Attrition of the Gods: Book 1 of the Mystery Thriller series Gods Toys. (10 page)

“Yes.”

Two years on and Leo was still trailing through different ledgers and ancient records. By now he knew that the Pope was looking for something specific but he was not told what. He’d realised very quickly that the Vatican Bank or IOR was a very complex organisation; the Vatican itself was a unique state. Leo discovered that it’s only real declared earnings or financial support came from a voluntary payment dating back over a thousand years. These donations were called ‘Peter’s pence’. The IOR’s remit is to serve the global mission of the Catholic Church by safeguarding the assets of institutions and individuals related to the Holy See. However, its profits and assets are not the property of the Holy See.

In plain English, it has all the benefits of a charitable organisation, the authority of self-regulation and the opportunity for officials to hide behind diplomatic immunity if the need arises – and all these things were an invitation to corruption and fraud. If the Pope was looking to clean up his house then Leo was the man. After the first couple of months exposing one indiscretion after another Leo was called for an audience with the Pope. This both excited and worried him. He was aware of the privilege and status that came with working for the high priest of the Romans but to be called to the court was to follow in the footsteps of Michelangelo. His worry, however, was that perhaps he had failed in this puzzling assignment, an assignment that he did not really understand and so led him to constantly doubt his performance.

Leo was escorted by two guards to the Pope’s private office. He waited by the entrance as the guards assumed a stance of honour then the doors opened and a middle-aged, stern-looking nun appeared.

“The Holy Father will see you know, Senior Verdi.”

Leo walked in, looking around like a child entering a Disney shop. He realised beads of sweat had involuntarily appeared on his forehead. Pope Benedict was sitting behind a large, hand-carved wooden desk. He was dressed in his papal robes, leaning over while writing a letter. Without looking up, he addressed Leo.

“Please, Señor Verdi, sit.”

Leo hesitated.

The Pope continued to speak as he wrote his letters. “I am aware that the institute I am head of is riddled with corruption, money laundering and numerous other misdemeanours. What I wish you to find is something far more important.”

His tone was punitive and Leo instinctively adopted a defensive tone.

“It would help if I knew what I was looking for.” Leo took a deep breath, trying to both assert and calm himself before continuing. “I mean, if I am not here to keep you informed on such things as theft or fraud, why do you want me to investigate the finances of the state?”

The Pope finally placed his pen down on the oak desk, looked up and gestured to the still standing Leo to sit. His face had softened as he began to explain himself.

“Forgive my reluctance to tell you exactly what I am looking for or why I have asked you to carry out this task. I am sure you are frustrated with the little information I am giving you, but you must believe me, it is for your own good.”

“But your Holiness, I don’t know how to find what you’re looking for if you can’t tell me what it is.”

“I don’t want you to feel insulted by this process, it is just that I am looking for something very specific. What it actually is even I do not know yet but when you find it I believe I will. Therefore, I want you to report any irregularity that you find and feel is significant. I may dismiss most of your findings as irrelevant but you must not feel your work is fruitless.”

Leo left more confused than when he went in. Still, he knew from the tone of the conversation that the work he was doing was important and that the Pope had faith in his ability to complete this quest.

Over the next six months Leo reported payments to non-Catholic organisations, contracts traced back to companies with dubious history, even monies paid directly into a certain cardinal’s personal account. Simeon took Leo’s findings to the Pope but time and again he was told to look elsewhere. When he discovered that the IOR purchased banks all over Eastern Europe at a knock-down price after the Second World War he was sure this was what his benefactor was looking for. Simeon thanked him but asked that he research the Holy See finances prior to the formation of the IOR. Leo dug deeper and the months soon became a year. He found himself wallowing in the archives relating to the administration of the property of the Holy See.

Once again Leo found evidence of illegal and immoral behaviour. Money laundering to American-Sicilians, collusion with fascist dictators, even a mortgage document that proved the Holy See was the landlord to most of the properties in Paris’s notorious nineteenth-century red light area. Still the Pope thanked him but asked Leo to dig deeper, maybe go further back.

