The Assassini (75 page)

“What man? What are you talking about?” He reached across the desk and took her hand. “Sister, forgive me—I’m acting like a madman—but you’ve got to tell me the truth now. We’re almost at the end of this terrible thing. We’re going to cleanse the Church, Sister, and we’re going to do it now. But you must tell me about the man in Avignon.
Please
.” He squeezed her hand, encouraging her.

She felt a sigh escape her, as if she were expelling an awful burden, and told him the story of the trip to see Kessler/Calder. When she reported his assertion that Simon Verginius was in fact D’Ambrizzi, she looked at Sandanato, waiting for the explosion, the denial.

But it didn’t come. Sandanato’s shoulders slumped. He stood up, pacing the room, hands in his pockets, shaking his head.

“Sister, you and Driskill have got to get out of this thing now. Listen to me. You’re not really in it, you’re not
players
, you’re bystanders, and I don’t want you to
be the ones who get hit by the runaway truck. Do you understand me?”

“No. I understand almost nothing at this point. Not you, not Driskill, none of you. But I can’t believe that Cardinal D’Ambrizzi is guilty of—”

“Promise me you’ll stay out of this. Please!”

“I’ll be damned if I will—who gave you all this authority all of a sudden? And why aren’t you blowing your top about Kessler’s story?”

“All right,” he said, making theatrical calming gestures, controlling himself by an exercise of extreme will. “I’m not blowing my top because Kessler’s story may be true. D’Ambrizzi may have been Simon. Yes.”

“What are you saying? Is he Simon now? That’s what matters—Pietro, you love this man—you are closer to him than anyone else on earth—”

“We’re not talking about personal relationships, Sister. We’ve gone way beyond that. We’re talking about the future of the Church … we’re talking about the man who may be pope. Now we’re very close to pinning this all down. The murders Sister Valentine tied together, her murder, the attack on you—”

“We? Who’s we?”

“Cardinal Indelicato and I! Yes, just believe me. His Eminence and I have been working together to get at the truth—”

“You and
Indelicato
? My God, they’re sworn blood enemies! They hate each other. What’s going on? Since when are you and Indelicato together?” Her mind was reeling. One of the fixtures of the Church she knew was the pairing of Sandanato and his master, D’Ambrizzi. What had happened?

“Since … since I realized that D’Ambrizzi was leading the Church astray. Since I realized that he was doing nothing to carry out the Holy Father’s wishes on the question of Sister Valentine’s killer, the killer of all the others. D’Ambrizzi was in fact obscuring the truth, confusing the issue.… Because he—he himself—was behind it all. Indelicato and I both saw what he was doing to Callistus, isolating him, lecturing him, leading him because Callistus no longer has the strength to make his
own way. We saw D’Ambrizzi’s hidden agenda … and it terrified us.” He looked at her, his face an agonized mask.

“But when? How long ago?”

“It doesn’t matter, Sister. What matters is that you must realize that it hasn’t been easy for me. You know he’s been like a father to me … but the Church must come first. You and I, we agree on that. I have always known that I would have to tell you the truth sooner or later. That’s why I tried to talk to you about the need to cleanse the Church … and how good might come from evil. There’s no time to thrash it all out now, Sister. No time.” The dim light threw his face into dark relief, the cheeks and eyes hollowed out and black. The spirit of agony, the martyr, willing to die for his Church right or wrong. He was drawn to the breaking point.

She was scrambling to assimilate what he was saying. Trying to reinvent the world on the spur of the moment. D’Ambrizzi had for so long been the one certainty in the Church, the one unfailing beacon of rationality, common sense, decency: the man who had it all in perspective. Saint Jack, the man who should have been pope.

“Kessler was right,” she said softly. “Is that what you’re telling me? That everything Ben said is right?”

“I have no idea what Driskill said, but I want you to stay away from him and Father Dunn. Driskill is perfectly capable of taking care of himself—”

“I thought you said he and I had to get out of this!”

“I don’t care what happens to Driskill, Sister! It’s you I’m—”

“I can’t take care of myself? Is that it?”

He ignored her sudden petulance. “You have to deal with what’s going on here. There’s no point in our arguing.
You
are a terrible threat to D’Ambrizzi’s plan. He’ll remove you without thinking twice if you keep after him … you may still believe in him, but what you’re actually doing, what you’ve been doing all these weeks-it can destroy him!”

