Magnificat (39 page)

“Cardinal Tayibha was murdered, wasn’t he?” asked Greene. “There’s no doubt about that?”

“I’m not saying he wasn’t.” Cardinal Hetre scowled at the American. “But it isn’t a good idea to permit everyone in the world to review the evidence.” He nodded toward the street. “Everyone out there has his own theory about what happened. Everyone has speculated on the role the Church played in Cardinal Tayibha’s death. That’s the trouble with making the autopsy results public. It brings too much attention on us, attention that causes distress to Catholics all over the world. They have endured the farce of this Papal election, but there is no reason they should have to share in this folly as well.”

“But the man is dead,” said Clancy. “Someone put poison in his tea. Your reports indicate that the poison was not in Tayibha’s cup but in the pot of tea. Anyone drinking that tea would have died. And the tea was prepared for Pope An.”

“Don’t call her that,” snapped Cardinal Hetre as his headache flared.

“It is the name everyone calls her. They can pronounce it more easily than Zhuang Renxin,” said Greene. He sighed as the limousine pulled to the side of the road, and a uniformed Eurocop tapped on the window. “Excuse this interruption,” he said to the passengers as he pressed the button to lower the window. “Yes, officer?”

The Eurocop was not thrown off hearing English. He answered in the same language with only a hint of a Veneto accent. “Your pardon, but as you are aware, we are conducting random inquiries.”

“Yes,” said Greene. “What do you want to know? We’re willing to cooperate, naturally.”

“Thank you,” said the Eurocop. “You are? May I see your passport?”

“Greene, Rufus Greene.” He pulled a Coach wallet from his jacket. “Here is my passport, and my receipt from the hotel where I am staying. I am Vice-President in charge of security for International Vision, Ltd. My cards and other identifications are also in the wallet, along with a copy of my travel itinerary.” He handed it over without any reluctance.

The Eurocop took the wallet and drew out Greene’s passport. “If you are in security, you probably comprehend the need for these precautions.”

“Most certainly. In your place I would probably do the same things you’re doing. All three of us are aware of the current difficulties.” He indicated the other two with him. “This is Mister Clancy McEllton, who does consulting work for me from time to time. And undoubtedly you know His Eminence Cardinal Hetre.” Greene went about the introductions with rapid efficiency.

“Eminenza,” said the Eurocop, ducking his head toward the French-Canadian.

Cardinal Hetre said nothing. Stiffly he waited for the Eurocop to be gone.

“Would you like to see my passport as well, Officer?” asked Clancy, taking his cue from Greene. “I’m not carrying my hotel receipts with me, but I’ll be happy to tell you where I’m staying: it’s on the north side of the city, off the Via Nerone, a place called the White Peacock.”

“The passport is sufficient,” said the Eurocop, handing Greene’s wallet back to him and extending his hand to Clancy.

“Here you are,” said Clancy as he fished his wallet—more battered and weathered than Greene’s—out of his jacket. “I’ve been going back and forth between here and London fairly frequently. All EEC countries, of course; I’ve also been to Germany and Greece in the last eight months. And I had a vacation in Denmark.”

“More security work?” asked the Eurocop without much interest.

“That’s my job,” said Clancy, watching while the Eurocop flipped through the pages of his passport. “I’m semi-independent. I’ve got continuing contracts with another company, but I take short-term consultations on the side. You know how it is.”

“Of course.” He returned Clancy’s wallet and bowed a little to Cardinal Hetre again. “I will need to see your Vatican identification, Eminence. For the record.”

This last addition chilled and infuriated Cardinal Hetre, who turned on the officer, his eyes baleful. “You’re impudent and insolent, Officer, and I will not tolerate it.”

“Sorry, Your Eminence, but we are required to—”

The Eurocop got no further. “I will report your actions to your superiors and I will insist that you be reprimanded for your actions. Is that clear?” He motioned to Greene to hold his tongue as he went on, for once taking satisfaction in the pain burgeoning in his skull. “I will not relinquish my identification to you. You know very well who I am and where I reside. Your attempt to bolster your position by making this untoward demand of me is not going to serve your purposes at all. I will personally see to it that you pay the full price for this effrontery.” He stared directly at Greene. “Roll up your window and have the driver take us away from here.”

