The first drugged confusions were over: the long unstable hours when he drifted between sleep and waking, the half-seen procession of Vatican visitors murmuring solicitous courtesies, the broken nights when his thorax hurt abominably and he had to ring for the nurse to move him in the bed and give him a pill to ease him back into sleep. But neither the confusions nor the pain could mask the wonder of the prime event: he had been taken apart like a watch and put together again; he had survived. It was exactly as Salviati had promised. He was like Lazarus stepping out of the tomb to stand, blinking and uncertain, in the sunlight.
Now, every day was a new gift, every unsteady step a new adventure, every word spoken a fresh experience of human contact. At moments the newness was so poignant that he felt like a boy again, waking to that first flush of spring when all the blossom trees in Mirandola seemed to burst into flame at once. He wanted to share the experience with everyone: the staff, Malachy O’Rahilly, the cardinals who came like courtiers to kiss hands and congratulate him.
The strange thing was that when he tried to express to Salviati both the wonder and his gratitude for it, his words seemed suddenly arid and inadequate. Salviati was courteous and encouraging; but when he had gone, Leo the Pontiff felt that a most important event had slipped past him, never to be celebrated again.
This sense of loss plunged him, without warning, into a black depression and a prolonged fit of weeping which shamed him into a deeper gloom. Then Tove Lundberg appeared and sat by his bedside to hold his hand and coax him out of the dark valley and on to the sunlit slopes again. He did not withdraw from her touch but surrendered to it gratefully, knowing, however vaguely, that he needed every possible handhold to anchor him to sanity. She used her own handkerchief to wipe away his tears and chided him gently:
‘You must not be ashamed. This is the way it goes with everybody – high elation, then despair, a huge swing of the pendulum. You have just been subjected to an enormous invasion. Salviati says that the body weeps for what has been done to it. He says something else, too. We all believe we are immortal and invulnerable. Then something happens and the illusion of immortality is shattered for ever. We weep then for our lost illusions. Even so, the tears are part of the healing process. So let them. How … My father used to remind us that Jesus wept for love and for loss, just like the rest of us …’
‘I know that. Why, then, am I so unprepared and inadequate?’
‘Because …’ Tove Lundberg pieced out her answer with great care, ‘because to this moment you have always been able to dictate the terms of your life. In all the world there is no one who sits higher or more securely, because you are elected for life and no one can gainsay you. All your titles affirm, beyond question, that you are the man in control. Your whole character urges you to hold that control.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘You know so. But now you are no longer master of yourself or of events. When my father was in his last illness he used to quote us a passage from the Gospel of John. It is, I believe, part of Christ’s Commission to Peter … How does it go? “When you were young, you used to buckle on your belt and go wherever you wanted.
Leo the Pontiff gave her the rest of the text as if it were a response in choir.
‘But when you are old, you will hold out your hands and another will gird you and lead you where you do not want to go …” For a man like me, that’s a hard lesson to learn.’
‘How can you teach it, if you haven’t learnt it?’
A ghost of a smile twitched at the corners of his bloodless lips. He said softly: ‘Now there’s a change! The Pope is taught sound doctrine by a heretic – and a woman at that!’
‘You’d probably be a whole lot wiser if you listened to both the heretics and the women!’ Her laugh took the sting out of the reproof. ‘I must go now. I have three more patients to see before lunch. Tomorrow, we’ll walk in the garden. We’ll take a wheelchair so that you can rest when you feel tired.’
‘I’d like that. Thank you.’
As a parting gesture she sprinkled cologne on a facecloth and dabbed it on his forehead and his cheeks. The gesture moved him to an unfamiliar emotion. The only woman who had ever soothed him like that was his mother. Tove Lundberg ran her fingertips over his cheek.
‘You’re stubbled as a wheat field. I’ll send someone in to give you a shave. We can’t have the Pope looking scrubby for all his important visitors.’
‘Please, before you go …’
‘Yes?’
‘The day I came in a woman died here. The name escapes me, but her husband used to be a priest. I asked my secretary to make enquiries about him and his family. So far he hasn’t given me any information. Can you help me?’
‘I’ll try.’ The tiny hesitation seemed to escape him. ‘There are certain rules about confidentiality; but I’ll see what I can do. Until tomorrow then.’
‘Until tomorrow. And thank you, signora.’
‘Please, would Your Holiness do me a favour?’
‘Anything in my power.’
‘Then call me simply Tove. I am not married, though I do have a child. So I am hardly a signorina either.’
‘Why,’ he asked her gently, ‘why have you found it necessary to tell me this?’
‘Because if I do not, others will. If I am to help you, you must be able to trust me and not be scandalised by what I am or do.’
‘I am grateful to you. And I already know who and what you are from Cardinal Drexel.’
‘Of course! I should have remembered. Britte calls him Nonno Anton even now. He is very important in both our lives.’
‘As you are in mine at this moment.’ He took her hands in his own and held them for a long moment, then he reached up and signed a cross on her forehead with his thumb.
