The Assassini (59 page)

“They are not
holy
murders, Salvatore. They are not
Church
murders, not what they have seemed, not what we may have assumed. We have been fools, blind to what we might have seen, shrouded in our own cloaks of self-importance. These murders we have let terrify us are no challenge from within the Church—no matter who is behind them!
They are part of the world we have created for ourselves
.

“They were inevitable because we have handed ourselves to our enemies.… They are secular murders because we have become nothing more than another cog in the secular machine … and the murders, they are the payment extracted from us by the world. We involve ourselves in unprincipled financial machinations, in crime and politics and the endless accumulation of wealth, and we must pay the price!

“Oh, some may whisper of the
assassini
, but if we believe them, we delude ourselves. We have been blind and the
assassini
is nothing more than a symbol, a tool we have created to scourge ourselves. But you, Holiness, can become the opened eyes of the Church, you can stop it … only you.…”

“But how, Giacomo? What is it you are telling me I must do?” Callistus, hardly a mystical man, wondered if he just might be in the presence of some kind of maddened, divine messenger or prophet. Was God speaking to him? Was this old man who had once been his mentor somehow possessed of divine inspiration? Callistus had no time for miracles, divine or otherwise. His entire orientation was that of the bureaucrat and how was the bureaucrat supposed to deal with this kind of situation? Still, he had been a pupil of the cardinal’s for so many years.… The power of D’Ambrizzi’s personality was working on him. It lingered still in the old man’s fiery
shell, like the distillation of spirit, the essence of the man.

“Just remember who you are.”

“But who am I, Giacomo?”

“You are
Callistus
. Remember the first Callistus and your mission will be clear.…”

“I don’t know—”

The immense hand suddenly clamped down on Callistus’s arm like a vise.

“Listen to me, Callistus … and be strong!”

Sister Elizabeth leaned back in her desk chair, pushed herself away from the desk, and put her feet up on the blotter. The magazine’s offices were empty and dark. It was ten past ten, she’d forgotten to have dinner, and her stomach felt as if the coffee had finally burned a hole all the way through to China. Meltdown time. She was holding a cheap ballpoint pen. It was out of ink. She pitched it toward the wastebasket, missed, and heard the pen clatter away into a corner. Perfect. She just couldn’t seem to get the hang of the three-point shot.

“Who the hell is Erich Kessler? Why was his name on Val’s list?”

She spoke softly, distinctly, dropping the words into the silence with a little shove, as if she hoped to sail them across some troubled waters to the feet of an oracle. She’d done everything but ask a Ouija board or consult a mentalist. If the name of Erich Kessler had appeared anywhere but on a list created by Val, she’d have assumed there was just no such man. But Val was too accurate, too specific. The name meant there was such a man, that he was connected in some way to the others. The fact that no date had followed his name almost surely meant he was still alive, since the dates following the other names had been dates of death. But where the hell was he?

Meltdown. Dead-end time. What to do?

She woke up at midnight, still with her feet on the desk blotter.

“This,” she said, “is nuts.”

She went back to the Via Veneto flat and couldn’t sleep. Before she really knew it, it was time for a run and then the day began and she knew she had to make the call.

“Eminence, it’s Sister Elizabeth. I’m terribly sorry about interrupting you—”

“Don’t be silly, my dear. What can I do for you, Sister?”

“I need to see you, Eminence. I need only fifteen minutes—”

“I see. Well, this afternoon. Four o’clock at my place.” He always called the Vatican “my place.” Saint Jack.

He was waiting for her alone in his office. He was dressed in full ceremonial regalia. He saw her eyes widen at the sight, and a broad smile broke beneath his great banana nose. “A performance,” he explained, “for the tourists. I was, I’m afraid, a stand-in for the Holy Father. Sit down, Sister. What’s on your mind?” He opened a carved cigarette box, dug around inside with his stubby fingers, and came up in the end with one of his black cigarettes, slightly the worse for the search. He stuck it on the huge shelf of lower lip and struck a match on his thumbnail.

“It’s the murders,” she said. “The names of the men on Val’s list, the men who we discovered had all been murdered.”

