The Assassini (85 page)

My father’s manner was uncharacteristically warm, or at least not aggressive, that first night. Some of his piss and vinegar had doubtless been drained off by his illness, yet I wanted to believe that we were possibly entering on a new phase of our relationship. Better late than never: I’d thought all the same thoughts about him before.

We horsed around in the kitchen together and eventually ate a long, leisurely dinner of grilled steaks, baked potatoes, salad, and a robust claret and powerful coffee with chicory. The questions he had couldn’t be avoided, obviously, but we started on them slowly, very careful when it came to Val’s murder. But slowly I told him how it had all developed. It was the first time I’d tried to relate the story and it made for a long evening, through which his interest and energy never flagged.

Names I mentioned jogged his memory, tapped into his pool of anecdotes. Torricelli and Robbie Heywood and Klaus Richter, countless memories of D’Ambrizzi and the war and the adventures with the Resistance. He told me stories he’d never told me before, stories about dropping into occupied France from planes flying only high enough to make sure the parachutists didn’t get killed by landing, or coming ashore by rubber rafts from submarines, eluding German patrols, connecting with Resistance cells, meeting with D’Ambrizzi in the damnedest places. It was all a game, I could hear it in his voice, scary most of the time, but everybody was younger then and there was a war on and you had to do your bit.…

“You knew Richter? He was a
German
officer—”

“Look, son, he was working with D’Ambrizzi in Paris and I was working with D’Ambrizzi. These things happen. I was having a fairly unusual war.”

“But did Richter know you were OSS?”

“Of course not, Ben. What are you thinking of?
D’Ambrizzi probably told him I was an American trapped in Paris when the war broke out. I don’t know—”

“But you could have been betrayed by anyone who knew who you were.”

“Well, not to Klaus Richter; he didn’t give a damn about me or who was going to win the war—he had his own work to do. Everybody was engaged in their own little war. People like LeBecq, all the rest of them—”

“You knew LeBecq?” It was disconcerting, realizing that my father had been there then, that I had all these years later followed in his footsteps. “You knew D’Ambrizzi killed him for betraying the Pius Plot?”

“Sure.” My father poured himself fresh coffee and clipped the end off a cigar, held a flame to it. “The Pius Plot, now, there was a crazy idea—” He puffed a couple of times. “If ever there was one. D’Ambrizzi was playing with fire on that one. He was way out of bounds.”

“Was it really so terrible?” We’d moved into the long skylight room. Wind blew the snow overhead, across the glass. A fire blazed in the fireplace which was made of rough slabs of fieldstone. We sat across from each other in deep slipcovered chairs. In the distant corner beside the arch leading to the dining room stood the towering Kodiak bear, arms out to embrace whoever chanced near. “D’Ambrizzi made a pretty good case for Pius as a Nazi sympathizer, a kind of war criminal.”

“The man wanted to murder the pope in cold blood. Doesn’t that strike you as just a little bit crazy? Pius was no war criminal. He had to be very careful on a continent entirely dominated by the Axis … the fate of millions of Catholics was in Hitler’s and Pius’s hands. So, what if Pius couldn’t make quite the moral choices D’Ambrizzi would have—so what? D’Ambrizzi was trafficking with Nazis every day.” He stared into the fire.

“On Pius’s orders,” I said.

“Look, D’Ambrizzi was a great man, I’m not saying he wasn’t. But he had a tendency to go off the deep end occasionally. Kill the pope … But it never happened, so …” He shrugged. My father had never conversed with me in this manner: he was taking me into his confidence, man to man, as he’d never done before.

“It never happened,” I said, “because Archduke betrayed the whole thing. And all D’Ambrizzi’s people died—”

“Not all.”

“Did you ever have any dealings with Archduke?”

“Well, I wasn’t there when that particular balloon went up, but I naturally heard things. Then the time came to get D’Ambrizzi the hell out of there. I liked the guy, he was a good man. The Vatican was on his tail, so I brought him out.” He watched me through the cigar smoke.

“What about you and Archduke?”

“Never met the man.”

“Do you know who he was?”

“Can’t say as I do. It’s all over now, what difference does it make?”

“It matters because it’s still all tied up with what’s going on now … the murder of Val—”

“You’re confusing past and present, Ben.”