“This is pretty hard to buy,” she said.

“Think how it must have seemed to me.”

“If you’re right, what’s his agenda? What’s happening?”

Sandanato fished a cigarette from his coat pocket and lit it, the smoke swirling toward the light on her desk. She didn’t want a cigarette anymore. He coughed, flicked a shred of tobacco from his tongue.

“D’Ambrizzi,” he said, squinting at her, “is set to take over this entire Church … starting with the heart. He has centralized his power, he has a solid cadre of support among the cardinals and in the press, he has American money behind him, he has one foot solidly in the material and political world, the other in the Vatican. The press loves him, Sister … I love him, as do you, as did Val … but the man we love and trust has used us to further his own plans. He is the only man the Holy Father will listen to anymore. He has complete control over Callistus, over his mind, over access to him. He is arranging for the Holy Father to speak with enough cardinals to press D’Ambrizzi as his own personal choice as successor—Cardinal D’Ambrizzi intends to be pope and he has arranged to hide his past forever. He must be stopped, Sister!”

“And you and Indelicato can stop him,” she said.

“If anyone can.”

“Then you and Driskill are allies,” she said, trying to see it all whole.

“No, no. Don’t you see? Dunn has complete control over Driskill! He has had from the beginning. Dunn is a subtle man, a manipulator—”

“But what’s wrong with that? Dunn is—”

“What’s wrong with that? Elizabeth, Dunn is D’Ambrizzi’s man! Don’t you see? That’s why Dunn has been in on this from day one in Princeton … he was with Driskill that night, he was the first to find Driskill in the family chapel with his dead sister. Ben Driskill never had a chance to react to Val’s murder without Dunn at his side, guiding him, comforting him.” He coughed again on the smoke, moving past her to look into the street from her office window. “Dunn must have known that Sister Val had to die … she was too close to the truth about D’Ambrizzi.… She had connected him to the
Nazis in the past and she knew the past had to be wiped clean. And D’Ambrizzi wanted Dunn there to see Driskill through it—and to make sure the job had been properly done.”

“But they tried to kill Ben when you two were ice skating—”

“Ben had convinced Dunn that he was going after Val’s past, he was going to try to reconstruct what had led to her murder.…”

The words kept coming, one enormity after another, like time bombs triggered long ago and exploding now in the depths of her psyche. The Church was being blown apart. Dunn was a villain, D’Ambrizzi was a villain, the Holy Father was D’Ambrizzi’s captive … all in the name of D’Ambrizzi being elected pope. Quite a journey, from
assassini
to the papacy, forty years.

Sandanato wanted her to come with him, he’d take her to the Order, where she should stay until it was all over. But she shook him off. He persisted and her anger and frustration bubbled over again, she flailed at him with words. It was all insane, you couldn’t possibly keep track of any of it … and he’d tried to explain it all rationally, calmly. It was all D’Ambrizzi, all his own brilliant, perverted conception. The pope was terminally ill; the Church needed to be moved even further into the mainstream secular world and he was the master, the expert. As pope he could see the Church into the future as a world power. But there were men alive, and a woman, two women eventually, who knew too much about his past, what he’d had to do with the Nazis and the
assassini …
so he had begun to clear the obstacles away. It wasn’t difficult to comprehend if you looked at it that way, the right way.

She sent Sandanato away and he left grudgingly, warning her to stay away from Driskill and Dunn and D’Ambrizzi until it was over.

Driskill. Alone, she could barely think of forming the sound of his name. Nothing in her life had ever gone so bleakly, desperately wrong. She was wrung out, all the options closed off when it came to Driskill. Hopeless.

An hour later she left the office and was struck by the
cold wind of late November. It was dark and quiet in the street of shuttered offices. She set off briskly, but by the time she’d reached the corner a gleaming black Mercedes had pulled alongside her.

A priest in a black raincoat, his white notch of collar peeking out, stepped out of the front passenger side.

“Sister Elizabeth?”

“Yes?”

“The Holy Father has sent his car for you. Please.” He swung the back door open.

“
The Holy Father?
”

“Please, Sister. Time is very short.”

He took her elbow and she went into the black hole of the backseat. She was alone. The car pulled away.

“The Vatican is back the other way. Can you explain this, Father?”

He turned his face and nodded solemnly. “I’m sorry, but we have another stop to make, Sister.”

“Where?”

