To Kill the Pope (35 page)

Tim parked his car against the mansion's western wall, among a dozen or more shiny Citroëns and Renaults, and walked over to the main door. The reception hall was roomy and cool, and a pale young priest sat behind the front desk. An oversize color photograph of a stern archbishop in full regalia, wearing the miter, reigned over the room from the white wall behind the reception
desk. It had to be Archbishop Leduc, and Tim again had the impression that the face looked vaguely familiar and, again, he could not place it. Perhaps he just remembered it from newspaper photographs accompanying stories about the Fraternity of St. Pius V's activities. A small painting of the Lourdes Virgin, an amateurish effort, hung on the right of Leduc's photo portrait, along with a crucified Christ sculpted in what looked like ivory. The archbishop must have brought it back from Africa. Next to Christ, Pius V stared into the distance from another amateurish painting—he was not as large as Leduc. Pope Gregory XVII was nowhere to be seen.

“Good morning, Father.” The priest-receptionist surprised Tim with the greeting in American English. “Welcome to our seminary. And what can we do for you?”

“Well, I was hoping to take a quick look around, if it's not too inconvenient,” he replied, without showing his surprise. To remain stone-faced in every imaginable situation, no matter how sudden and unexpected, was one of the many useful things the CIA had taught Tim. “But how did you know to address me in English? Don't I just look like any other Jesuit?”

“I guess not,” the priest said with a patient smile. “You look like an
American
Jesuit, Father . . . Ah, I could tell it right away. You see, I'm from California, from Sausalito, and we American priests can sense one another instantly, even in the Languedoc. Yes, sir . . . And, of course, we would be delighted to show you around the seminary. It's a relatively new one, but we're very proud of it. Actually, Abbé Loïc, our equivalent of General Superior, will be happy to give you a personal guided tour, Father Savage . . .”

This time, Tim had to try even harder to dissemble how taken aback he was. He had a sinking feeling, sensing that his carefully prepared act had been betrayed. Tim was determined not to ask how the priest, and indeed the seminary, knew his name—and that he was coming this very morning. He may have been discovered, but he had to go on playing the game. He could not let his mission unravel at the first obstacle.

“That is too generous on the abbé's part,” he said. “He must be very busy and I'd hate to disturb him . . .”

“Not to worry, Father,” the Californian told him. “The abbé is
awaiting you in his study . . . and with great coffee! Please follow me.”

*  *  *

Abbé Loïc was a big, beefy man in his fifties, exuding enthusiasm and good cheer. Standing at the door just inside his study, he opened his arms to embrace Tim, giving him no opportunity to resist the rapid gesture. The Abbé smelled of garlic, not an uncommon phenomenon in southern France.

“It's an honor and a pleasure to receive you, Father Savage,” the Abbé said in English, releasing Tim from his steel embrace. “We've heard so much about you.”

“And I've heard so much about the Fraternity and the seminary,” Tim answered, wondering just
what
the abbé knew about him—surely not about his Islam expertise. “So I took advantage of touring this part of France on my vacation to drop in on the seminary as an uninvited guest. I thought I'd just take a quick look without being a nuisance . . .”

Now he knew he had to be extremely careful—and creative. He was in a dangerous—possibly lethal—game over which he had very little control. Tim knew he was trapped, not quite understanding how it had happened. Where had he slipped, given himself away? Had he been betrayed and, if so, by whom? Had the Fraternity been on his scent all the while he believed he was on
its
scent? For the first time since Vietnam, he feared for his life.

The moves on the chessboard were suddenly being played in reverse, and the Fraternity could checkmate him at any moment. The idea entered his mind that his adversaries could simply liquidate him in a mountain highway “accident,” or something similar. If, indeed, they did try to kill the pope, they certainly would not hesitate to do away with an unknown Jesuit.

Among survival skills, physical and psychological, in the event they were captured, the CIA taught its officers—most fundamentally—to exercise maximal self-control in order to remain calm, regardless of provocation, and be able to plan countermoves and escape routes. This was what Tim was hoping to do in response to the Fraternity's next moves. Beyond that, his destiny was in God's hands, an ironic state of affairs considering it was a face-off among priests of the same faith. In any case, Tim could no longer
lead insouciantly his double life: an arms dealer or a professor of religion one day, a Jesuit priest the next. Henceforth it would be the Society of Jesus for him, full time and no disguises.

