The Chimera Sanction (12 page)

Dulac turned and said, ‘Anything wrong, your Eminence?’

‘The Italian government should have confirmed the bank transfer by now. What’s taking them so long?’

Suddenly, the monitors came alive. The screens vacillated for a moment, then the picture came into focus: seven hooded figures dressed in dark brown fatigues were seated behind a small platform onto which
had been set a microphone and a single chair, empty. Dulac felt a cold chill run up his spine. A mock trial, he thought. A hooded man wearing black fatigues appeared, stood before the microphone for a moment, before reaching down and adjusting its height. He seemed to signal to someone to the side of the platform, invisible to the camera.

Then a large, hooded man wearing black fatigues walked onto the platform followed by two shorter men supporting a white-robed figure between them. They sat the man down brusquely in the solitary chair, and the camera focused on the lonely figure, stooping slightly, his jaw slack, his head leaning to one side. ‘It’s His Holiness!’ said Sforza.

They’ve drugged him, thought Dulac, fear seizing his brain like a vise. Not good. The man in the brown fatigue grabbed the microphone: ‘Men of little faith, you dare challenge us? Did you think we weren’t serious?’ The electronically scrambled voice was a chilling, otherworldly monotone. ‘Your token gesture is an insult. Do you hear? An insult.’ The voice’s pitch rose slightly. ‘To us, to your Pope, to the world. Our demands were clear, and you chose to ignore them.’ The voice paused for a moment and the hooded man pointed to the pontiff sitting below him. ‘Now, your Pope will pay the price.’

Dulac’s stomach knotted. He could hear the hushed rumblings of the incredulous prelates spread like a trail of lit gunpowder.

Legnano, his eyes glued to the monitor, leaned over towards Sforza sitting next to him and whispered, ‘They’re going to disclose the diary.’

‘They’re not going to, to harm him?’ said Sforza.

The hooded man in brown gestured to the burly man in black, who walked over and stood behind the seated pontiff. At the man’s command, the burly man grabbed the side of his belt and unsheathed a large scimitar in a quick, smooth motion. For an instant, a flash of light reflected off the wide, curving blade.

The Segnatura room’s occupants sat transfixed, mute, holding their collective breath. ‘Jesus Christ, they’re not going to decapitate him?’ said Guadagni, as he crossed himself quickly.

The burly man raised the scimitar above his head with both hands. ‘
Mio Dio!
’ exclaimed the Minister of State.

The burly man waited. After what seemed an eternity, he looked
sideways
to the other man. The man nodded.

‘NO! NO!’ the voices of Brentano, Fouquet and Sforza shouted in
unison, as they jumped up from their seats.

The monitors’ image blurred for an instant and caught the scimitar’s arc as it sliced downwards. A collective gasp rose from the room.

The Pope fell forward, blood spattering onto the camera’s lens.

The Segnatura room’s occupants sat motionless, transfixed. No one uttered a word. All stared, hypnotized by the screens of the TV
monitors
, now blank. After an endless moment, Fouquet crossed himself slowly and broke into tears. ‘In God’s name, why? Why?’

Dulac sat, staring into space. He didn’t dare make eye contact with the Cardinals. After what seemed an eternity, Legnano said in a barely audible voice: ‘I never thought…. They are mad….’ Legnano turned to Dulac: ‘Who are these barbarians? Who in God’s name would take the pontiff’s life? Why, Mr Dulac? Why?’ Legnano took his head in his hands.

The other members of the Curia simply sat, looking at each other, unsure as to what to do next. Finally, Brentano broke the mournful gloom. ‘We … we must prepare a statement for the press.’

‘The press? Is that all of you can think of?’ said Sforza, indignant.

‘We aren’t sure that the Holy Father … I mean, we can hope that …’ said Brentano.

‘Do you need to see the body?’ said Fouquet, his voice cracking with emotion.

‘Barbarians. They’re insane. They butchered an innocent man,’ said Guadagni.

The Italian Minister of State rose solemnly from his chair and said, ‘Gentlemen, your Eminences, you have my condolences. I will advise the President immediately. Cardinal Legnano, rest assured we will wait for your permission before advising anyone else.’ From the corner of his eye, Dulac caught a glimpse of Guadagni trying to get his attention: ‘Partial payment, eh, Dulac. That was your recommendation.’

Dulac felt his face reddening and steeled himself not to meet Guadagni’s stare.