“Excuse me, Sister, but we’ve already had this conversation. Unless there’s something new at your end …” He shrugged massively, shifting the expanse of finery.

“Look, Eminence, think of Val. Think of how she gave her life, try to put yourself in her place. She really was close to something so important that they had to kill her … think of Val—”

“My dear young woman, you needn’t instruct me on my feelings about Sister Valentine. I’ve been close to the Driskill family since before the war when I first met Hugh
Driskill. He was in Rome … working for the Church … we used to go to concerts together. I was introduced to him at a concert. I remember it as if it were yesterday, Sister. Beethoven. Trio number seven. B-flat major. Opus 97. A particular favorite of Hugh’s. It was the first thing Hugh and I ever discussed … but that’s neither here nor there. The point is, I love this family, all of them. But let’s admit it, they
are
a headstrong lot. Hugh and his OSS missions, parachuting and God only knows what else. Valentine and her digging around in things that got her killed … and Ben, whatever it is he thinks he’s doing. I want to find the man who killed her. I am conducting my own investigation, in my own way, and frankly, Sister, I’d like to be left to get on with it. Without having to worry about your being murdered, or Ben Driskill’s being murdered.… Am I getting through to you at all, Sister? Am I making sense to you? I want you to get entirely out of this thing. You have no business, no right, no reason to pursue it. None. None at all. Look at me, Sister Elizabeth, and tell me that you hear me.”

“I hear you,” she said softly.

“Ah, I hear a ‘but’ in your voice. Do I hear a ‘but’ in your voice, Sister?”

“With respect, Eminence, I don’t understand why I have no right to try to finish the work Val had begun. I feel as if I not only have the right, I feel as if I have something a whole lot like an obligation. I … I … I can’t help feeling as I do, Eminence.”

“I understand about feelings, Sister. I’ve even had some in my time. What I don’t understand are your actions. Leave this in the hands of others.”

“But, Eminence, the others—they’re the ones who are killing people! These others of yours are inside the Church—”

“You’re guessing, Sister. Leave it. It’s a Church matter, leave it inside the Church—”

“How can you say such a thing?”

He smiled at her, lit another cigarette. “Because I wear the red hat, I suppose. That’s probably the best
reason as far as you’re concerned.” He looked at his wrist watch.

“I really must be going, Sister.” He was standing up, the elaborate costume seeming to slow him down with its weight.

“Erich Kessler,” she said. “Who is Erich Kessler?”

D’Ambrizzi stared at her.

“His is the last name on Val’s list. The only name without a date of death after it. But there doesn’t seem to be such a person. Who is he? Is he the next scheduled victim?”

D’Ambrizzi was watching her through his closed alligator eyes. “I have no idea, Elizabeth. None. Now, please drop it! All of it!” His voice was low, little more than a whisper, but the exclamation points were all in place.

“If Erich Kessler is the next intended victim, then he must know why the others were killed … that would mean that Erich Kessler has all the answers.” Her hands were shaking and somehow she was on the verge of tears. “I’m going to Paris. Val was there, she was working there.”

“Good-bye, Sister.”

He swung the door open.

Monsignor Sandanato was sitting at his desk in the anteroom. He looked up. “Sister,” he said.

Then she had brushed past and was hurrying down the hallway and to hell with all of them, every damn one of them!

Cardinal D’Ambrizzi turned to Monsignor Sandanato.

“Pietro, have you had any luck looking for Kessler?”

“No, Eminence, not yet. Not an easy man to find, it turns out.”

“Well, keep at it, Pietro.”

That evening Sister Elizabeth kept a long-standing dinner invitation to join several fellow sisters of the Order. They dined in the grand dining room of the convent, off the very best Wedgwood and the heaviest,
oldest silver. The atmosphere was collegial, exactly what her state of frayed nerves required. The candlelight shone in the crystal and the conversation flowed quietly, calmly onward, punctuated by genteel laughter. It was not a life Elizabeth much experienced anymore, nor one she often sought out, but when she found herself in it, caught by its spirit and rhythm, she enjoyed it and remembered one of the reasons that she’d become a nun in the first place. It was a haven from the cacophony of choices the rest of the world insisted on offering, like it or not.