The historic archives delighted him: the Papal State is the oldest political chancery in continuous operation in the world, its records go back centuries. Although Leo’s labours were seemingly unappreciated, he still relished going to work every day. Aside from the constant nagging by Regina about their retirement plans, Leo loved his assignment. Numbers and history were his two favourite things (outside of his family) and he had access to probably the world’s wealthiest store of knowledge on these subjects. He sometimes wondered if he really wanted to find the illusive information the Pope sought – retirement was beginning to look boring.

A comparatively benign event from 1748 caught Leo’s attention but he doubted the Pope would have any interest in it. He dithered on whether to bother Simeon with it at all. It appeared a Jesuit monk by the name of Isaac received three payments of quite significant amounts directly from the Pope of the time, Benedict XIV. It seemed that this Isaac was acting as a go-between for the Pope and the Chinese Empire, which at the time was ruled by the Qing dynasty. The sum was paid in gold and brokered by a Jewish lender. No real documents seemed to explain the transaction, just a note in the Pontiff’s own hand saying:
Ledger held by MB
. Leo followed the paperwork and discovered that this book was used to enter many more transactions right up to 1945. Strangely there was no pattern to the deals. Some were to organisations, some to companies and some to countries. Even the broker changed. Early on they seemed to use Rothschild, then James Barclay or Barings, later Warburg and Morgan. These were large sums of money but it all balanced as far as Leo could see. He also noted that at the end of the trail in 1945 the promissory and the book were supposed to have been kept in the Vatican vaults but he could not locate them.

He doubted that the current Pope Benedict would be interested in this information as it all seemed completely above board and he should probably not mention it until he had traced the ledger, which had probably just been misplaced, but it had been a quiet week and he needed something to justify the thousands of Euro’s he would be billing Simeon so he included it in his weekly report with a footnote saying he would look for the ledger the following week.

Tired and a little frustrated, Leo went home to his apartment in Rome. It was an upmarket place that the Vatican had provided, just two hundred metres from the Piazza del Popolo in an executive block. The flat itself was very modern, furnished in white leather and clear glass with marble floors that led to plush carpets and both bedrooms contained sunken baths and shower rooms. A cleaning lady and a cook came as part of the deal. Leo had commented to Regina that they now lived like film stars but she was not impressed, finding the flat sterile; all she really wanted was to get out of Rome.

On this evening Regina was back in London visiting their oldest daughter. Leo realised she was unhappy and he was ashamed of the way he felt about her indifference. He had always strived to make Regina happy but now he almost resented her for not wanting to be part of this great adventure. She had taken to visiting the children at any opportunity and Leo knew that she preferred to be anywhere but here in Rome. Tonight though, Leo missed her. He wanted to see and hold her; something told him it was important. He phoned his wife.

“Hello. It’s me.”

“Hi. How was your day? Did you find the Holy Grail yet?”

Leo laughed at his beloved’s remark. In an effort to avoid Regina’s interrogation about his role for the Pope he had joked with her that he was searching for the Holy Grail though he now realised that task would probably have been easier. Leo was not a great man for phone conversations but to Regina’s surprise he continued talking well into the night, telling her every detail of his week and even more unusually, telling her how much he missed her and wanted her with him. Still, this didn’t prepare her for his final words.

“I love you Regina. More than I ever have or will love anyone or anything.”

His words invoked concern in his wife. She told him she would be home the following day and as they disconnected a feeling of foreboding fell over her.

When Leo hung up he felt bad that for the first time since they met over thirty-five years ago they wanted different things.

He was so happy here. Fifty miles of books and manuscripts fill the Vatican library’s shelves. Packed with knowledge. Millions of books and scriptures. It is the world’s greatest repository for medieval and renaissance manuscripts as well as many incunabula collected or stolen from cultures over the first half of the millennium. The machine that is the Roman Catholic Church owned works of literature and art, science and maths, priceless documents, even parchments that were written before Christianity existed telling of a history forgotten by the world. This fountain of knowledge was Leo’s utopia yet unbeknown to him the adventure was about to escalate and the fun was about to end.

