took one of his normal theatrical pauses and drained his wine glass. “Brennan’s personal Doberman is a member of the Legion of Jesus. His name is Father Juergen Meyer, I’ve met him a couple of times, and he scares the living crap out of me. The fact that he is a bona fide priest challenges my faith to a certain degree, but I’m sure he would argue that he is a soldier of God. He’s loosely described as Brennan’s administrative assistant, but I’ll wager the only thing he administers is a kick in the head. I’d further wager that he’s our man in the hood.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit of a leap?” Fagan said.
“I’m just looking where the fingers are pointing.”
“So are you saying that Brennan was involved in the murder of his adoptive father?” Frankie asked.
Walter gave a non-committal shrug.
They sat in silence, only the crackle of the olive wood in the fire to penetrate it.
“But why?” Fagan asked.
Frankie looked up from the fire, “That’s what we need to find out.”
Fagan looked into her eyes. There was a hardened determination there that he had not seen earlier.
“Brennan is the monkey on our back. And I mean that for all of us.” She looked at each of the faces sitting around the fire. “If we ever want to get him off, we need to know all of his dirty little secrets.”
10
Apostolic Palace, Rome.
Roberto Calvanini stood in the San Damaso Courtyard, sheltered in the archway of the entrance to the Apostolic Palace, watching the steady drizzle splatter onto the ancient cobbles. He imagined it washing away its dubious past — and present, keeping the soul of the Holy See clean and spotless. He wondered if he stepped out into the rain, would it do the same for him?
Roberto was barely beyond a youth. His dark hair, dark complexion, dark eyes, and the black cassock of a novitiate that he wore, all seemed to blend into his overall demeanor. Three days growth of beard only added to the effect. But within that darkness was a bright spark, a unique flickering interaction of synapses in his brain that placed him in the position he was in today. He was a member of one of the few professions where the level of knowledge and expertise appeared to be inversely proportional to age.
He wore a gold pin, shaped like a crown of thorns, pinned at the breast of his cassock. Not that he felt any particular religious leanings, apart from the fact he was born a Catholic, but in this case, it went with the job — which brought about his problem.
He was the head of the Vatican Cyber Security Group, a small and secretive unit, hidden away in the depths of the holy citadel. It was a position he had inherited from his predecessor, Father Walter McGeechan. His boss was the Holy Father’s personal secretary, the newly elected Cardinal Brennan, which was also part of his problem. It was at times like this he wished he had never been given this job.
He knew there was trouble when Father Juergen came looking. He wanted to know where Carlo was, which was the first time he realized that the slimy little rat was gone, and when he had got really worried.
He had never trusted him and had always kept his secrets hidden away from him. But Carlo was smart, Roberto had to give him that, and maybe he had been a little sloppy himself. He had checked on his stash. The file was still there, but the sophisticated monitoring software he had in p
lace showed that someone had copied it. Whoever had taken it had covered their tracks well. To even gain access to the file was a feat in itself, it was hidden away deep in elaborate layers of security. Which was why he knew it had to be Carlo. He could operate inside their major firewalls and was one of the few people he knew capable of pulling this off. Just the existence of that file was evidence of Roberto’s own guilt, and unless he found it and any other copies — he suppressed a shudder. He didn’t like to think of the consequences.
When he got his hands around Carlo’s skinny neck, he would find out just what he had done — before he squeezed the life out of him.
But that was the future. He had to deal with now. It was late, so why was Father Juergen calling him at this time?
He should have been a hero. He had gone to Father Walter’s apartment looking for the file. He had found the laptop, but of course there was no sign of the file. Walter was never going to make it that easy. Then he had discovered the photographs, and everything changed.
He had recognized the girl first. Quite a looker, and the source of more than one of his dark fantasies when Cardinal Brennan had assigned him the task of searching for them when he had first arrived back in the Vatican. At the time his investigation had gone nowhere. But now he had been given a second chance. When he had looked closer, he recognized the man, the one that Brennan had a real hard on for — to the point of wanting him dead.
But that was not for him to question, this was the heady heights of the Vatican, as Brennan had explained early on.
We are doing God’s work. Deeds in his name are not sins.
Using some of his smart software, it had not taken him long to work out the location of the photographs, and he had given that information to Cardinal Brennan. He had hoped that maybe it would distract him and Father Juergen long enough for him to track down Carlo. He should have been celebrating now. Was it his fault that the Brothers of the Legion in the south of France were a bunch of incompetent fools? From what he had heard, dead fools. And Father Juergen, instead of being there with them, and also dead, had stayed here to look for Carlo.