The brand-new ’76 Cadillac stretch limo bore a set of Consulate plates from Vatican City. It rolled past the front steps of the St. Louis cathedral of New Orleans and glided to a halt before the gothic three-story rectory.
The distinctive aroma of General Motors leather was a bit overpowering, but Mr. Gibbs loved the new-car smell. He was two years out of the motor pool at the American Embassy in Saigon, and any job that didn’t reek of fear, diesel, and cordite was a blessing.
He hopped out and opened the back door, nodding in respect as the four envoys from the Vatican got out and stretched their legs. It had been a long ride from the airport, and the winter night was only now cooling off.
A young Bishop Nano was carrying a flat wormwood box, intricately engraved and inlaid with ivory. He looked around, privately wondering how anyone in his right mind would choose to live in the South. He grew up in New York City, and considered the rest of the world to be the sticks. Except for the Vatican, of course. He was thrilled with his new posting there. This was his first visit back to his native country, and he was distinctly underwhelmed.
His three colleagues were Italian bishops, schooled at Oxford. This was their first taste of America. Nano intended to take them back through New York and show them the town. He was confident that the food in Hell’s Kitchen would stack up against what they were accustomed to in Rome.
Mr. Gibbs led them up the steps and opened the door for them, and Nano led the way inside. Father Vicente, the archbishop’s secretary, shook their hands in the foyer and took them upstairs, to Archbishop Sanchez’s suite of offices on the third floor.
Sanchez’s rosewood-paneled office spanned the width of the building. It had twelve-foot-high coffered ceilings and a wall of leather-bound books, punctuated by a series of tall leaded windows that overlooked the graveyard behind the cathedral. A matching set of windows opposite overlooked the circular horseshoe drive and the front lawn.
The visitors looked at the archbishop’s desk, but it was unoccupied. Then they looked around the cavernous room, but Archbishop Sanchez wasn’t there.
They turned to Vicente, whose countenance had suddenly grown somber. “I’m sorry to report that the Archbishop suffered a heart attack, while your Excellencies were flying in from Rome.”
Nano and his colleagues glanced at each other. Behind their placid expressions, they swiftly re-thought their strategy. The three Oxford scholars waited for the poker-faced Nano to make a decision.
“I’m afraid the stress was too much for him,” Vicente explained to Nano. Nano hesitated, his thumb gently burnishing the wormwood box as he peered into Vicente’s eyes, calculating his next move. He saw something deep inside Vicente, and nodded once.
The other bishops began breathing again, silently agreeing with Nano’s decision to proceed.
Vicente sensed that something had changed. He glanced at the box in Nano’s hands and smiled in anticipation. Nano smiled back. The other bishops quietly watched them.
“And just what did the Archbishop tell you, Father Vicente?” Nano asked, still studying his eyes.
Vicente’s face was suddenly radiant. “That your Excellencies are on the most important mission in all of history. In all of history!” He bowed his head. “I would be honored to serve in my bishop’s memory.”
Though he was barely older than Vicente, Nano nodded like a kindly old uncle and glanced at the other bishops. They gave their silent assent, satisfied that Vicente could be a faithful courier. They could see it in his eyes. Someone had to deliver the treasure into the right hands three days hence, when all the pieces would finally be in place. It was an intricate ballet of celestial precision, but Sanchez was gone and someone had to stand in his stead. For their part, they had to return to the Vatican in a matter of hours, and no one could know they had been gone. Father Vicente was their only hope.
Nano gestured with the box, and Vicente gazed at it. “So you know who this is for?” Nano asked him. “Have you met the man?”
Vicente looked at him, a wondrous glow in his eyes. He slowly shook his head, but it wasn’t a denial. Rather, he was correcting Nano’s choice of words.
“He’s not a man!” Vicente whispered.
The four envoys smiled. Vicente would surely understand the truth, once it was revealed. They had just enough time to enlighten him before they scurried back to the Vatican.
Two hours later, Nano and Vicente sat in a pair of centuries-old chairs before the crackling fire in Archbishop Sanchez’s chambers. The other bishops stood behind Nano’s chair, watching as Vicente gazed unfocused at the dancing flames, digesting everything that had just been revealed.
They were all sweating, but not from the fire. They were exhausted. With the able assistance of his three wise men, Nano had arduously briefed Vicente, painstakingly laying out the true history of the Mother Church and the Liturgy, and the actual secret of the Vatican Secret Archives. Vicente had no idea, and yet when it was all explained to him everything made perfect sense. But not before he was literally sick with shock. They had taken his entire world, turned it inside out, and handed it back to him. He would have to clean the archbishop’s private restroom after the envoys were gone.
Nano handed the wormwood box to Vicente, and the priest reverently lowered it to his lap. It was a little more than a foot long, perhaps six inches wide, and about two inches thick. The box had been burnished over the centuries by numerous human hands. The lid was inlaid with the yellowed ivory of lion’s teeth and had two iron hinges, but no latch. The box and its contents were nearly two thousand years old.
With an encouraging nod from Nano and a chorus of smiles from the bishops behind Nano’s chair, Vicente fiddled with the box, trying to open it, but he couldn’t find a way.
The bishops were amused, and Nano finally took the box back. He depressed one of the ivory inlays, slid a side panel with his thumb, and then handed the box back to Vicente. Vicente found that he could now open the lid.
The crucifix dagger was inside, on a soft bed of fleece. The golden figurine of Christ and the jewels that studded the crucifix gleamed in the fire glow. Nano gestured for Vicente to take the ancient artifact out of the box.
