To Kill the Pope (39 page)

“I do? What is it?”

“It is the fact that, for reasons that remain unclear to me, you have been striving to trace to the Fraternity, or even to me personally,
the attempt to assassinate Pope Gregory XVII. I have no idea whether this is something you are doing on your own, and if so, why, or on orders from Rome, though it strikes me as odd that an American Jesuit who specializes in Islam would be given the job. I was informed that you had a meeting with the imam in Toulouse and that he had told you about supposedly procuring an assassin for Roman Catholic fundamentalists to kill the pope for them, but I fail to see why an Islam scholar would be required for such a task. This would be police work, no more. Anyone could have been sent to talk to the imam, don't you think, Father Savage?”

“That is true,” Tim agreed, choosing his words with extreme care. As he listened to Leduc, it seemed quite possible that the archbishop was ignorant of Tim's Istambul foray and his Paris connections and conversations. That was encouraging. Leduc seemed to be familiar with only one aspect of his investigation, which gave Tim at least a temporary advantage in their confrontation.

“And is it also true that it was you who actually did meet with that imam in Toulouse?” the archbishop asked in a prosecutorial tone.

“Yes, Your Grace, it is true,” Tim said. There was no point in denying it at this stage.

“What did he tell you?”

“That, in effect, his Muslim council had been asked by Catholic fundamentalists in Toulouse, with whom they have some kind of contact, to make arrangements to hire a Muslim assassin to shoot the pope. What you heard, Your Grace, is essentially accurate.”

“How, then, did you link these ‘Catholic fundamentalists' with the Fraternity?” Leduc asked. “What about your questions to the bookseller in Le Somail where you concealed being a priest? What made you go to the seminary in Mirepoix?”

“Well, it's a long story,” Tim replied, “but when the imam mentioned Catholic fundamentalists, suggesting it was an organization and not just a bunch of free-lance fanatics, it was a fairly simple deduction that what he had in mind was your Fraternity—even if he knew nothing about it. I could have been wrong, but I had to pursue it. Nothing else made sense.”

“You sound like a professional investigator, like a CIA agent or something,” Leduc said. “But did you believe the imam?”

Tim assumed, from the archbishop's passing comment, that the Pius V Fraternity was unaware of his CIA past, which was not particularly surprising. It had checked his Rome background, but it would have been most unlikely to trace him back to the agency where, like so many operatives, he had worked under deep cover.

“To be honest with you,” he said, “I had no reason
not
to believe the imam. I can't think why he would make it up. There was nothing in it for him.”

“Then, Father Savage, if you really think that we are the Catholics in question, I must assume that you also believe that the Pius V Fraternity—and I—were behind the assassination attempt against Gregory XVII. This is my deductive French Cartesian logic. Am I right?”

*  *  *

The conversation had now escalated to a dangerous level, and Tim sensed that every single word counted heavily. And his life could still be at stake. He was convinced at this stage that the archbishop was not aware of all his activities and their origin, let alone his personal background. But, by the same token, Tim lacked precise knowledge about much of what Leduc and the Fraternity had actually done—and how. Somewhere in the abbey, the clock struck midnight.

“Your Grace,” Tim said very slowly, “I cannot jump to conclusions on the basis of what I was told by a Muslim imam in France whom I had never met before and whose motivations may be vague. I am not sure—so far—what to believe.”

The archbishop rose from his chair and paced up and down the library for several minutes, his hands clasped behind his back. Tim thought that he heard him murmuring prayers. He, too, could use divine guidance.

“I shall be honest with you—up to a point,” Leduc said, easing himself back into his leather chair. “But we both must be realistic about this situation. I shall not deny that, yes, we had sought the help of our Muslim brethren in finding an assassin. However, I shall not confirm it to you, either. You are free to interpret any way you wish my earlier statements about my crusade, about just
wars and the moral right to kill in the name of the faith. Yet, I do not believe, Father, that I am ready to ask you for absolution.”

Tim nodded silently.

