The Assassini (49 page)

Monsignor Sandanato stood at the window staring into the night but not seeing. He had left the cardinal’s office late, long after D’Ambrizzi had retired to his quarters. He’d come back to the apartment through the dripping night, wanting to sleep but afraid of what he might see once he closed his eyes. So instead he opened the bottle of Glenfiddich, filled his glass, and took up his place at the window.

He didn’t know how many times he’d replayed the conversation from the night Sister Elizabeth had come to D’Ambrizzi’s for dinner. But he couldn’t keep from going through it again. Her mind was so volatile, so questioning: it excited him, listening to her cut through the tangle of possibilities and construct a theory. A theory of the murders which Sister Valentine had “discovered,” a theory about the identity of the silver-haired priest, whom Elizabeth now believed was “Simon.” And there was her theory explaining the meaning of “the Pius Plot” Torricelli referred to … a plot engineered by Pius to revive the
assassini
for use in aid of the Nazis during their occupation of Paris.

It all made sense, of course, or she wouldn’t have thought it all the way through, as she clearly had. But when he’d asked her
why
 … why were people being
murdered now, why had Val been on the list and all the others Val had discovered, then she’d lost her confidence.
The election of the pope
 … What else could be worth the spilling of so much blood?

He poured himself another couple of fingers of scotch, sighed. He rubbed his eyes which were already badly bloodshot. Where the devil was it all going and where would it end? He wanted to go outside: somehow he felt safer in the street, among the tourists and the men in pursuit of girls and the constant flow of priests murmuring among themselves. But safer from what? The dark corners of his mind, he supposed.

He was also beginning to feel less at home within the walls of the Vatican itself as the problems—the murders, the fear, the indecision and helplessness and confusion—tightened like tentacles about the heart of the Church. And he had grown to hate his apartment, its smell of loneliness and struggle and regret. He was running out of places. He wished he could go away, retreat to one of the quiet old monasteries where, all that mattered was the old way and you knew what was going on and what it meant.…

He shook the idea out of his mind, like rattling a child’s toy. Later. Time for all that.

The telephone jarred him back to life.

He shuddered when he heard the voice.

Sister Elizabeth had been sitting up late working when Monsignor Sandanato called her and she’d said, sure, come on over, but she warned him it might not be for long. She was tired, she said, and couldn’t guarantee how long she’d last.

He wanted her company too much to be polite and tell her he knew it was late and she should go to bed. Now, sitting on the couch, watching her, how she’d curled herself in the chair, how she sipped from a glass of wine with her notebooks and file folders spread across the glass coffee table before her, he heard
Rigoletto
from the large speakers in the corners of the room. The doors to the terrace were thrown open and the rain spattered
on the metal furniture. The draperies moved in the breeze. Sister Elizabeth was wearing corduroy jeans and a heavy woolen sweater.

“So you were having a bad night,” she said sympathetically. “Well, I know the feeling. I’ve been having a lot of them myself lately. And you’ve been under a lot of pressure. They must be going crazy over there.” She nodded in the general direction of Vatican City. “Who’s in charge of murder investigations?” She smiled impishly.

“Guess,” he said.

“D’Ambrizzi?”

“He’s one of the faithful investigators. But it’s Indelicato—”

Elizabeth slapped her palm against her forehead. “Of course, what was I thinking of? This is his kind of
thing
!”

“There’s just so much frustration,” he said. “No one really knows what to do … or if anything even can be done. Not even Indelicato. But he’s the man they naturally turn to. The problem is that there’s no consensus on the size of the problem.” He frowned. “Don’t be taken in by the way D’Ambrizzi talks about it—he knows there’s something going on and he knows it’s got to be coming from within.”

“Well, the number one question must be—how will it affect the election of the new pope?”

“You’re ahead of yourself, Sister. His Holiness could last another year—”

“Or he could be gone tomorrow. Don’t kid me, my friend.”

“What can I say? There’s a growing fear that this has been a permissive pontiff, that he could have used more iron … there’s a sense of a boil breaking, that all this has come to a head as a result of liberal rot within the Church. Some are saying that matters are simply out of control and we need order restored—” He shrugged. “You can imagine.”