‘Peter’s blessing for Tove Lundberg. It is not any different from your father’s.’
‘Thank you.’ She hesitated a moment and then posed the diffident question. ‘Some day you must explain to me why the Roman Church will not permit its priests to marry. My father was a good man and a good pastor. My mother was his helpmeet in the Church and with the people … Why should a priest be forbidden te marry, to love like other men … ?’
‘That’s a big question,’ said Leo the Pontiff. ‘Bigger than I could possibly answer now. But certainly we can talk about it another time … For the present, just let me tell you I am glad and grateful for what you are doing for me. I need this help in a way you may never understand. I shall pray for your well-being and that of your daughter … Now, please send me the barber and have nurse bring me fresh pyjamas. A scrubby Pope indeed! Intolerable!’
The small tenderness she had shown him, and the rush of emotion it had produced in him, lent all the more emphasis to her question about celibate clergy and his own unanswered enquiry about Lorenzo de Rosa. This cluster of small incidents was simply a micro-image of problems which had bedevilled him for a long time and had plagued the Church for more than fifteen hundred years.
The discipline of enforced clerical celibacy in the Roman communion had proved at best questionable, at worst a creeping disaster for the community of the faithful. The attempt to equate celibacy, the unmarried state, with chastity, the avoidance of unlawful sexual intercourse, was doomed to failure and productive of a whole crop of ills, not least an official hypocrisy and a harvest of tragedies among the clergy themselves. Forbidden to marry, some found relief in secret liaisons, others in homosexual practice or, more commonly, in alcohol. Not infrequently, a promising career ended in mental breakdown.
In the mid-sixties, after the Second Vatican Council, discipline had been relaxed to permit those in distress to quit the priesthood and marry validly. There had been a sudden rush for dispensations. Tens of thousands left the ministry. New vocations slowed to a trickle. The sad truth had been revealed, that this was no happy band of brothers, joyful in the service of the Lord, but a lonely ministry of lonely men facing an old age lonelier yet.
Thenceforward every attempt to drown the problem in a flood of pious rhetoric had failed miserably. His own rigorist policy – ‘few but good, and for none an easy exit’ – had seemed at first to succeed, with a small crop of Spartan zealots coming up each year for ordination. But even he, Leo XIV, Hammer of God, had to admit in his secret heart that the remedy was a placebo. It looked good, tasted good, but did nothing for the health of the Mystical Body. There were too few shepherds for the vast flock. The zealots – in whom he recognised his younger self – were out of touch with reality. The threadbare theology that backed a face-saving legislation was no excuse for depriving the people of the saving word.
What he could or should do about it was another matter entirely. He had – at least to this moment – no intention of going down in history as the first Pope in a thousand years to legalise a married clergy. Whatever the morals of such a move, the economics of it opened a new chapter of horrors. Meantime, the personal tragedies proliferated; the faithful gave tolerance and affection to their pastors, young and old, and made their own provisions to keep the sacred fire of the Word alive. There was nothing he could do but wait and pray for light in his own puzzled mind, and strength for his still shaky limbs.
The barber came, a new one this time, sallow and saturnine, wielding an old-fashioned cut-throat razor, who shaved him clean as a billiard ball and uttered no more than a dozen words in the process. A nurse brought him fresh pyjamas and then walked him to the shower and helped him scrub himself, because his chest and back still hurt. He was no longer humiliated or even displeased by his dependence; but he was beginning at least to make a comparison between his own circumstance and that of any ageing cleric, forced to depend upon the ministrations of women, from whom he had been exiled by decree all his life. Finally, shaved, dressed and lighter in spirit, he walked back to his room, seated himself in his chair and waited for visitors to arrive.
The first, as usual, was Monsignor Malachy O’Rahilly, who brought with him a roster of those who had applied to call on His Holiness to pay respect and to keep themselves and their business under Pontifical notice. They had always recognised in him an old-fashioned Italian traditionalist and this was the old-fashioned way of papal business: protocol, propriety, compliment and courtesy.
With his master restored to him, Malachy O’Rahilly was himself renewed, bubbling with busy good humour.
‘And are they treating you well, Holiness? Is there anything you need? Any delicacy to tempt your fancy? I’ll have it here for you in an hour. You know that.’
‘I know it, Malachy. Thank you. But there’s nothing I need. Who’s on your list for today?’
‘Four people only. I’m holding the numbers down because once they see that bright look in your eye they’ll all be wanting to talk business – and that’s verboten! First on the list is the Secretary of State. He has to see you. Then there’s Cardinal Clemens from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He’s still jumping up and down about the Tübingen Petition. There’s more and more discussion in the Press and on television. His Eminence wants your consent to take immediate disciplinary action against the theologians who signed the document … You know his arguments, it’s a direct challenge to Papal authority, it calls in question your own right to appoint bishops to local churches …’
‘I know the arguments.’ The familiar predator look transformed him instantly into an adversary. ‘I told Clemens very plainly that we should take time to reflect before we answer. We need light, not heat, in this matter. Very well. I’ll see him at four-thirty. Fifteen minutes. No longer. If he runs on, you come in and get rid of him. Who’s next?’