“Eminence,” said Greene placatingly, “you might as well go through the motions for him. He knows who you are, but there are procedures. You ought to sympathize with him. He has his work to do.”

“That does not allow him to harass me. Or you,” he added as an afterthought.

The Eurocop sighed once. “Never mind, Mister Greene. Things have been a little tense around the Vatican. I’ll take care of it on the report. You won’t have any trouble about this.” He moved back from the window. “Drive on,” he ordered, motioning to the chauffeur to put the limousine in motion.

Greene waited until they had turned right onto the Via Nazionale before he spoke. “I don’t intend to criticize Your Eminence,” he began tactfully, “but I think that perhaps it was not wise for you to call so much attention to us as you did.”

“You’re absurd,” said Cardinal Hetre. The back of his head felt as if it were being squeezed in a vise; his hands were cold. “The fellow was impossible.”

“He was doing his job,” said Clancy, and ignored the restraining hand Greene put on his arm. “If you’d gone along with him, he wouldn’t have paid any attention to us. Now he’s going to remember he saw you, and with whom. That could make things trickier later on, after we do what we need to do. If you’d just handed over some ID, he wouldn’t have anything to recall about us. As it is, you could put him on a witness stand and get solid testimony out of him.”

“Don’t be foolish,” said Cardinal Hetre, but with less confidence than before. “It won’t come to that. With what he is doing, he will have many people angry with him by the end of the day.”

“That may be so,” said Clancy, “but most of them will not be Cardinals riding in limousines, if you will excuse my mentioning it.”

For an instant Cardinal Hetre saw himself standing over Clancy, both of them naked. He shook with revulsion and something darker. “Once his superiors castigate him properly, he will put the incident out of his mind.”

Greene read something in Cardinal Hetre’s expression and took a much gentler course with him than he had intended. “Eminence, do you think it is wise to speak to his superiors? If you complain, there will be an official record of what was done; that might be used against you, if there is ever any question of our…association. If you say nothing, it will be the man’s word against ours, and then no fault could be fixed on you.”

Now his headache was raging. Cardinal Hetre put his hand to his eyes to block out the muted sunlight. “I’ll consider what you say,” he told Greene while he did his best to contain his anguish. He wanted to get on his knees, to offer up his suffering in the hope that God would take it from him.

“Cardinal Hetre,” ventured Clancy. “Is something the matter?”

“A…slight headache. I’m prone to them.” He made himself lower his hands. “There. I think the worst has gone off. If you have an aspirin or—”

Not that aspirin would do any good, he knew, but it was what Greene and Clancy McEllton expected him to ask for. “Three tablets is my usual dose.”

“Very well,” said Greene, opening a leather-covered panel in the back of the limousine. “Aspirin or a substitute?”

“Aspirin,” said Cardinal Hetre firmly. “And a taste of wine to wash it down.”

“Of course,” said Clancy, reaching for the champagne that was chilling in a bucket beside Cardinal Hetre’s seat. “This was supposed to seal our bargain, but I reckon we might as well open it now.”

“Go ahead,” said Greene, who held out three tablets to Cardinal Hetre. “It will serve its purpose this way as well as the other.”

“And we are agreed that we will continue to work to be rid of this interloper in the Vatican, aren’t we?” Greene asked, directing the question at Cardinal Hetre.

“It sounds like it to me,” said Clancy, feeling merry now that he was certain Cardinal Hetre would provide them the introduction they needed to approach the new Pope. “We can drink to that, can’t we?”

“Thank you,” murmured Cardinal Hetre as he took the tablets. The pain was making him nauseated. “By all means, let us drink.”

The champagne cork popped and Clancy held a flute to catch the first enthusiastic overflow. When the glass was half-full he handed it to Cardinal Hetre. “To the end of all our headaches,” he said with an impish smile.

Cardinal Hetre, his features wan, his eyes like coals, lifted the glass in agreement before he washed down the aspirin.

