The Caravaggio Conspiracy (27 page)

Caravaggio stared hard into the eyes of his confessor. Then he spoke the names of Fra’ Luis de Fonseca, of the Knights of Malta, and Battista’s secretary, Father Ciro. The Monsignor nodded. ‘Is there anyone else, my son?’

‘No, Monsignor – none that I know of.’

‘And have you spoken of your fears to anyone else? Anyone at all?’

Caravaggio could hardly keep his eyes open. He was finding it hard to
concentrate
. ‘Prince Marzio Colonna,’ he said at last.

Marinello’s eyes narrowed. ‘No one else?’ he asked.

‘No, Monsignor,’ Caravaggio replied. ‘After all that happened, I decided that the Holy Father and his emissaries were the only ones I should trust.’

‘That was wise,’ Marinello said, motioning with his eyes to the hooded monk standing impassively three feet behind. ‘But now, my son, you are tired and raging with fever. It is time for you to leave us.’

Leave us
? What did he mean? Marinello turned away. Caravaggio, his heart pounding, struggled to get up. His hand went to his belt. Where was his dagger? But he was too late, as he had always known that one day he would be. He struggled onto his knees, sweat pouring down his forehead, and twisted round to identify the danger that he knew was there. The monk had produced a long, two-edged sword from beneath his habit and now advanced on him without a word. His blue, soulless eyes offered no hint of pity.

‘You!’ said Caravaggio.

The monk smiled and raised the broadsword above his shoulder. Then, with grunt of satisfaction, he brought it down. Caravaggio was reminded in his last moments of the men who had cut wheat in the estate outside his father’s house. He had watched in fascination as their scythes swung metrically through the corn, reducing it to stubble.

The blade struck. The artist’s severed head, like the head of Beatrice Cenci, like the head of Goliath, like the head of John the Baptist, fell to the floor, teeth bared, eyes staring, while his body slumped sideways.

The Monsignor knelt down and listened. For a second he thought he could hear a sigh emerge from Caravaggio’s open mouth. This interested him. Perhaps, as the doctors said, it was a last, involuntary gasp, or the attempt by a dying brain to express in extremis its ultimate despair. But might it not also have been the release of the infidel’s soul embarking on the first step of its road to hell? There could be no mercy for the unbeliever. Looking down at the disembodied head with a mixture of satisfaction and distaste, he touched his fingertips to his temples, lips and heart. ‘
Allahu Akbar
!’ he said quietly. 

O’Malley, aware that he was engaged in the most important quest of his life, was in the innermost chamber of the Vatican’s Secret Archives. The General Archive, first established in 1610 on the orders of Pope Paul V, was not, in fact, secret, merely restricted. But one room, separated from the rest, deep beneath the museum’s central courtyard, was the final storehouse of everything that the Church and the Curia wished to keep hidden from the world. Only his stature as Superior General of the Company of Jesus – in effect the Black Pope – granted him access to this most obscure repository. Here were no computers, no electronic records – only documents, yellow with age. O’Malley blew the dust off boxes whose labels were the stuff of history: Policy and Conduct in Respect of the Knights Templar; the Case of ‘Pope’ Joan; The Relationships of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia; The Trial and Execution for Heresy of Bruno Giordano; the Trial and Interrogation of Galileo; The Trial and Execution of the Cenci family; Pope Pius XI and Mussolini; Relations Between the Holy See and the Nazi Occupiers. Finally, hidden away on a bottom shelf, in a pouch made of leather or vellum: The Investigation of Cardinal Orazio Battista, 1610-1611.

O’Malley pulled the pouch towards him. With fevered fingers, he undid the string holding it shut, then reached inside and slowly drew out the contents. The top sheet, containing a list of those to whom the information was entrusted, came away from the papers beneath with a discernible snap. Battista’s early life and career were there: his upbringing in Lucca, his three years as a parish priest in Pisa, his time as a diplomat, taking him to Paris, London and … Constantinople. He had been awarded his red hat by Pope Gregory XIV, Niccolò Sfondrati, at the consistory held on 6 March 1591, as reward for a lengthy, and no doubt stressful, period as a leading prosecutor for the Inquisition. Created a cardinal priest in 1601 (a fact omitted by the Catholic Encyclopedia) he was soon after appointed Camerlengo. And that is where the story ended. What happened to him after that was not recorded – not even the time or place of his death. Whatever documents there may have been relating to the cardinal’s later life and career – including the mysterious investigation into his treason and apostasy – were gone.