“No, I
almost
understand the connection between past and present, Dad. I’ve just about got it … it’s a man, it’s a couple of men. Indelicato was one, tying past and present together. But there’s another and it’s Archduke. I think Archduke is still alive, that he betrayed D’Ambrizzi a long time ago and allied himself with Indelicato then … and I believe he was allied with Indelicato now, to keep D’Ambrizzi from becoming pope by making sure Indelicato did. Of course everything’s up for grabs now, with Indelicato dead.”

“You give this Archduke a great deal of credit,” he said. “Do you have any idea who he is?”

“I’m sure I know.”

“And?”

“You won’t like it.” I took a deep breath. “Summerhays.”

“What?” He banged his huge palm on the arm of the chair. “Summerhays? Why in the name of God Summerhays?”

“He was your control out of London in the OSS days?”

My father nodded, a small smile of surprise on his broad, flat face.

“He had you and plenty of other sources inside both France and Germany. He had access to all the intelligence coming to London from Europe.… He had a long history of deep involvement with the Church, he knew Pius both before and after he became pope … he’s a traditional conservative in Church matters … he taught you and Lockhardt how it’s all done—face it, Dad, he’s the logical Archduke, like it or not!”

“And you’re telling me he’s still at it. It’s a hard one to swallow, Ben.”

“It’s hard to swallow what’s been going on for the last eighteen months, tidying up the past. Dad, you can help me on this, you can help me prove it … Summerhays trusts you.”

“Oh, now, Ben, I don’t know about that. My God, Drew Summerhays … I haven’t thought about all these things in a long time.”

“But you’ve had your memory refreshed by reading the papers D’Ambrizzi left behind when he disappeared from Princeton.”

He nodded, laughing softly. “Sure, sure, but Summerhays—you really surprise me there, Ben. You’re on the wrong track, you must be. Yes, I read D’Ambrizzi’s brief, Peaches told me about it—”

“With a little prodding, I understand.”

“So you’ve been talking to young Peaches. He told you the story of that old padre who used to brag to me?”

I nodded.

“Well, I did badger poor Peaches and he finally admitted he’d found the papers. I read it all. Interesting stuff so far as it went, but what does it really amount to? I don’t know. The Church sponsored something like a Resistance cell, there was some art theft involved, a little murder, lots of code names … all very old news, isn’t it? What did you make of it?”

“It had a ring of authenticity,” I said. “Did you ever get wind of the idea that Indelicato was the Collector? Did you know that Indelicato was the man Archduke went to with the Pius Plot story?”

“Maybe, Ben. Who knows anymore?” My father looked up at the sudden blast of wind smacking the side of the lodge. A draft whispered across the floor. “But yes, I found out that Indelicato was the man they sent after D’Ambrizzi. Of course. I’m the one who got him out of Europe with Indelicato in hot pursuit.”

“Well, it was Horstmann who’s been doing the killing. Did you ever come across him over there?”

The memories were wearing him out, but though his face was drawn his eyes were bright and he didn’t seem to want to stop talking. “No, I don’t believe I ever knew him. But that’s not surprising. D’Ambrizzi had a pretty involved network—”

“
Assassini
,” I said.

“Call them what you will, he had them. Most of what he was up to had nothing to do with me, Ben. I could use a brandy. Don’t argue. It’s good for my heart.”

I poured us each a snifter and he sipped, rested his head on the back of the chair.

“Think about it, Dad. What if we could somehow reveal Summerhays for what he is … he’s as much a killer as Indelicato, he was in on it, plotting, killing …”

“Ben, I’m mighty tired all of a sudden. We’ll talk tomorrow. I really do want to hear all the rest of it. But I’m bushed.” He stood up slowly, but I knew better than to help him. He stopped at the foot of the stairs that led up to the balcony and the second-floor bedrooms. The snow was rattling on the skylight. From the windows I locked at the snow building up. My car had a fresh layer of snow, six inches anyway. “Ben, I’ve had an idea. Tomorrow you’re going to go out and get us a Christmas tree.” He sighed. “I miss your sister, son. Dammit.”

When I got up it was past midmorning and my dad was frying bacon and eggs. We sat at the dining table. I ate a prodigious amount. I reminded myself of Sister Elizabeth. He brought the coffeepot to the table and told me he wanted to hear the rest of it, how it all turned out.

