Immaculate Reception (20 page)

I
nearly fell off the crate. I just managed to recover my balance enough to roll into a crouch and hide behind a pile of empty cardboard boxes stacked nearby. The noise I made caught Zoda's attention as he rounded the corner. I didn't think he saw me.

“What was that noise?” Zoda demanded from Xavier. With a frightening amount of energy for such an old man, he pulled at the handcuffs, making certain they were secure.

“Some boxes fell over,” Xav said. “I was hoping the noise might get someone's attention.”

“You have my attention, young man,” Zoda said, sternly, “so stop that noisemaking at once.”

“Who are you?” Xavier asked. “What is this all about? I'm a Jesuit…”

“A priest, yes I know,” Zoda said, rubbing his bald head with one hand in a nervous gesture. “But you should have left me alone. There is nothing worse than a nosy priest.”

“You're making a mistake,” Xavier tried to explain. “I don't even know who you are.”

“Victor Zoda? You expect me to believe you have never heard of me, sir? You've been stalking me, dogging my steps. I am an old man. I will not permit it.”

“Mr. Zoda, I am a Jesuit Brother. Surely you must understand that I've dedicated my life to helping people in trouble. Maybe if you told me what your…”

“Enough talking,” Zoda said, when he had finally sat
isfied himself that the handcuffs were intact.

“Why did you attack me? If you're planning to harm the Holy Father, I must warn you…”

At that Zoda began laughing, as loud and as hearty a laugh as one would expect to come from a man half his age.

“Please, dear God, you can't mean to injure His Holiness,” Xavier said, nearly distraught.

“You don't know the joke,” Victor was saying, as he moved around into a clear spot. “If you only knew the lengths to which I have…”

I jumped off the highest pallet, straight onto Victor's back. In an instant I had crushed the old man, landing spread-eagled atop him, his now crumpled body breaking my fall.

“Madeline!” Xavier shouted.

Before I could speak, the man beneath me began to squirm, lashing out with hands and feet. Twisting violently, Zoda almost overturned me with the strength of one agitated kick. Quickly, I drew up on one knee and then pounded the force of my body onto him again, slamming down hard on the man's mid-back. While I had him on his stomach, I clutched about wildly, trying to seize one of his flailing arms.

He was yelling incoherently, stronger than an old man should be, resistant as a steel spring, heaving, trying to buck me off. One more desperate lunge and, at last, I grabbed hold of his swinging right arm and pinned it down. Then I yanked it with all my power up behind his shoulder blade until I believed it was close to breaking.

“Stop!” he screamed.

“Maddie, you're hurting him,” Xavier said, shocked.

“Please, can we worry about that later!”

With his arm pinned back high, Zoda stopped wriggling so much. Only on his stomach, I knew, could a man be restrained.

Zoda sputtered. “What insanity…! Have you gone mad? What do you want from me?”

In the elegant surprise of my attack, he had barely gotten a look at me. And in that moment, I felt exultant. I had truly done it. For once, I had taken action. No more swearing after the tailgate of trucks. No more slinking off in fear into my own dumbwaiter. With the extreme abuse I'd taken that morning, I didn't need a shrink to tell me what I was doing with all my pent-up anger and frustration. This was probably as emotionally healthy as I was going to get all year.

“Mr. Zoda. Victor,” I said. “Don't you remember me? I visited you only last night.”

“What do you want?” he hissed.

“Why didn't you tell me the full story last night, Mr. Zoda? You enjoyed talking so much about the old days, why leave out the part where you smuggled Nazi war criminal scum into South America?”

“What do you know?” he asked, as he once again came alive beneath me, jerking almost out of my grasp. I pulled his right arm even tighter and he yelped loudly.

“Tell us about the Nazis,” I yelled, breathing heavily, angrier than I can ever remember being.

“It's nothing. You know nothing,” he said, now lying still, but with his muscles tightly flexed. “I am Victor Zoda, a respected man in my community. Do you realize how much money I have donated to my church, Miss Bean? I have given over twenty-five million dollars! Do you think of me as a criminal? Well, I can assure you no one else in this building does.”