O’Malley uttered a stifled curse. He couldn’t believe that he had got so close, only to fall at the final hurdle. But then he stood back and approached the problem from a new angle. He was a Jesuit after all, trained in logic and lateral thinking, and this was the greatest challenge of his life – the test of his convictions that would redeem his entire career. He turned to the personal archive of Pope Paul V and discovered, in reference to the disappearance of Caravaggio in July 1610, that Cardinal Ferdinando Gonzaga had been asked to conduct an urgent and discreet inquiry into matters raised by the late Prince Marzio Colonna concerning the Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church. Gonzaga, whose family down the centuries produced innumerable princes of the Church, would later resign his cardinalate after succeeding to the dukedom of Mantua and marrying his cousin, Caterina de Medici. But for several years he had been one of the Pope’s most most trusted confidants. Fascinating! O’Malley now turned to the file on Gonzaga himself, whose resignation and marriage had come under papal scrutiny. And there it was, buried in a single sentence. ‘In the autumn of 1610, His Eminence led the inquisition and conviction
in camera
of Cardinal Orazio Battista, charged with apostasy, high treason and other crimes against the Catholic Church and the Holy See.’

Mother of God! They were right. A second note, attached at a later date, recorded that on 2 January 1611 Gonzaga witnessed, on behalf of the Holy Father, the execution
intra mures
of Battista and the scattering of his ashes in the Tiber. No doubt it was said that he had succumbed to a sudden heart attack, or died of the plague while on some foreign mission. At any rate, beyond October 1610, all formal record of his existence in the Church hierarchy simply vanished. No Mass was offered. It was as if he had never been. No details were provided of the nature of the ‘apostasy’, but the pieces were fitting together. Liam had already determined that it was Bosani, decades before, who removed the files on Battista from the general library. If it could be shown that Bosani had also purged information from the top-secret secret papal archive, the coincidence would be too great for anyone to ignore. But how to prove it?

O’Malley turned next to the lay vice-prefect of the archive, Vittorio Stucci, aged seventy-six, who had presided over the underground vaults since 1975. A tall, thin man, stooped over from years of working in confined spaces, Stucci should have retired eleven years before, but was so much of a Vatican institution that it was decided he should remain ‘at God’s grace’. Did he remember anyone, years ago, back in the 1970s, taking a particular interest in Battista?

‘An awful man,’ Stucci began, licking his cracked lips as if to breath life into his dry words. ‘He saw evil in everyone. For years, Romans lived in fear of him. Parents would tell their children that if they weren’t good, the Camerlengo would come for them.’

The old man looked about him and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘It was even said of him that he was secretly a Muslim, in league with the Sublime Port. Can you believe it?’

‘I’m learning to believe something new almost every day,’ said O’Malley, whose pulse had begun to race. ‘But did anyone from our own time take an unusual interest in him? Someone in the Curia – a bishop perhaps?’

‘A
bishop
? Well, I suppose I could check.’

‘There’s nothing in the record. I’ve looked.’

Stucci smacked his lips. ‘I don’t mean those records, Father General, I mean my personal diary. I keep a list, you see, of everybody who steps into this room. Wouldn’t be much point in keeping a secret archive if people could just walk in and out willy-nilly. Your name is already on the record.’ He walked over to an ancient desk and drew out an old-fashioned ledger from its top drawer. ‘There,’ he said, opening the latest page. ‘Superior General O’Malley, arrived 10.07. Seeking
information
on Cardinal Orazio Battista, Camerlengo of the Roman Church 1601-1604.’

‘Aah! How reassuring. So what about thirty-five or forty years ago?’

Stucci squinted and pushed his thick spectacles back up his nose. ‘That’s a long time ago, Father General. I still had ambition then. I …’

‘Yes, yes, Signor Stucci. I understand. But I need to know who was inquiring into the life and times of Battista back in the 1970s?’ ‘A good question,’ the old man said. ‘I think you’d better go and have a coffee while I consider it. It could take some time.’

‘Please, Signor Stucci, it really is very important, and I am, after all’ (he drew himself up to his full height, almost knocking his head against the barrel vaulting of the ceiling), ‘Superior General of the Society of Jesus.’

Stucci, who sometimes entertained the Pope in his lair, was unimpressed by this uncharacteristic
braggadocio
. ‘Come back in half an hour, Father General,’ he said. ‘That’s the best I can do.’

