The Good Shepherd (52 page)

Goggin was naturally astonished to discover Dennis in Rome. “I’ll meet you at the foot of the Spanish Steps in fifteen minutes.”

In twenty minutes, they were drinking
cafe doppios
in a marble-floored, old-fashioned restaurant on a street full of fashionable shops only a block or so from the Steps. Dennis told him what was happening, and Goggin’s eyes widened with disbelief. “As the French general said at the charge of the Light Brigade, ‘Magnificent, but it isn’t war.’”

“I know,” said Dennis, “but it may be something better than war. It may be peace.”

“Old pal, don’t get grandiose on me.”

“All right. What do you know about Father Guilio Mirante, fellow ex-Jesuit or Jesuit, take your pick?”

“Nothing,” said Goggin, “but I’ll do my best to find out a few things.”

Dennis told him that he suspected Mirante was working for the Vatican. “Leave it to ye old biblical scholar,” Goggin said. “I’ll give them my absentminded professor act.”

“What else do you hear from your employer?”

“If this were 1570 instead of 1970, there would be a pall of smoke hanging over the Netherlands. The Sacred Inquisition would be buying up firewood all over Europe. It would have been a marvelous opportunity to see how bishops burn. As for
your
employer, he would be in a cell in the bottom tier of Castle St. Angelo, which the Tiber floods regularly.”

“Paolo is not happy.”

“Paolo and everyone around him are steaming. I spent the morning translating a little something for the radio that will probably be in
Osservatore Romano
tomorrow. It talks about the Church being prepared to use its coercive powers in order to insure the unity of the faith.”

“Nice.”

“Why don’t you retreat to the first century with me while there’s still time? We can spring our coup on them without warning. From now on, your employer will be anathema. And they won’t let you within 100 miles of any library with archives worth looking at.”

Dennis shook his head. “This is more important. This could make your book an official text, a sacred document, instead of an underground classic.”

“But politics are so boring.” Goggin finished his coffee, stood up, and saluted. “I am off to see the Jesuits.”

Back at the hotel, Dennis found Matthew Mahan sitting on the edge of the bed, talking on the telephone. “I’m sorry to hear that Cardinal Confalonieri will be on retreat for the next two weeks. May I speak to Monsignor Draghi, the secretary of the Congregation?

“Oh? He’s on retreat, too. Odd that they would go at the same time, isn’t it? Well, you tell them that I called. I may still be here when they get back. I intend to stay in Rome until His Holiness gives me an appointment.”

He hung up and nodded to Dennis with a grim half-smile. “The freeze is on,” he said. “Everybody’s out of town.”

“Including the Pope?”

“No, I haven’t called him directly. But I tried calling Villot. I got Benelli, the Substitute Secretary of State. He pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about. No, that could be unjust. Maybe he didn’t know. Anyway, he said there was absolutely no hope of a break in His Holiness’s schedule for at least a month. I asked him to see what he could do to change that, and he got a little unpleasant.”

Dennis nodded. “I took a walk and bumped into my friend Goggin, the biblical scholar and part-time Vatican translator. He said they’re breathing fire over there.”

Matthew Mahan sighed and looked across the Tiber at St. Peter’s dome. “Well, we knew it was probably a fool’s errand. But let’s just sit here for a day or two and see what happens.”

Father Mirante returned that night after supper. The ex-Jesuit could not have been more negative. All his friends at the Vatican were appalled by what Cardinal Mahan was doing. No one had heard so much as a whisper about his arrival. Almost certainly, his letter had been routed to the office of the Secretary of State, where Archbishop Benelli, the chief administrator of the department, would take charge of it. He was a fierce, combative man.

“How do we get around him?” Matthew Mahan asked.

“There is no way around him, Your Eminence,” said Mirante. “He is a colossus. He bestrides the Vatican. No one speaks to His Holiness without his permission.”

“Did you tell your friends how serious I was?”

“Of course.”

“And their advice -”

“- is go home.”

“These are people who are on our side?”

“Assuredly. Insofar as a man is capable of maintaining that position in the present atmosphere.”

Mirante departed once more. Matthew Mahan paced restlessly up and down the room, growing gloomier and gloomier. A half hour later, Goggin called. “I’ve been told our friend is negotiating. He’s a baddy. Went sour a year or two ago, started chasing girls. When his superiors tried to straighten him out, he trotted up to Isolotto and jumped on that little bandwagon. He misjudged the temper of the times, oh grievously. He didn’t realize that the word was out to get tough. By now I’m sure he’s ready to perform all sorts of services for the Prince of this world or anyone else.”