I told him. I told him D’Ambrizzi’s explanation as he’d presented it to our little party at the Hassler. I assumed that if D’Ambrizzi could pass on everything he
did that night to all those people, I could certainly tell his old comrade in arms. My God, he’d even told Summerhays. So I told my father everything. I wanted his help, if we could come up with a way to land Summerhays. I told him everything but why Val had had to die: that she’d learned the truth, that she’d tied it all together and that she was coming home to tell her father and brother.…

I wanted to make sure he could handle all that, the rough stuff. So I waited. He didn’t ask about Val, so I decided to wait some more.

But otherwise, I told him everything. How Indelicato died, how we found him, how D’Ambrizzi had—how could I say it to him? How D’Ambrizzi had spoken from the past, as Simon, and given Salvatore di Mona his last instructions … to kill Cardinal Indelicato.

My father looked at me over the rim of his coffee cup. His eyes were hollow, circled in purple, as if he’d been up all night. “Well, as a student of Church history, I must say that a pope committing a murder is not entirely unheard of. Even eliminating his most likely successor—it’s all been done before. Nothing new under the sun or the dome of St. Peter’s.” The tired eyes bored into me. Something had changed from last night. We weren’t enemies, but we weren’t pals anymore, either. It was as if the world had come between us, by stealth, in the dark of night.

I told him how Sandanato had betrayed D’Ambrizzi by working with Indelicato and my father spoke up.

“They all believed they were doing the right thing, didn’t they? That’s the tragedy, Ben. That’s always been the central tragedy of the Church. Indelicato and Sandanato and Archduke wanted what was best for the Church … D’Ambrizzi … your little sister … even Peaches, for all I know, wants what’s best for the Church … Callistus was willing to kill for the Church in 1943 and he did kill for the Church now. That’s the hold it has on people. Do you see what I mean, Ben? Have you ever believed in anything enough to kill for it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never killed anyone.”

“Most men, I think, would ultimately kill for something. Not that they ever have to face up to it.”

“The heart of the Church,” I said, “is the heart of darkness. I’ve been there. I’m just back. And I don’t believe it’s full of great guys trying to do the right thing.”

“You haven’t been to the heart of darkness, son. You haven’t even come close. I’ve been there. Your mother even got there. But not you. There is no worse place, and when you get there, there’s no mistaking it. You’ll know.”

I told him how Sandanato had died.

My father went to the window, stared out into the steadily falling snow.

“Horstmann,” he said, “is the kind of man who apparently believes in evening the score. All the way back to zip.”

In the afternoon I bundled up in the old sheepskin and took a hatchet and a saw outside into the snow. It was still falling, large wet flakes, quiet, still. I passed by the huge skylight that slanted up from ground level and looked inside, down into the main room. The warmth of the house made the snow melt on the glass while it piled up all around. I saw my father standing at the turntable sifting through phonograph records in well-worn jackets. His shoulders were slumped, and when he’d placed the disc on the spindle he used a cane, walking slowly back to his chair by the fire. He lowered himself carefully and sat staring into the flames. Defenses down, he wasn’t the same man. He looked like a man—suddenly too old, too frail—who hadn’t long to live. I wished I hadn’t seen him.

The wooded hillside sloped upward for perhaps a hundred yards, dotted with rocky outcroppings among the thick black-green clumps of evergreens and the spindly trunks of oaks and elms and poplars. At the crest it leveled off and descended slightly to a lake of no great size, where I’d first gone sailing and swimming. It was an inhumanly cold little lake. Now it would be frozen over. I set off climbing and discovered there was more breeze
than I thought. The pillowy flakes seemed suddenly smaller and sharp-edged, designed to sting.

I noted a couple of potential Christmas trees as I climbed headdown toward the summit. I was drawn there by a sense of the past, I suppose. It had been several years since I’d been there last. Not since boyhood had I gone there with any regularity. Within twenty yards of the top I stopped, leaned against a tree to catch my breath. It was at just that moment that I got a whiff of something that surprised me. I smelled the remnant of a pungent fire made of branches and pinecones.

It didn’t take long to find the source. Beneath one of the clusters of rock, tucked back under the shelf for shelter, was a damp, blackened pile of ashes, partially kicked over with snow. There was still the faintest wisp of smoke, only a dying gasp, and the aroma of wet, burned pinecones. But someone had warmed himself at that fire during the night. I looked down the eighty yards toward the lodge. Through the trees that dark gray afternoon the glow from the great skylight was plainly visible, a yellow blur of light. Smoke curled away from the chimneys. The wind blew snow down the back of my neck. I was perspiring from the climb.