The Assassini (43 page)

He was fighting a constant battle against the armies of depression he had known all his life. He was losing. Everywhere he looked the darkness seemed to beckon. What he saw happening to the Church burned in his belly like a torturer’s poker. The shadows seemed to be closing in unless, somehow, the Church could be saved in time. He had seen the fear in the pope’s eyes, the confusion, the inability to take hold. Someone else would be pope soon.…

Sandanato opened his eyes, watched a neighborhood prostitute sidle up to a man in the street. She laughed, a harsh sound like glass breaking or a cat in heat, and linked her arm through the man’s, led him away to the stained sheets and the smells of sweat and dried semen and perfume like garbage. He remembered it, the whore he’d visited once, and he gulped at the scotch to burn away the memory.

He dribbled more scotch into the thick-lipped jar, stared at his reflection in the glass. He needed a shave. His mouth tasted like a toilet, and he felt as if none of the dinner had been properly digested.
Where was Driskill and what was he doing?
He slammed the chair back against the wall and stood up, paced the small room. The loneliness was overwhelming. He ought to have spent the
night in the Vatican. It was his only real home. His only life lay there, inside the Church.

He knew where his thoughts were taking him, but his resistance was paltry, a weak-willed thing. Out of his loneliness and frustration, he came to think of Sister Elizabeth.

He wasn’t entirely sure why and didn’t suppose it really mattered.

But he was sure he had never known such a woman before. He could identify in her appeal the quality of her mind, the freshness of her candor, her strength. She appealed as a human being, as a representative of the Church, on so many levels. He sat alone, wanting to be with her, in some other room without the pain and longing and frustration that seemed to festoon these four walls like remnants of a madman’s delirium.

He wanted to hear her talk, to argue with her, to match wits. He sensed that rarest phenomenon, a true meeting of minds. He knew she thought the way he did, that the Church must always come first, that she had the same strength of inner commitment that he did.

He was sure Sister Valentine had been Lockhardt’s mistress. Cardinal D’Ambrizzi had left him in no doubt of that. But what about Sister Elizabeth? He knew he was being irrational, but he had managed to drive himself half mad with thoughts of Ben Driskill and Sister Elizabeth. There was not a single piece of evidence: it was all in his head and he knew it. But he’d seen them together, he’d watched them.… For a moment he’d been delighted when Driskill had related the unpleasantness of their parting. It had momentarily put his mind at ease. And then he’d begun to see how Driskill was taking it, how badly it had hurt him, how angry he’d become. It was the reaction of a man who cared and it reminded Sandanato of the looks he’d seen pass between them.

It was evil the way it tormented him. It grew in him like a malignancy. Could anything have happened between them? Driskill had told him how they met before, how much she and Val had liked, loved, each other.…
Could she take her vows so lightly, could she have done with Driskill what Val had done with Lockhardt?

Christ, he hated himself for even thinking it! It was so absurd. Val was murdered, Elizabeth flew to Princeton, and he was suggesting that they immediately fell into bed with each other! An adolescent fantasy, a paroxysm of fear from a lonely man who was a priest … and who had fallen into a mad infatuation with a nun who hardly knew he existed! What a classic performance, the behavior of a dunce—he’d seen it before in priests he held in utter, total contempt.

She could set his mind at ease. It would be so simple. But he could never ask. He wanted so badly to see her, to learn that she was true to all that gave her life—his life—its meaning. He wanted to trust her, to join with her. He needed her to help him climb out of the dungeon of his dark solitude.

But was she worthy?

The very question was hateful, but he couldn’t deny it.

Finally, with his glass drained, he could restrain himself no longer.

He picked up the telephone, dialed her number, waited while it rang and rang and rang.…

Father Artie Dunn stood at his study window staring down at the top of Carnegie Hall and Fifty-seventh Street and Central Park South slumbering under a gray morning fog. The trees in the park were leafless and the lakes looked gray, and every so often brown and gray ducks would take off or land and float toward the reeds. He sighed, put down his binoculars, and poured himself another cup of coffee from the thermos on his desk. He’d dozed off for only three hours and he yawned mightily. The desk and coffee table were cluttered with pieces of paper full of his scrawl. Plotting the “Driskill affair.” The family was everywhere. Everywhere! What an extraordinary bunch!

