The Caravaggio Conspiracy (33 page)

O’Malley at this time was in the middle of St Peter’s Square talking to Aprea, Studer and the divisional commander of the Roman police. The crowds had been pushed back and urged to get as far from the square as possible. The body of the suicide bomber had been taken away, to a chorus of jeers from onlookers. Franco had melted away. Dempsey was being treated for delayed shock by paramedics.

Maya, finding her path out of the Swiss Guard barracks blocked by police, had found a back way into the square that ran between the Apostolic Palace and the Sistine Chapel. She knew better than to approach the conclave, but hurried along to a side gate that she knew would be guarded by one of her father’s halbardiers.

The young man recognized her at once. He was from the same canton.

‘I need to speak with my father,’ she told him through the grill. ‘Please let me through.’

The soldier, in his blue, everyday uniform, shook his head. ‘This is a closed area. But in any case, the colonel isn’t here. He’s over there.’ He pointed to a huddle in the middle of the square.

Maya thanked him and hurried on. What she failed to see was a figure in scarlet arriving at the gate she had just left.

Bosani waved a hand at the young pikeman. ‘Let me pass,’ he said.

Recognizing the Camerlengo, the soldier hesitated, then reluctantly barred his path. ‘I am sorry, Your Eminence,’ he began, ‘but Colonel Studer has given us strict orders to admit no one and to allow no one to leave until a new pope is elected.’

‘Get out of my way!’

‘It is the law. You must return to the conclave.’

For a moment, Bosani simply stared. Then, without warning, he shoved the young guardsman out of his path and sped past him into the square.

Maya, desperate to find out what had happened to Liam, had almost reached the huddle in the square when her father, alerted by a sixth sense, or perhaps a flash of scarlet, spun round.

‘Maya!’ he shouted in Schwitzerdeutsch. ‘Behind you!’

The warning came too late. Bosani had caught up with her, and as she turned she was astonished to see the grinning cardinal, his teeth bared, encircling her neck with a silk-clad arm. 

It was an ecastatic moment for Bosani. Maya Studer, the daughter of the commandant of the Swiss Guard … the little whore who had thrown in her lot with O’Malley and his accursed nephew. Yes. She would do. She would do very well. In some ways, her death would be even more symbolic than that of the Father General. A good Swiss Catholic girl, of high rank, whose father had dared to thwart his plans and was sworn to protect the Pope. The entire Christian world would be outraged.

On the edge of the square, news cameras were running. The international media was all around. Without intermediaries, with himself as the messenger, he would proclaim the coming triumph of Islam. Having delivered his message, he would kill the girl, slitting her throat with Battista’s dagger. They would shoot him. Oh yes. He would die at her side. But while her soul went to hell, his would soar to heaven, where Muhammad – peace be upon Him – would be waiting.

Days before, reasoning that if everything went wrong he would not end up entirely defenceless in the face of his enemies, Bosani had concealed his predecessor’s richly decorated knife beneath a ledge in his place in the Sistine Chapel. Now he pressed the edge of the curved blade, inscribed with lines from the Qu’ran, against Maya’s throat. She tried to scream, but couldn’t. His arm was too tight about her neck. Her eyes pleaded with him, begging him for mercy. But none would come and she knew it. She waited for death, praying that it would be quick.

‘Allahu Akhbar!’ Bosani cried out, addressing his words to the cameras. ‘God is great! Europe has lived too long in sin. Soon the unstoppable forces of Islam will be loosed upon you and you will have the choice either to live as Muslims or die as slaves. No pope can save you. No army can rescue you from your fate.’ He glared at O’Malley. ‘The death of this Christian whore will only the first of many. I go now to glory. The triumph of Is …’

At that moment, a single shot rang out and Bosani, a look of shock and
disbelief
in his eyes, fell backwards. From the side of his head, just above his left ear, a wound had opened up that spewed blood all down his robes and onto the
flagstones
. The dagger fell onto the cobbles, its point hitting the ground so that the blade shattered into two pieces. This was not …
fair
. He cursed his fate. He looked to the heavens for some sign that the gates of paradise were opening, but saw nothing. A final, despairing gurgle emerged from his mouth as his brain died, and then he lay still.

