The Lost Catacomb (32 page)
Four hours later he drove into a wooded area and parked the
battered old truck between some trees that screened it from the road.
He'd spent nearly all of that time
thinking about Elena
’
s situation instead of focusing on where they should spend
the night before crossing into France.
Poor thing, he thought to himself.
What an awful story!
She was too young to be left on her
own.
Too vulnerable to count on her
own resources to see her through the next few months.
How old could she conceivably
be?
Eighteen at most?
Maybe only seventeen?
He mulled over several possible scenarios in his mind.
But most of them entailed either danger
or continuing loneliness for Elena.
There was really only one reasonable option
—
not
that anyone, besides himself, would regard it as reasonable
—
but
it would involve both him and his family back in Connecticut, and he couldn
’
t even be
sure she would agree to it.
He could offer to take her with him to London, where he
would be debriefed at Allied Command Headquarters before returning home until
his next assignment.
She could join
him when he was airlifted back to England, instead of remaining in France, and
he could try to arrange for her be given asylum in the United States.
But perhaps that was too ambitious a plan.
Even with his father
’
s
political connections, it might take too long for her to be given security
clearance and a visa, and he couldn't remain in London indefinitely to look
after her.
After all, she was a
citizen of a Fascist republic and would therefore be suspect.
The State Department wasn
’
t very
lenient these days.
He knew from
documents he
’
d been shown at Headquarters that even visa applications
from Jewish refugees who needed sanctuary more desperately than Elena did were
being summarily rejected.
Another thought suddenly flashed through his mind,
however.
It was quite brilliant,
actually.
He could offer to marry
her in some sort of civil ceremony in London.
Then she would be granted automatic
American citizenship.
She
would have a place to go to.
It
would give her child legitimacy.
The marriage could be annulled at a later date if and when she
wished.
And his family was
certainly wealthy enough to provide for her and the baby for the foreseeable
future, especially if he were to pass the baby off as his own.
Yes, his parents could either be told that she was a war
widow, because of the pregnancy, or perhaps he and Elena could just pretend
that the baby was premature when the time came.
That it was really his.
It didn
’
t occur to him to ask himself how this would impact on his
personal life and chances for a real marriage someday.
There was no one he wanted to marry at
the moment anyway, no one he could even imagine asking to be his wife.
So it really didn
’
t
matter.
It was the right thing to
do
—
in
fact, the only thing to do.
If he were totally honest with himself, he had to admit
that he was half in love with her already, though clearly, she was still in
mourning for her dead lover.
So
brave, yet so vulnerable, so heartbreakingly beautiful
—
perhaps
things might work out for both of them eventually.
But if not, he would know that he had
done everything possible to help her start a new life, free of fear and
stigma.
He would never hurt her or
take advantage of her emotional distress. There would be no strings
attached.
None whatsoever.
He would never even touch her, he
resolved, unless he knew for certain that she wanted him to.
He couldn
’
t blame her for what had happened, for sleeping with the
young man she'd loved, under the most heart-rending and frightening of
circumstances
—
when, he thought angrily, a priest affiliated with the
highest echelons of power in the Vatican could try to blackmail a beautiful
young girl into yielding to his lust; when life itself was so uncertain,
fraught with danger wherever one turned; when no one could know how the war
would end and who would survive it.
Whatever moral principles he might have had before the war
with respect to premarital sex, he had seen too much suffering, too much
premature death, to feel that it was wrong for anyone
—
male
or female
—
to seize the opportunity for a few moments of bliss in the
midst of all this madness, to try to salvage something that was life-affirming
from the ashes of destruction.
And though he himself was sexually experienced, as were
most young men his age, especially those stationed overseas during this awful
war, he fully recognized that until recently he, like so many others, had been
guilty of a double standard.
Men
could sow their wild oats with impunity.
It was understood, accepted, in fact, that they had so-called needs that
could not be ignored.
But young
women were expected to be chaste, to wait until marriage to experience physical
love.
Not that that had prevented
some of the young women working at Allied Headquarters in London from letting
him know that they were available and willing.
But these were wartime flings, one-night
stands that were repeated casually, when time and opportunity availed.
There was nothing meaningful in these
encounters, nothing long term, nothing that bespoke a commitment or union of
souls.
War, he had learned in the past months, was not a time for
pretences, for the artificial barriers that kept people from reaching out to
each other in this most basic, most elemental, of ways.
War reduced life to a simple will to survive,
to affirm one
’
s right to exist here on earth.
And hope, ever elusive, nearly
always beyond our grasp
—
hope that there was a better future or indeed any future at
all
—
that too needed to survive, to be nurtured, to endure.
He would not and did not judge her.
Or if he did, it was with compassion and
admiration for her courage.
He
would marry her, if she agreed, and he would let her decide, in the fullness of
time, just what could be recuperated from the tragedy of her past.
Elena yawned and opened her eyes, forgetting for a moment
where she was and with whom.
He gave her a moment to collect herself and then said slowly,
“
I have a
plan, Elena, or rather a solution.
I think it will work.