“Then it’s accepted fact that Val was right about all
those killings being part of some kind of plan. Why won’t D’Ambrizzi just admit it to me?”

“Come on, Sister, he’s from another generation. And you are a nun … he’d think I was insane, if not something much worse, to be talking all this over with you. You’re too much of a—” He fumbled, at a loss.

“How about ‘nosy bitch’?”

Taken by surprise, he gave her one of his rare laughs. “You’re too perceptive, that’s the word. You’re too smart and he knows you’re a reporter, remember.”

“What am I going to do? Print scandalous theories and accusations in the magazine? Or run to the
New York Times
? Come on, get serious!”

“And he’s worried about you. You are too perceptive and too persistent. So was Sister Valentine. He can’t forget what happened to her.”

“But what was she supposed to do? She discovers that mass murder is being done inside the Church—that devoted Catholics are being killed, that the
assassini
was alive in the Second World War and might still be alive—what’s she supposed to do? Forget it? Because it might prove inconvenient?”

“She ought to have come to us. To the cardinal. And told us … she should have left it to us and we would have taken steps. It was a Church matter, Sister, and she’d still be alive.” He’d been speaking with confidence but ended with a dying fall. “Anyway, that’s one view. D’Ambrizzi’s.”

“And yours?”

“I don’t know—”

“Oh, give us a break! All the paternalism is cute and cozy and horribly out-of-date. Women think and write and act and gosh, we’re just like real people. Val finds people getting slaughtered wholesale and she’s supposed to run tell the teacher! The idea makes me sick!”

“Well, Sister, she didn’t go to the police—isn’t that what your ‘concerned citizen’ should do? But not Sister Valentine—she decided she was going to find out what was happening … and why did she do that? Because she was a nun, because she was part of the Church—she
was not like people on the outside. Well, I don’t see how what she did and what she should have done—telling the teacher, as you put it, Sister—are so different. Either one tells the police and opens up the Church to some deeply troubling investigations … or one keeps it inside the Church. She naturally chose the latter … but she should have taken it to someone in power. Or the head of your order—she’d have known what to do.” Sandanato was moving forward to the edge of the seat. “I suppose I can see your point, but you’re missing the larger point—the Church is not the world. The world changes more quickly. What she did proves she knew the difference between
the
world and the Church … but if she’d followed something like the chain of command, she’d be alive and well and continuing her work.”

He stood up, ran his fingers through his rain-wet hair. His soaked raincoat lay across the back of a chair. He shook his head, threw up his hands in a gesture of his own confusion and frustration, didn’t trust himself to speak. He was simply afraid that if he began talking he wouldn’t be able to stop, that his fears and dreams would come tumbling out in a swirling cacophony, screeching and sobbing. She had a way of cutting through to the heart of things unexpectedly, even when she had no idea what she was doing. He needed time to think, but there didn’t seem to be any. How much could he dare tell her?

She watched him pacing, said, “Look, I’m not trying to bug you about all this. You’ve got your job and Val had hers and I’ve got mine. Everyone has to make his own decisions and take the consequences.”

“I know.” He was looking out at the rain falling on the Via Veneto, his back to her. “You’re being a willing friend. I’ve imposed on you tonight and you’re very kind to put up with me. As it happens, Sister, I have few friends. I have my work, my masters. I’m not used to dealing with friends—so I take advantage of you this way—”

“You and Ben Driskill seemed to hit it off well enough,” she said. “Have you had any word from him? I wish we knew—”

He shook his head. “No, no word. He’ll turn up.” He brushed Driskill away. “Don’t you see, Sister? My only friends—no, I am not a man with friends. I deal with Vatican people. You know it’s an authoritarian place, relationships prescribed by form. And—one must be honest about oneself—I am a solitary man. We priests, whatever we may appear to be on the outside, are solitary creatures in the deepest sense. It must be true of you nuns as well—”

“Really, I think not. For many nuns and priests, too, it seems a very collegial life. Ready-made friends, you might say—”

“For some perhaps.” He gave a brief Italian shrug.

