The Holy Bullet (52 page)

The pope stroked the Turk’s head and started for the door. He looked at him one last time.

“I came here to see my executioner, and I leave with a friend in my heart.”

Twenty minutes can be a long time.

—The last word of John Paul II before his death,
April 2, 2005

 

E
ight days have passed, though they seemed like months. Sarah has wandered through the small city of Wadowice, fifty kilometers from Krakow, in the venerable land of Poland. She’s passed by number seven on Ulica Koscielna and visited the house where the young Karol Wojtyla was born and raised. The place where Wojtyla’s life began, which led to his becoming the most beloved pope in history, it must be confessed, filled her with emotion. One thing was certain, sooner or later, one day he would be Saint John Paul. Keeping in mind all that Sarah had come to know in this last week, it was just that it be so. If a saint worthy of the name exists, he was it. A man who helped his executioner from the beginning without judgment, censure, or reprobation, who gave himself to God without anything and without anything departed to Him. Humble, benevolent, placid, serene, the highest example for millions of the faithful. What was important was to believe in God the Father, Omnipotent, Creator of all that was, is, and will be to eternity.

The car came down Ulica Wisniowa and entered Gimnazjalna. Rafael drove. He didn’t wear cassock or suit, just jeans and a sweater, since this was spring, the mild season of the year.

“Do you miss much?” Sarah asked.

“No,” he answered without taking his eyes off the road.

Sarah remembered a few days ago when Rafael drove her to Rome for the reunion with her parents. The meeting was in the Piazza Navona, full of people in mid-afternoon. Elizabeth covered her with kisses and embraces, as did Raul. They radiated health and looked tan.

“Were you at the beach while I was gone?” Sarah asked jokingly.

“Istanbul has this effect on people,” JC interjected, sending a shiver down Sarah’s spine; she had not expected to see him.

“JC,” she stammered.

Rafael looked him over from top to bottom, evaluating him. He looked older than a year ago. Time had passed and worn him down. The cripple looked at Rafael out of the corner of his eye, anger present but controlled, as it had to be. He couldn’t help but think about the disability in his leg and who was responsible for it, there in front of him, with a few dark bruises on his face, nothing to leave a scar, while his walking . . .

JC watched Sarah with a cool stare. He enjoyed it. He knew they all feared him except for Rafael, from whom he’d just turned his eyes away.

“You’ve conducted yourself well,” he praised him.

“I tried,” Rafael replied.

There were no thanks or appreciations.

“What’s going to happen to Harvey Littel?” Sarah timidly asked.

“He’s going to be promoted to secretary of defense.”

“What? You’re joking.” Sarah was shocked.

JC showed her the front page of
The New York Times
where she could read the headline: “Harvey Littel to Run Defense.” Sarah read it but couldn’t believe it. How could that be possible? A small headline at the bottom of the page caught her attention: “Ford Accused of Pedophilia.” Sebastian Ford, Rafael’s man on Barnes’s and Littel’s team. He who risked his life to save Rafael and, as a consequence, her and Simon.

“I don’t understand,” Sarah protested. “How could this happen?”

She looked at Rafael, who didn’t look surprised.

“Littel belongs to the system. He knows a lot. Now they’ve put him in a position out of the CIA, but where he’s going to have all his movements watched by the CIA . . . and public opinion. They’re keeping the dog, but on a shorter leash,” JC explained.

“And you? Have you seen what’s happening to your friend?” Sarah spoke angrily.

“Littel’s revenge. In politics there’s no room for honest men,” Rafael said. “But don’t worry. The Vatican’s going to need his services as a mediator with the United States.”

So, at first blush, nothing seemed bad. Rafael was not the type to turn his back on friends, that was certain, especially those who hadn’t turned their backs on him in his hour of need.

“What happened finally? What was it Phelps wanted?” Sarah changed the subject. She needed explanations.

“Phelps wanted what many people do. To get rid of anything that could be harmful to the image of his organization. No one could know that Marcinkus was Opus Dei.”

“And P2,” Sarah added.

“Yes, but that didn’t matter to him. He was afraid that someone would find out that a man like that, who presided over the operations of the IWR for such a long time, could be linked to the organization. It would be a step away from discovering that Marcinkus had made an attempt on the pope’s life, and, worst of all, was recommended for that position by Opus Dei’s own founder José María Escrivá.”

“Oh, my God.”

“But you also had your own agenda,” Rafael accused him.

“I’m sorry about your uncle,” JC said.

“You’re not sorry about him.”

“I like direct people.” He turned to Sarah. “There’s a box in the post office at Kings Cross that this key unlocks.” He showed her a small key and placed it in her hand. “Inside you’ll find a pile of documents and copies I collected over my lifetime.”

Sarah couldn’t believe what she was hearing. JC trusted her.

“Soon you’ll receive instructions about what to do with them,” he said. “Don’t do what you did with the Turk’s file,” he criticized. He looked at Rafael. “Help her with anything she needs.”

The priest said neither yes nor no.

The old man took a yellow envelope out of his jacket that Raul recognized as the one that Cardinal Sebastiani had handed him in Istanbul.

“Add this to the spoils.”

“What is it?” Sarah asked curiously.

“A letter that should have been delivered to Wojtyla but never was.”

“Can I read it?”

“Please,” JC permitted her.

