Of Saints and Shadows

THE ROOM HAD BEEN BUILT FOR ROUGH play. Soft black leather filled with down and some other kind of padding beneath that prevented sound from escaping and allowed play to continue even if the walls were coated with whatever variety of human fluids could be expected to splash, drip, or smear on such surfaces.

Tracey looked around, taking in the instruments of pain/pleasure. Though she had some little knowledge of these sex games, she didn’t recognize any of the room’s furnishings. Monstrous things they were, and she turned away, back to her predicament. In the back of her mind a voice piped up, attempting to decide which of those torture machines would be the least painful and wondering how anyone could enjoy such things. Would she?

Here she was chained, though most elegantly, to the wall. She sat on a black leather chaise, fully clothed, for Hannibal had given her back her things and asked her to get dressed before incarcerating her. In general she had no plans to cooperate with him, but she couldn’t refuse to get dressed. She’d nearly frozen to death in that water, and even now was chilled to her bones. She knew that she must be getting sick. How could she not? The room itself was fairly warm, and smelled of something terribly sweet, like sticky cinnamon buns. And it was black, but for the lamp next to her, which was green and obviously not a part of the room’s usual decoration.

Everything was black—the walls, floor, and ceiling, the machines, the door, even the chains. The one that kept her here led from a black metal plate on the wall to a shackle, padded on the inside, around her right ankle. The links of the chain between were invisible, the whole thing covered in a padded black leather sheath of some sort. The other chains in the room were not as forgiving.

For captured prey, she was being treated fairly well. She’d been fed, allowed to choose a book from the library, and was treated with deference by Hannibal’s human servants, none of whom was shackled.

Now she sat, her throat raw, her forehead hot and her nose running like crazy. She was getting very sick and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Of course, Hannibal had two quick and sure cures for her illness, but neither was terribly attractive to her. No, now that the sun was up—and she knew it was, for they would never have chained her if Hannibal was around to hunt her down if she got free—she pretended to read while her mind analyzed every escape plot she hatched, and rejected them all.

She had to get out! She had to call in the damn story. CNN had a bureau in Rome, but there was an outside chance that there’d be a team in Venice to cover carnival. Certainly there would be some reporters here, and even if CNN had to share the story or the tape, it would still be her story, and that’s what mattered. Not only did the world desperately need to be warned, but she wanted—no, needed—to be the one to warn them.

He and Meaghan were standing on the train platform, both urging Cody to step out from the shadows of the train itself. Will had stood aside as the other passengers had filed past him, and Meaghan had run to buy both men hats and sunglasses in the station. She was gone only minutes, and Cody had made a little joke about the hat. A man used to sombreros and cowboy hats, his dislike of its narrow-brimmed style was plain.

“Yes, it fucking hurts! It really hurts at first, like every inch of uncovered skin getting stung by bees all at once. But it doesn’t last, understand. It wears off until it’s just an uncomfortable ache, like a light sunburn. Surely you remember sunburns?”

“Some hero you are! The noblest whiteskin, the great scout, the world’s greatest showman. Sounds like a bunch of buffalo shit to me! You’re supposed to be the man’s man—gambler, lover, hunter, horseman, the best at everything, the symbol of the Wild West. But that’s all crap, isn’t it, because William Frederick Cody, the hero of children around the world, Buffalo Bill, is afraid of getting a sunburn!”

While Peter looked stunned, Cody’s face went from shocked to embarrassed to angry, and the train conductor, who’d finally reached them, tapped his foot patiently and waited for her to finish, obviously recognizing Meaghan as a force to be reckoned with, and not to be interrupted. When she did finish, all three men fumbled for something to say.

“Come on, Peter,” she said, turning on her heel without so much as a look back, “let mama’s boy ride the train back and forth until nightfall. It’ll probably all be over by then anyway.”

Peter looked after her, eyebrows raised. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out and she kept right on walking. He turned to Cody and shrugged, a guilty, silly grin fighting to break out on his face. Finally he shook his head and laughed, then followed after her, catching up easily. The conductor watched them for a moment, then turned to their reluctant companion.

Red-faced with fury and humiliation, not daring to give it another thought, Cody was out in the sunshine and hurrying after them before the first word was out of the conductor’s mouth. He didn’t understand Italian anyway.

“I know what you tried to do,” he said to Meaghan as he caught up to them, “and it didn’t work. I’m out here because I want to be, not because of your petty childish antics. Lord, woman, but you are a pain in the ass! And you,” he said, turning on Peter now, “you’d better be right, ’cause right now I’m hurting like hell.”

