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Authors: Jef Geeraerts

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BOOK: The Public Prosecutor
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He fished his Mont Blanc Meisterstück 149, nicknamed “the cigar”, from his inside pocket, removed the cap and started to sign the letters in purple ink without reading them. He finished off his carefully placed signature with three elliptic full stops, designed to lead his addressee astray in one way or another: Catholics wondered which lodge he belonged to, and although the so-called “free-thinkers” knew better, they still had their doubts. The truth, however, was simple. Public Prosecutor Savelkoul did not belong to the Christian People’s Party nor was he attached to the Lodge, something quite unique in the politicized Belgian legal establishment.
Having dealt with the day’s correspondence, he returned his fountain pen to its place, groaned and inspected the series of photographs hanging side by side on the wall. He felt a little melancholic, as he always did when he looked at the photographs on the wall. He was much younger in most of them: with King Boudewijn, Queen Beatrix, UN Secretary-General Waldheim, twenty years of Belgian Prime Ministers, President Mitterrand, and, topping them all, President Bush, who shook his hand by sheer accident during a flying visit to the University of Harvard, where Albert had “audited classes” in 1989.
4
 
Albert left the Court of Appeal at ten thirty via the back door. He strode across the car park towards the Vlaamse Kaai, his expression introverted, as if he were deep in thought. He was aware that a selection of people were watching him from the windows above, following his every move with laser precision, and this prompted him to walk with dignity, much slower than his usual brisk pace - evidence, he believed, of his excellent physical condition. He turned into Pourbusstraat, a cheerless place lined with derelict buildings and warehouses, reminiscent of New York’s Lower East Side. He walked through an open door and found himself in an ugly brick-paved courtyard with lock-up garages right and left. He produced a bunch of keys, unlocked a grimy plastic roll-down shutter numbered 14, pulled it up, opened the boot of a large black BMW, removed his jacket, folded it inside out, placed it in the boot and slipped into a brown leather sports coat lying beside it. He loosened his tie and tossed it on top of the jacket, closed the boot, got into the car, started the engine and reversed out of the lock-up.
 
At that same moment, twelve hundred miles away in Rome, a short, thickset, sixty-year-old woman was leaving the Academia Belgica on Via Omero, a grubby bunker-like edifice from the Mussolini era. A silk Hermès scarf was knotted around the strap of her black, crocodile-leather handbag. She had a peroxide blond, razor-cut hairdo with a lock hanging over her forehead in imitation of Queen Paola. There was a hint of disdain in her expression, a feature common among upper-class ladies. She made her way with measured steps to the awaiting taxi, stopped at the rear passenger door and tapped the window, but the chauffeur did not budge. She stepped awkwardly into the taxi, closed the door, fished a visiting card from her handbag, put on her glasses, which were hanging around her neck on a chain, and said in Italian with a French accent: “Viale Bruno Buozzi
settantatrè
.”
The thin unshaven chauffeur with Arab looks and a black anorak started the engine and accelerated abruptly. The woman glanced at the meter, which correctly read three thousand lire, and glowered involuntarily. Instead of following the shortest route via Villa Giulia, the chauffeur drove at reckless speed through the “gay park” towards Piazza del Popolo. The woman looked at her watch, opened her handbag, produced two ten-thousand lire notes and held them at the ready. The chauffeur positioned himself at the front of the left lane at the crossroads with the Via Flaminia, and the second the lights changed to green, he cut in front of the line of cars waiting to drive straight ahead and turned right into the steeply climbing Viale Bruno Buozzi.
A little less than a mile further, on the brow of the hill, where the luxury apartment buildings made way for walled villas surrounded by palm trees, the taxi stopped in front of a cheerless, grey-stone, four-storey building with bars on the windows and its inside shutters locked tight. The woman paid, left no tip, got out of the taxi and ignored the driver’s derisive gesture. There was no nameplate beside the doorbell, which gave the impression that the building was unoccupied. She rang the bell. It took a while before someone opened. A thin, slightly effeminate young man stood in the doorway, Mediterranean, dressed in a splendid black suit, pink shirt and mauve tie. He smiled as if he recognized her and said: “
Buenos dias, señora
.”
“
Bonjour
,” she replied, appearing not to be even slightly surprised at being welcomed in Spanish.
He let her in and lead the way along a wide marble corridor where an immense chandelier with burning beeswax candles was suspended from the lofty ceiling, as in a church. At the end of the corridor there was a silver-framed portrait with a crystal vase of white lilies on an antique bronze stand. The portrait was of a man in his early sixties, dressed in a black soutane, his eyes narrowed, peering beyond the world in front of him through tortoiseshell designer glasses. His pursed lips and hanging jowls gave his dramatically furrowed rustic countenance a troubled look. A gnarled right hand covered half the left hand, the thumb of which appeared to grasp at something invisible, like the claw of a lobster. The young man paused in front of the portrait, closed his eyes, bowed his head and murmured something. The woman stood beside him, looked briefly at the portrait and closed her eyes. They remained in front of the portrait for a few seconds and then turned into a second corridor where the young man opened a tall hardwood door. “
Un momentito por favor
,” he said with a smile.
The room was spacious and bare and had the chilly atmosphere of a cellar, the only furniture a marble table on gilded legs with lion’s head motif and two chairs with embroidered armrests. A small wooden cross without corpus was the only decoration on the white walls. The air was odourless and a deathly silence filled the room. A patio with carefully trimmed boxwoods in terracotta pots was visible through the net curtains decking a large window. The woman took a chair and sat at the table. She sighed and looked at her watch. 9.55.
 