Vicente held the crucifix in his hands, turning it over and examining it from every angle. It was fashioned from a shaft of wormwood almost two inches wide and nearly a foot in length. He quickly discovered that the wood was split just above the crosspiece. He nudged the body of Christ, and the blade was unsheathed.
The slim iron shaft glinted in the firelight. It was lightly dressed with oil to keep it from rusting. Both edges of the blade were honed to razor-sharp perfection.
“The blade was fashioned from a Roman spear,” Nano explained to him. “The same spear that pierced the side of Christ.”
Vicente looked to him in wonder, and Nano nodded to assure him that he wasn’t joking. The bishops standing behind him gazed down at Vicente, completely serious. Vicente looked back down to the dagger in his hands.
“It’s been kept in a vault under the Papal throne for almost two millennia,” Nano told him, and cracked a dark smile. “Just in case He ever showed his face again.”
Vicente looked at him with his eyes aglow, and the bishops standing behind Nano smiled down on the priest. He understood perfectly. He would do just fine.
The stately suite of offices was Bishop Nano’s now. When everything went awry at the Bayou Memorial Clinic, the Cabal of Cardinals in Rome made hasty arrangements to have Nano installed as the Archbishop of New Orleans.
His tenure at the Vatican had been much too brief for his liking. He had hoped to be there his entire life, but until this mess was resolved, he was stuck in New Orleans whether he liked it or not, and he didn’t like it. Particularly now, with the weight of the entire world pressing down on him. His predecessor, Archbishop Sanchez, had buckled under the same load; the man could never quite make the leap of faith required for the task at hand. The way Nano saw it, faith was a talent that most mortals aspired to, but few could truly master.
He was sitting in the same centuries-old chair that he sat in more than thirty years ago. A fire was crackling in the hearth, just as before, and the dagger case was once again open and resting on his lap. Except this case was stainless steel. The ancient weapon looked out of place in the blast-proof portable vault, cradled by high-density foam.
Simone sat across from him, in the same chair where Vicente once sat, listening as Nano explained what transpired at the clinic. The night when everything went wrong.
“Vicente was drunk with the prospect of power!” Nano fumed, as he contemplated the crucifix dagger in his lap.
“Instead of delivering the dagger as he was instructed, he took it upon himself to do the deed! And we have been chasing shadows ever since.”
He glared at Simone, revealing the full measure of his fury. “I can assure you, he is suffering in the ninth circle of Hell!”
The fire popped, and Simone wondered if it was a sign. He shivered, despite the luxuriant warmth.
Nano placed the steel case on the tea table beside his chair, then got up heavily and went to his desk. He unlocked a bottom drawer and took out the ancient wormwood box.
He brought it back to the fireside and sat down again, resting it on his thighs. Simone watched, fascinated, as Nano depressed one of the ivory inlays, slid a side panel with his thumb, and opened the lid.
He took the dagger from the steel case and nestled it into its bed of fleece. Then he gently closed the engraved lid of the wormwood box, and dismissively gestured at the steel case on the tea table.
“We won’t be needing that contraption anymore.”
Simone nodded. He closed its lid with a finger, and it hermetically sealed shut with a soft hiss. He slipped it into his briefcase.
Nano placed the ancient box on the tea table and absently patted it like a long-lost friend, as he sat there brooding and gazing into the fire. Beyond the open windows, it had finally stopped raining. The leaves of the magnolia tree outside were dripping loudly onto the cobbled driveway below.
Simone reached inside his briefcase and handed the Archbishop another parchment envelope, also sealed with wax.
Nano frowned at him, and then at the envelope. Like the first one, it was sealed with Molinari’s signet ring.
Nano broke the seal and removed a single piece of parchment. It was a short note, inscribed with a quill pen in a neat, disciplined hand. Nano absorbed the message and frowned. He glanced at Simone, wagging the parchment at him. “This isn’t a name, Simone. It’s an invitation.”
Father Simone offered him the ghost of a smile. “Yes, your Excellency. We trust you will deliver it to the right person.”
The sky had cleared, and the weather was cool and perfect. Simone came down the steps of the rectory and approached the limousine. Mr. Gibbs was standing ready at the open back door.
Before Simone got into the Maybach, he took a moment to admire the façade of the cathedral of New Orleans, magnificent in the clear sunlight and washed clean by the rain.
Nano was right, he thought to himself. Over thirty years, and I’m nothing more than a goddamn priest, sleeping on a cot in a dormitory. A pauper living in a palace.
He sighed, and looked at the limousine. The paint was flawless, hand-buffed to a mirror finish. He touched the surface, marveling at its earthly perfection. He could see Nano’s reflection in the pure black paint, watching from a window in his chambers above. Watching a priest covet his neighbor’s goods. An archbishop’s Maybach, no less.
“You do beautiful work, Mr. Gibbs,” Simone smoothly remarked, trying to cover his sin.
“Thank you, Father Simone,” Mr. Gibbs replied, but he knew exactly what Simone had been thinking. The envy was etched in the priest’s face and telegraphed by his body language.
Simone took a last look at the cathedral, and climbed in back. Mr. Gibbs closed the door and got behind the wheel.
Nano cracked a knowing smile as he watched his Maybach whisper down the driveway. He had the man pegged. Even from his high angle, he saw exactly what Gibbs had seen. Simone wanted more out of life than what his devotion to Molinari had brought him. A change was long overdue.
Nano’s smile disintegrated when he suddenly became aware of an insistent noise, somewhere in the room behind him. He turned and froze in his tracks, staring breathlessly at the dagger box. It was rattling on the tea table.
He sensed a presence in the room.