“I understand that you studied and taught at Georgetown University,” Abbé Loïc said. “A very famous Jesuit center . . . But I, too, had a bit of experience with the American education system. Way back, in the late 1960s, I spent a semester on a fellowship at the Divinity School at Harvard, and, my God, how I did love it and how I loved Cambridge. The Charles River . . . We must chat about it at dinner tonight . . . Yes, of course, you are our guest here, and I want you to spend at least one night with us to get to know how we live and function in provincial France. Nothing as inspiring as your Jesuit seminary at Warnersville, but we hope you will like it.”

“It's so kind of you to be so hospitable to a guest who descended on you out of the blue,” he said, aware of how stilted it sounded. They were like two actors reading lines from a script.

“Shall we take a look at the seminary?” Abbé Loïc proposed, getting up. They had been sitting at a low table in the corner of the study, sipping the abbé's coffee. It
was
excellent, Tim acknowledged to himself. Was it like the last cup of coffee before the prisoner is executed on death row?

The abbé conducted Tim through airy classrooms in three academic buildings on the campus, each room decorated with portraits of Pope Pius V and Archbishop Leduc who seemed to watch over the seminarians' progress. He introduced Tim to the professors: philosophy, theology, history of the Church with emphasis on the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, lives of great Saints and Fathers and Doctors of the Church, life stories of Pius V and Pius X, liturgy, ethics, sociology, and advanced Latin, Greek and Hebrew. A most impressive curriculum, Tim had to admit. There must have been sixty or seventy students attending the seminary, vastly more than at any other seminary with which Tim was familiar, and an unusual number of middle-aged men. What, he wondered, prompted so many late vocations? Most of the students were French, it appeared, but as the abbé pointed out, there were Swiss, Belgian, German, Austrian, and even a few American pupils among them.

“Our teachings, you know, have a very wide appeal in this savage world,” he said. “You see here our Church being reborn.”

Tim and his host lunched, abundant Languedoc style, in a refectory that resembled an American college cafeteria, confining their conversation to comments about the religious education in seminaries in France and the United States. Tim had resolved not to plunge into dangerous waters, to remain passive. Abbé Loïc also seemed content with pleasantries and platitudes. Tim spent the afternoon napping in his room in the seminary's guest cottage, faithful to another CIA training admonition: in difficult situations, get all the rest you can so that you may be relaxed, on your guard, and ready for everything.

*  *  *

In the early evening, soon after Angelus prayers, the abbé came to escort Tim to his house for dinner. It was a comfortable home, with Provençal furnishings, bookcases in all the downstairs rooms, a small altar in the corner of the living room, with large paintings of Pius V and Pius X—none of Gregory XVII—and an autographed color photograph of Archbishop Leduc in a place of honor on the wall.

After they prayed, the abbé opened a bottle of red Fitou, and signaled to the nun across the room to begin serving. As soon as Tim tasted the first tablespoon of fish soup, his host turned to him without a trace of the bonhomie he had displayed all day.

“Our friend the bookseller, Monsieur Raymond, tells us of your interest in medieval heresies,” he said accusingly. “He also tells us that you had presented yourself as a professor, concealing your identity as a priest without a valid reason, which, by the way, is a sin. Would you care to explain your behavior?”

“As it happens,” Tim replied carefully, “I am, as a scholar, quite interested in heresies. And since you seem to know so much about me, you must be aware of my scholarly work at the Vatican. Furthermore, it's been drilled into me from my first day in France that so many of you are still so anticlerical that it's often easier to do religious research without identifying oneself as a priest. Hasn't that crossed your mind, Father?”

“Well,” the abbé said, sounding more conciliatory, “the thing is that we must be very protective of our sacred work, and
perhaps we overreact in unexpected situations. And you
were
unexpected when you turned up at the bookshop on the canal. And, yes, we also know about your meetings with Muslims in Toulouse . . .”