Chapter 21

Dame Leonie looked tired from her long flight, but Willie hardly noticed. As soon as they reached his apartment, he shoved the door closed and pulled her into his arms. He held her for some time before he kissed her, convincing himself that this was no longer his overactive imagination at work, but Leonie herself; he did not need to dream of her any longer. Their kiss was complex, leaving both of them light-headed.

“It must be jet lag,” whispered Leonie, unwilling to move out of his arms.

“Is jet lag contagious?” Willie asked fondly. “God, it is wonderful to have you here.” He was horrified at how banal that sounded. He wanted to summon every loving word he had ever learned, entwine them all in wreaths of poetry for her; he did not know they were all in the way he spoke her name. “Leonie.”

She snuggled closer to him. “You don’t know how many times I’ve had to stop myself getting on a plane and coming here. Don’t bother to tell me how foolish that is.”

He kissed her brow. “All right; I won’t.”

Her suitcases lay at their feet making movement hazardous, or providing a splendid excuse to stand leaning together for a while. Finally Leonie sighed and disengaged her ankle from the long shoulder strap of her larger garment bag. “When word came from the Vatican—”

“What word?” asked Willie. “Who contacted you?” He had been told only that Dame Leonie had been requested to come to the Vatican, but nothing of who initiated the invitation. “It wasn’t Mendosa.” He was certain of that, but little else. He pulled her back close to him.

“Zhuang. Pope An.” She nudged against Willie, confiding, “I thought you were behind it. I didn’t think.… Why would she send for me, but because of something you asked?”

Willie scowled. “I don’t know,” he had to confess, and resolved to have the answer as soon as he had his next audience with Her Holiness. “I’ll find out.” The pressure of Leonie’s body against his was too distracting for him to worry about the Pope now. He reached up and sank his hand in her hair, disarranging her elegant coiffeur. It pleased him to mess her hair, to change it from sleek perfection to a glorious tangle.

They kissed again, and this time there was a promise in the way their mouths met. After a long moment she pulled away, saying, “Is this wise?”

“No,” he answered before he unfastened her jacket and started to work on the concealed buttons of her blouse. “Oh, yes.” His whole attention was focused on what he was doing. At the first touch of her skin, a shock went through him as jolting as electricity. His breathing grew ragged. He kicked off his loafers.

She had dropped his tie and was tugging him out of his jacket. She glanced toward the French doors leading onto his little balcony. “Shouldn’t we—?”

“Close them?” he finished for her. “Someone might notice that. I'll draw the curtains. That’ll keep prying eyes out.” His smile transformed his face, making him fifteen years younger and idealistic again. He hurried to do this, taking care to stay out of the sunlight. Once the filmy curtains were across the doorway, he tossed his jacket onto the nearest chair and turned back toward Leonie once again.

She was naked, but for her slim gold necklace and earrings. With her hair in disarray, her jewelry became tokens of intimacy, making her somehow more naked than she would have seemed without them. She fixed her eyes on him, her pupils enormous so that her eyes were almost black. “I don’t know why I want you so much.”

The intensity of her voice shook him, and he tried to answer flippantly; he read something in her demeanor that was unlike anything he had discovered in her before. “We’re middle-aged crazies? Leonie?” It sounded wistful. He put his cufflinks on the dresser and flung his shirt aside.

“Nothing so easy,” she said, coming toward him. She stopped directly in front of him, all her senses heightened. She could not keep from trembling. “I guess what they used to say is true. If you don’t squash passion when you’re young, it gets stronger with age.”

He nodded once, his throat tight. Slowly he reached out and touched her necklace, holding the fine gold links between thumb and middle finger. “Yes. It does.” His admission was so all-consuming that it took his breath away. With an effort he stepped back from her. “Sorry, getting out of trousers is so damned awkward,” he said, suiting actions to his words.

She made a breathless attempt at a chuckle, then caught his hand in hers as he straightened up, trousers and socks abandoned in a heap on the floor. “I’ve been dreaming about this all the way here.” She led him the half-dozen paces to his bed, falling back onto the tousled sheets and pulling him with her. “I couldn’t concentrate on anything. But this.” She wrapped her arms around him.