The evening was a wonderment of relaxation, calm civility, gentle yet pointed wit peppered through with irony and sarcasm. These women were not easy on their Church: indeed, they were among its most demanding critics. And so they sat together, in their traditionally elegant black habits—for some, the only time in the month they wore them—and they talked. For Elizabeth the evening and the company added up to proof that there was a world beyond the Vatican and the hissing shadows of the
assassini
and the murders. Proof that there was a world of order and restraint and intelligence without the intolerable pressures operating on, crushing down upon the men who lived their lives within the Apostolic Palace. Sitting with the sisters, listening to the conversation ranging freely across the board, the recounting of experiences and feelings to which she could relate so easily … sitting with them she found an uncluttered oasis of peace, so far from calamity and blood and fear.

Sitting in the parlor with the old paintings in their gilt frames, with the aroma of espresso, she thought of Val, how often they’d sat in this room with the sisters drinking coffee after dinner.… Poor Val. What would she have done if D’Ambrizzi had given her such peremptory orders? It wasn’t an easy question. And what, she wondered, would Ben Driskill have suggested? She bit her lip, tasted salt, forced a smile. Ben would have told her to tell him to go to hell.… But in the back of her mind she counted the dead. Finally the evening had drifted to an end and she made her good-byes. The serenity of
these few hours had faded already, as indistinct as a cracked, forgotten childhood photograph.

She arrived back at the tower on the Via Veneto, working at reviving her sense of calm and failing miserably. She still felt the sting of her confrontation with D’Ambrizzi. She had never experienced anything like it before: the flat anger, the disappearance of diplomacy in his style.

Somehow, she told herself, it would all work out, somehow she would see it through.

God, what foolishness! See it through … There wasn’t a shred of hope anymore!

She undressed and drew a hot bath, sank slowly beneath it, watching the steam condense on the tile walls. She massaged herself with the bubbles, leaned back, luxuriating in the bath oil and the fresh clean smell.

She had left the bathroom door ajar. In a mirror in the hallway she could see the reflection of the night’s breeze rippling the curtains by the sliding door leading to the terrace. Her eyes were drifting shut. She glimpsed the wrought iron table, the cloth fluttering. She’d planned to have a friend in a few days before and had made the preparations. Then, at the last minute, they’d gone out. Now she could see the crystal and the candlestick, heavy and silver and gleaming within its glass chimney windbreak. The terrace was lit by the lights from below in the street, from all the reflected lights of the rushing city; they flickered like a handful of jewelry flung at the curtains, clinging …

Her tired muscles were relaxing beneath the water. She felt the heat soaking the tension from her, nibbling at her hard edges. She felt herself slipping away and welcomed it, longed to drift off to sleep.…

From the edge of sleep she thought she saw something move in the mirror’s reflection, a cloud moving across the trace of moon, the shadow of a bird on a sunny day, something moving in the almost darkened flat, a flicker.

Something.

When she looked again there were the curtains drifting
in the night, the dull gleam of the candlestick on the glass tabletop.

She watched the mirror. Waiting.

A bat? She was terrified of bats. Had one blundered in from the terrace only to find itself trapped, banging against the walls?

And the shadow shimmered again in the mirror. Almost too quick to see. A shape like a fleeting memory, out of sight and unidentifiable.

Something.

She felt the hair on her neck tighten, goose flesh rising. Slowly, locking her eyes on the mirror, she rose from the water, reached naked and dripping for her terry-cloth robe, stepped out of the tub, wrapped it around her shivering body. Her knees were shaking and her nipples had tightened with the chill. Her heart fluttered like the bat.

She thought briefly of barricading herself in the bathroom. No, no, she’d be trapping herself. The same was true of the bedroom across the hall. A child could smash through the flimsy door. And something told her it wasn’t a bat … And it wasn’t a child.

There was only one door out of the apartment. If only there were a telephone in the bathroom …

My God, she was fantasizing. It was all a question of her nerves, the worry, the
assassini
, the confessions she’d heard from Monsignor Sandanato in this same place, the fear about Ben Driskill and the memories of Val, the confrontation with D’Ambrizzi. It was all nerves.