The Assassini (71 page)

“How adaptable you are, my friend.”

In the darkened library the cardinals took up their customary positions around the low table. The coffee was served, they waited while Poletti fumbled the tape onto the spindles with his short, hairy fingers. Then he pushed the button and the voice of Cardinal D’Ambrizzi was among them.

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

I don’t know
.…

Listen to me, Callistus! Be strong!

But how, Giacomo?

That Callistus, in a world where countless challenges to the Church sprang up like weeds, from cat goddesses of the Nile to the seahorse fairies of the Celts, that Callistus hewed to the true meaning of the Church. The Roman Empire was coming apart, chaos was encroaching from every side … but Callistus saw that the business of the Church was salvation … as Jesus made clear, the salvation of all sinners. All sinners. Even ourselves when we had sinned. There was time to repent and be saved, so said the first Callistus, and Hippolytus cried out against him, called him a whoremonger for decreeing absolution for prostitutes and adulterers who repented. Hippolytus, the first self-proclaimed antipope. But Callistus was right. Salvation was all … and when he was murdered in the street it was Pontian who carried on
.…

What are you telling me?

Make salvation the work of this Church. Reclaim it from the secular world, withdraw from politics and money-grubbing and the wielding of secular power and pressure. Wield moral power! Offer eternal salvation, not riches and power here and now. Care for the souls … and the killings by which the secular world holds sway will cease and this Church … this Church, Holiness, will be saved!

Tell me how, Giacomo …

When the tape ended and Cardinal D’Ambrizzi’s
voice had faded to a faint dry whisper and was gone, the room was quiet. A breeze pushed at the heavy curtains.

Finally Vezza said, “Which one of them is crazier? That would seem to be the question, would it not?” He peered at the control of his old hearing aid, tapped it with a long fingernail.

“You can never be sure about D’Ambrizzi,” Antonelli said softly. “Whatever his agenda—and I don’t for a minute believe we’ve just heard him state it—you can be sure that he’s not crazy. What he’s pulling on the Holy Father remains to be seen … but remember this, no one is a better manipulator of hearts and minds than Saint Jack … Callistus is becoming Saint Jack’s tool … but what job he intends to use him for is a mystery.”

“We can be frank within these walls,” Poletti said.

“Who says D’Ambrizzi or Indelicato doesn’t have you bugged?”

Garibaldi’s question stopped Poletti in mid-thought. Garibaldi smiled, the tip of his tongue tracing the line where his plump lips met, pressed.

“Now you’ve frightened him,” Antonelli said. “It’s all right, Poletti. Go on.”

“I was about to say that the kind of talk we’ve been hearing is the sort of madness we heard in the old days from John XXIII. He was going to revolutionize everything. He was setting out to strip the Church of its worldly power and wealth. I need hardly remind you of the action we had to take. An unhappy task. Thank God, I was not a cardinal at the time—”

“Lucky man,” Vezza muttered. “Murder, it was—”

“But I
was
here for John Paul I,” Poletti said. “Poor misguided fool …”

“Old news, old news,” Vezza grumbled from deep within his jowls. “What are you suggesting? Murder, I suppose. Blood, blood, always a cry for blood.” He might have been talking to himself. “But Callistus is dying.… Why commit murder when you need only count the hours, when time will do it for you?”

The quiet stretched on for minutes, each man contemplating his own morality, his own agenda. Their eyes steadfastly refused to meet.

Finally Ottaviani’s knifelike, bleak voice broke the stillness like an iron pipe on plate glass.

“All well and good for Callistus,” he said, “but Saint Jack is in perfect health.…”

Peaches O’Neale arrived at the Driskill place in the fading gray light of late afternoon. Hugh Driskill had called him at the parish house. The great man’s voice had been weak, yet stronger than Peaches had expected. He said he’d been home forty-eight hours and was about to go stark staring mad. He said he needed company and wanted Peaches to stop over when he could get away. He also had something specific on his mind, but he’d tell Peaches about that when he saw him.

Margaret Korder, Hugh’s personal secretary and all-purpose shield from the world, opened the door. Behind her a large nurse in starched white hovered, torn between watching the door and peering down the length of the Long Room. She seemed to be straining at an invisible leash which kept her from going on through, into the Long Room.

“Oh, Father,” Margaret Korder said softly, “he’s not behaving very well, I’m afraid. I think he needs some male company, but all his regulars are so work-obsessed and, well, you know … you are just what he needs. Someone to
talk
to rather than run the world with, if you see my point. He won’t let this poor nurse into the room. Literally. He’s far from top shape, but he can still raise more absolute holy hell than any other dozen men I know.” He was helping her into the mink coat she’d had no trouble affording on her salary. “I’m still down at the Nassau Inn. Practically permanent by now.”