Tim ate his soup in silence. How
did
they know? There are no miracles in intelligence work, even when it deals with God's religion. But there are double-dealings, double agents, double betrayals on every conceivable level. The craft of intelligence must have been invented by the Church at the dawn of Christendom to survive as an institution. Was that why so many key CIA career people were Catholics? Abbé Loïc had made the next move after the obvious attempt to unnerve him by revealing, a bit smugly, that his cover had been blown and that the Fraternity was aware of his dealings with the Muslims. But it was unclear how much he knew about his basic mission, so Tim had to go on being patient, awaiting the endgame.

Roast fowl was brought to the table and the abbé picked up his train of thought, now looking at Tim with a slight smile.

“All right,” he said. “I understand that, as a scholar, you are interested in heresies. After all, they are part of the history of the Church. But from what you know about us, do you believe that the Fraternity is a heresy? You know, something tells me that you are more interested in us, as hypothetical heretics, than in the Cathars . . .”

“I cannot answer that,” Tim told him. “I am not a theologian and it is way beyond my competence to render judgments of such significance. All I know, in broad outlines, is what the Holy See has expressed publicly on the subject.”

“Would you like to learn more about us?” the abbé asked.

“Well, yes, of course I would,” Tim said. “You mean here at the seminary?”

“No,” Abbé Loïc answered. “There is a better way. The Archbishop would be pleased to talk to you about the Fraternity, to acquaint you with it. In fact, I've been told that he will be free to receive you early tomorrow afternoon at his place.”

Somehow they never got around to chatting over dinner about Harvard, Cambridge, divinity schools, and seminaries.

*  *  *

At “Les Horns” mansion, Jean-Pierre, having just received a call from Abbé Loïc, knocked on the door of Jake Kurtski's fourth-floor room a few minutes after midnight, awakening him from a deep sleep. Kurtski had downed a half-bottle of Absolut vodka before passing out.

“Kurtski,” he said, “Be ready to hit the road the first thing in the morning. Your work awaits you . . . I'll tell you more before departure. Be downstairs at seven o'clock.”

Then, Jean-Pierre placed a call to Paris, to Georges de Sainte-Ange, the head of the French secret service.

“Sorry to disturb you so late at home,” he said, “but I thought you'd like to know that we've found our man. Tomorrow is the big day. We're counting on your guys. . . .”

I
T WAS JUST
too damned easy, Tim worried as he lay in bed in his guest cottage room reviewing the day's alarming events. Whereas he had had doubts and reservations when he went to the seminary about requesting a meeting with Archbishop Leduc, it was now being offered to him on a silver plate. It was literally too good to be true. Tim knew he was not being invited to see the archbishop: he was commanded, no,
ordered,
to appear before the old man with no time being wasted. Why?

In fact he was the Fraternity's prisoner at the seminary and about to be offered sacrificially to the archbishop. They clearly regarded
him
as enemy, and the question was whether the St. Pius V Fraternity hoped to co-opt him, bring him over to its side by convincing him of the validity of its beliefs, or neutralize him, one way or another. His realistic inclination was to think that the latter was probably the case.

Tossing and turning in his bed, Tim wondered at the same time about how much the Fraternity, or its top men, actually knew about his mission. Yes, they were aware in some fashion of his session with the Muslim council in Toulouse, but he could not be certain how much they actually knew of what he had been told. By the same token, it did not follow that they had also heard of his meeting with the Stalingrad imam in Paris, let alone his trip to Istambul. They had heard from Monsieur Raymond that Tim had asked him how the Cathars might react to the notion of killing Gregory XVII, but all this did not necessarily suggest that he had actually discovered the conspiracy and its origins.

It was like playing blind man's buff, along with chess, with each party unsure of what the other knew. All things considered, Tim reasoned, this fact gave him a relative advantage—for the time
being. Thus Archbishop Leduc was suddenly so anxious to meet him, Tim deduced, to discover his mission, just as he was anxious to ask questions of the archbishop. Presumably, Leduc would decide afterward what ultimately was to be done with Tim. He felt his professional juices rising as he mentally blessed his CIA mentors and prepared for combat.