Pope's Assassin (43 page)

    "We'll see each other in hell, Nicolas," she said bitterly before going out into the cold, dark night.

T
he next day dawned sunny, as it often does after a storm.

        Rafael had spent the whole night in a chair at Sarah's side in the Policlinico Gemelli, courtesy of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who intervened personally to make sure the journalist was treated with every comfort.

    Tarcisio had called Rafael early in the morning to meet him at the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls on the Via Ostiense, where Tarcisio was presiding over a ceremony celebrating the founder, Don Bosco. It appealed very much to the secretary's heart, since it was a Salesian ritual, and he himself was a Salesian brother.

    Rafael showed up at the designated hour, ten in the morning, in the basilica where the bones of the apostle Saint Paul are exhibited. A line of Salesian priests and brothers filed past the secretary, who was seated next to the altar. The ceremony lasted about fifteen minutes, with a choir singing the praises of God, and then there were many petitions, since it was not every day they had the privilege of speaking person ally with such an important figure. Rafael stood next to the tomb of the apostle, who never knew Jesus, but contributed decisively to His immortality. Rafael watched. The wide nave with eighty columns was full of tourists taking photos of the portraits of the popes displayed throughout the edifice from Peter to Benedict, the sixteenth to use that blessed name.

    The stampede of brothers eased up gradually as they went to enjoy a simple meal being served in the cloister. Tarcisio delayed a little to exchange words with the rector of the Salesian congregation—instruc tions and recommendations from someone in an infl uential position important to the order.

    The secretary returned to the sacristy. An assistant who had taken Trevor's place came over to Rafael next to the canopy.

    "His Eminence can see you now," he said.

    Rafael followed him to the sacristy, where Tarcisio was waiting.

    "Good morning, Rafael. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting. Sit down, please," he said, gesturing toward a chair next to a large oak table. "Did you get any rest?" Tarcisio asked.

    "I dozed a little in the hospital."

    "Is Sarah all right?"

    "We'll have to see," Rafael replied.

    "I'll mention her in my prayers," Tarcisio offered.

    Rafael knew he would.

    "Your Eminence never questions things?" Rafael asked, a little intimidated by the question he couldn't hold back.

    "What do you mean?"

    "Do you ever doubt your faith?"

    Tarcisio sighed. "Someone who wants to believe must fi rst doubt. Faith comes after doubts, not before."

    Rafael took a deep breath. It was a profound response.

    "Whoever never doubts never really knows what it is to believe," the secretary added.

    Rafael was a man with doubts, but he was in the presence of one of the most powerful men in the world. He didn't know how to express his doubts without showing a lack of respect.

"Yesterday I realized things that . . . that . . ."

"That put your faith in doubt," Tarcisio concluded for him.

Rafael neither confirmed nor denied it.

    "My dear Rafael, I understand your confusion, your doubts, but let me say that they're unfounded."

    "I'm afraid everything is just a misunderstood exaggeration of his tory by Paul, whose bones may not even lie in that tomb out there."

    "They're in there, for sure, Rafael," Tarcisio reassured him.

    "Then what is the society guarding?"

    "A great lie. A Jesus Who never existed. Don't forget something, Rafael. We're His heirs. This is not based on anything that can be denied."

    Rafael wanted very much to believe this, but he felt a storm of doubts at the moment. He didn't have the clarity of thought to distin guish between true and false or a plausible invention.

    "Excuse my presumption, Your Eminence, but why are you a Catholic?"

    Tarcisio smiled condescendingly. "For two simple reasons. Because I want to be and I can be."

    It was an affirmation of freedom, in fact, that put faith on the level of a simple choice. Either one accepted freely with a spontaneous will or rejected it, purely and simply.

    "I called you here because His Holiness asked me to give you this." Tarcisio handed him a rare book with extremely worn pages.

    Rafael opened it carefully. It was written in Latin with the title Je
sus
the Nazarite.
The priest turned his eyes to Tarcisio, astonished.

    "His Holiness doesn't want any of his flock to have doubts or con fusion. The answers to your questions are there," he explained. "It's a loan. His Holiness would like it back when you're fi nished."

    "Of course," Rafael said with a smile. This gesture made him feel better.

    A piece of paper fell out of the book. It was a photocopy of a carbon-dating test showing that the material analyzed belonged to a male from the fi fteenth century.

"What's this?"

"It concerns the bones the Jesuits have been guarding."

    The fifteenth century, not the first. This is why Tarcisio always spoke of a fraud. He knew.

    "What's going to happen now between us and the society?"

    "Don't tell me you don't know?" Tarcisio exclaimed, assuming a sardonic tone.

    Rafael shook his head. What was there to know?

    "Something very strange happened," Tarcisio revealed. "Adolph has suffered a severe attack of food poisoning and is being treated at this moment in the hospital. But it seems his last hour has not come," he said ironically. "Next time it could be worse. Food can kill you, Rafael. You just never know. Schmidt or Aloysius, however you prefer to call him, had worse luck," he continued. "He fell off the metro platform at Lepanto when the train was coming in. A tragedy." There was a trace of sorrow in his voice, even if Tarcisio sounded sarcastic.

    Rafael thought about these latest developments. Proof of the power of the church that could destroy the society next time. Whoever had been the strategist—Tarcisio, William, or the Supreme Pontiff—was brilliant.

    "Your contribution was very important, Rafael. We won't let you forget."

    "But I still feel lost. You could have told me about JC's involve ment," he argued.

    "It was William's strategy, and I didn't want to interfere."

    "Where is it that they guard the supposed bones of Christ?" Rafael asked jokingly.

    "The supposed bones of some Christ from the fi fteenth century, is that what you mean?" the secretary corrected Rafael. "Where else would they be but in the Church of the Gesù?"