‘Cardinal Frantisek, Congregation for the Bishops. That’s a courtesy call on behalf of the hierarchy. It will be brief. His Eminence is a model of tact.’
‘Would we had more like him, Malachy! Five-fifteen?’
‘Finally, Cardinal Drexel. He’s spending the day in Rome; he asks if he may call on you between seven and eight, on his way home. I’m to telephone his office if you agree.’
‘Tell him I ‘II be delighted to see him.’
‘And that’s all, Holiness. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. It means that the Secretary of State will have my head if I submit you to even a hint of harassment.’
‘I’ll tell him myself you’re a model chamberlain, Malachy. Now, you had some enquiries to make for me about the young woman who died the night I came here. The one who was married to a priest of the Roman diocese.’
Now Malachy O’Rahilly was caught between a very large rock and a very thorny place. The Pontiff demanded information. The Secretary of State had promised to boil him in oil if he divulged it. True always to his nature, Malachy O’Rahilly decided that if he wanted to stay in his job, he must cleave to the Bishop of Rome and not to his adjutants in the Curia. So, he told the truth; but this time at least he told it penny-plain, making no mention of the newspaper cuttings in his briefcase, no reference to the security meeting in the Apostolic Palace or Matt Neylan’s passionate intervention on behalf of de Rosa.
When he ended his story, the Pontiff was silent a long time. He sat bolt-upright in his chair, his hands clamped to the arm-rests, his eyes closed, his mouth a pale razor-slash across his chalk-white face. Finally, he spoke. The words issued in a harsh, strained whisper, simple and final as the deaths that prompted them.
‘I have done a terrible thing. May God forgive me. May He forgive us all.’
Then he began to sob convulsively, so that his whole body was racked with the pain and the grief. Malachy O’Rahilly, the perfect secretary, stood mute with embarrassment, unable to raise hand or voice to comfort him. So he tiptoed out of the room and signalled a passing nurse to tell her that her patient was in distress.
‘Explanations please, Professor.’ The Mossad man, humourless and laconic as always, pushed a clipboard across Salviati’s desk. ‘I know most of it, but I want to check it off with you.’ ‘Go ahead.’
‘That’s a specimen of the chart which is hung at the foot of every patient’s bed, right?’
‘Where are the charts produced?’
‘On our own copier in the clinic.’
‘Now would you read the column headings, please?’
‘Time. Temperature. Pulse. Blood pressure. Treatment administered. Drugs administered. Nurse’s observations. Physician’s observations. Treatment ordered. Drugs ordered. Signature.’
‘Now take a look at the chart in front of you. Look at yesterday’s date. How many signatures are there?’
‘Three.’
‘Can you identify them?’
‘Yes. Carla Belisario, Giovanna Lanzi, Domenico Falcone.’
‘Functions?’
‘Day nurse, night nurse, physician on duty.’
‘Now look at the notations. How many different handwritings are there?’
‘Six.’
‘How do you explain that?’
‘Simple. The nurses who sign are responsible for the patient. Each has several patients. Temperature, pulse and blood pressure are taken by juniors. Dosages are administered by pharmacy personnel, treatment may be given, for example, by a physiotherapist. The system is essentially simple. The physician prescribes, the nurse supervises, the others work under direction and supervision … Now perhaps you can tell me what you’re looking for.’
‘Loopholes,’ said the Mossad man. ‘How to murder a Pope in a Jewish clinic and get away with it.’
‘And have you found one yet?’
‘I’m not sure. Look again at that chart. Is there any mention of haematology?’
‘Right at the beginning, in the pre-operative stage of this patient. There’s an order for a whole series of blood tests.’
‘Explain exactly how they would be done – in respect of the patient.’
‘The test is ordered on the chart. The office on this floor calls haematology and puts in the order. They send someone to take blood samples, which are taken back to the laboratory for testing.’
‘That someone who takes the samples. What equipment does he have? How does he proceed?’
‘It’s generally a she,’ said Salviati with a grin. ‘She has a small tray on which there is alcohol, cotton wool swabs, some small adhesive patches, stoppered phials with the patient’s name and room number written on the labels and a sterile hypodermic needle in a sealed plastic packet. She may carry a small rubber strap to constrict circulation and pump up the vein. That’s the lot.’
‘How does she proceed?’
‘She identifies the vein in the crook of the arm, swabs the spot with alcohol, inserts the needle, draws the blood and transfers it to the phial. She staunches the puncture with cotton wool, then seals it with an adhesive patch. It’s all over in a couple of minutes.’
‘Nobody else in the room during the procedure?’
‘Not usually. Why should there be?’
‘Exactly. That’s the loophole, isn’t it? The girl is alone with the patient. She is carrying a lethal weapon.’
‘Which is what, precisely?’
‘An empty syringe, with which blood can be extracted from a vein, or a lethal bubble of air pumped into it!’