Her lips were on him, tasting him everywhere. He lay back as she began her quest, and she indulged her desire, finding him more eager, more receptive than he had been before, even while she unfurled the condom, sheathing him and driving him to greater excitement. Her skin seemed fused with his own, as if the flesh between them dissolved so that each became part of the other where she straddled him. With culmination came deep, joyous laughter.

The bell from the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore pulled them back to themselves. They rolled apart, each laughing softly, without embarrassment.

“I don’t want to give this up,” said Leonie, for the first time showing real concern. “I don’t want to give
you
up, Willie.”

Again a flippant response hovered on his lips, but he never spoke. Instead he leaned over and kissed her lightly. “I don’t want to give you up, either.”

She touched his face. “I wish we could stay together. Every day I wish it more and more. But the scandal. There would be so much scandal.”

“We’d weather it,” he said, for the first time in his life certain it was true. “Your royals have got through worse.”

“Do you think so?” Doubt clouded her features. “Maybe we would as lovers, but.… It sounds so bloody-minded to say this out loud: scandal would ruin my career. I mean ruin it utterly. Because of what would come out about…my husband. None of the royals have had that over them.”

“That we know of,” Willie pointed out.

“Exactly. That would be the scandal.” She sighed, her breath shaking. “Twenty years of work, and it would count for naught.” Her hand slid to his chest. “I feel dreadfully selfish, telling you this. I feel mean-spirited and.…”

He stopped her, placing his finger beside her mouth. Although he could not convince himself it was true, he said, “Don’t fret. People would forget in time. You know how these things are.”

“Yes,” she said very somberly. “I do. Perhaps if I were a man it wouldn’t matter so much, but—” She moved away from him. “Divorce would be bad enough. But it wouldn’t stop there, would it?”

Willie watched her sit up. He wanted to reach out and pull her back to him, to restore their closeness. “Divorce happens. The whole Church of England was founded on a divorce. You aren’t Roman Catholic,
he
is, and a bad one, at that. You agreed to raise your children Roman Catholic. You took the Catechism, for the sake of the children. What children? No one would insist you stay with a man who’s homosexual, unless you want to. If divorce isn’t possible, then a real, legal separation, not this living apart for years on end. Separations happen. You and I know of a dozen couples who haven’t spent any time together in the last ten years, and everyone knows that those marriages are fiction. When they end it, everyone’s relieved. It would be all right. Most people would understand. They’ve understood about others.”

“Not women in my position,” she said slowly. “There are two women Ambassadresses representing the English in the world today. Neither of us would remain in our positions if anything was discovered to our discredit.”

He wanted to persuade her with the very sound of his voice. “Leonie. You could leave him. You could.”

She turned, her lovely back caught in a slice of hazy light, her face in shadow. “Do you think so?” There was a suggestion of a forlorn smile in the darkness.

“Well,” he answered carefully, “I hope so.”

“Hope?” She took his hand in hers. “I’d like to hope so, too. But how can I, Willie?”

* * *

Zhuang Renxin wore black slacks and a quilted black jacket. Her lapel pin was her only concession to her position—a jeweled and enameled Papal tiara. In that she was much in the mundane style of her companion, except for the cowboy boots. She poured out a cup of tea and glanced at over at Cardinal Mendosa. “Would you like some?” She paid no attention to the magnificent dome of Saint Peter’s that occupied most of the view from her study window.

“Please,” he said, settling back in his chair.

She poured a second cup, but before handing it to him, she said, “I have not heard anything more from the police about the death of Cardinal Tayibha. What progress is being made?”

“They don’t report to me, Worthy Magistrate. I can ask, if you wish.” He accepted the tea. “According to what has been in the news, the whole thing remains a mystery. No one wants to admit that someone wants to kill you.”

“But someone does. Probably many people do. The police ought to report to me,” she said, handing him his cup.

“As Pope or Worthy Magistrate?” asked Mendosa without a trace of sarcasm. “They might not know your skills in these situations. Or your concern, for that matter.” The tea was too hot. He put it aside for the moment.

