The Lost Catacomb (35 page)
Others were worse off than she was, the stars told her.
They would never be rescued.
She must try to make peace with her
irrecoverable loss.
She must try to
think only of the present.
Of
what she had now.
Not of what she
would never have again.
Several hours later, when Tom
’
s parents came out to look for them in the dark,
they found the two of them asleep on the old wicker sofa.
Their heads were touching, with Tom
’
s arm protectively
encircling Elena
’
s
shoulders.
And billions of miles away, somewhere among the vast
stretches and endless expanse of the firmament, the stars looked down and,
smiling, nodded their assent.
Tom
’
s
next assignment took him back to London for two months.
There was much preparation needed for
the final thrust of the Allied Forces into enemy territory, an offensive that
would take many months, perhaps even a year of careful planning before it could
be successfully executed.
Tom's presence was essential to the enterprise and he could not be
spared, he was told unequivocally, not even for the birth of his first child.
During that time he called home whenever he could to check up
on Elena, who was now at the end of her ninth month of pregnancy.
She was cheerful most of the time, his
parents reported on the occasions when he spoke to them rather than to her,
though she tired easily and was occasionally given to contemplative moods and a
desire to be left alone, resting in her room.
Tom could only assume that she was
feeling the burden of the past encroaching upon her hopes and fears about her imminent
transition to motherhood.
While Tom would not be able to leave London Headquarters to
be with his wife when she delivered
—
and
in any event, the timing of a first birth, with no past medical history to rely
on, was unpredictable at best
—
special
consideration was given to him so that he could call home on a daily basis once
she'd reached her due date.
“
I
’
m really sorry, Tom,
”
his commanding officer
had said after one of those hurried phone calls to Connecticut.
“
Believe
me, I wish we could spare you for a week or so, or even for just a few days.
But our timing is critical now.
We
’
ve worked hard to lay intelligence foundations in
France and Italy, and we just can
’
t
let you go.
I hope you understand.
”
Tom, of course, understood, far better than any one would
suspect.
He wasn
’
t even sure that Elena
would have wanted him waiting in the wings when she was about to become the
mother of her dead lover
’
s
child.
An event of this sort,
a first birth, was always momentous, but in this case it was fraught with both
joy and sorrow since it would bring back memories of Niccol
ò
.
And if the baby were a boy, and were he
to resemble his biological father, Tom was not sure if this would comfort or
pain Elena even more.
He wasn
’
t sure how he himself
would react, for he still held out hope that in the fullness of time Elena
would put the past behind her and come to love him as much as he now loved her.
Her courage, her resilience in the face of unspeakable loss,
her beauty, the enduring nature of her love for those who had been so precious
to her and would never return, and yes, her vulnerability
—
all these
qualities had made him love her more than he had ever thought possible.
She was so much younger that he was in
years, yet older than he hoped he would ever be in terms of what she had gone
through, of what she had suffered.
And their different cultural backgrounds, instead of constituting an
obstacle to be overcome, merely added an ineffable aura of romance to his
idealization of her.
He would be patient for as long as it took, but he hoped that
somehow the birth of this little baby would not only give her something to live
for in the short term, but some stake as well in the as yet undefined future,
whose contours were unformed, still to be constructed and shaped
—
a future he
desperately hoped would include him fully, as a crucial part of her life.
His thoughts were now interrupted by a loud rapping on his
office door.
“
Captain
Keating,
”
one of
the young secretaries called out excitedly as she entered the room without even
waiting for his response.
“
Captain Keating, a
telegram has just arrived for you from the United States.
It was routed through the Foreign
Office.
General Armstrong said I
should give it to you without delay.
I . . . I hope it
’
s
good news.
I mean, about your wife
and the baby, sir.
”
She looked at him expectantly and then realized that he might
want some privacy while reading it. Tom hesitated a moment before unfolding the
piece of paper, waiting for the young woman to leave. She was halfway through
the office door when he gave out an exultant whoop of joy.
“
It
’
s a girl!
My wife has had a baby girl!
Get me a phone line, will you,
Sarah?
I need to make an overseas
call, right now.
This is fabulous
news!
”
It was mid-May, and the first shoots
of grape hyacinth, pale narcissus, and brightly colored daffodils had already
begun to emerge from the sun-warmed soil in the gardens outside the Apostolic
Palace, cautiously poking their celadon leaves into the spring air.