The whole
business
was extraordinary, amazing: it far surpassed any novel he’d written. He’d never have
gotten away with it, that was the bottom line. For instance, there was this wild Gothic story Sister Mary Angelina had told him, this little old nun with the big eyes, safely tucked away in her convent, the last stop for Sister Mary Angelina. She’d poured out this story so calmly—more or less calmly, anyway—that she’d been sitting on for nearly half a century. After hearing her out he’d thanked her and what the hell else could he say? A bit of a conversation stopper, not your everyday item of family reminiscence. For one thing, he didn’t know whether or not to believe her. She seemed perfectly sane, but you never knew. In his experience there weren’t a great many wholly sane people who could have kept such a secret for so long a time and then have trotted it out at the end like a prize pet. He hadn’t known what to think, so he’d thanked her and stopped off in Princeton at the Nassau Inn for a burger, the place where it had all started that foul night almost a month before. He decided he needed some kind of confirmation of her story. Which was going to be difficult since Mary Driskill was long dead, Father Governeau was longer dead, and he couldn’t quite picture himself toddling into Hugh Driskill’s hospital room and running through Sister Mary Angelina’s trip down memory lane.

So, how could he dig up a second opinion? There had to be a way.

When he got back to New York it was dark and cold and he sat down and began trying to factor Father Governeau’s death into the mass of plot he’d worked out. It was an unholy mess, it needed weeding, but he didn’t know where to start. He longed for the order and control of one of his books.

He’d eventually tottered off to bed and slept a dreamless sleep, awakening three hours later at seven o’clock when the timer turned on the
Today
show. The NBC correspondent in Rome was reporting on two Vatican stories: the continuing scandal at the bank which seemed to be resulting in a rash of suicides and, almost as an afterthought, the rumor that Pope Callistus IV might be in ill health since his public appearances, which had
decreased markedly during the summer, had come to a complete halt during the past month. The official story—a stubborn upper respiratory infection—seemed to provoke a jaundiced response from the NBC man. Dunn groaned sleepily but couldn’t help grinning. He enjoyed the prospect of the Roman curia having to hotfoot it around the land mines and start dealing with real life. It was surprising that they’d kept the lid on so long.

Once he’d had his coffee he nudged his problems around with a freshly activated collection of brain cells. And he came up with at least one answer. He needed someone to confirm Sister Mary Angelina’s story. The name came to him.

Drew Summerhays. If he didn’t know the truth, then no one was going to. He was Hugh Driskill’s mentor, adviser, friend.

Dunn got the number of Bascomb, Lufkin, and Summerhays and spoke with the great man’s secretary. No, he wouldn’t be in today but tomorrow at two o’clock would be fine. Dunn agreed.

Making the call, he noticed for the first time that he’d been so preoccupied the previous evening he’d ignored the messages waiting on his answering machine. The only one that mattered to him that morning was one that had come in from Peaches O’Neale in New Pru two nights before. There were two follow-ups during the day when Dunn had been off visiting the convent near Trenton. Peaches was growing exasperated by the conclusion of the third call, so Dunn wasted no time in calling the St. Mary’s parish house.

Peaches made it to The Ginger Man, a restaurant across the busy intersection from Lincoln Center, for a one o’clock lunch. Father Dunn was sitting at a table in the glassed-in sidewalk café sipping a dry martini when Peaches came in from the cold rain that had blown in across the Hudson. Rain was slapping at the windows like an angry housewife who’s caught up with her bastard of a husband at long last. It bounced on the sidewalk, puddled. Peaches came in shaking his raincoat and sniffling, red-nosed.

“There is,” Dunn said, leaning back, “a sense of urgency about you, young Peaches.”

“Ha! An understatement if ever I’ve heard one. You ought to pick up your messages more often. I’ve been going crazy.” He ordered a Rob Roy and opened the rain-spattered black briefcase on his lap. His face wasn’t quite so boyish. He had a cold and looked every day of his age for the first time since Dunn had known him. “Artie,” he said, “hold on to your hat. I think we’ve got something here but I’m damned if I know what. Since you try so steadfastly to give the impression that you are truly wise, here’s your chance to prove it. Take a look at this.”