“They don't know you like we do, Victor,” I said. “Tell Brother Xavier about
Stille Hilfe
.”

The man seemed to wilt beneath me. I felt the energy ebb away from his resistance. But I couldn't let down my guard, not until someone came to take charge.

This position, me astride Victor Zoda forcing his right arm up behind his back, was problematic. It meant I couldn't reach my radio, which had smashed to the floor and skittered away down the aisle, when I'd made my jump. I still had my bag over my shoulder, but I couldn't
loosen my hold on Zoda to feel around for my cell phone. And Xavier, handcuffed five feet away, was of no use.

“
Stille Hilfe
,” I prompted.

“Who told you about that?” he asked. “Did the same person ever tell you how many Jews Victor Zoda saved? It's true. I saved more lives than any priest in this building,” he said.

“What's he talking about?” Xavier asked me.

“In the late thirties, I had a job in the Mussolini government. Not a grand job, you would probably tell me. How could I not be disappointed when my promotions did not come through? With my qualifications, it was preposterous! Politics. But I learned quickly. I made it my business to become friendly with the powerful people I met.”

“You mean with Nazis, don't you?”

“Don't be so quick to judge. During the war, I also had special friends inside the Vatican. Boyhood friends, men I'd grown up with. Some of these priests knew of families, Jews who needed special help, but what could the priests do? Their hands were tied. It was
I
who saved these wretched men,
I
who took the risk,
I
who gave them back their lives. My access to government schedules and the falsified travel papers procured through my Vatican sources permitted many, many Jews to get out of Europe alive, one step ahead of the Gestapo.”

“For how much money?” I asked him, coldly.

“Money was the key, Miss Bean. Nothing happened without money. Yes, the Jews paid. They paid dearly, as who would not if it was their own children's necks they wished to save? Are you suggesting I should not have collected their payment? Are you so naive to expect men to risk their lives without hope of profit?”

“And while you were getting rich off your ‘humanitarian' scheme, you somehow kept this black market activity from the notice of your Nazi friends.”

“Of course. I was clever. I told you.”

“Then tell us about
Stille Hilfe
,” I said, grimly.

“When the war began to go badly for the Third Reich,
there were many Nazi officers who were anxious to escape Europe with their lives. These were men I had become friendly with, in the line of my work, men of great wealth.”

“Stolen wealth, you mean. The money and jewels and artwork of the continent, stolen by murdering thugs.”

“Stolen or not, these objects were worth unspeakable amounts of money. Some items were indeed priceless. This is what they offered me to get them to South America before they were captured by the Allies and put on trial for their crimes. And think, the underground path out of Europe had already been established and I controlled the gate.”

“So you used your contacts within the Vatican?”

“The Vatican was an independent state. As such they were permitted to issue their own travel visas for the use of clerics,” Zoda said. “This is how my Jews escaped. Do you enjoy the irony? My Jews traveled in cassocks with false papers which showed them to be priests traveling to a mission in South America.”

“So while some helpful priest arranged for documents to allow Jewish families to escape those monsters, you lined your pockets with those families' life savings. And if that wasn't despicable enough, you used the same unwitting priest's kindness to rescue the Nazi monsters when their money looked better.”

I was sick to think I was that close to such a villain. Such callous, commerce-minded evil.

“Maddie, don't,” Xavier said.

I looked down and realized I was close to breaking Zoda' s arm.

“Please, I told you what you wanted to hear. These stories are old. The men we speak of are dead. Of what importance are these ancient matters today? Let me up and…”

“Let you up?” I screamed. “You ambushed an innocent Jesuit brother and murdered him. Why did you kill Brother Frank del Valle? What madness was that?”

“It was a mistake,” Zoda said, giving in to his own tears. “I never meant…”

“Madeline, is this true?” Xavier asked.

“He was after you, Xavier,” I said, watching Xav' s face lose its color as he took in the news. Then I turned back to the old man who lay quietly on the ground, and demanded, “Weren't you?”

Zoda said nothing.

“Was it Picca who acquired the travel documents for you back in Rome?” I asked.