“Trastevere, Sister,” he said as they gathered speed, staying on back streets which were dark and empty, heading toward the Tiber.

The driver honked and a flurry of cats was caught in his headlights, dashing in a frenzy for safety.

I
was still trying to figure out why I was there when they brought Sister Elizabeth into the large, roughly finished room. It was chilly and dusty and was mostly empty but for Dunn, D’Ambrizzi, and me. And a desk and some chairs haphazardly arranged around a long, scarred table. Nobody had been saying much, and nothing helpful.

She was accompanied by a priest who ushered her in and left, closing the door. She was wearing her belted trench coat, a bag slung over her shoulder. She looked apprehensively at us, started to say something, but stopped dead when she saw D’Ambrizzi. He crossed the cement floor, smiling, looking up at her, guiding her to the table. She hung back a moment but he was irresistible.

“Please, sit down,” he said, looking so unlike himself in the gray pinstripe. Everything about him seemed to have changed. His posture—which normally found him rocking back slightly on his heels with his hands clasped in an avuncular manner across his broad girth—had an indecisive quality, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with his feet and hands. It made him seem innocent and unsure, utterly disarming. A smile flitted across Father Dunn’s face when he caught my eye. You bastard, I thought.

“I am prostrate, my friends,” D’Ambrizzi said, “at having brought you here so rudely, without warning, without explanation. But time is short and you will discover my motives. These, I need hardly remind you,
are—what?—unusual times. Calling for, at the very least, unusual measures. Please accept my deepest apologies.” He stumped across the room once we’d all seated ourselves at the table and scraped the chair behind the desk across the rough cement. He seemed unaccustomed to being without his attendant. Sandanato was nowhere to be seen. “And you must further forgive me if I dominate these proceedings. I have much to say to you. I will try to anticipate your questions … as you understand, my time is unhappily limited. And there is so much to cover.” He consulted a wristwatch self-consciously, like an actor with an unfamiliar prop. Sandanato was doubtless his customary timekeeper. He leaned against the back of the chair, staring down at the empty desktop. “All right. We begin.

“Father Dunn is a dear friend of mine, more so than you ever imagined. He has briefed me on your activities, Benjamin. Egypt, Paris, Ireland, Avignon. He has told me of the manuscript that was found in New Prudence. I know about your belief that August Horstmann is the killer. And, of course, he told me how Erich Kessler explained that I am this Simon Verginius who has played such an important part in the unfolding of this story. Yes, I believe I am quite well briefed.

“Now, I must tell you, I believe there are certain explanations you deserve. Why do I say
deserve
? Well, Benjamin, you deserve to know the truth because your sister is dead. And you, Sister, because you have nearly been murdered yourself. You both deserve the truth because of the determination you have shown,
foolish
determination, determination to a point near madness—all to discover the truth of events so deeply buried beneath the rubble and dust of time. Frankly, I wouldn’t have believed such detective work quite possible in the circumstances. But you have persevered.” He shook his head in mock sorrow, the banana nose dipping toward his chin, like Punch. “Making the riddles far more difficult for me to solve, making it more difficult for me to put an end to the killing, and in the words of my faithful Sandanato, ‘save the Church.’ ”

He paused, as if looking for some answer that might
satisfy us all, then gave up. He took a labored, raspy breath and lowered his bulk onto the spindly chair.

“Yes,” he said from deep in the cavernous chest, “I was Simon Verginius. It was I who was sent by Pope Pius to Paris to report to Torricelli, to organize a group of guerrilla fighters to protect the Church’s interests—to accommodate the Nazis, gain their trust and support, and acquire a share of treasure for the Church. It was no easy task, let me tell you, with men like Goering and Goebbels after everything for themselves. In any case, it was an ungodly, unholy task, I admit it, but you must try to understand the weight, the power of an order given personally by Pope Pius—the mission was the darkest secret possible. He told me that … he told me he was entrusting me with a job crucial to the survival of the Church. You—you truly cannot imagine the weight of that man’s personality, his nature, like a laser … and as it happened he’d chosen a man capable of carrying out his orders. How it pains me to say it! But I was by nature a pragmatist and a student of history. History, you see, is not a very pretty place. History—if you want to survive a while—is the dwelling place of the pragmatic. Home of the secular Church. Well, I was a secularist as well. Not much of a priest, you say. Perhaps, perhaps not. But I was the man for the job. Whatever would benefit the Church, I was willing to do.