Sarah opened the envelope and took out a paper worn through the passage of years. It was once white, the date above, 11/04/1981.

“Sebastiani didn’t want to believe the letter. He hid it as if this action would put off the warning until much later. That same day, the Pole was shot, and Sebastiani knew it was true.”

 

 

To my very esteemed Holy Father:

“That’s incredible,” Sarah declared ecstatically.

JC turned his back accompanied by the cripple. Everything had been predicted.

“Where are you going?” Sarah asked him.

The old man turned to her.

“I’m going where we all have to go. Stay out of trouble.”

“Thank you for my job at the newspaper.”

JC looked from her to Rafael.

“I’m not the one to thank. If it were up to me, you’d have been dead in London or New York a year ago.”

He flashed a sarcastic smile and continued toward the rest of his life. They would never see him again.

Sarah considered his words now inside the car on the streets of Wadowice. Rafael followed a secondary road that led to the outskirts.

“Why did you get the job for me at the newspaper?” she asked.

Rafael drove in silence.

“Don’t I deserve an answer?” she pressured him, slightly insulted.

“I didn’t get you any job.”

“Are you lying, Father Rafael?” she reproved him ironically.

“Why did someone have to find you a job?” Rafael continued, confused. “Did it ever cross your mind you got the position on your own merits?”

Sarah had never seen things in this light. On the other hand, he could be trying to mislead her for some other reason. Let him have his way.

They entered a very steep dirt road.

“Where are we going? Cross-country?” Sarah protested.

“Only a few more miles.”

They continued in silence for a few minutes, not a contemplative silence appropriate to the situation, but an oppressive, awkward silence.

“How could the pope pardon someone who wished him such ill?” Sarah asked.

“He was a noble soul.”

“I think he would have liked to read the letter,” Sarah added, mentioning the letter she had read in the Piazza Navona and carried with her.

“He always knew that the bullet was special. Divinely turned aside inside his body.”

“A holy bullet.”

“A holy bullet.”

“I’m sorry about your uncle Clemente,” Sarah finally said. She should have said it much earlier but hadn’t been able.

“Thanks.”

“Were you very close?”

“He was my only living relative,” he admitted.

They arrived at an enormous gate with two wings, fixed in a high wall that surrounded an enormous property. It was open, so Rafael drove in without stopping. The road continued for a few more miles.

Where the hell are we going?
Sarah wondered, tired of so much mystery.

Silence descended again. Rafael and Sarah were only comfortable with each other when the situation involved revolvers, shots, bombs, chases, and torture. A ride in the car through the fields on a sunny day was too complicated for both of them to deal with.

“I hope you’ll look upon me as a family member,” Sarah suggested sincerely.

Rafael looked at her and stopped the car.

“Thanks, I already do.”

They exchanged looks, and for moments nothing else existed. Only she and he inside the car.

A knock on the window woke them from their romantic trance.

“We’ve arrived,” Rafael told her.

He opened the door and left the car, while Sarah closed her eyes in frustration before getting out.

“Tim,” Rafael greeted him.

“How are you, Rafael?”

“I got here at the last moment, but I got here.”

Sarah joined them. They were in an open space surrounded by trees. On one side there was a kind of well.

“This is Sarah, a . . . close friend.”

“How do you do?” He shook her hand. “Tim Baynard.”

Sarah looked at him. He was a calm, happy man. He carried a black briefcase he gave to Rafael.

“Safe and sound.”

Tim went over to the well that turned out to be stairs going underground. The panel that covered it was half open. It wouldn’t have been easy for Tim to lift it alone.

“Let’s go,” he said, going down rapidly ahead of them.

Sarah couldn’t figure out precisely how long they descended, but she was surprised to see electric lights illuminating the way, very different from Moscow.

“This is private property?” Rafael asked.

“Yes, bought by the Vatican,” Tim answered eagerly.

“Do you know what you’re going to do with your life now?” Rafael changed the subject.

“No. Time will tell. Whatever comes, I hope it’ll be for the best.”

“That’s a good philosophy,” Rafael agreed.

They entered something that seemed to be a crypt, confirmed as such by a tomb in the center of the wide space.

It was new, granite, with letters engraved in gold.

Krystian Janusz Wladyslaw
.

II-IV-MMV
.

“What does that mean?” Sarah asked, confused.

“Thirty-three days after his interment in the tomb of the popes in the Vatican, Karol Józef Wojtyla was brought here secretly in accordance with his wishes. Here he’ll rest for eternity under this name. If someday someone enters here mistakenly, he won’t know to whom it refers.”

Sarah got down on her knees on the floor next to the tomb holding the body of the most beloved pope of all times. She let tears of emotion fall.

“There’s now nothing to keep me here,” Tim said to Rafael. “Keep this as a memory.”

He left a gilded object, small, cylindrical, bright in his hand . . . a bullet.

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

Alone. Rafael approached Sarah and gave her his hand to help her up.

They remained for a moment holding hands, keeping watch on Karol Wojtyla’s tomb.

“And now?” Sarah asked emotionally.

Rafael looked at her, and, afterward, at the tomb.

“This isn’t over yet.”

Freedom of conscience and religion . . . is a primary and inalienable right of the individual.

—JOHN PAUL II,
message on religious freedom,
November 14, 1981