“Okay, look,” Peter said, their conversation taking a sober turn. “The sun is our advantage—it’ll keep us from being attacked by some of our friends who hold a grudge, at least until we can talk to them about what’s going on.”

It was just past eleven in the morning when Giancarlo Garbarino arrived for his appointment with His Holiness the Pope. As usual, the pontiff was late, and Garbarino sat in his parlor awaiting his return from Mass. A papal attendant brought him herbal tea, though what he would really have liked was some of that Viennese chocolate coffee. Unfortunately, with the pope’s poor health, such things were too rich for him.

When finally he did show up, the pope seemed perturbed, barely acknowledging the clumsy bow and perfunctory kiss of the ring he received from Garbarino, disrespectful attempts at tradition that would have insulted a more prideful, less pious pontiff. He stepped into his internal chambers with Garbarino on his heels, then turned and stepped into the small library that served as his private office. This space was reserved for those around whom he felt comfortable. Garbarino knew the Holy Father didn’t like him, but he also knew that the man respected him and his academic efforts.

The pope looked at Garbarino, ready to argue about the tea, but then changed his mind and settled back in his comfortable burgundy leather chair. “Paulo,” he said, “please bring the tea and then do not disturb us. I am in ill humor today, and the cardinal better be here to cheer me up.”

Paulo reentered then, setting his platter down silently in front of Garbarino, who shushed him away when he reached for the pot. He left the room, shutting the door behind him, letting Garbarino pour the water for tea.

As he placed tea bags in the cups a small capsule dropped from his palm into the pope’s tea, its membrane dissolving immediately and releasing a clear, tasteless liquid that would mix with the tea within minutes. He had done away with John Paul I in the very same fashion.

He served the pontiff first, then himself, watching as His Holiness began to sip at the steaming cup. Garbarino began to smile and sip his own tea. With John Paul it had been important that he not be discovered. This time, however, nothing mattered. If they knew the pope had been murdered, if they knew he was the killer, such knowledge would be useless, for he’d be long gone, never to return.

Ah, but such a service he was performing for the glory of the true God, whose nature Roman Catholicism had only begun to grasp. It was control that mattered, mastery of all things, all creatures, natural and unnatural. This was what God had intended for man, and for His church.

He chided himself, as the pope sipped, not to become overwrought. After all, he was a soldier in God’s army, a pious man, not a self-righteous, self-serving lunatic like Liam Mulkerrin. No, of the many things that caused Giancarlo Garbarino to commit the sin of pride, the foremost was this—he considered himself completely sane, something he couldn’t say about many others.

“You know, Giancarlo,” the pope said, putting down his cup after only a couple of sips, enough to make him ill surely, but probably not enough to kill him. “I’ve been wondering for some time about Cardinal Guiscard.”

“Henri Guiscard was quite a scholar—is quite a scholar still, I should think. I never understood why you didn’t want him on your Vatican Historical Council, unless it was simply that you didn’t want to compete with another cardinal. Regardless, his disappearance concerns me, as does the disappearance of that hellish book.”

“Well, I never got through the whole thing, only bits and pieces here and there, and of course the reports you wrote about it. But, well, we agreed that it was yet another example of misguided zeal along the lines of the Inquisition. I mean, vampires? Weren’t witches and exorcists bad enough?”

“While many suffered and died for those false impressions, the church doesn’t need any more bad press. We still haven’t gotten out from under that Father Porter fiasco,” the cardinal said.

“But why Guiscard?” the pontiff continued. “Not that I knew him well, but he seemed genuine enough. And more intelligent than most of us, for certain. Why take that book? If he had wanted to hurt us with it, which doesn’t make sense in the first place, why hasn’t he done something with it?”

“Well, if it weren’t for your recommendations, I would have had the thing destroyed and we wouldn’t have this problem, would we? I can’t even brief the PR people unless the thing comes out, because if it doesn’t, I’ll have told them about it for nothing, and then it probably will get out. It’s so frustrating.”

“No, thank you, though, Giancarlo, but I didn’t really want it in the first place. That herbal flavor is simply awful, but I dare not tell that to Paulo, who has somehow been told it’s my favorite. I’ll just ring him now, to pick up the tray. If you’re done with yours, that is.”

In two and threes they left, from all exits, and singly as well. Fathers and brothers and sisters, drifting out of the Vatican with no hint of shared purpose, no recognition of one another. Vatican police surely noticed a larger volume of clergy on their way to museums, to the airport, to shop, visit hospitals and churches, or merely to walk. The clergy who were not leaving, who were not aware of the sinister purpose behind this exodus, also noticed a larger volume of departures than usual in those morning hours.

Those taking their leave set off in many different directions, at different times, and purportedly for different reasons ... while many may have thought the volume peculiar, none thought to remark upon it.