From the edge of the huddle, next to the ambulance where he had been receiving treatment, Dempsey began to walk forward, a police pistol held rigid between his two outstretched hands.

No one tried to stop him. Only when Maya, shaking with fear, managed to turn towards him, raising her arms, did he drop the gun. Then the two of them began to run. They didn’t stop until they arrived in each other’s arms. As they embraced, with tears running down their cheeks, white smoke rose from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.

The new Pope, the 267th successor of St Peter, had just announced his regnal name, to the joy of the anxious crowd still gathered in St Peter’s Square. An experienced administrator and diplomat, doctrinally conservative but socially progressive, he promised in his
Urbi et Orbi
address to engage the Muslim world in ‘
constructive
dialogue’. There was no talk of war or revenge. For a start, he said, on whom would Christians be revenging themselves? No ‘outsider’ was party to the plot; all involved had been born and raised as Catholics. Instead, the new pontiff vowed to tackle the central issue of faith in the Church and the ‘absolute imperative to live in harmony with our fellow citizens of all faiths and none’.

Most Muslim leaders, bar the usual suspects, welcomed the choice and deplored the attempted bomb attack, which they insisted was a sin against Islam, having no connection with anyone beyond the Vatican. They called on the Church to renew its dialogue with Islam and to speak out in favour of greater integration by Muslims into the greater European society. Putting their best face on a bad
business
, they looked forward to a new era, though not one without its tribulations.

Only four days after the conclave did it emerge from an anonymous article in
Il Messaggero
that the front runner at the time of Studer’s intervention was Cardinal Pietro Albonetti, a hardliner, born near the airport at Fiumicino, who was close to both Bosani and Von Stiegel, and was an acknowledged anti-Muslim bigot. Few at the outset considered Albonetti papabile, let alone the favourite, but after three failed ballots, each engineered by Bosani and his cohorts, his candidacy was
gathering
momentum. Only after the dramatic events in St Peter’s Square, followed by the personal intervention of Colonel Studer, did a new search begin, with the
nomination
of the successful candidate by Cardinal McCarthy, the Archbishop of Dublin.

O’Malley and his nephew were sitting in the Jesuit’s office in the Borgo Santo Spirito. ‘You realize, of course,’ Dempsey said, ‘that Albonetti was Peter the Roman.’

‘I suppose so,’ O’Malley conceded, reluctantly.

‘The Antichrist.’

‘If that’s what you believe.’

‘You still don’t give the idea any credence, then? Even after all that’s happened?’

O’Malley clasped his hands in front of him. ‘I’ll give you this much. Years ago, when John Paul I died – or was murdered – it was noted that his pontificate
corresponded
almost exactly with the moon’s monthly cycle. Believers in the
prophecies
of Malachy insisted this was why he was described as
de medietate lunae
– the crescent moon. But I always saw it another way. The crescent moon is the symbol of Islam …’

‘… and Luciani was one of the first to foresee the crisis that was building between Christians and Muslims.’

‘Exactly.’

Dempsey looked lost in thought. He twisted round in his chair and stared out the window towards the dome of St Peter’s. ‘When you come down to it,’ he said at last, ‘the Antichrist and the Dajjal are pretty much one and the same.’

‘I don’t deny it.’

‘Mirror images of the same grotesque prophecy.’

The older man nodded.

‘And from what you tell me, both of them have their origins in scripture and neither has been repudiated by scholars.’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘It’s scary.’

‘Very.’

O’Malley swallowed hard. He looked troubled. Then he brightened. ‘But that doesn’t mean everything has been decided in advance. Let’s not forget, Malachy didn’t say anything about Peter the Roman coming close, only to lose out to a surprise choice out of nowhere.’

‘He could hardly be expected to forsee every contingency.’

‘Oh, come on now. Isn’t that exactly what astrologers are for?’