Don
’
t
worry.
Everything will be fine.
”
The following morning, a battered old truck with Italian
license plates crossed the French border with little difficulty.
The passengers
’
papers
were in order, and they were waved through the checkpoint by the indifferent
guards.
The tired-looking young
couple disembarked near a small village not far from Nice, abandoning the truck
in a deep ditch, after puncturing one of its tires and deliberately smashing a
headlight.
From there they made their way on foot to the center of
town and sat down at an outdoor caf
é
, where they ordered tea with five sugars apiece.
The waiter scrutinized them knowingly
and returned with their order, surreptitiously placing a folded piece of paper
under one of the saucers.
As the
young woman reached for her cup, her narrow antique wedding band, studded with
a few diamond chips, glittered in the sunlight on her right hand.
She glanced at her companion, who
whispered to her almost inaudibly,
“
Elena. It belongs on your left hand.
You'd better change it before someone
notices.
”
She put her cup down slowly and hid her hands in her lap,
under the table.
She would have to
learn to play her part more carefully, she realized.
Her safety and that of the baby would
depend on it.
The train wound its way through twisting, serpentine mountain
passes, moving northward from the border town of Chiasso, the last stop in
Italy, along small shimmering lakes of crystal blue dotting the landscape in
the distance, and on into southern Switzerland.
Seated in a luxurious first class compartment, Mauro
Rostoni looked out of the window with satisfaction.
It was not yet noon, and if all went
well, he would complete his tour of the
“
Maternal Fertility Clinic
”
in Engenweill in time to have dinner
in Lugano, perhaps at one of the lakeside caf
é
s, and then
catch an express train to Zurich later that evening.
He had scheduled meetings for early the
next morning with several Swiss bankers, followed by appointments with two art
dealers along the Bahnhofstrasse who were known for their discretion and from
whom he hoped to acquire a few choice pieces for the personal collection of the
Pope and for another project, a private collection that Rostoni himself was
amassing and which the Pope knew nothing about.
He hoped that he would not have to travel to Geneva as
well, but that might prove to be unavoidable, depending on what transpired in
Zurich.
He expected full
cooperation from the Swiss, but as he knew, they had invited some of their
German associates to the strategy planning session, and Rostoni
’
s dealings
with the Germans he
’
d encountered in Rome had taught him that they were used to
immediate gratification of their demands, no matter how inconvenient for those
who were expected to gratify them.
This, however, was a circumstance that could no longer be justified in
Rostoni
’
s estimation, given recent rumors about the probability of
an eventual and not too distant Allied victory.
In the past, he had hidden his
impatience with their overbearing arrogance.
But from now on, he was determined, they
would have to adjust to a changed situation.
In fact, the Germans needed the Swiss
—
and
the Holy See
—
far more than the Church or Swiss needed them at this point
in time.
For the Swiss and the
Vatican, all of the banking arrangements that Rostoni was involved in were a
matter of business as usual.
Nothing more than an opportunity for extra income and readily obtained
profit.
For the Nazis, however,
there was much more at stake.
The
money and gold hidden by Swiss banks, with the active help and intervention of
the Vatican, would not only help restore the German economy after the war,
whenever it might happen to end, but without it, the covert networks
established to enable Nazi fugitives to escape Allied retribution, in the event
of a defeat, would be ineffectual.
There would be no money to finance these Ratlines, as they had been
nicknamed, nor would the infrastructure for the forgery of appropriate
documents and interim hiding places exist.
The Swiss took care only of the financial aspects involved;
the escape routes themselves were handled exclusively by the Vatican and its
willing network of collaborators.
Rostoni prided himself on the well-organized arrangements that the Holy
See and its associates had made.
Yes, he congratulated himself, the Vatican could be as efficient,
perhaps even more efficient, than
Odessa
and
Die Spinne
, the two
best funded of the Nazi-organized Ratlines.
Business beckoned him, and the stakes were high
indeed.
Combining this aspect of
his trip to Switzerland with his more personal interest in the Engenweill
clinic was a fortuitous situation.
Rostoni felt that he was overworked at times, perhaps not appreciated
enough by others who were also close to the Holy Father, and a brief respite from
his official duties in Rome was welcome.
It was a pity that there would be no time for a cruise along the lake or
a hike in the grassy foothills, now resplendent with springtime flowers.
But even a brief stop in the city of
Lugano, before heading for Zurich, would be refreshing.
His alibi had been carefully prepared, though it wasn
’
t a word
he liked to think of in relation to himself.
After all, he
’
d
committed no real crime, no offense that those colleagues who disliked him
could or would ever discover.
If he were careful enough, all would go well.
The Vatican Bank would be flush with
even more money than anyone could imagine, his German associates would be taken
care of, and that unpleasant little business of Father Barrio
’
s
indiscretion would be forgotten.
The Germans would no longer be in a position to blackmail the Holy See
into relinquishing any of its more unusual holdings, and they would be
dependent on Rostoni
’
s good graces if they wished to survive the war.