The next day Leo was up and about at the crack of dawn. It was Friday and Leo hoped to get into the office before 07:00 so he could finish early and meet Regina off the plane. She was scheduled to arrive at 15:00 and Leo was looking forward to seeing his loving wife. When he got to the Vatican Sister Bernadette, the nun who looked after the admin at the small office out of which Leo worked, met him at the door.

“You are to go straight to the Papal office,” she told him. “His Holiness wishes to see you.”

Leo was slightly alarmed; the sister had sounded anxious as she hurried him up. Although Leo met with Simeon at least once a week he had only met with the Pope three times during his assignment as the Pope was a very busy man.

Normally Leo would wait for a Swiss guard to escort him but today the nun was insistent that he go straight to the Pope’s personal library. As Leo made his way through St Peter’s Basilica, the greatest of all churches in Christendom, his gaze was drawn to the huge central dome and he was once more overcome by the gravity of his place of work. Leo could not help but be impressed by the Catholics but he also wondered how they could pretend to be the church of the people and the descendants of Christ when they surrounded themselves with such ostentatious architecture. He wondered what the man who threw the traders from his father’s home would make of all this grandiosity.

Eventually he averted his gaze, remembering that he was about to meet with the Holy Father. Quickly he tried to recount his rehearsed explanations for the lack of progress in his search for whatever it was he was looking for. Head down and mumbling to himself, Leo reached the exit of the great church, headed up the corridor that led to the library and walked straight up to the guards who stood at the entrance to Benedict’s apartment. The head guard waved him past, he was obviously expected. As he approached the grand library he could hear the Pope’s voice and that of Simeon, the loyal servant. The discussion was about some book.

“You asked to see me, Your Grace,” Leo said, addressing the Pope.

To his discomfort it was Simeon who answered, still wearing the damned sunglasses.

“Did he fuck? I wanted to see you!”

Leo recoiled in horror and surprise. Did Simeon just curse in front of the Pope? Leo looked at the Pope, the man who is God’s representative on earth, the man who commands over 1.2 billion Catholics across the planet, the most famous man on earth, who was now cowed like a schoolboy brought before the headmaster.

“Sit down, Leo,” ordered Simeon.

Leo immediately recognised an authority in Simeon’s voice that was absent before. He looked again to Pope Benedict.

“Is that okay, Your Grace?” he asked.

The Pope nodded. Leo noticed a look of trepidation fall across the elderly priest’s face. Simeon spoke again.

“The last report you sent mentions a transaction from the Vatican to China.”

Leo felt uncomfortable. He noticed that as well as authority, Simeon’s voice was bearing a certain menace.

“Well?” asked Simeon, his voice raised.

Uncomfortable was now an understatement, especially as Simeon was acting as if the Pope was a secretary awaiting instruction. Leo gathered his courage and inquired to the Pope.

“Is everything all right, Your Worship?”

Simeon sighed. “Trust me, he is fucking fine. He shits in a golden latrine and gets blow jobs off the nuns so don’t worry about him. I need you to focus, Leo. The Jesuit and the Jew, what paperwork have you found on them?”

A mixture of outrage and fear prompted Leo to stand suddenly. His mind raced:
What is
going on?
he thought.
Is this some sort of prank? No, of course not, you fool. Perhaps it’s a test. Well,
I’ve failed if it is. What if Simeon has flipped? Could be drugs? No, he doesn’t look drugged, does he? I can’t see his eyes with those confounded glasses on, I need to get out of here.
Eventually he had a clear thought
. Of course, Simeon must have had some sort of breakdown and the Pope is playing along. I must alert the guards!

“It’s okay, Leo,” said the Pope. “Take a seat.”

Leo hesitated as he watched the Pope get up and offer Simeon the chair at his desk.

“Thank you,” said Simeon, slipping into place. “Now I understand that this is a little strange, Leo, but let me explain.” He opened a drawer in the desk and pulled out Leo’s report before nodding to Benedict who turned and left the room, closing the doors behind him.