‘What do we do now, Mr Dulac?’ asked Sforza, his voice breaking.

‘I wish I knew, your Eminence. I wish I knew,’ Dulac said, feeling the weight of a horrible guilt pressing upon his chest.

As the Cardinals sat in oppressive silence, suddenly, loud voices and a commotion could be heard coming from outside the room.

Sforza got up, walked to the door, and opened it slightly. A handful
of reporters were in a heated discussion with the Swiss Guards.

‘What is it?’ asked Sforza.

‘They say the Pope has been assassinated. It was on Al Jazeera TV ten minutes ago.’

Amid the ensuing chaos, Dulac had made his way out of the Vatican and regained the relative quietness of his hotel room. Sitting at the desk eating a sandwich, Dulac was on the phone with Henri Bléguet, Head of Interpol’s data center in Lyon, while the Cray computers analyzed, crunched, filtered, and digested the raw data regarding the Al Jazeera transmission, and preliminary results trickled in. The news was not good. The transmission’s security codes and firewalls were resisting Interpol’s computers’ attempts at descrambling, and the bouncing off restricted satellites before reaching Al Jazeera’s newsroom was making the transmission impossible to trace.

Dulac rose and turned on the TV. The blonde anchorwoman, a look of professional concern on her face, announced that a special news broadcast from the Vatican’s Old Study Room was about to begin. The scene switched to the Vatican, the camera zoomed in onto Sforza, then Legnano, sitting behind a white cloth-covered table. Slightly beneath and in front, reporters and journalists waited for the press conference to begin, to the incessant flashing of camera lights.

Legnano reached for the microphone and started to read his notes, his hand shaking slightly, his voice broken. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have all witnessed today an abominable, barbaric act. We believed we could initiate a meeting with the kidnappers, in order to negotiate the release of His Holiness Pope Clement XXI and of Dr Bruscetti. We had no reason to think they would carry out this wanton, savage killing. We do not understand what they have gained by this … this …’ Legnano stopped, upset. He wiped a tear with his hand, then reached for a glass of water. ‘Words cannot describe the pain and sorrow that I feel, that I’m sure you all feel. The loss we must bear is all the greater in that his death was gratuitous.’ Legnano paused and took another sip of water. ‘In a moment such as this, it is inevitable and natural that we feel anger and frustration and want to exact revenge on the perpetrators. But this is not what our Holy Father would have wished. That is why we ask that you find it in your hearts to forgive those who have done this, as Jesus,
our Savior did some two thousand years ago. In the words of Christ: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ We in the Curia share your grief, pain and sorrow on this somber day for all of humanity. Please join us in prayer, prayer that His Holiness finds everlasting peace in the arms of our Lord. Amen.’

Legnano and Sforza started to leave when some of the reporters cut them off at the exit of the Old Study Room, pushing aside the Swiss Guards and poking microphones in the prelates’ faces.

‘Why didn’t you pay the whole ransom? Did you not think the Pope’s life was worth it? Don’t you feel partially responsible for His death?’

‘What kind of principle are you applying when you pay a down payment only?’

‘No comment. No comment,’ was the recurring answer from the unprepared cardinals.

Dulac turned off the TV, went to the bed and lay down. A while later, unable to sleep and fed up of staring blankly at the ceiling of his room, Dulac went downstairs and sat at the hotel’s bar. ‘Double scotch.’

‘Yes sir,’ said the thin, bald bartender. ‘Say, aren’t you the Interpol inspect—’

‘And no goddamn ice,’ growled Dulac.

‘Yes, sir,’ the bartender said, recoiling.

Dulac took a deep drag from his Gitane. His cell rang, and he pivoted away from the bar before answering.

‘Hi. It’s me.’

‘Hello Karen.’

‘I still can’t believe it. Why? What do they have to gain?’ she said.

‘I really don’t feel…. I’m not up to talking about it just now.’ Dulac caught a glimpse of the bartender, trying to listen in. He stood up and walked away from the bar.

‘You’re not taking this personally, are you?’ said Karen.

‘I proposed the partial payment. I was sure they would negotiate.’

‘Surely the Curia checked with ransom experts before making their decision?’

‘Still, I suggested it.’

‘Thierry, it was their decision.’

‘I thought we were dealing with rational, intelligent human beings, not twisted psychopaths. I trusted my instinct. I was wrong, dead wrong.’

‘By the way, did you look at that video closely?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not sure, but I think I saw a flash, a ring or something on the finger of the man with the electronic voice, when he adjusted the microphone.’