“Priests have always struck me as an essentially gregarious lot, except for the complete assholes, of course.”

He laughed again at her profanity. “You’ve heard the old wisdom, we are so gregarious in public because we sleep alone.” He came back into the center of the room. He was looking into her lustrous, intelligent green eyes, returning his stare. “Like most old sayings, that one has survived because it’s true. We are different … and I find myself ill equipped to deal with some of what I’ve been feeling lately. And now I have to ask myself, why have I turned to you? You have no obligation to share my burdens, Sister, yet I come to you with them.…”

“I’m a sucker for a sob story, maybe?” She grinned at him. He was so intense all the time. Somebody needed to push his off button once in a while.

“I came to you knowing you’d listen to me.”

She nodded, her eyes wide, her face open to his needs. And her face was what did it. He began to talk, not worrying about the hour, not worrying about what she might think of him. He talked about the pope’s weakening condition, about the closeness of his own relationship with D’Ambrizzi, as well as D’Ambrizzi’s with Callistus. He talked about the murders and Driskill’s blind determination to leap into the fray and all the costs that might entail. He knew he was working himself into a fury of frustration, the way it was playing itself out, and
then he felt her hand on his arm and he looked at her as if he’d forgotten she was in the room, and she led him back to the couch, murmuring small comforts.

“You’re exhausted,” she said. “It’s breaking-point time. You’d better get some rest. You need it.”

He sat with his head in his hands, willing himself to go no further, to reveal nothing more. No more, not another word. She’d think he was mad if he kept talking. She brought him a glass of brandy which he gulped gratefully.

“Forgive me,” he said. “Please. You’re right, I’m overtired … worried. Forget all this.”

“Of course. It’s none of my business anyway.”

“But like a fool I’ve made it your business. You must try to forgive me.”

“Believe me, it’s all right.”

“The murders …” He grimaced behind his hand. “They’re coming from inside the Church. They
are
. No point in pretending anything else.” Why couldn’t he just let it go, get up, and slink away? But he looked at her and smelled her fresh, newly bathed scent, shampoo and powder and bath oil, and he didn’t leave. He sat quietly listening to her talk about Sister Valentine, about how close but how very different they’d been, how odd that now she, Elizabeth, had taken up Val’s work. She spoke about how sorry she was she’d left on bad terms with Ben Driskill, and at the sound of Driskill’s name Sandanato felt an internal cringing, a fear of what she might be feeling about Driskill, and he fought not to show his fear, envy, jealousy.

Later he said, “But the Church must do what is necessary to preserve itself. Is that right, Sister? Isn’t the greater good what matters? Is the long run the key to the story of the Church?”

She nodded thoughtfully. “The Church is good. That is a given, of course. Anything else and
our
lives are irrelevant, we—priests and nuns—have been tricked.… Therefore, the Church is good.”

“Then, if these killings are coming from within the Church … and they are … then the possibility exists
that the Church could be cleansing itself with these murders.
Possible
. It is possible, Sister, is it not?”

“Strictly logically,” she said coolly, “the Church could sanction such acts to preserve itself. Logically. In the abstract. But you have reduced the principle to an absurdity.”

“Have I? Are you sure?”

“In reality, in the world, it would be utterly monstrous …”

“But the Church is not the world—”

“But how would the killing of these people—of Val and Curtis Lockhardt!—how would that be cleansing the Church? The idea is diseased, you must agree. Monstrous.”

“Yes, yes, monstrous, of course … but … but I ask myself, if the murders come from within the Church, sanctioned by men who put the Church first—well, what if they are in that sense justified?” His eyes were on fire. He felt the sweat on his forehead, the constant fever that kept him going, searching for an answer.

Sister Elizabeth shook her head vigorously. “It’s not on, it’s just not defensible. Not murdering Sister Val. Not her … how can you even imagine such a thing?”

“Sister, I admit the questions are strangling me, choking me. I mean the possibility that the killings are a kind of purgation, one we cannot understand … but part of a greater good.”

“If I cannot understand it, then I say the hell with it!”