‘That’s something I hadn’t thought of. But there’s a big hurdle she has to jump first. Our distinguished patient has had all his blood tests. Who’s going to write the order for new tests on his chart? Who’s going to call up haematology?’
‘That’s the second loophole,’ said the Mossad man. ‘Under your very thorough system, Professor, the clipboards are brought to the office at the end of each day shift and night shift. They are hung on numbered hooks and the charge sister inspects each one before completing the diary of her tour of duty. Anyone can pass by and make a notation. I’ve seen it done. The girl who took the patient’s temperature forgot to write down the pulse rate or the blood pressure. You know it happens, and how it happens. How many times has a nurse had to ask you whether or no a dosage is to be continued?’
Salvati rejected the whole idea out of hand.
‘I don’t believe it – not a single damned word! You’re synthesising a fiction; how a murder might happen! You’re pulling an assassin out of thin air. This girl is one of my people. I’m not going to let you frame her like this.’
The Mossad man was unmoved. He announced flatly:
‘I haven’t finished yet, Professor. I want you to listen to something.’ He laid on the desk a small pocket recorder and plugged in an earpiece which he handed to Salviati. ‘We’ve had Miriam Latif bugged for days now – her room, her laboratory jacket, the lining of her pocket-book. She always uses a public phone, so she has to carry gettoni. The pocket-book goes with her everywhere. What you will hear is a series of brief conversations with Omar Asnan, the boyfriend. They’re in Farsi, so you’ll have to take my word for their meaning.’
Salviati listened for a few minutes then, exasperated by his inability to follow the dialogue, took out the earpiece and handed it back.
‘Translation, please.’
‘The first conversation was from a bar in the village. She says yes, the arrangement is possible. Asnan asks how soon. She says a few days yet. He asks why. She says because of the logic. He asks what she means by logic. She says she can’t tell him now. She’ll try to explain at the next call … The explanation comes a little later in the tape. She explains that no one is allowed access to the man without passing through the security screen. She points out it wouldn’t be logical to have a blood test ordered in the middle of convalescence. It would be more normal just before the patient was due to be discharged. Asnan says it’s running things very fine. He’ll have to think of back-up arrangements. Her answer to that clinches matters as far as we’re concerned. She says: “Be careful. The place is crawling with vermin and I haven’t identified all of them yet.” There’s more, but that’s the core of it.’
‘There’s no possible doubt that she’s the assassin?’
‘None.’
‘What happens now?’
‘You don’t ask. We don’t tell.’
‘Would it help – it’s a long shot and I’d hate to do it – would it help if I transferred the patient to Gemelli or Salvator Mundi?’
‘Would it be good for the patient?’ The Mossad man seemed willing to consider the idea.
‘Well, it wouldn’t be the best, but he’d survive it.’
‘What’s the point then, Professor? So far as Miriam Latif is concerned it would make no difference at all. She’s identified as a killer. The Vatican doesn’t want her. Because she hasn’t committed a crime yet, the Italians wouldn’t do more than deport her back to Lebanon. We certainly don’t want her running around loose in our theatre of operations. The conclusion’s obvious enough, isn’t it?’
‘Why,’ asked Sergio Salviati bitterly, ‘why the hell did you have to tell me?’
‘It’s the nature of things,’ said the Mossad man calmly. ‘You’re family. This is your home place, we’re protecting you and all who abide here. Besides, what’s to fret about? You’re a doctor. Even your most successful cases end up with the undertaker!’
Then he was gone, a sinister, bloodless ghost haunting the corridors of an underworld that ordinary folk hardly believed to exist. Now he, Sergio Salviati, was a denizen of that underworld, caught in the toils of its conspiracies like a wasp in a spider web. Now he, the healer, would be made a silent party to murder; yet if he did not consent to silence, more and bloodier murders might be done. As an Italian, he had no illusions about the underside of life in the Republic; as a Jew and a Zionist, he understood how bitter and brutal was the struggle for survival in the Fertile Crescent.
Willy-nilly, he had been for a long time a player in the game. His clinic was a listening post and a refuge for sleepers in the intelligence trade. He himself, like it or not, was playing a political role; he could not, on the same stage, play the innocent dupe. Come to think of it, if the person of the Pope were directly threatened would the Vatican security men hold fire? He knew they would not. Sergio Salviati was not asked to pull a trigger, only to be silent while the professionals went about their normal business. The fact that their target was a woman had no weight in the case. The female was as lethal an instrument as the male. Besides, if any blood splashed on Sergio Salviati’s hands, he could always get rid of it when he scrubbed up for surgery. There at least and at last he had to be clean …
In the midst of that wintry meditation, a courier brought the invitation for Tove Lundberg and himself to dine with Mr & Mrs Nicol Peters at the Palazzo Lanfranco.