“You are a jewel.” Peaches smiled.

“It’s a vocation, Father. My life’s work. Though I am worn down to a mere zircon tonight.”

“Ah, Ms. Korder. You must know where a great many bodies are buried. I’m surprised you’ve never been kidnapped.”

“Father!”

“A joke, just a joke. Is he going to give me a particularly hard time?”

“Just don’t argue with him.” She sighed. “A drink, a cigar, we can’t stop him. When we did try he got purple and looked like he was going to explode—that’s got to be worse than the drink and the cigar. If you need her, Nurse Wardle stands ready out here in the hallway or in the kitchen or somewhere. You know where to get hold of me. I’ll be curled up with room service and a good book. Have you ever read Father Dunn’s books?”

“Sure. He’s a friend of mine.”

“I love them. What a devious mind! How can a priest know so much about sex?”

Peaches blushed, looked sixteen. “Wondrous powers of imagination. What else could it be?”

“Well, you must be right, mustn’t you?”

Hugh Driskill’s face was drawn. The lines at the corners of his eyes had deepened. When Peaches approached the couch, he laid aside one of several photograph albums bound in dark green leather. Peaches saw a flash of Val’s face, a color picture taken on the tennis court, her legs tanned and straight, the skirt flaring up in the wind to show her white pants. She was smiling, squinting in the sun, one hand shading her eyes. Twenty … oh, hell, twenty-five years ago. If was unspeakably painful for him to think that she was dead.

“Sit down, Father. Have a drink. Plenty of fixings.” The Laphroaig and a pitcher of water and a silver ice bucket sat on the coffee table. “Go on, Peaches, fill ’em up. I’m going to keep you here for a while. You can listen to me complain about the turn things have taken here at the end. Top this off for me, I’m very dry.” He watched while Peaches made a drink for himself, then refilled the other heavy, squat glass. “The doctors, the nurses, this incredible creature who’s here now—they treat me as if I’m dying, and I say if I’m dying, what difference does it make which day it happens? Margaret is a life saver. But things, as you may have noticed, are not going well … the fact is, it’s hardly worth being alive. But there are a few things I have to do before I go—my God, where did the time go, Peaches? The lament of every dying man, I suppose. Well, so be it. My daughter is dead, I’m led to
believe the Church is somehow implicated, my son is off God knows where, inconveniencing the Church and making an ass of himself.… I have friends in Rome, you know, I still hear a thing or two. Ah, yes, I surely do …” His speech might have been just slightly slurred: Peaches couldn’t quite be sure. But he’d never heard Hugh Driskill engage in such a stream of consciousness. He’d always been a man of a very few words and those markedly impersonal. The old man wore a bathrobe of dark scarlet with royal blue piping, his initials on the breast pocket. He gestured with his glass, ice tinkling, at the far end of the room near the foyer where Nurse Wardle still stood her ground. “She’s afraid of me. She realizes who I am. Poor wretched girl. I was unkind. Told her she needed a shave. I don’t know what got into me.…”

“Well,” Peaches said, “she could use a quick once-over.”

Hugh Driskill laughed, a weak, hollow sound. “Peaches, no offense, but I don’t believe God exactly intended you for the cloth.”

“Other people have occasionally reached that conclusion.”

“You’re an innocent. Bad priest material. But a nice man. You
are
a nice man. My daughter loved you … you were a good boy. Tell me, did you love Val, Peaches?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, that squares. She told me you did. And she said you were a trustworthy man—”

“When was all this, sir?”

“Sir?
Sir?
Come on, Peaches. It was the last time we talked. Just before she died.”

“Really?”

Hugh Driskill was staring at the girl in the photograph, squinting into the sunshine. He slowly turned the pages. Peaches saw so much of the family’s history passing by, upside down. “Here you are … standing beside a Christmas tree with Val … happy days, long ago. We couldn’t see the future, could we, Father?”

“Just as well,” Peaches said. “Would have ruined those happy days long ago.”

“Now here, this is my wife. There she is with Cardinal Spellman … not long before she died. She was an unhappy woman, my Mary, but of course you knew her, didn’t you.…”

“Well, not really, sir. I was too young. I came along later.”