    "How ironic."

    "We have another problem, Rafael, not related to this."

There's always something,
the priest thought to himself.

"It's about Anna and Mandy, her daughter," Tarcisio revealed.

    Rafael focused on the names he knew well. "What's going on? That affair was resolved."

    "It was, true, but Anna's receiving visits from reporters, and she could never keep a secret, as you know."

    Rafael knew this well. Anna and Mandy were a daughter and grand daughter of a pope. Anna knew this, but Mandy had no idea. She didn't even know that Anna was her mother.

    "We have to resolve this problem," Tarcisio said.

    It was good to see how rapidly the church recovered itself. Every thing was returning to normal . . . or almost everything.

    "I'm not going to be able to help you with this right away, Your Eminence. Please ask Jacopo and Roberta to argue the case during my absence. As soon as possible I'll go see Anna and see what I can do," Rafael informed him.

    Tarcisio got up and put his hands behind his back. He walked off through the sacristy with a proud expression. He was the secretary of state in all his splendor again.

    "I think we can hold off for a while," he suggested with a smile, and extended his hand to say good-bye.

    Rafael went off again toward the interior of the enormous basilica to look at the altar. He passed the baldachin on his way through the immense nave and looked at Paul's tomb. He went down some marble steps to the crypt, knelt down, joined his hands, and prayed.

    "I've never asked anything. I've always served You without ques tion." He opened his eyes and looked at the chest that held the apostle's bones. "The time has come to ask You humbly to protect her because only You can do so. Give me light and support my steps. I've got to do it, but I can't do it alone."

T
here's a first for everything, and certainly Sarah never expected to find herself stretched out in a hospital bed with a tube pushing oxygen through her nose and a catheter stuck into the back of her hand, receiving fluids with unpronounceable names. At least she'd been able to sleep last night, probably with the help of some drug that soothed her eyes, convincing them to close, and quieted her mind, obliging her to rest. When she woke in the morning her vision was clouded, but she made out a figure seated in a chair against the wall. He seemed to be dozing as much as his uncomfortable position allowed.

    "Were you here all night, Rafael?" she asked with a voice that came out a squeak.

    "Who's Rafael?" the figure asked, straightening up in the chair and then getting up to come to the bed.

    It was Francesco. She could make out his features now that he was closer. She touched his face.

    "How are you?" she asked.

    "Don't worry about me. Are you okay? What happened?" He was worried.

    "I still don't know. They gave me a battery of tests last night, and then I passed out."

    Francesco took her hand and breathed deeply, a sigh that resem bled a lament. "Sarah, I don't know if I can deal with this."

    His eyes were moist, a tear was about to fall from them, but he wiped it away.

    "I never thought your life was like this. I never imagined this existed," he tried to explain. "I don't have the strength. I don't have the strength."

    "We're going to have a baby, Francesco," she announced without thinking about it. "He's going to need a father."

    Francesco looked at her, amazed. "The nurse told me you weren't pregnant, Sarah."

    
No? But the test came out positive.
The attendant had congratulated her, and she couldn't avoid looking at the red strip on the pregnancy test that showed positive.

    "No?" she said, doubtful. "But . . ."

    Francesco pressed her hand again. "Give me time, Sarah. Please, give me time."

    Now it was her eyes that filled with tears. Francesco was a good man, but she hoped with all her might that the nurse was right. She was selfish and he didn't deserve a woman who couldn't love him completely.

    Francesco kissed her on the forehead. "I'll call you later, okay?"

    She agreed, wiping the tears, and watched him leave helplessly, without a W
ait! Don't go! Don't leave me! N
othing. She simply let him leave. She remembered crying like a baby, the nurse asking her what was wrong, and answering nothing. She wasn't crying over seeing him leave but over her own disappointment in herself, and she couldn't say that to the nurse.

    She slept and woke up, slept again and awoke, not knowing how many hours had passed and not caring. Finally she awakened to a feel ing of well-being. Someone was holding her hand and caressing her hair. Was it her mother or father? She opened her eyes, and it was him.

    "Rafael?" she stammered. "What are you doing here?" She pulled herself together and tried to draw her hand away, but he wouldn't let her.

    "You're not pregnant, Sarah," he told her. "You have a choriocar cinoma."

    She felt as if he'd punched her in the stomach.

    "A what?"

    "A trophoblastic cancer in the ovaries. That's why the pregnancy test was positive, and why you had nausea and coughed up blood. Per haps you also felt short of breath. Those are some of the symptoms. But there's a high rate of success for treatment. I've already talked with the doctor. He'll explain everything to you shortly." It was best to say it all at once.

    He didn't mention that the doctor had told him she was in the third stage of metastasis. Having cancer was bad enough news.

    She didn't know what to think. She hadn't expected this particular misfortune. She had cancer. Everything had changed in seconds. One moment she was pregnant, and the next she was at the gates of death. Nice irony, God! Maybe it was a punishment for rejecting a child, but a God Who punished wasn't God. At least the God she'd grown up with loved all beings unconditionally. Good, bad, criminal, saintly. A Father and a Mother always loved their children above everything else.

    "You're going to overcome this, Sarah," Rafael assured her.

    She smiled sadly. "This time you can't protect me."

    The priest looked at her seriously and pressed her hand again. He gave her a timid smile, pleasant, or at least she thought so.

    "I know there's a part of me somewhere inside you. Only you know where it is and what it could be. Use it to protect yourself. I've never let you down, have I?"

    Tears ran down Sarah's face. She shook her head. No, he'd never let her down.

    "That Rafael you have within you will never let you down," he repeated.

    She closed her eyes. She felt pain. "I don't know if I can make it alone," she confessed through her tears.

    He made her look at him. "I'm not going anywhere, Sarah," he assured her. "I'm not going anywhere."