O’Malley bowed to the inevitable and made his way upstairs and outside into the library courtyard. While strolling among the formally organized shrubs and pathways, he telephoned Dempsey. His nephew sounded better, which was a relief.

‘Listen closely to me, Liam. I was seriously worried about you. You’ve done enough. I don’t want you to involve yourself in this matter any further. Your father would never forgive me. Concentrate on making a full recovery. That’s the best thing you can do for me right now.’

‘What about Bosani?’

‘Maya was right about him. It’s worse that we could ever have

imagined.’

‘And Hukara? Anything more on him?’

O’Malley paused. ‘According to Aprea, there’s a real chance he’s in Rome. A contact in the Muslim community – a moderate, God help him, who’s taking his life in his hands – says he was in the central mosque less than a week ago.’

‘And Bosani?’

‘He was there, too – to attend an inter-faith meeting.’

‘It’s all adding up.’

‘Yes. But now you must leave Bosani to me and the Ispettore. This is my fight. You’ve done more than enough already.’

‘You and what army?’

‘I’m serious, Liam.’

‘So am I. I may not be a fully functioning member of the Catholic Church, but I don’t want to see Europe plunged into a meaningless war between crusaders and jihadis. And I don’t like strangers stabbing me in dark alleys.’

‘We’ll talk later,’ O’Malley said. ‘Meanwhile, try and get some rest.’

When he returned to the library and knocked on the door of the Secret Archive, Stucci was waiting for him with a look of triumph on his parchment-like features. ‘I’ve found what you were looking for,’ he said. He opened an ancient ledger with a marbled cover. ‘January 23, 1977: Bishop Lamberto Bosani – details of the life and career of Cardinal Orazio Battista, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church 1591–? Arrived 09.17, left 12.33.’

‘Why the question mark?’ O’Malley asked. 

‘Yes, that’s odd, isn’t it? It turns out there’s no official record of what happened to Battista after 1610. He just vanished. I could look into it if you like.’

‘No need. But would you be prepared to confirm what you have just told me, in a papal court, if one were to be convened – including the rumours that Battista was a spy for the Ottomans?’

‘Of course. My first duty is always to the Holy Father. Only don’t leave it too long. I’m afraid I’m not as young as I used to be.’

O’Malley thanked the librarian and turned to go.

‘Father General O’Malley,’ he heard Stucci say to himself as he inscribed a new entry in his ledger using an old-fashioned fountain pen. ‘Left 11.09.’

All but three of the cardinal electors had arrived in Rome. The exceptions, from Mozambique, China and Bolivia, were on their way. A palpable tension filled the air. Ripples from the disturbances outside the Regina Coeli prison were still making themselves felt, adding to the anti-Muslim sentiment whipped up by the death of the papal gardener and the apparent attempted assassination of the judge in Bologna. But in the office of the Camerlengo, a remarkable calm had descended. When Father Visco brought his master’s coffee that morning, he discovered, to his considerable relief, that everything was in order. It didn’t matter about the Father General and his nephew, Bosani said. They were too late. They were an
irritation
, nothing more. They could be dealt with later. In two days’ time, nothing they could say or do would make any difference. The world would have arrived at a new turning point in its history.

Bosani had waited many years for this moment. As a boy, growing up on his father’s vineyard above La Spezia, in the armpit of Italy, his Catholicism was entirely orthodox and wholly unremarkable. It had been learned at his mother’s knee and beaten into him at school. Had the local priest, Father Musetti, not taken note of his obvious intelligence and aptitude for learning, it was likely that he would never have entered the Church. More probably he would have become a teacher … or a gangster. In the event, it was by chance, while he was a seminarian in Genoa, that he decided to add spice to an all-too predictable curriculum by taking a course at the Interdepartmental Centre for Islamic Studies, in Bologna. It was three years later, on the basis of that experience, that he had been selected, with three others, to spend a year at Al-Azhar University. The Church, it was
reckoned
, needed experts in every field, and a sound knowledge of Islam would take him far. In that, at least, his sponsors had been proved correct. What they could never have anticipated, or imagined, was that the truth of Islam would hit him like a thunderbolt, changing his life forever and awakening in him a profound sense of his personal destiny.

He had expected to find Islam both intriguing and challenging. What he had not expected was that he would embrace it quickly and avidly as a natural extension of the Judeo-Christian story. His
aalim
, or teacher, from the Muslim Brotherhood, helped by introducing him to the Gospel of Barnabas, with its confirmation by a recognized Apostle of Muhammad as the true Messenger of God. After that, there had been no turning back. It was as if the Archangel Jebril had taken charge of his life.