“Concerning the attempt to kill
you
today,” the archbishop continued, “I've already indicated that it had not been the best idea. When Bishop Laval and our security chief had learned of your meeting with the imam—it doesn't matter how they learned it—as well as of your visit to the bookseller, they concluded that you already knew too much and that you represented considerable peril to us and our plans for the future. They suspected that you had other sources and connections as well. Next, the bookseller informed them that you had mentioned plans to visit the seminary. So we were ready for you when you arrived in Mirepoix. Their recommendation, as I told you, was to have you killed. Our people reasoned that nobody would ever reconstruct what exactly had happened in Fanjeaux, and the crime would soon be forgotten, if it were noticed in the first place. You see, you are nobody as far as the world is concerned . . .”

“Thank you for the compliment, Your Grace,” Tim said with a feeble attempt at ironic humor. “But you have a point: nobody would miss me if I vanished in a godforesaken French village.”

But he immediately corrected himself—mentally. Angela would not only miss him personally, but she would have an idea of what might have happened and act accordingly through Vatican channels. And his family in Washington knew everything about those missing in action: his father's death in World War Two and Tim's risk taking with the CIA in Vietnam and elsewhere.

“Now I'm glad that the attack on you failed,” the archbishop said matter-of-factly. “Having met you, which I didn't really expect, I can see that your knowledge about this nasty affair is confined to what the imam had told you. He could not prove it and you could not prove it—if it was your intention to pass the information on to your superiors, whoever they are. I imagine it is Rome, but I don't care. And I don't believe you are doing all this to amuse yourself intellectually . . . In other words, you are not the danger my people feared you were, and it would have been an unnecessary and morally indefensible murder. I should not have sanctioned it. This was the only time, I think, when I
was not right . . . So all I can offer you is,
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
—you know, it's from the Tridentine Mass.”

“I'm relieved to hear, Your Grace, that it would have been wasteful to kill me,” Tim answered in his most professional manner. “But where do we go from here, if anywhere? Do I just go back to tend my flock of sheep at the Islam office in Rome? Do I suffer an accident somewhere? Do I just forget everything, or what?”

“I said that we must be realistic,” Leduc replied. “Realistic means we both forget everything about this whole business and go our separate ways. I have nothing against you personally, Father Savage, and I doubt that you can really harm me or the Fraternity, no matter what you tell them in Rome. With no actual proof, it would be at best just another rumor, just another accusation against that demented old archbishop in the south of France, more inconclusive speculation about the assassination attempt . . . Meanwhile, get some sleep. A security man will show you to your room.”

Tim said nothing, just bowed his head as he left the library.

*  *  *

He awoke in midmorning in a huge double bed in an enormous bedroom with a vaulted ceiling. Looking out of the window, he saw a shepherd behind his flock of sheep. The surveillance television camera in a corner just under the ceiling observed Tim rise, and five minutes later a young security man in a black suit brought him a tray with coffee and croissants.

Downstairs, in the driveway, his green rental Peugeot gleamed washed and clean in the morning sun. Leduc's talented young men had evidently hot-wired the car that sat in front of the Fanjeaux square café and driven it over to the abbey for him. This is efficiency, Tim thought admiringly as he pulled his keys out of his pocket to unlock the vehicle. In a crazy sort of way, it was stimulating to be dealing with first-rate professionals. If he could only figure out how and where Leduc's men had procured Jake Kurtski to be his designated shooter: it was just professional curiosity.

*  *  *

As Tim drove out of the abbey's courtyard, Archbishop Leduc made two telephone calls over his secure line from his regal bedroom on the second floor. The first call was to Jean-Pierre at “Les Homs,” just a few miles away.

“The American has just left the premises,” he said. “Let's be sure we don't lose him. I want a report on his movements everyday—and more often if warranted.”

The second call was to a residential number in Paris in an apartment likewise equipped with a secure telephone line. The man he wanted to reach answered on the first ring.

