Headquarters of Global Capital Italia: 10:38 a.m.
“The Pope intends to speak to the media?” Caterina Amato couldn’t hide her surprise. “Do we have any idea what he’s going to say?”
“Our men inside the Vatican have only been able to determine that he’s set on speaking, and that the press event will take place soon. The Pope’s not told anyone what he intends to say.”
Caterina’s mind churned through the potential outcomes of this news, annoyed that the Fraternity hadn’t provided more concrete information. She was constantly exasperated by the group, furtive and secretive as they were, and utterly consumed with a project that was of the least possible interest to her. A fraternity of the Roman Catholic Church’s old guard, dedicated to rooting out the influences of modernity and reform on their beloved magisterium. Christ, could there be a more loathsome, pointless undertaking? Or one that less convincingly masked these men’s real character? They were individuals driven by their lusts and desires, just like everyone else.
Lusts and desires. Old memories flashed back. Caterina was eleven, her brother Davide was fifteen and her mother had only recently sent them both off to the Sisters of Perpetual Mercy boarding school near San Vittorino. Caterina could still smell the stench of that place: stone and wood and pine cleaner lingering in the air of dark, seemingly endless corridors. But what she truly remembered was what had taken place there—not to her, but to her brother.
Caterina had been treated like every other young girl in the school: harshly, lovelessly, indiscriminately. But the boys experienced the place very differently. She remembered Davide being taken off to see the school’s ecclesiastical supervisor, a twenty-eight-year-old priest who would come to the institution intermittently to make his inspections. Those invariably included special meetings with hand-selected students, always boys.
She remembered how Davide trembled each time he was called to those encounters. How he came back from the distant inspector’s office pale, unable to speak, faltering in his walk. She never asked, but she knew what happened to him there, and to others like him, at the hands of “our reverend father.”
And she never forgot the abusive priest’s name: Father Donato Viteri. It burned its way into her mind as she watched her brother grow wearier and wearier, his love of life stolen from him. When, three months after Davide had graduated from the school and departed into the world, news reached her that he had committed suicide, her world changed permanently. Davide had bled out, alone in an alley, his wrists slashed by the fragments of a beer bottle that was found still clutched in his grip. Caterina had been fourteen.
She had run away from school within a week, making her way to the capital. She found work in Rome at a bare wage until she’d earned enough to buy a cheap camera and a few rolls of film, then she’d put the first career plan of her life into action. She’d returned to the Sisters of Perpetual Mercy. She’d broken into the grounds undetected and hid herself away in the garden outside the inspector’s quarters. She’d lain in wait for two days before Father Viteri arrived, and when, a few hours later, he called a boy into his office for the kind of meeting that had driven her brother to his death, Caterina caught it on film. Every repulsive, horrible dimension of it.
From that moment on, she knew she had something of which she could never be deprived. Power. Father Donato Viteri was elevated to the rank of monsignor on his thirty-fifth birthday, and a few days later, a young woman he didn’t know from Eve had appeared in his office. She’d laid a series of photographs on his desk in silence. Within that silence the monsignor had come under her complete control, a control that remained as he rose through the ranks—becoming bishop, archbishop, cardinal, even Secretary of State. And through it all, a member and then leader of the Fraternitas Christi Salvatoris.
Deep breaths. Calm. Caterina forced herself back into the present and the new unknowns facing her. Of the possibilities emerging from news of a papal speech, almost all were good.
“All the financial preparations are in place?” she asked her assistant.
“I’m assured that the transfers have been managed in the manner that will have the most effect, once further discoveries are made.”
This was positive. Nothing spelled out conspiracy and fraud like cash. It often only took a few surreptitious transactions to make the innocent appear guilty. Caterina had destroyed enough of her competitors in the past in this manner.
Though some enemies she kept close. She’d never exposed Viteri, because she had realized early on that he was much better used than eliminated. His Fraternity in particular gave her opportunities for control within the Church. Bishops, priests and cardinals its membership might be, but these men were just as power-hungry as Caterina and just as little interested in the behavioral confines of an imposed morality. Get behind their white collars and they smoked and swore and dealt under the table with the best of them. They did whatever they perceived they had to do to get what they wanted. And as she’d used Viteri to find dirt on each of them, so she had gained what only the risk of damning exposure could ever truly ensure: their absolute obedience. It had developed into a working relationship that functioned well, and that she was happy to use until the moment came when she would destroy them all.
But at this moment they remained useful, though they’d provided only scant details about the newly announced press conference. Caterina felt confident in the knowledge that the pontiff wouldn’t be appearing to speak out against the miracles of the day—not after he’d been affected himself. The healed don’t usually lambast their healing. That meant there was a more limited number of potential avenues his messages might take.
Yet there were still reasons for concern. They needed time—time for the world to grow in its belief that the pontiff was standing in solid adoration of his guest, in affirmation of the miracles. It needed to be clear to everyone that he was a believer. That he had something at stake in what was disclosed. Only then could the culminating phases of their plan be unleashed.
But the Pope was planning to speak. To this degree, at least, the timing was out of their hands.
Caterina nearly smirked at the irony that, just at this moment, what was required of her was faith.