Albert scurried out of the delicatessen on Vestingstraat, where he had just bought smoked Irish salmon, two boiled crayfish and a 250-gram tin of Iranian Sevruga caviar. The man who served him pretended not to recognize him, but Albert preferred this to the forwardness so typical of Antwerp’s population, one of the few things on which he agreed with his wife. He headed back to his BMW, which was unlawfully parked in front of someone’s garage, stepped inside and drove off.
 
The door opened and a small, pallid, bony man in his early fifties with black crew-cut hair cautiously entered the room. He wore a soutane with an exceptionally high clerical collar and a gold watch chain dangling from one of the buttons. He was carrying a black leather file under his arm, decorated on the front with a simple gold-leaf cross. The woman got to her feet. He greeted her with a nod, took his place at the table and said in perfect French: “I am procurator of the Italian prelature. You had an appointment with the prelate general Monsignor Echevarria, but he is unavailable.” No apologies were offered for his absence.
The man spoke so quietly, the woman had trouble understanding him. She raised her eyebrows for an instant. He signalled that she should take a seat. The round lenses and black frames of his glasses were reminiscent of one of El Greco’s cardinals. He knotted his hands together and held them a couple of inches above the folder. The sleeves of his soutane revealed immaculate cuffs with rectangular gold cufflinks. He looked at her penetratingly and said nothing.
“
Pax
,” the woman mumbled, her eyes turned to the wall.
The priest pretended not to have heard this characteristic Opus Dei expression, opened the folder, tapped his glasses and started to read the first page of what appeared to be a personal file.
After a few minutes, in which the silence was virtually audible, he looked up, straightened his back and said impassively: “Your son Didier is on the verge of fulfilling his agreement and becoming a numerary with the Leuven residence of Opus Dei in Belgium. You are aware of this.” His concluding words were not a question, but an observation of incontrovertible fact.
“Yes, Father.”
The priest nodded and reflected.
“Do you know what this implies,
ma fille
?” he asked, in line with the strictly upheld Opus Dei policy of treating women like girls.
“A great honour for us…”
“For us, did you say? What do you mean by ‘us’?”
The woman scowled and a wrinkle appeared between her eyes.
“Let me help you. The honour also extends to your
husband
?”
His question irritated her. The priest stared at her unwaveringly. “Would you be kind enough to answer my question,
s’il te plait
?”
“The sole purpose of my visit to Rome is to talk about the problem to which you refer. On the advice of Hervé van Reyn at the prelature in Brussels on the Avenue de la Floride, by the way—”
“No need for names and addresses, they are already known to us!” The priest’s expression turned vacant and cold.
“My apologies…”
An embarrassed silence filled the room.
“My husband… thinks… I’m in England,” the woman continued, clearly ill at ease with the idea.
The priest shrugged his shoulders, removed his glasses and stared at the woman with dark-brown, short-sighted, slightly bulging eyes.
“Perhaps we should come to the point—”
“I beg your pardon…” the woman interrupted, but, with a trivial gesture of the hand - thumb and forefinger pressed together as if he was handing out Communion - he repeated his words with a shrill yet insubstantial voice: “I said: perhaps we should come
to the point
!”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is the following: that his
entire
inheritance must be made over to Opus Dei
as a minimum
.”
“Yes, I’m aware of that.”
“
Eh bien
, so what are we waiting for?” he said with a giggle, his arms spread open.
“The matter is more complicated than you think, Father.”
“In what respect?” he enquired abruptly.
“Do I have to explain?”
“Do I have to remind you of our primary obligations, in addition to our unconditional obedience to His Holiness the Pope?”
The woman’s cheek twitched nervously.
“Mortification, mortification and more mortification,
total
childlike submission,
unremitting
piety and
single-minded
apostolate!” he snapped.
The woman blanched.
The priest’s mouth had contorted into a contemptuous grin, exposing his teeth. He wheezed and continued in the same tone as before: “And meditation on the sayings of our founder, El Padre, in
The Way
. When did you last read it?”
The woman heaved a sigh and turned to one side.
“And you call yourself a supernumerary, a married member of Opus Dei?”
“I beg forgiveness, Father…” she whispered.
“Finally! You would do better to go to confession in the chapel after our conversation.”
“I was planning to do so, Father.”
“A propos, how is your relationship with your husband?”
“I go to confession once a week, to an Opus priest in Antwerp.”
“You’re avoiding my question. I asked about your relationship with your
husband
.”
The woman bit her lower lip.
“Do I have to be blunt?” he snarled. His voice cracked at the word “blunt”. He slapped the table with the palm of his hand and glared at her with barely contained rage. Without waiting for her reaction, he snapped: “Do you still sleep in the same room? In the same bed? Do you still give in to the
sins of the flesh
in the matrimonial bed now that your fertile years are behind you? Have you forgotten that your body is a
sack of dung
? That we must
chastise
the body because it is our greatest enemy?”
His cheeks were flushed and his mouth was half open. He moistened his lips. The breath was audible in his nostrils. All at once he blessed himself, slowly and with solemnity, closed his eyes and nervously prayed: “
O Dio, che concedesti al Beato Josemaría, sacerdote, innumerevoli grazie, scegliendolo como strumento fedelissimo per fondare l’Opus Dei, cammino di santificazione nel lavoro professionale
… O God, you granted your priest Blessed Josemaría countless graces, choosing him as a most faithful instrument to found Opus Dei, a way of sanctification in daily work…”
The woman gazed at him motionless. She felt as if she had aged ten years in just a few minutes.
 
He wasn’t sure why, but every time he took the exit for Sint-Job-in-’t-Goor on the E17 on his way to Louise, Albert was always reminded of the same thing: the way he had acquired the farmhouse with its four acres of grazing, their “love nest” in recent years.
BOOK: The Public Prosecutor
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