“Let me tell you,” Leduc said angrily, “that you're not doing your job properly. We almost had a disaster here yesterday with the American Jesuit . . . Yes, he's very much alive and he is much smarter than we thought. He managed to kill your killer. Your guys better get their act together before we have a real catastrophe. You managed to blow up poor Greenpeace's
Rainbow Warrior
way out in the Pacific, but you can't catch a wandering American Jesuit in France. God, I almost wish de Marenches were still in this world. At least, he understood the
métier. . . .”

T
HE MORNING AFTER
his return to Rome from France—there was nothing further to accomplish there after the encounter at the Cisterian abbey—Tim Savage read in
L'Osservatore Romano
that Archbishop Jules Leduc, former head of the Archdiocesis of Casablanca and the founder of the Pius V Fraternity, had been excommunicated by Pope Gregory XVII for consecrating four bishops on his own authority. A lengthy editorial on the Vatican newspaper's third page, usually devoted to matters of theology and philosophy, explained that Leduc was penalized for this “irregular” act inasmuch as, under canon law, only the pontiff can name bishops. The article pointed out that the archbishop had been suspended from the exercise of holy orders ten years earlier after ordaining fourteen Fraternity priests without permission from the Holy See and remained “recalcitrant” thereafter. It also emphasized helpfully that “heresy” and “schism” were among other reasons for excommunications.

Tim calculated that Leduc must have held the consecration the day after their marathon session in the abbey. The private, unpublicized ceremony had taken place at the seminary in Mirepoix. Reading
L'Osservatore
,, Tim told himself that the archbishop had now launched the latest phase of his crusade against Rome. His immediate task was to prepare the report on his mission for Monsignor Sainte-Ange: It had to be a very careful and creative effort for Tim was experiencing strangely mixed emotions about Gregory XVII's powerful private secretary. Again, it was pure instinct.

His first call in Rome was to Sister Angela to say that he was back and to ask her to set up an appointment with the monsignor.

“I have returned!” Tim announced over the telephone, sounding
a bit more dramatic than he had intended. “How are you and how's everything there?”

“Hi! Welcome home!” Angela responded merrily. “We've missed you around here. At least I did.”

“And I've missed you and I've thought a lot about you, especially about our Paris chats,” he said. “I hope to see you very soon—perhaps still this week if I complete my report and the Monsignor can receive me right away.”

“How did it go?” she asked. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Probably not everything, but an awful lot—enough to make a difference,” Tim told her.

*  *  *

Angela telephoned Tim at Villa Malta the next day.

“The Monsignor doesn't want anything on paper,” she reported. “He wants an oral presentation, and he can see you tomorrow at ten o'clock in the morning. I'll see you then.”

That
is
curious, Tim thought. Nothing on paper? Is he worried about a paper trail? It would be like a top-secret military or CIA debriefing, a performance for an audience of one, but he believed he could handle it well. The next question in his mind was how Leduc's provocative move with the bishops and the Vatican's swift reprisals would affect the broader state of affairs. Leduc and Gregory XVII were now officially and openly at war. Did the pope realize what a lethally dangerous adversary he had in the old archbishop? And did Sainte-Ange?

It was raining on that October Saturday morning when Tim crossed St. Peter's Square on his way to his meeting with Monsignor Sainte-Ange in the Apostolic Palace. The square was deserted, except for a half-dozen bored
carabinieri
huddled under the Bernini Colonnade, next to the wide stairs leading to the Bronze Doors. The Swiss Guard noncommissioned officer on duty at the doors along with a younger guardsman inquired about Tim's business and waved him on with a quick salute.

Tim reached the second
loggia
of the Palace by elevator after walking across the wide inner central courtyard, the Cortile S. Damiano, the way most official visitors to the Papal Household come and go. The pope, descending from his third
loggia
domain,
uses a small private elevator to which only he and the monsignor have keys: it takes him to another courtyard where his limousine or the Popemobile await to whisk him out of the Vatican through the Sant'Anna Gate. On the second
loggia,
Tim was met by an usher in white tie and tails who escorted him to Sainte-Ange's office anteroom along the gallery forming the outer side of the Palace.