Not that it had been easy. He was an old man now and the years since his conversion were made bearable only by his dedication to the cause, renewed each day in prayer, and by an unwavering discipline. In particular, he had had to wean himself off his powerful predilection for good wine. For a long time he had been a sleeper – waiting for the call. Conscious of the tragedy of his legendary
predecessor
, Cardinal Battista, he had at first tried to work
with
the Church in its dealing with Islam. It was only when John Paul I, just ten days into his office, announced his intention to reinstate the Patriarchate of Constantinople that he had taken drastic action. Such a development, aimed at fostering increased religious freedom in Turkey, could have had the disastrous effect of driving Ankara deeper into the embrace of the West. Battista would have been horrified. Worse, it would not even have been he who was given charge of the experiment. That role would have fallen to a
Jesuit
– the upstart Irishman O’Malley. He would not permit that. Poisoning Luciani, ostensibly in support of the P2 dissidents, had not been easy. The toxin had begun to take effect even before he left the papal apartment. There was time to see the light leave the pontiff’s eyes. But the action had strengthened him, purging him of the last vestiges of loyalty he owed to the Vatican and its false doctrines.

Another conclave and another election came and went. At first he had tried to bully and manipulate the Polish Pope, who knew little about the Curia’s Byzantine system of government and didn’t understand the potential of Islam. But Wojtyla was relentless and implacable, with a mind of his own and a will of iron. For the first ten years of his pontificate, he was obsessed with ending communism – a policy with which, as Fate would have it, the Muslim world concurred, albeit for its own reasons – and by the time the Pole was older and more malleable, ready to kiss the Qu’ran and visit the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, he was already a wasting asset. In terms of Catholicism’s relationship with Islam, the impact of his twenty-six years as pontiff was at best cosmetic. The opening of the central mosque in Rome was the highlight, but the faithful of Italy were still made to feel like second-class citizens, tolerated rather than embraced as equals. This had grated. Wojtyla may have been hailed as a ‘hero’ by moderates in the Muslim world; he was not a hero to Bosani.

Under Ratzinger, a formidable intellectual but also a traditionalist, raised among Nazis, things began promisingly enough. The new Pope, as Benedict XVI, told a French journalist from
Le Monde
that he was against Turkey joining the EU because Europe’s roots were fundamentally Christian. Next he downgraded the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, renamed by his predecessor, amid fears that the expansion of Islam into Europe could well become unstoppable. Finally, he delivered his notorious speech in Regensberg that caused many in Rome to hope that the days of Christian retreat might at last be at an end. Hiding beneath the sentiments of the fourteenth-century Byzantine emperor, Manuel II Palaiologos, he implied to his audience that what Muhammad had brought into the world was evil and inhuman, delivered at the point of a sword. Bosani
remembered
the intensity of the pleasure he experienced as Benedict’s words hit home. Fatwas were issued by the Markaz-ud-Dawa party in Pakistan, linked to Osama bin Laden, and by the Union of Islamic courts in Somalia. Cairo and Rabat recalled their ambassadors. Demonstrations and protests were held in almost every country in the world. In Iraq, churches were burned. In Somalia, a nun was shot dead. The Muslim Brotherhood said Ratzinger threatened world peace and had ignited the wrath of the entire Islamic world. For twenty-four hours it had felt as if, suddenly, everything was possible. Had the German only had the courage of his convictions, it could have been the turning point of which Bosani had dreamed. As it was, the pontiff retreated beneath a smokescreen of obfuscation. He restored the
independence
of the Muslim Office and, as a sign of his good faith, agreed to visit the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. From that moment on, if he spoke of Islam at all, it was in exaggerated terms of respect and affection.

The next Pope should have provided the perfect opportunity. An able enough scholar, but a weak man, his election had been secured against the wishes of a majority of cardinals. Bosani had released a series of complex, sometimes
contradictory
, lies and rumours to secure the victory, setting each faction against all of the others so that the atmosphere in the Sistine Chapel grew poisonous. During one crucial vote, he substituted five false ballot slips – as many as he dared – for five cast in support of two opposing liberal contenders. It was touch and go throughout. Towards the end, when his choice began to acquire the support of older cardinals from Europe and the United States, he had briefly believed that his life’s work was about to be achieved, only for the emergence of a last-minute ‘agreed’ candidate to dash his hopes. 