‘I suppose. But tell me this. You’re not comfortable with the idea of a monster, in the form of the Antichrist, stalking the earth, only to be defeated and sent to hell by a vengeful Messiah. And I don’t blame you. It’s more like
The Lord of the Rings
than the Lord Above. Yet, in
The Betrayal of Christ
– leaving out Caravaggio’s unusual take on events – poor old Judas was only acting out the script that had been written for him.’

‘Exactly right,’ the priest said.

‘If he’d exercised free will and not betrayed his master, he would in fact have been acting contrary to the will of God.’

‘That’s true … and also impossible.’

‘It’s a mess.’

‘It’s a mystery.’

There seemed nothing left to say, and the two men stared at each other.

‘So what happens now?’ Dempsey asked. Before his uncle could respond, there was a polite knock on the door and Father Giovanni came in, smiling beatifically at Dempsey. He distributed coffee and biscotti, then turned to leave, still smiling.

Dempsey smiled back. ‘
Grazie
, Giovanni.’

‘
Prego
.’ The young priest retreated, closing the door after him.

O’Malley picked up his coffee and took a sip, glad of the chance to break the mood. ‘Father Giovanni seems to have taken a bit of a shine to you since you prevented a massacre in St Peter’s Square.’

‘I’d noticed.’

‘You’ll need to get used to that. But to answer your question, what happens now is that the Pope confers on you the Grand Cross of the Order of Pius IX.’

Dempsey squirmed. ‘Is there no way out of that?’

‘None that I know of. But sure don’t knock it. As a papal Knight, you’ll have every head waiter in Dublin falling over himself to give you a decent table.’

‘That would be nice if the Pope was settling the bill.’

‘A St Peter’s credit card, you mean?’

‘From the old Bank of the Holy Spirit. Something like that. I’ll let you know how it goes. The main thing is, though, I have to be back in Galway at the end of the month. I’ve a PhD to prepare for, remember, and I’m months behind in my research.’

‘After all that’s happened, take it from me, you’ll waltz it. More importantly, what about Maya?’

Dempsey grinned. ‘Well, now, that’s the good part. She’s got a job with UBS in Dublin. So we can see each other at weekends. And I’d guess we’ll be out here for the holidays.’

‘I look forward to it.’

‘If she should ever agree to marry me …’

‘Make an honest man of you, you mean?’ 

‘Exactly … I hope you’d do the honours.’

‘In Rome, in the Gesù? If course. A pleasure and a privilege, my boy. Your father would be proud of you.’

They both sat back and sipped at their coffees. O’Malley said, ‘You’ll come to the special Mass, of course?’

‘I wouldn’t miss it.’

High Mass in the Gesù for the repose of the souls of Caravaggio and the two murdered priests, Pope John Paul I and Cardinal Horst Rüttgers, was to be held the following Sunday. It would be celebrated jointly by the Pope and Superior General O’Malley. Attendance would include artists from around the world, surviving members of the family of Albino Luciani and representatives of the German Church, led by Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky, the retiring Archbishop of Berlin and new acting head of the German hierarchy. Media interest was enormous. Al-Jazeera had requested, and been granted, facilities to record the occasion. Security would be provided by the Swiss Guard, under the command of Colonel Studer, while mounted above the altar, by permission of the Society of Jesus and the National Gallery of Ireland, would be
The Betrayal of Christ
, with its startling, telltale image of the fleeing man.

‘Of course, all this still leaves one loose end,’ Dempsey said.

‘The mysterious stranger, you mean?’

‘I looked into his eyes – twice. I could describe him. I could narrow it down for them.’

‘Is that what you want?’

Dempsey thought for a second. It was something he and Maya had talked about without coming to any firm conclusion. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘He’s obviously a hard bastard. But he saved my life and maybe even saved the Christian world. The Muslim world, too. He deserves a break.’

‘So let’s give him one. If he wants to confess his sins, he knows where to come.’

‘Fair enough. Let’s leave it at that, then.’

O’Malley took a deep breath and stretched his hand across the space between them. ‘There’s one more thing,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you about your father.’