The Secretary of State had a tidy mind and a subtle one. He hated a clutter of trifles on his agenda; he insisted always that they be disposed of before addressing himself to major issues. So, on his afternoon visit to the clinic he spoke first with Salviati, who assured him that the Pontiff was making a normal and satisfactory recovery and that he could probably be discharged in five or six days. He also talked briefly to the Italian and Vatican officials in charge of security, careful always to avoid any questions which might suggest that His Eminence knew more than his prayers. Then he presented himself to the Pontiff and walked with him to a sheltered spot in the garden, while an attendant waited at a discreet distance with the wheelchair. His Holiness came brusquely to the nub of the matter.
‘I am ill, my friend; but I am not blind. Look around you! This place is like an armed camp. Inside I am hedged and picketed wherever I move. What is going on?’
‘There have been threats, Holiness – terrorist threats against your life.’
‘By whom?’
‘An extremist Arab group, calling itself the Sword of Islam. The information is high-grade intelligence.’
‘I still don’t believe it. The Arabs know our policies favour Islam over Israel. What have they to gain by killing me?’
‘The circumstances are special, Holiness. You are a patient in a clinic run by a prominent Zionist.’
‘Who still treats many Arab patients.’
‘All the more reason to teach everyone a lesson. But however twisted the logic, the threat is real. Money is on the table – big money.’
‘I’II be out of here in a few days – less than a week probably.’
‘Which brings me to my next point, Holiness. Most of us in the Curia are strongly against your proposal to lodge with Anton Drexel. It means a new and very expensive security operation, possible danger to the children and – let me say it frankly – the last thing in the world you want: jealousies within the Sacred College itself.’
‘God give me strength! What are they! A bunch of schoolgirls?’
‘No, Holiness. They are all grown men, who understand the politics of power – and not all of them are friends of Anton Drexel. Please, Holiness, I beg you to consider this carefully. When you go from here, go straight back to Castel Gandolfo. You will have the best of care, as you know. From there, you can visit Drexel and his little tribe whenever you choose.
The Pontiff was silent for a long moment, watching Agostini with hostile, unblinking eyes. Finally, he challenged him: ‘There’s more, isn’t there? I want to hear it, now.’
He did not expect evasion. He did not get it. Agostini set down the core of the argument.
‘All of us are aware, Holiness, of your concern at the divisions and dissensions in the community of the faithful. Those of us who are close to you have sensed for some time that you are going through a period of … well, of doubt and reassessment of the policies you have pursued so vigorously during your pontificate. That state of uncertainty has been increased by your illness. There are those – and let me hasten to say I am not one of them – who believe that the same illness, the sense of urgency it provokes, may cause Your Holiness to take precipitate action which, instead of doing good for the Church, may damage it further. Here is my point: if changes for the better are to take place, you will need all the help you can get from the Curia and the senior hierarchy of the National Churches. You’re one man in the world who knows how the system works and how it can be used to frustrate the most determined or the most subtle of Pontiffs … You trust Drexel. So do I. But he is a man in the evening of his years; he is a German; he is too impatient of our Roman follies. He is, in my view, a handicap to your plans; and if you were to put that to him, I believe he would agree with you.’
‘Have you yourself put it to him, Matteo?’
‘No.’
‘And where do you stand on the question of policy?’ ‘Where I always stand. I’m a diplomat. I deal in possibles. I’m always afraid of hasty decisions.’
‘Drexel is coming to visit me this evening. I owe him the courtesy of a discussion before I decide anything.’
‘Of course … There is one other matter on which I need a personal authority from Your Holiness, otherwise it will be floating around the Congregations for months. We’ve lost one of our best men from the Secretariat this week, Monsignor Matt Neylan.’
‘Lost him? What does that mean, precisely?’
‘He’s left us.’
‘A woman?’
‘No. In a way, I wish it were. He came to tell me that he is no longer a believer.’
‘That’s sad news. Very sad.’
‘From our point of view, he has conducted himself with singular propriety. It’s tidier to laicise him without fuss.’
‘Do it, and do it quickly.’
‘Thank you, Holiness.’
‘I will tell you a secret, Matteo.’ The Pontiff suddenly seemed to have withdrawn into a private world. ‘I have often wondered what it would be like to wake up one morning and find that one no longer had the faith one had professed for a lifetime. One would know it all, as one might know a matter of law or a chemical equation or a piece of history; but it would no longer have any relevance … What is the phrase in Macbeth? “It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” In the old days, you know, we’d have turned away from a man like that, treated him like a leper, as if the loss were his own fault. How does anyone know that? Faith is a gift. The gift may be withdrawn, as the gifts of sight or hearing may be taken away. It could as easily happen to you or me. I trust you were kind to him. I know you would never be less than courteous.’
‘I’m afraid he wasn’t very happy with me, Holiness.’
‘Oh, why not?’
The question took them by a single stride to the story of the final Vatican involvement in the fate of Lorenzo de Rosa and his family. This time, however, it seemed that the Pontiff had no more emotion left to spend. What he uttered was a lament for lost hopes.
‘We’re losing too many, Matteo. They are not happy in the family of the faithful. There is no joy in our house, because there is too little love. And it is we the elders, who are to blame.’