A sultry evening breeze was now blowing
outside, despite the time of year, making it all the more incongruous that
somewhere on the third floor of the papal residence, the famed
terza piano
,
a fire had been lit in one of the small rooms that served as a library.
“
That
will be all for now,
”
Rostoni said, nodding in the direction
of the door.
“
Just
close the draperies over there before you leave,
”
he added.
The young housekeeper looked at him
inquiringly, but said nothing despite the peculiarity of the request.
After all, the windows were still open,
catching the nighttime breeze.
Why
cover them up with the curtains?
“
You
heard me correctly, Francesca,
”
Rostoni reiterated, a slight edge of
anger to his voice.
“
I
require total concentration.
The
moonlight is disturbing.
”
Rostoni had deliberately chosen to
call one of the junior housekeeping staff to build the fire, knowing that such
individuals could be dismissed on the flimsiest of pretexts if they were
uncooperative or loose-tongued.
And
though the war seemed to be coming to an end, Rostoni knew that it would be a
long time before the Italian economy would improve.
No one could afford to lose her job,
however little it paid.
Yes,
Rostoni knew he could count on the discretion and silence of little Francesca,
who had not dared to question or comment aloud on the unusual circumstance of a
fire in May.
He waited until the door was closed
and the soft echo of her footfall disappeared down the hallway.
Walking over to the massive mahogany
desk at the far end of the room, he removed a key ring from his pocket and
opened one of the drawers.
The desk
was one of many used by the Holy Father, depending on the task at hand or his
mood.
There was a formal study in
which the Pope would greet guests, for instance, and sign important documents
in a somewhat public venue, but occasionally he preferred a more intimate
setting in which he could compose the early drafts of his encyclicals or attend
to diplomatic correspondence.
This was one such room, and it housed
not only these early versions of the Pope
’
s pronouncements on
theology and faith, sometimes carelessly tossed onto a silver tray to await the
next moment of inspiration or revision, but several of his predecessor
’
s
hand-written manuscripts as well.
These had been filed away in a locked drawer, untouched since his death
a few short years ago.
It was these
papers that Rostoni intended to deal with tonight, together with some coded
documents related to Ratline activities that might possibly incriminate him and
others at a later date.
Rostoni emptied the drawer in question
onto the desktop and thumbed through several of the pages.
It was just as he
’
d
heard in whispered conversations, conversations so indirect in their wording
and purport as to be all but incomprehensible to anyone outside the Pope
’
s
closest circle of advisors.
Pius XI, the previous pontiff, had
indeed been preparing a series of documents in which the Holy See would express
its doubts and reservations about anti-Semitic legislation just before what
could only be characterized as his conveniently timed death.
He had already published one encyclical
condemning Nazi teachings.
Rostoni
smiled to himself triumphantly as he recalled the nasty rumors that the
physician father of Claretta Petacci, Mussolini
’
s mistress, had
hurried Pius XI to his death on the
Duce
’
s orders in order
to avoid scandal.
Of course, nothing had ever been
proven.
There had been no
post-mortem to detect the presence of poison, and there were no other extant
drafts of these papers.
It was,
however, entirely possible that some bureaucratic toady or other, with a
misplaced sense of loyalty to the previous pope, had filed other copies in the
Secret Archives.
If that were
the case, Rostoni could only hope that they were in some obscure place where
they would never be discovered for decades, or that they were in a classified
file that would never be accessed by scholars.
All of these ruminations, however,
were now keeping him from the task at hand.
The fire was burning steadily behind the
wrought-iron grate, and, carrying the sheaf of papers to the hearth, he dropped
them into the flames one at a time, waiting until the final scraps had been
consumed.
Taking a heavy poker in
his hand, he stirred the ashes.
Good.
Everything from the
locked drawer had been consumed, totally and without leaving any identifiable
trace.
He walked back to the desk and placed
some of the papers the Pope had been working on in the drawer and locked
it.
Should anyone ever open the
drawer for any reason at all, at least there would be something inside it,
something innocuous but credible.
He pulled the heavy velvet curtains apart and let the fresh night air
enter the room.
He was prepared to
remain there until the smell of the fire had dissipated and the ashes had
cooled.
Patience, he congratulated himself
silently as he sat down in a deep armchair to wait, patience and tenacity were
indeed among his major gifts.