“Thanks,” said Dennis. “We’ll be in touch.”

He told Matthew Mahan what he had just heard. The Cardinal sat down slowly in a wing chair and began to nod mournfully. “It’s really a little like war, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Dennis, ruefully recalling his overblown words about peace to Goggin earlier in the day.

That night Dennis awoke to find Matthew Mahan stumbling around the room, he turned on his bed lamp and the Cardinal said, “Dennis, I’m sorry. I got completely disoriented in the dark and couldn’t find the bathroom. Look at the mess I just made.”

Dennis walked around the bed and saw a three- or four-inch splotch of blood on the rug. “Are you - all right?”

“Yes, yes, of course. Nothing unusual. Let’s clean this up.”

They scrubbed with cold water and towels until there was only a faint stain.

Dennis turned out the light and lay awake in the darkness for a long time, listening to Matthew Mahan moving restlessly around his twin bed. Once he took a deep breath and released it in a kind of sigh that made Dennis’s heart skip. It must have been close to dawn when Dennis finally fell asleep. He awoke to find Matthew Mahan quietly saying mass on the top of the room’s dresser. For a moment, he wondered why and then groggily remembered that they had decided before they left to conduct themselves as anonymously as possible in Rome.

Outside, the weather was foul. Rain drizzled miserably from the gray sky. People scurried along the street below the pensione, their coat collars turned up against a wolfish wind. “Sunny Italy,” Dennis said, staring out the window at the viscous-looking Tiber.

“People have told me you can get pneumonia here in the winter quicker than you can in Chicago,” Matthew Mahan said. “Now I believe them.”

After lunch, having read
Osservatore Romano
and two or three other dailies, Matthew Mahan sent Dennis out to buy a copy of Pope John’s autobiography,
Journal of a Soul.

“Should I get an extra copy to send to the Vatican?” Dennis asked.

It was as cold and as miserably wet in the streets as it looked. In the lobby on his way back, he met Father Mirante. As they went up in the elevator, Dennis said, “What do you think you’ll get if you talk him into going home? A professorship at the Gregorian, perhaps?”

Mirante glared at him as they stepped out of the elevator. “Your career, if it deserves such a term, is finished. You must know that,” he said.

“I never had a career.”

Dennis started to walk ahead of him down the hall. Mirante seized him by the shoulder and spun him around. “Would you believe me if I said that it is to his advantage as well as mine that he goes home? Do you think it’s impossible for a man to act in his own interests and out of love and concern for a friend at the same time?”

The pain on the middle-aged face was exquisite. “I’m beginning to think anything is possible,” Dennis said softly.

“He is a great soul. Why do you torment him? You are the evil genius here.”

“Evil?” Dennis said. “Compared to you, Father Mirante, I don’t think I even understand the meaning of the word.”

They walked down the rest of the hall in silence. Dennis handed over the copy of Pope John’s journals. Father Mirante launched a feverish monologue in Italian. Matthew Mahan listened somberly, then turned to Dennis. “He says they are preparing to disgrace me. There’ll be an accusation that I’ve misused the finances of the archdiocese. Apparently Leo the Great’s columns have traveled far.”

“They wouldn’t dare. They have more to lose than you in a mess like that.”

“Yes. I think so, too,” Matthew Mahan said. He looked out the window at the gloomy sky. St. Peter’s dome looked forlornly gray. “I should have expected this. But it still hurts.”

“They can be petty as well as stupendous,” Father Mirante said. “Your Eminence, I see only the futility of this. The danger both to your reputation and your health.”

“I know, I know, Guilio. But when it’s something your soul summons you to do -”

“Isn’t it we that summon the soul?”

“The souls of others. It’s seldom - too seldom - that we let our own souls speak. Don’t you think so?”

Tears suddenly streamed down Mirante’s face. “Yes. Yes.” He fell on his knees and clutched Matthew Mahan’s right hand to kiss his ring. “Forgive me, forgive me,” he said. “I am not worthy of your friendship. I am not worthy of anyone’s friendship.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Guilio. But whatever it is, you’re forgiven. Not by me. God’s forgiveness is always yours for the asking, you know that.”