“Through him. He was not important enough yet. But he knew men who were.”

“So Monsignor Picca thought you were a hero,” I said, disgusted with how easily Zoda had fooled everyone all these years. He was a respected man in the community. It was shocking.

“Benny knew the good I had done. Although he had sworn to keep silent about our clandestine arrangements to help the Jews escape from Rome, he knew,” Zoda said, actually sounding proud of himself.

“We were from the old country together,” Zoda continued, “and we had interests in common. Naturally, I saw him often. Then, one day last week, I noticed a diocesan newsletter on his desk. A notice was posted by a Brother Xavier asking for information about a certain Jesuit brother named Ugo. Of course, Benny remembered Brother Ugo from the old days. He told me he planned to respond to the notice.

“That evening, I called the parish where this Brother Xavier was staying. I was informed he was attending a performance at a television studio. I was able to call a friend and get permission to enter the lot. Once I was there, I sent a note, but when the Jesuit brother I was looking for came to meet me, I saw he was not alone. There was a woman with him. So I stayed away and watched. What else could I do? Of course at that time, I thought I was watching Xavier Jones.”

“You meant to find
me
?” Xavier asked, shocked.

“And kill you, Xavier,” I said.

“No! I meant to talk with the brother. Why would I kill
anyone? I simply wanted to tell him to leave this ancient issue involving Brother Ugo alone.

“I kept my eye on that trailer he entered. Soon, through the back window, I could see the brother standing all alone. I moved nearer and heard the sound of the shower running, so I took the chance I could have my quiet word with Brother Xavier and be out again before the lady emerged from her bath.

“But when I spoke to the Jesuit in that trailer, he denied everything. Don't you see? I thought he already knew my secrets and was about to reveal them. I couldn't allow that! Not now. Not with the pope coming to see us. I was pushed beyond reason. He denied looking into the matter of Brother Ugo. He even denied that he was Xavier Jones.”

I grimaced. Poor Brother Frank. He'd gotten caught up in something he couldn't begin to understand. He tried talking sense to a madman.

“I didn't mean to kill him. But he was holding a statue. A heavy statue. I thought he meant to attack me with it. So I wrestled it away from him. I don't know what happened next. Perhaps he thought I was a thief. He became very agitated that I was in the trailer. When he tried to take the statue back, I swung. The next thing I knew, the man had fallen back onto the bed. I threw down the statue and ran.”

“And no one saw you?” I asked, amazed. “No one stopped you?”

“No one looks at an old man,” Victor Zoda said, bitterly.

“But why?” Xavier asked, more stressed at listening to this story than I'd ever seen him. “Why kill Frank? Why kill me? What threat did you imagine I could have been to you if I continued my investigation of Brother Ugo the baker?”

Victor Zoda, the man who liked to talk, shut up like a clam.

Zoda had admitted his involvement in the black-market ransom scheme. He'd acknowledged his work for
Stille Hilfe
smuggling top Nazi war criminals to South America.
He'd even confessed to the murder of a young, innocent Jesuit brother in a case of mistaken identity. But he would say not a word more regarding the old, long-forgotten sin that was tied to the mystery of Brother Ugo.

“It has to do with the encyclical, doesn't it?” I prodded him.

Zoda shook his head violently, facedown on the floor of that dim storeroom.

“Pope Pius XI was planning to deliver an encyclical to the world denouncing anti-Semitism and the Nazis. At the end of nineteen thirty-eight, despite the harm it might have done to the Roman Catholic Church, Pius XI was going to stand up to Hitler and demand respect for all human rights.”

“He was crazy!” Zoda said, swearing. “He was insane! He was an old, sick man who was about to bring down the church and then who would he help? Would it have served anyone if he had sacrificed forty million Catholics along with some Jews?”

“I think you were more worried about your own little scam,” I said to the back of his head, as I held him tight. “If the Catholic world had turned against Hitler, if the war ended, maybe you wouldn't have found yourself such an influential and wealthy man. What had you ever done to deserve respect? Success? You needed the Nazis to continue making your black-market fortune.”