He handed the manila envelope with its remnants of electrician’s tape across the table to Father Dunn, who carefully opened it and slid the handwritten manuscript out.

The Facts in the Matter of Simon Verginius
.

“By none other than one Giacomo D’Ambrizzi.” Peaches O’Neale smiled. “I hereby officially make it your problem.” He was looking better already.

Eleven hours later the New York Giants and the Philadelphia Eagles were entering the fourth quarter, the midnight quarter, of a football game conducted in a soggy swamp of half-frozen mud. Peaches was slumped wearily before the television set in Father Dunn’s study. Perhaps, he thought, hell is an endless football game played in a mud where you can’t tell which team is which and nobody knows the score and nobody cares anymore anyway. He balefully regarded the remains of a pizza, the empty cans of Diet Coke.

Dunn looked up from the manuscript and grinned at Peaches. He tapped the manuscript. “This would make a helluva movie.”

“Sure, sure. What do you make of it? You’ve read it enough times to memorize it—”

“I was memorizing it, in a way. Tomorrow morning I want you to put this thing in your little black briefcase and take it back to New Pru and put it where you found it. If this thing were to start floating around—well, perish
the thought, laddie.” He pointed to his forehead. “I’ve got all I need up here.”

“So, who was this Simon Verginius? And Archduke? All these code names? Who were they?”

“I don’t know, and that’s the truth. But I’m going to find out, one way or another. D’Ambrizzi was sure as the devil close to this Simon and all the rest of them.”

He made a plane reservation for the following evening, first-class, to Paris.

There was one man he had to find.

Erich Kessler.

Sister Elizabeth was working late, although magazine work had nothing to do with what was really on her mind. Word of the pope’s illness, which had been privately known throughout the Roman press corps, was beginning to dribble out, first by way of Roman newspapers and then on television. It could only mean that the disease, or diseases, was not responding to treatment. Things were bad enough that a signal had been passed from somewhere within the curia: it was now time to begin to prepare the world for the death of Callistus IV, whenever it actually came to pass.

She was looking once again at her notes on D’Ambrizzi and Indelicato, trying to put her finger on the prime dark horse who would join them as the favorites, when Sister Bernadine came bustling in, closed the door, and let her facade collapse. She threw herself down on the couch and blew out a long sigh. She’d just finished a major struggle with the printer and the color separator and was worn out from the constant arguing.

“I’ve gotten together the next installment of your hit-list bios.” She leaned forward and pushed the folder across the desk toward Elizabeth.

She opened it and leafed through the sheets. “Anything of special interest?” Her eyes flicked through the material, looking for something, but she didn’t know what.

“They’re all pretty much of an age—”

“We knew that.”

“They were all Catholics.”

“We knew that, too, Sister.”

“They were all murdered—”

“Come on, Sister! Tell me something I don’t know!”

“And,” Sister Bernadine said with a smile, “they were all in Paris during the war.”

Elizabeth’s eyes clicked open like a cartoon character’s, and she blinked several times at her colleague.

“Ahhh … now, that’s something I did not know, Sister. Anything about Kessler?”

Sister Bernadine shook her head. “Talk about a mystery man!”

Brother Jean-Pierre had come to the village not far from the Hendaye border-crossing with Spain during the summer of 1945. Those were confused days in France, in both cities and the countryside, and he’d taken advantage of the confusion that came with the arrival of the postwar world to leave Paris and everything that had gone on there. On foot he’d come all the way to the coast of Brittany, then worked his way down that rocky edge of France and come to rest, where he’d remained ever since. Considering what might have befallen him as a result of a very strenuous war, he felt fortunate. He had made himself useful as the handyman for the priest at the threadbare country church. He would blush when they called him by his title, sexton. He tended to the bell, to the polishing and repairing, all the jobs that made him indispensable. And for nearly forty years he had passed largely unnoticed, which wasn’t easy when you thought of how he looked.