Once each week, at an unscheduled hour, Sergio Salviati made what he called the ‘white-glove round’ of the clinic. He had borrowed the phrase from an elderly relative who used to extol the spacious days of sea travel under the British flag, when the Captain, accompanied by the Commodore and the Engineering Officer, donned white gloves and inspected the vessel stem to stern. The white gloves showed every trace of dust or grime and protected the soft hands of authority.
Sergio Salviati did not wear white gloves but his Chief Of Staff carried a clipboard and a xeroxed plan of the institution on which every shortcoming was noted for immediate remedy. It was a very un-Latin procedure; but Salviati had too much at stake in patronage and professional reputation to trust to the shifting standards of a polyglot staff. He checked everything: toolsheds, linen stocks, pharmacy, pathology, files and records, surgical waste disposal, kitchen, bathrooms. He even took micro-samples from the air-conditioning ducts, which in the hot Roman summer might house dangerous bacteria.
The inspections were always made in the late afternoon, when his stint in the operating theatre was over and his ward rounds were all complete. At this hour, too, the staff were more relaxed and open. They were coming up to the end of the day and were vulnerable to criticism and well pleased by a word of praise. It was a few moments after five on this same ominous day when he came to the Haematology Department, where blood and sera were stored and analyses made of samples brought in from the wards.
Normally there were three people on duty in the laboratory. This time there were only two. Salviati wanted to know why. He was told that Miriam Latif had asked for the afternoon off to attend to some personal business. She was expected back on duty the next day. The arrangement had been cleared with the Chief of Staff’s office. People within departments covered for each other as a matter of course.
Back in his own office, Salviati summoned the Mossad man and quizzed him about the girl’s absence. The Mossad man shook his head sadly.
‘For an intelligent fellow, Professor, you’re a very slow learner. Your own staff have told you all you need to know. Best of all, they have told you the truth. The girl was called away on personal business. She made the excuse in person. Leave it at that!’
‘And the threat to our patient?’
‘Her absence has removed it. Her presence would restore it. We wait and watch, as always. For tonight at least you can sleep soundly.’
‘And tomorrow?’
‘Forget tomorrow!’ The Mossad man was impatient and abrupt. ‘You, Professor, must make a decision today – now, this moment!’
‘About what?’
‘The role you want to play: the reputable healer going about his reputable business in a wicked world, or the meddler who can’t keep his nose out of other people’s business. We can accommodate you, either way. But if you’re in, you’re in up to the neck and you play by our rules. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Either way,’ said Salviati, ‘it seems I’m being manipulated.’
‘Of course you are!’ The Mossad man gave him a vinegary smile. ‘But there’s one big distinction: as Professor Salviati you are manipulated in innocence and ignorance. The other way, you do as you’re told, eyes open, mouth shut. If we want you to lie, you lie. If we want you to kill, you kill – the Hippocratic oath notwithstanding. Can you wear that, my friend?’
‘No. I can’t.’
‘End of argument,’ said the Mossad man. ‘You’ll enjoy your dinner tonight and sleep a lot more soundly.’
But you don’t sleep,’ Tove Lundberg chided him tenderly. ‘You don’t even enjoy making love; because you’re not innocent, you’re not ignorant, and the guilt gnaws at you all the time.’
They were sitting over cocktails on the terrace of Salviati’s house, looking out at a sky full of stars, misted and blurred by the emanations of Rome: river fog, traffic fumes, dust and the exhalations of a city slowly choking itself to death. He had not wanted to share the story with her, because the mere knowledge of it put her at a certain risk. However, concealment put him at greater hazard, because it clouded his judgement, robbed him of that detachment upon which his patients’ lives depended. Tove Lundberg summed up her argument.
‘The problem is, my love, you know too little and want too much.’
‘I know Miriam Latif is going to be killed – if she’s not dead already.’
‘You don’t know it. You’re surmising. You can’t possibly be sure she’s even missing until tomorrow.’
‘Then what do I do?’
‘What would you do if it were another person altogether?’
‘I would I hear it much later than everyone else. The Chief of Staff’s office would already have inquired into her absence. If she didn’t show up in a reasonable time, they’d ask me to authorise a replacement. I would probably advise them to contact the police and immigration officials, because the clinic has sponsored the girl’s entry and guaranteed her employment. After that, it’s out of our hands.’
‘Which is no more or no less than your Mossad man told you at the beginning.’
‘But don’t you see … ?’
‘No! I don’t. I can’t see one step beyond the routine you have just outlined. Whom else are you going to tell? The Pope? He knows about the threat to his life. He knows about the security measures. He consents, tacitly at least, to anything that may happen as a result of those measures. If the girl is a terrorist, she herself has already accepted all the risks of the job for which she has been trained.’
‘But that’s just the point.’ Salviati was suddenly angry. ‘All the evidence against her is circumstantial. Some of it is negative, in the sense that no other more likely candidate has shown up on the Mossad lists. So she’s being condemned and executed without a trial.’
‘Maybe!’
‘All right. Maybe!’