As they made their way toward the appointed meeting place, two and one half miles from the train station in Rome—some taking far more circuitous routes than others—they were joined by several dozen additional clergy members from the Roman community. Sister Mary and the Montesis had organized this exodus so well that it indeed appeared to be nothing more than coincidence.

Unless, of course, you happened to be standing near the train yard as Roman clergy filtered in, in threes and fours, and boarded the train. If you watched while some emerged in a new uniform of all black, male and female alike, without collar or habit, you would most certainly have been curious. If you had seen many of these people take gleaming silver daggers from the assorted bags and totes and briefcases that they carried and hide them in the folds of these new uniforms, or in the boots they wore, unlike anything you could have seen clergy wearing before, well, then you certainly would have remarked upon it to the first person who would listen.

And Vincenzo Pustizzi had every intention of doing just that, of stumbling from the train yard where he often slept and telling the first policeman he came into contact with. He would have done exactly that if Robert Montesi hadn’t seen him first. If the youngest Montesi brother hadn’t called upon something invisible, something awful, to crawl inside him and eat his heart, he would have blown the whistle for sure. Nobody in Rome would have believed Vincenzo Pustizzi, but he would have told them all right.

By noon, when Giancarlo Garbarino and Liam Mulkerrin left together, Sister Mary Magdalene and Robert Montesi were just getting the last stragglers aboard the train. Isaac and Thomas, meanwhile, were making final arrangements with their Venetian unit by cellular phone. They were aware, of course, that these phone lines were never secure, but it was taken for granted that their enemies were far too arrogant to believe they were in any danger. Certainly espionage was not within their range of skills.

Brother Paulo had served the pope faithfully for several years, and the pope before him for the duration of his life as pontiff. Paulo considered himself a simple man, like his father before him, a man who asked very little of life and of God. A roof over his head, food to eat, warm clothes, and to serve God. He was well pleased and suffered himself the merest glimmer of pride with his work. His job, after all, was to care for him who was closest to God Himself, a man who had far more on his mind than what to wear and what to eat. Paulo considered himself far more important to the daily life of the pontiff than the pope’s handlers, the men who made his travel arrangements and planned his public appearances. This man was responsible for the well-being of millions of faithful churchgoers, and the religious health of the rest of the world as well. Paulo had been made, through appointment as well as by default, the caretaker of this man’s well-being.

Nothing else mattered. It did not matter that the pope could be an old curmudgeon like so many men of his age. It did not matter that there were certain things about which Paulo had become disillusioned since taking his post. It did not matter that the pope spent more time than Paulo felt was appropriate in baby-sitting the internal and external political factions attempting to exert their influence upon Catholicism. It was not Paulo’s place to disapprove. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, and always had.

It was with these things in mind that Paulo entered the office/library that had always been the pontiff’s favorite room. It was common for the pope to fall asleep in his leather chair, reading a book or simply thinking, especially after tea. And he hadn’t been feeling well, which made him much more likely to need a nap. After all, when all was said and done, he was still a mortal man, and, well ...

Paulo knocked lightly, to be certain His Holiness was still asleep. Sure enough, there was no answer. He turned the knob and pushed, a blanket over his arm. He always covered up the old man when he was sleeping. One good draft could make his cold that much worse, and he refused to wear his slippers at night. It was frustrating.

Paulo was surprised by the darkness in the room. The shades were drawn and the lights were off. It seemed that His Holiness had made no pretense about falling asleep this time. He would rather sleep in his office than his bed.

Paulo smiled to himself and shook out the blanket. Quietly, he stepped across the room and pulled the curtains apart only an inch or so, enough to see by. He turned toward the desk where the pope had his head down, and at first saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Then he stopped. He tilted his head in an attempt to figure out just what was out of place about the sleeping form. Then he realized what it was. Rather than resting his head on his folded arms, as he usually did, the pontiff had let his arms dangle at his sides, his head at an awkward angle on the desk.

He rushed to the chair, nearly slipping in the blood of the Pope of Rome, and could clearly see the terrible gash that had been sliced into the man’s throat. A mortal man, indeed. The blood was everywhere, and Paulo couldn’t stop the tears that came, harbinger of a scream that was building in him, that would escape in moments. He turned to run from the room, to call for police, but tripped and fell on the carpet. He reached in the semidark for what had tripped him, and his hand came back wrapped around a terrible instrument of death, a dagger in the form of a crucifix, the form of Christ, the life-giver, forged into a life-taking weapon.

He stood, dagger in hand, too confused and distraught to notice that others had come into the room. Too horrified to hear the words that they said, to realize what it was that they were seeing. The lights came on.