“Of course you did. What was I thinking of? Well, you didn’t miss much, to be honest. Mary was a distant sort of creature, or she could be. She was never very good with children … I don’t know, the truth is I have trouble remembering her all that well—is that shameful? Well, my memory generally is not so hot lately. The truth is not always a welcome visitor. For instance, I’m told the Holy Father has all but kicked the bucket.”

“You’d know more about that than I. You’ve got your contacts. Cardinal D’Ambrizzi …”

“Yes, I guess I would, even in my pathetic state. Old Jack has called me a few times. Well, Peaches, I might as well admit the ghastly truth. I’ve brought you here to put the screws to you, my boy. Look upon me as the Inquisition.…” He smiled crookedly. “Do you recall one of your predecessors over there in New Pru, Father John Traherne. You do recall him?”

“Father Traherne. Sure. Of course.”

“Well, I got to know him pretty well. He was in his later years an obsessively curious old fart, was Father John. Let me tell you a story about him, Peaches. You play the part of my son tonight … the son I never had, the son who should have been a priest, not the son who turned to footballing and lawyering instead of—well, I won’t blacken his name to an old friend of his.…” He held out his glass for a refill.

Peaches was squirming at the turn things were taking. From where he sat he could see the forecourt, which was under illumination. He saw his beat-up old car being spruced up by the snow which had begun falling since his arrival. The radio weatherman had said the first big snow of the winter was moving in from Ohio and the Midwest beyond. It was snowing hard but there was no wind and
the scene was peaceful as a Christmas card. He filled Hugh Driskill’s glass with Laphroaig, water, and ice.

“Father Traherne used to get pretty well loaded with me from time to time. He’d get a real skinful. He knew I paid his salary over at New Pru, he was an Irishman, so he naturally resented me all to hell. He was always looking for an angle, always wanted to be a bigger man than I, wanted to show me he didn’t need me … you know the type, little men who resent their lives … he drank himself to death, no surprise there—You don’t drink much, do you, Peaches?”

“No, sir. Never much of a drinker.”

“I remember one time when Traherne came over, in his cups, Irish courage, and he told me how Monsignor D’Ambrizzi—that’s as he was then—had come to see him one day over in New Pru. That’s when D’Ambrizzi was a visitor here with us after the war in Europe. Well, Traherne was taking great pleasure in telling me how he and D’Ambrizzi had this big secret. Something I didn’t know about and they did. Small mind, Traherne.” Hugh Driskill’s fist tightened around the glass as he sipped. He’d lost weight, not only in his face where the skin had taken on a slightly translucent quality, but also in his hands. The veins were like gnarled roots now, the skin ashy, sinking, in upon them. “Well, he couldn’t resist running his mouth, you know the type. Hard to tell the real thing from the whiskey and the blarney. Anyway, he tells me how D’Ambrizzi is this big old pal of his, how he came over to New Pru and gave him these papers, important papers, for safekeeping.… Traherne says he’s to keep them safe until the time came when he’d need them.… Traherne says that D’Ambrizzi told him never to let anyone,
anyone
, see these pages. But old Traherne—this is years and years later, D’Ambrizzi’s a cardinal practically running the Church—old Traherne’s got a wild hair somewhere and he’s drunk and he’s got to come lording it over me!” He laughed, shaking his head. The nurse had given up, stomped off to the kitchen. The snow was falling thicker. Peaches wished he were somewhere else. Anywhere would have done.

“Can you believe it, Peaches? The old nitwit had kept
his secret all those years and what does he do? He gets drunk and has to show me how important he is so he spills the beans about the manuscript … he kept teasing me about it, kept going on about how important it must be and wouldn’t I like a peek at it, the silly old boozer. I told him that D’Ambrizzi had written the whole thing in my own home, if he’d wanted me to read it he could have asked me to take a look at it then. Since he didn’t, I had no intention of reading it at Father Traherne’s suggestion and I told him just that.” He sipped his scotch, pulled his robe tighter, as if a chill were creeping upon him. His face was pale, his eyes sharp, quick, restless. “But … things change. My daughter has been murdered, a man she may have loved was also murdered … someone, maybe the same man who killed them, also tried to kill my son … the Church may be involved in some crazy way—how the hell should I know? But the pope is dying, D’Ambrizzi is nearing the Throne of Peter itself … it all seemed to be getting mixed up in my mind while I lay in that damnable hospital bed and the funny thing was, Peaches, I kept thinking about how D’Ambrizzi stayed here with us for a while … how he’d worked in the study, writing and writing … and then I got to thinking about Traherne, and D’Ambrizzi giving him those papers for safekeeping and never coming back for them or sending word … Peaches, you follow me on this?”