‘Again, what can you do about it, when the Italian Government abdicates its legal authority in favour of direct action by the Israelis? That’s what’s happening, isn’t it?’
‘And the Vatican sits pat on the protocol of the Concordat. The Pope’s bodyguards may protect him by force of arms if necessary; but the Vatican may not intervene in the administration of justice in the Republic.’
‘So why go on beating your head against your own Wailing Wall?’
‘Because I’m not sure any more who I am or where my loyalties lie. The Pope’s my patient. Italy is my country. The Israelis are my people.’
‘Listen, my love!’ Tove Lundberg reached across the table and imprisoned his hands in her own. ‘I will not take this kind of talk from you. Remember what you told me when I first came to work for you. “Cardiac surgery is a risk business. It depends on free choice, an acceptance of known odds, clearly stated between surgeon and patient. There can be no trading back if an unknown factor tips the odds the wrong way!” So, it seems to me you’re in the same position in the case of Miriam Latif. The odds are she’s a trained assassin, nominated to kill the Pope. A choice has been made: to stop her without attracting reprisals. In this case, however, the choice was made by others. Your identity is not challenged; rather, it is confirmed. You are a healer. You have no place on the killing ground. Stay away from it!’
Sergio Salviati disengaged himself from her handclasp and thrust himself up from the table. His tone was rasping and angry.
‘So! It’s happened at last! It always does in Rome! My loyal counsellor has become a Jesuit. She should do very well with His Holiness.’
Tove Lundberg sat a long while in silence, then, with an odd, distant formality, she answered him.
‘A long time ago, my dear, you and I made a bargain. We could not share our histories or our traditions. We would not try. We would love each other as much as we could, for as long as we could, and when the loving was over we would stay friends always. You know I have neither taste nor talent for cruelty games. I know you play them sometimes, when you are frustrated and afraid, but I have always believed you had too much respect to force me into them … So, I’m going home now. When we meet in the morning I hope we can forget this ugly moment.’
The next instant she was gone, a blurred figure hurrying through the twilight towards her car. Sergio Salviati raised neither hand nor voice to stay her. He stood like a stone man, clamped to the crumbling balustrade, lonelier and more desolate than he had ever felt in his life. The valiant of Zion had rejected him with contempt. A woman of the goyim had probed with an unerring finger towards the hollow place in his heart. Each had acknowledged him as a healer. Both had challenged him to the impossible, to mend his damaged self.
That night, the Pontiff sat late with Anton Drexel. After the emotional storms of the day he felt a need for the calm, quiet discourse which Drexel dispensed. His answer to the objections raised against a papal sojourn at the colonia was typical of the man.
‘If it raises problems, then forget the idea. It was intended as a therapy, not as a stress factor. Besides, Your Holiness needs allies and not adversaries. When all the brouhaha has died down and the risks of attack on your person have diminished, as they always do, then you can visit the children. You can invite them to visit you …’
‘And what of your own plans for me, Anton? My education to new views and policies?’
Drexel laughed, a man at ease with himself and his master.
‘My plans depend on the working of the Spirit, Holiness. Alone, I could not bend you a millimetre. Besides, your Secretary of State is right – as he is most of the time. I am too old and still too much the Ausländer, to be a true power-broker among the Curia. That is how Your Holiness won the battle over Jean Marie Barette. You assembled the Latins against the Germans and the Anglo-Saxons. I would never attempt the same strategy twice.’
Now it was the Pontiff’s turn to laugh – a painful business with little amusement at the end of it.
‘So what is your strategy, Anton? And what do you hope to win from me or through me?’
‘What I believe you hope for yourself – a revival in the Assembly of the Faithful, a change in the attitudes which dictate the laws which are the greatest obstacle to charity.’
‘Easy to say, my friend. A lifetime’s work to accomplish – and I have learned how short and fragile life can be.’
‘If you are thinking of serial solutions – picking off problems one by one like ducks in a shooting gallery – then of course you are right. Each issue sets off a new debate, new quarrels and casuistries. Finally, weariness sets in and the kind of creeping despair that has afflicted us since the Second Vatican Council. The fire of hope that John XXIII kindled has died to grey ashes. The conservatives – yourself, Holiness, not least among them – had a whole series of pyrrhic victories and the faithful were the losers every time.’
‘Now tell me your remedy, Anton.’
‘One word, Holiness – decentralise.’
‘I hear you. I’m not sure I understand you.’
‘Then I’ll try to make it plainer. What we need is not reform, but liberation, an act of manumission from the shackles which have bound us since Trent. Give back to the local churches the autonomy which is theirs by apostolic right. Begin to dismantle this creaking edifice of the Curia, with its tyrannies and secrecies and sinecures for mediocre or ambitious prelates. Open the way to free consultation with your brother bishops … Affirm in the clearest terms the principle of collegiality and your determination to make it work … One document would start it – a single encyclical written by yourself, not constructed by a committee of theologians and diplomats and then emasculated by the Latinists and bled white of meaning by conservative commentary …’
‘You’re asking me to write a blueprint for revolution.’