Moreover, Rostoni had long-range plans
of his own for the unique pieces of artwork that the Germans had lodged deep
within the most secret vaults of Switzerland
’
s banking
establishments.
It was all
very satisfactory, he thought.
More
satisfactory than he had thought possible a few short months ago.
Before leaving the Apostolic Palace, Rostoni had announced
that he had been called away unexpectedly to visit a sick relative who
languished in a sanitarium somewhere in the Dolomite Mountains, carefully
specifying no place in particular.
His relative, he had said, with a sad sigh of acceptance and a slow,
painful lifting of his shoulders, was not long for this world, and his presence
was requested at what would undoubtedly be his cousin
’
s
deathbed, to administer the last rites.
Alas, he regretted that he might have to leave Rome for several days
—
it
would all depend on his cousin
’
s situation
—
but sometimes family obligations could not be ignored.
Some of his colleagues in the Apostolic Palace were
surprised at Rostoni
’
s sense of family solidarity.
Mother Pasqualina, for one, had
commented sarcastically that Rostoni would probably demand to be included in
his dying cousin
’
s will as a precondition for performing the rites of
absolution.
But most of those who
were privy to his travel plans took it to be a hopeful sign that the young man
was somewhat less cold-hearted than he appeared to be.
At the train station in Engenweill, not far from Lugano, he
was met by Dr. Gotthard himself, an honor he had not expected.
Naturally Rostoni was easily
recognizable in his cassock.
He had
debated with himself, before leaving Rome, about the possible advantages of
traveling in secular garb, but since he was presenting himself as an emissary
of the Vatican, the risk of discovery was a necessary and acceptable one.
The two introduced themselves, exchanged pleasantries about
Rostoni
’
s trip, and then settled comfortably into the back seat of
a black chauffeur-driven Daimler for the ten-minute ride into the mountains
above Engenweill and Lake Lugano.
Arriving at the clinic, Gotthard dismissed the chauffeur
and ushered Rostoni into a spacious suite of rooms that bore the nameplates of
Gotthard and his junior associate, Dr. Martin Bumann, who had recently
relocated to Engenweill from Saas Grund.
“
Please, be
seated.
Some coffee or tea perhaps?
”
Gotthard
asked.
He signaled to his
secretary, who was hovering nearby.
“
Grazie
, or should I say,
danke
,
”
Rostoni
replied,
“
but I had an early luncheon on the train.
Perhaps later.
Right now I'd like to get down to the
subject of our mutual interests and have you tell me about your immediate and
long-term financial needs.
”
“
Certainly.
And then perhaps a tour of our
facilities?
I assure you, you will
find it most fascinating.
And of
course it will give you an opportunity to see just how your money will be
invested.
”
He motioned to his secretary.
“
Ermengilde, that will be all for now.
Danke
.
”
There was
a long pause as Rostoni and Gotthard waited for her to leave the room.
“
As I told
you when we spoke over the phone last week,
”
Rostoni began,
“
the Pope
is interested in promoting any kind of technology that will improve the overall
health, and perhaps extend the lifetime, of all human beings.
He regards any involvement of the Holy
See in such an enterprise as his personal, sacred mission.
“
I've been
deputized both by him and the
Istituto per le Opere di Religione,
which
you know as the Vatican Bank, to invest some discretionary funds in your
scientific research.
Of course, all
of this is highly confidential.
The
Holy Father would not like it to be known that that we're investing in anything
that could be regarded by fanatics within the Church
—
or
worse, construed by the enemies of Christendom
—
to
constitute tampering with the divine powers of our Creator.
”
Gotthard nodded sagely, indicating that he fully understood
the gravity of this undertaking and its possible repercussions.
“
The issue
of secrecy is so crucial here, I might add, that even if the Pope were to be
confronted on this topic at a future date, he would have no recourse but to
deny all knowledge of it.
As would
I.
I hope that's understood.
”
“
Certainly,
”
Gotthard
replied.
“
You have
my word of honor as a Christian gentleman.
And if I may be so bold as to add, we at the Clinic are gratified that
you've transferred your confidence from one of our fellow countrymen
—
whose
name I shall not even dignify by mentioning it at this time,
”
he added
with a trace of disgust,
“
to our own modest enterprise.
“
I think we
understand each other perfectly.
And now, perhaps it's time for you to meet Dr. Bumann and see our laboratory
facilities, yes?
”
Gotthard donned a white laboratory jacket and offered one
to Rostoni, who declined.
He
enjoyed the respect and sense of power his cassock gave him and was not about
to compromise it.
At the far end of an adjacent corridor they took an
elevator into a sub-basement, several levels below ground.
Passing through a series of locked
doors, they entered yet another corridor leading to four laboratories of
varying size, all with large glass windows that faced the hallway.
“
The first
room is where it all begins,
”
Gotthard
explained.
“
Of course,
as you know from the name of our clinic,
”
he
continued,
“
we specialize in fertility treatments for women who can't
conceive without the help of science.
Some of these women are
‘
habitual aborters,
’
to
use the medical term.
Others have
never been able to conceive at all.