‘A ring? Yes, I suppose….’ In a nanosecond, thousands of neurons made two million connections in the world’s fastest and most efficient computer, the human brain, and reached into the faraway depths of Dulac’s data bank, his memory. The idea formed and struck him like a lightning bolt. ‘Jesus. I’ll call you back.’

He hung up, downed the scotch and punched Interpol’s single digit, quick-dial Lyon number. ‘Get me Gina at forensics.’

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me, Dulac. Do you have a copy of the Al Jazeera video on your computer?’

‘Just a minute. Yes, I have it.’

‘The left hand of the tall man, when he adjusts the microphone. Get a close-up of it.’

‘Got it.’

‘Can you see a ring?’

‘Yes, sort of. It looks like a small seal.’

‘Any inscription on it?’

‘It’s too fuzzy. I have to do a micro-reconstruct by computer. It’ll take a couple of minutes.’

‘I’ll wait.’ Dulac put the phone to his shoulder and lit another Gitane.

‘There, I’ve got it now,’ said Gina.

‘What do you see?’

‘A small animal. Some kind of strange animal, I think. Yes. Head of a lion, body of a goat, and—’

‘The tail of a snake? A Chimera?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Goddamn de Ségur. It’s de Ségur. He’s behind this. He and his ultra-right-wing Cathars. Why didn’t I think of it before? Do a kinetics-anthropomorphic comparison with the man in the black fatigues. I’m sure that’s him.’

‘We’ve already started a voice deconstruct and rebuild from the video. With this input, it shouldn’t take long,’ said Gina.

‘Call me.’

Dulac took the elevator back up to his room, his third scotch slowing his usually determined gait. Walking down the corridor, the memories of his arch-nemesis, the man Dulac had uncloaked and laid bare as a murderer, the man responsible for Gladio’s resurgence and deadly agenda throughout Europe in the eighties, Dulac’s struggle and ultimate failure to bring de Ségur, the French billionaire, to justice, all the memories of Dulac’s ill-fated case resurfaced and flooded his brain. De Ségur, the ex-CEO Of Miranda Group, the murderer of Archbishops Salvador and Conti. Dulac felt the anger mount and tried to remain calm.

After a tepid shower to cool his temper, he phoned his assistant Daniel Lescop in Paris. ‘It looks like de Ségur,’ said Dulac. ‘I’m having a voice video and anthro-analysis done.’

‘De Ségur? Why on earth him?’

‘Try revenge. Besides, murder has never stopped him before.’

‘I suppose. Who is doing the anthro?’

‘Gina.’

‘She’s the best. So you believe de Ségur and his Cathars kidnapped the Pope and murdered him when their ransom demands weren’t met?’ asked Lescop. ‘Doesn’t sound rational.’

‘Since when are these fanatics rational?’

By evening, the horrific, sequential pictures of the scimitar on its downward trajectory toward the Pope’s head were on all of the TV news channels of the world and the special edition front pages of the world’s major newspapers. ‘Kidnappers kill Pope Clement XXI. Ransom not paid in full. World shocked by live coverage of assassination,’ the blood-red Corriere Della Sera’s headlines blurted.

As usual, the Evening Standard hit the streets of London first: ‘Pope Clement XXI executed live on Al Jazeera.’

CNN reporter Dave Anderson was broadcasting live from St Peter’s Square.

‘Hello Larry, I’m here in front of the Basilica. People are streaming in by the hundreds, most of them still in shock. It reminds me of when Pope John Paul II died.’

‘Any more news from the Vatican yet?’

‘Larry, the Vatican press secretary has told me that they won’t be
making any further announcements today.’

‘What about the police? Do they have any idea who did this?’

‘We haven’t been able to contact them yet. At headquarters in Rome here, they say they’re too busy coordinating with other police forces to talk to us.’

‘How are the people in the square reacting?’

‘Larry, people are still in shock. A lot of them can’t believe this has happened. I spoke to a woman who witnessed the attempt on Pope John Paul II’s life, and she says she never thought she would see this again. She’s confused and angry.’

‘Understandably. Aren’t we all? Keep in touch Dave. Now, a word from our correspondent Nancy Price in Washington for a reaction from the White House. Nancy….’

The Vatican’s Secretariat was once again flooded with calls. World leaders reacted swiftly, phoning, faxing, e-mailing their anger and shock, and expressing condolences to the members of the Curia.