‘As I remember, Holiness, the Sermon on the mount was a revolutionary manifesto.’
‘Revolutions should be made by young men.’
‘The old ones write the documents, the young translate them into action. But first they have to break out of the prison in which they are kept now. Give them liberty to think and speak. Give them your confidence and a charge to use the liberty. Perhaps then we will not have so many casualties, like de Rosa and Matthew Neylan.’
‘You’re a stubborn man, Anton.’
‘I’m older than you are, Holiness. I have even less time.’
‘I promise you I’ll think about what you’ve said.’
‘Think about this too, Holiness. As we stand now in the Church, the centuries-old fight for papal supremacy is won – and the penalties of that victory are costing us dearly. All power is vested in one man, yourself; but you can only exercise it through the complicated oligarchy of the Curia. At this moment, you are almost impotent. You will remain so for months yet. Meantime, the men whom you appointed to positions of power are ready to range themselves in opposition to any new policies. That’s a fact. Agostini has already given you the same warning. Is that a healthy state of affairs? Is that the true image of the Church of which Christ is the head and all we are members?’
‘No, it is not.’ Leo the Pontiff was weary now. ‘But there is not a single thing either of us can do about it at the moment except think and pray. Go home, Anton! Go home to your family and your vineyards. You should be picking and crushing very soon, yes?’
‘Very soon. Two weeks, my man tells me.’
‘Perhaps I could come for that. I haven’t been to a vendemmia since I was a child.’
‘You’ll be very welcome.’ Drexel bent to kiss the Ring of the Fisherman. ‘And a papal blessing might do wonders for the wine of Fontamore.’
Long after Drexel had gone, long after the night nurse had settled him for sleep, Leo XIV, successor of the Prince of the Apostles, lay awake listening to the night noises, trying to decipher his destiny in the shadows cast by the night light.
The argument which Drexel had put to him had a certain grand simplicity on the one hand and, on the other, a very subtle distinction between authority and power.
The concept of papal power had been given its most rigid and extreme definition by Boniface VIII in the fourteenth century and Pius V in the sixteenth. Boniface had declared tout court that ‘because of the need for salvation, every human creature is subject to the Roman Pontiff’.
Pius V had elaborated the proposition with breathtaking presumption. Leo XIV, his modern successor, inheritor of his rigid will and irascible temper, could recite the words by rote: ‘He who reigns in heaven, to whom is given all power in heaven and on earth, gave the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, out of which there is no salvation, to be governed, in the fullness of authority, to one man only, that is to say, to Peter, the Prince of the Apostles and to his successor, the Roman Pontiff. This one ruler He established as prince over all nations and kingdoms, to root up, destroy, dissipate, scatter, plant and build …’
This was the ultimate and most flagrant claim of an imperial papacy, discredited long since by history and by common sense; but the echoes of it still lingered in the Vatican corridors. Power was still the ultimate human prize and here resided the power to move nearly a billion people, by the ultimate sanction – timor mortis, the fear of death and its mysterious aftermath.
Drexel’s proposal was therefore an abdication of positions held for centuries, surrendered piecemeal and then only under extreme duress. It involved not an imperial concept, but a much more primitive and radical one, that the Church was one because it possessed one faith, one baptism and one Lord, Jesus Christ, in whom all were united as branches to a living vine. It involved not power, but authority – authority founded upon free consent, free conscience, an act of faith freely made. Those who were vested with authority must use it with respect and for service. They must not pervert authority to an instrument of power. To use it rightly, they must not only delegate it, but acknowledge freely the source from which it was delegated to them and the conditions of its use. It was one of the ironies of a celibate hierarchy that when you deprived a man of one satisfaction you sharpened his appetite for others, and power was a very spicy taste in the mouth.
Even if he agreed with Drexel’s plan – and he had many reservations about it, as he had about Drexel himself – the obstacles to its accomplishment were enormous. That very afternoon his quarter-hour interview with Clemens of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had gone on for nearly forty minutes. Clemens had insisted very firmly that his Congregation was the watchdog guarding the Deposit of Faith – and if it were forbidden to bark, let alone bite, then why bother to have it? If His Holiness wanted to respond directly to the protestors of Tübingen, that was his right, of course. But a word from the Pontiff was not easily recalled, nor should it be gainsaid, as it might be, by these intransigent clerics.
It was the power game again and even he, the Pontiff, depleted of strength was not exempt from it. What chance had a rural bishop, ten thousand miles from Rome, delated from some act or utterance by the local Apostolic Nuncio? Drexel could fight, because he was Clemens’s peer, older and wiser in the game. Yet this very Olympian detachment made him, in some degree, a suspect advocate.
On the other hand, a man who called himself Vicar of Christ was given, perforce, a place in history. His words and acts were cited as precedents down the centuries and their consequences weighed in the balance on his own judgement day. So, it was hardly surprising that the dreams that haunted his pillow that night were a strange kaleidoscope of scenes from the Michelangelo frescoes and of men, masked and armed, stalking their quarry through a pine wood.