The worst part, looking back, was that the new pontiff, aware of the balancing act that had brought him to power, ended up so reluctant to say yes or no to anything, that he virtually brought the business of the Church to a halt. Bosani believed that in time he would have broken him to his will. His own appointment as Camerlengo was proof enough of that. But the Pope’s premature death – apparently accidental, though who ever knew for sure? – had reset the clocks to zero, forcing yet another conclave and one last opportunity for Bosani to act out his destiny.

Recalling the sequence of events, he couldn’t help sneering. If the Church was not so contemptible, it would be amusing. Yet he did not spare himself from reproach. Up until now, he had failed in his mission. The forces ranged against him had proved too great. Should he have allowed his own name to go forward for
election
? Could he have presided over the chaos to come? No. It was impossible. He had too many enemies, had offended too many liberals, who would delight in striking him down. No. His role was to prepare the way – to build up his faction within the Curia and exploit opportunities as they arose. It was not his fate to seize the prize for himself. Like Moses he would view the Promised Land, but could not enter it. Instead, he had prepared three candidates for the conclave, coaching each of them on the evils of Islam and the glory that would accrue to their names when they rescued the Church from disaster. All three men, two Italians and a Dutchman, were aggressively anti-Muslim in their sentiment; all three were distinctly
papabile
. Crucially, each was ready to support the others, moving behind whichever of them drew the most votes. At the same time, lesser cardinals, like Delacroix and Salgado, tired of the struggle, angling for positions in the Curia, were primed to act on his signal, throwing their weight, and their numbers, behind the most promising contender. Their reward would not be an eternity in paradise but lunch every Friday in the Hostaria dei Pesce. It was, of course, frustrating to have to work through lesser men in this way. But it made sense. The solace was that God was merciful. Everything that had gone before, Bosani now realized, was but a
preparation
for this moment. With Islam on the march across Europe, sure of its strength, knowing that Western materialism no longer had an answer to Muslims’ deeply held religious conviction, the time had come at last for him to stab the Church in its enfeebled heart.

‘Think of it, Cesare,’ he told his assistant. ‘A crusader pope, ready to denounce Islam and all its works. A world shocked by direct action as the faithful, from Andalucia to Bosnia, rise up to throw off their shackles. An intifada spreading like a fire across the continent. Turkey, its faith renewed as foretold in scripture, will join us. The whole Muslim world will be on the march, calling out with one voice that there is no God but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet. Our Arab brothers, led by Saudi Arabia, will cut off deliveries of oil; Tehran will announce its readiness to use the Islamic bomb, if not against Europe, then certainly against Israel. The EU, fearful and desperate, will demand the creation of a new Fortress Europe. But it will be too late. We will not only be at their gates, we will be within the walls assaulting the keep. In the end, Rome itself will fall and the faithful will applaud us. Has there ever been a prospect more glorious in the eyes of God?’

Visco, though a true believer, converted personally by Bosani, was, like his master, someone who needed daily affirmation of even his most deeply held
convictions
. ‘But how will it end, Your Eminence?’ he asked. ‘Tell me again how it ends.’

A messianic look suffused Bosani’s face as he responded. ‘You have read our Holy Qu’ran. You have read the Hadith. As Allah has willed it, so shall it come to pass. It will not be immediate. I will not live to see it, Cesare, but you surely will. Europe is weak. It is like a rotten fruit, ready to fall from the tree under its own weight. It believes in nothing any more. America, the Great Satan, will not
intervene
. It no longer has a stomach for the fight. The Europeans, led up a blind alley by the baying of the Vatican, will agree to divide the continent into Muslim and Christian spheres. Once more we will stand before Vienna. Only this time, when we knock, they will not dare to refuse us. The Balkans will fall to us, and Venice. And then, when the Catholics and their still more heretical brethren believe
themselves
at last to be safe in their shrunken world, we will descend on them in their complacency like a wolf on the fold.’

Visco’s eyes lit up. He spread his hands in rapture. ‘In preparation for the coming of the Dajjal and the return of Eesa, who will curse the wicked and receive the blessed into heaven. Allah be praised!’ He paused, dry-mouthed, and looked pleadingly at Bosani. ‘And, truly, it all begins in two days’ time?’

The Camerlengo bared his teeth. ‘Yes, my young friend. They will learn, as Luciani, my first Pope, learned on his deathbed, that it is impossible to build a bridge between truth and lies. There can be no compromise with the will of Allah. They will convert or they will pay the price. The caliphate is nearer than they think. And there is no longer anything that anyone can do to stop it.’