She smiled as she looked at him. “Who has the right to be more concerned than I? As Magistrate, I want to be kept informed. As Pope, I want to be on guard.”

“I think some of them don’t understand you yet, Worthy Magistrate. They hope that if they tell you nothing, the reason for their worry will…disappear.”

“Disappear. Very clever, Mendosa.” She took her tea and sat down. “I have been told there are those who disapprove of me serving tea to my guests. Why is that?”

“Oh, more of the panoply you dislike so much, Magistrate Zhuang. We’re supposed to wait on you, not the other way around. You know what became of Cardinal Tayibha because there is someone at the Vatican who doesn’t know you very well. You see, there are those who would compete for the privilege of pouring your tea, if you would let them. Tell you what: if anyone else speaks against it, say you are doing it for humility; that ought to shut them up.” He stretched out his long legs and crossed his ankles.

“Why would that succeed?” She sipped her tea, her black eyes fixed on him, alert and very determined.

“Because humility is a virtue, and you can say that as Pope you seek to set an example of it.” His smile was wintery. “Who knows? Some of them might even take it to heart for a day or two.”

Zhuang chuckled. “How on earth did you manage to become a Cardinal, with such an attitude?”

He waved one hand negligently, grinning. “My uncle helped. He plowed several million dollars into building the Four Evangelists—my cathedral at home—and twice again as much into restoring and preserving historic Catholic churches in Europe and America. He let it be known that he would be thanked if his priest-nephew advanced. And I was politically desirable at the time of my first two promotions.” He reached over to get the tea. “And my vices are minor ones in the eyes of the Church.”

“Your uncle is a wealthy man, then?” She appeared genuinely surprised.

He regarded her. “Yes. So was my father. Two of my brothers are extremely rich.” Then he made a canny guess. “You were thinking I was a poor Mexican-American who had been able to pull himself out of poverty through the Church? Is that it?”

She gave a single nod. “I have heard that Mexicans are very poor in Texas.”

“Some of them are. More of them than ought to be are,” said Mendosa. “But Tex-Mex isn’t really Mexican, not the way you mean. I wasn’t born Carlos, I was born Charles. I have a sister named Kathleen, and one named Taylor, for her Godfather. I learned most of my Spanish in school and from my grandparents. My family has been in Texas for seven generations. That might not sound like a lot to you, Worthy Magistrate, but in Texas it’s quite a record.”

“Then your position was bought?” she asked, sounding disappointed.

He refused to be ashamed. “If I hadn’t been any good at the job, I wouldn’t be a Cardinal. There’s only so much rich relatives can do, and then you either”—he very nearly said “shit or get off the pot,” but modified it—“cut the mustard or you’re siphoned off to some unimportant work well out of harm’s way.” He took two gulps of tea and added the only thing that truly mattered to him. “Besides, I have always believed that I was supposed to be here.”

A month ago such a statement would have appalled her. Now she shrugged. “You’re not another fanatic, Mendosa. You don’t have that hunger in your eyes I see in so many here. What is your ambition?”

He looked directly at her and smiled, “To serve God, Worthy Magistrate, in the only place I can—the world.”

She poured more tea and held the pot out to him. “I think my English is getting very good.”

“Very good,” he seconded, making no comment on her abrupt change of subject; she would reveal what was on her mind in time.

“Two hours of intensive instruction each day for four months has helped me, and watching American and British television.” She set the pot down. “Have more when you wish it.”

“Thank you, Worthy Magistrate.” He remained still, watching for what she would say next.

“I have a few questions I want to address to you. I am relying on you to give me the answers I need. I have asked my tutors and a few of the others—I will tell you who later—but not even Cadini will tell me what I wish to know.” She tapped one foot. “It is very disturbing to me that so many in this Church are not willing to speak openly.”

“It’s habit, Worthy Magistrate. Most of them have forgotten how.” He got up and poured himself a little more tea.

“It is very annoying to me,” she said as if she were in court. “I wish those serving me to be reliable.”

“Tell them that,” suggested Mendosa, although he knew it was useless.

“I have,” she said, the tone of her voice revealing how little good it had done. “They do not know what I mean. They are confused and…like one being attacked.”