Mirante shook his head. “What does His forgiveness matter when you cannot obtain it from yourself? For a wasted life, a ruined career?”

Matthew Mahan said nothing. He just stood there letting Mirante cling to his hand. On the other side of the room, Dennis McLaughlin thought: I must never forget this moment. The slight Italian, his lined, world-weary face wet with tears on his knees before the tall, somber American Cardinal.

Mirante lurched to his feet and stumbled to the door. “I will tell those bastards that I am on your side.”

The door slammed. He was gone. Matthew Mahan looked at Dennis and sat down to read Pope John. “I’m so glad you found this book,” he said after about an hour. “It makes me feel close to him again. I think I told you how close I felt last May. But this time, I only felt his absence.”

He sighed and began pacing the floor again. Each time he passed the window, he looked out at St. Peter’s dome. “I’m getting mad,” he said. “I’m an Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church. I don’t think I should be left sitting here like a pensioner.” He paced for another ten minutes. “Paul is so sad. He breaks your heart. If I hadn’t taken that vow -”

“Couldn’t you argue that it was taken under duress?”

“Now, now. Don’t use your Jesuit logic on me. Either we do this straight or it isn’t worth doing.”

They ate supper. Dennis noticed that the Cardinal barely touched his chicken. He drank his milk, ate a little bread and some canned fruit. “Are you planning a hunger strike?” Dennis said.

“No, I - I’m just not hungry. Actually I feel a little nauseated. Maybe I’m getting a virus.”

The telephone rang. It was Mirante. “I am calling from a phone in the street. This is not the conspirator, this is the friend,” he said. “Tonight you will be visited by Jean Cardinal Derrieux. Prevent him if possible, my young friend, prevent him from seeing your Cardinal.”

“Why? They’re friends. He’s -”

“He
was
a great liberal. Now a week scarcely passes without him denouncing one of the Pope’s enemies in
Osservatore Romano
or elsewhere. He sees Villot on the throne. A French pope. For that, he will do anything.”

Dennis hung up. “Who was that?” Matthew Mahan asked.

Lie to him? No, this thing has to be done straight. “Mirante.” He told him what the Italian ex-Jesuit had just said.

Matthew Mahan looked both pained and puzzled. “Derrieux? I can’t believe it. If he comes, I’ll certainly see him. I think Guilio’s like a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to another.”

At eight-thirty, the phone rang again. A voice introduced himself as Monsignor Gaspieri. He was Cardinal Derrieux’s secretary. The Cardinal wished to see His Eminence, Cardinal Mahan, as soon as possible. Would 9:00 p.m. be convenient? Dennis passed on the question. Matthew Mahan nodded. “Give him the room number.”

Precisely at 9:00 p.m., there was a knock on the door. Dennis opened it, and Jean Cardinal Derrieux stepped into the room. His face seemed starker than Dennis recalled it. The pinched cheeks, the small narrow mouth, the dominating high-crowned nose, and intense dark eyes had the impact of a knife blade. He wore a red cassock, and a jeweled pectoral cross glittered on his chest. He held out his hand, ring turned upward. Dennis bobbed his head toward it and brushed his lips against the thin, feminine fingers. He got a whiff of cologne. He stepped back and let Matthew Mahan shake hands. He was wearing his plain clerical black without a trace of red on it. “Jean,” he said, “I’m glad to see you. If they had to send anyone, I’m glad -”

“I wish I could agree,” said Derrieux in a voice with only the hint of a French accent.

They sat down in the room’s two wing chairs. Dennis stood against the far wall. “I think it would be best if he left,” Cardinal Derrieux said with a sideways nod of his head.

“I see no reason for that. Father McLaughlin is completely aware of why I am here.”

“Too aware, from what I hear. Time is short, and we are talking about things too important for niceties. I am told from many who know you, many from your own archdiocese, that you are this young man’s dupe.”

“I’ve never heard anything sillier in my life,” Matthew Mahan said. “I don’t think I am any man’s dupe.”

Cardinal Derrieux reached inside his cassock and took out a single piece of paper. “I have been given this letter which you wrote to His Holiness. Cardinal Villot, the Secretary of State, gave it to me. He is, of course, horrified by it. So am I.”

“Has His Holiness seen it?”

“His Holiness is an old man. Not a well man. It is our task to protect him from this sort of aberration.”