Warburg in Rome (32 page)

Oddly, perhaps because of the cloth at the general’s throat, the white and black
tallit
, sinking into the waters of the lake, came momentarily to Warburg’s mind, but otherwise he was focused on Mates. He slugged him one last time, sending him through the door and out into the street.

Rossini was waiting at the curb. Mates fell in a heap at his feet, but it was Warburg at whom he was agape. “What the hell, Mr. Warburg?”

“Take care of him, Sarge,” Warburg said. “A little iodine, a little bourbon, he’ll be fine.”

Mates struggled up. “I’ll see you court-martialed!” the general said, barely more than a groan.

Warburg, adding to the ruefulness he would feel later, laughed. “I’m not military, General. I’m not even a government employee. No question of court-martial. If you want the law, you’ll have to call the Carabinieri. They won’t give a shit—unless, of course, you tell them you were ambushed by a Jew.”

If they had been lovers, the Nicholas V sacristy would have been their trysting place. But no.

They had met there roughly every other week, poring over maps spread out on the vesting case, as Sister Thomas brought Monsignor Deane the latest from cables crossing her desk in the Vatican cipher room and from Tardini’s briefings for which she was note taker. Always, she tracked the lava-like westbound flow of refugees, lately speeding up, with hundreds of thousands risking what little was left them to escape the closing vise of the Red Army.

Sister Thomas was one of the first outsiders to know of secret agreements among the British, French, and Americans that shut the Soviets out of Western occupation zones. She reported on the reprisal killings of collaborators across the continent. From Vienna came reports of a surviving Nazi cell called Die Spinne, or The Spider; other reports spoke of Italy’s own Gladio, clandestine Fascist military units secretly supported by the Allies. From Vilna came rumors of failed anti-Soviet efforts—meetings of Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Polish conspirators, aborted because of disputes over what language would be used in the meetings.

But yesterday, something much closer to home had prompted Sister Thomas to leave a single rose at the feet of the Virgin in the grotto of the Vatican gardens, the signal for Deane. Now she was kneeling alone in the Sala dei Chiaroscuri, and though her face was buried in her hands, she kept seeing the images of martyred saints painted on the frescoed walls around her—arrows into blissful Sebastian, the amputated breasts of Agatha, the sword at the throat of Agnes, Stephen eternally being stoned. All such figures, in the Catholic imagination, went unclothed to God, a quite lovely nakedness that clashed with the Puritan impulse to cloak the flesh, as Sister Thomas’s own was cloaked. As always, she wore the white Dominican habit with its black veil flowing over her shoulders.

Each morning before dawn, she nimbly removed her coarse nightgown, naked as any martyr. She welcomed the chill on her body—the physical sensation—for the few moments required to bathe. No question of gazing upon her nakedness in a mirror, since there was no mirror. But she was often aware of the turn at her hip, the slight protrusion at her abdomen, the bristle below. When she stretched, with her arms high, her small breasts flattened and her skin lost its wrinkles. Oddly, vanity about her body had not reared itself until she’d turned forty, when it dawned on her that the ripeness of youth had not yet wholly withered. As for her hair, she’d been wearing it clipped close to her scalp for ten years now, and she had no idea what that looked like on her. How amused she’d been in recent months when modish girls began appearing in the streets of Rome with hair like hers—a style named for Julius Caesar, she’d been told. Those girls would be appalled to know they looked like nuns at bedtime.

Someone entered the shadowy chapel behind her. Through her fingers, she watched. Monsignor Deane strode up the side aisle, his leanness emphasized by the black, red-trimmed cassock swirling at his knees. At the head of the aisle, holding his upright martial posture, he executed a crisp genuflection with one hand lightly on the communion rail. Usually his movements struck her as gracefully unselfconscious, but this morning she sensed their performance aspect. Having apparently ignored her, he disappeared through the innocuous door into the sacristy. A few moments later, she rose, blessed herself, and followed him. No satchel today.

He stood leaning at the vesting case, arms folded easily across his chest. He smiled when he saw her. She was aware of the lift he felt in her company, because she felt it, too. But not today.

“Good morning, Sister,” he said quietly, standing up straight, a gentleman.

She nodded. “Monsignor.”

Normally they would turn away from the slight flare in their greeting, sublimating what sparked it in the business of file folders, maps, and cable ledgers. But today they stood face to face, separated by the width of a prie-dieu. Between them, a wedge of sunlight from the small window emphasized the shadow in which they stood. Neither was able to discern what was written in the other’s expression.

“I’ve learned something you should know,” Sister Thomas said at last. “A shipment of hand-rolled beeswax altar candles arrived by truck from Zagreb this week, an order sent to the Holy See as a gift from the Confraternity of San Girolamo. Twenty-five cartons, each weighing about two stone.”

“Beeswax candles?”

“Laced with frankincense and myrrh.”

“I don’t follow.”

“A PCA truck on a return run, having brought grain and flour to Trieste. Exempt from searches.” PCA—Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza. Deane’s shop.

Sister Thomas continued, “The cartons were offloaded two nights ago, the candles stored in the crypt of Santa Marta. The operation was personally supervised by a bishop of the Curia.”

“Marini? The papal master of ceremonies?”

“No. Antonio Caggiano.”

“The Argentine? The Catholic Action fellow?”

“Yes.”

“Candles? That’s the liturgy office, ceremonies. What does Catholic Action have to do with candles?”

“That was my question when I learned of it. I went to Santa Marta yesterday. Sister Portress told me that Caggiano removed the key to the storage room from the key cabinet and kept it, no further entrance except through him. She assumed I was acting on Tardini’s authority, up the pyramid from Caggiano. As I expected, she had a master key. She averted her eyes as she handed it to me, as if to be able later to deny knowing how I got it. I entered the crypt alone, examined the cartons of candles, several of which had been recently unsealed, presumably by the good bishop.”

“Not candles.”

“No.”

“What?”

“Gold, smelted into bars. By my calculation, twenty-five cartons, each holding twelve bars, each bar at one kilogram—something like three hundred kilograms. Value, twenty-five million pounds sterling.”

Deane pursed his lips as if to whistle. Only after some seconds did he say, “A hundred million dollars.”

“Approximately.”

“In the crypts at Santa Marta? Not the bank vaults?”

“Correct. As far as I can tell, not recorded anywhere.”

“From Zagreb.”

“Yes.”

“A gift from San Girolamo? That’s Franciscans.”

“Peter’s Pence, then?” Her face fell into what he thought of as her all-knowing smile, but she snapped it off with an abrupt wag of her head. “The bars are stamped with a U—Ustashe. Almost certainly this gold is from the Croatian state treasury. The Croatian state that ceased to exist in May. From the looks of the carton I opened, two bars have been removed. Nearly eight hundred thousand dollars.”

“Does Tardini know?”

“Perhaps. There’s more.”

“What?”

“Tardini is preparing to ask British and American authorities to release Croatian prisoners of war from Allied custody. I’ve seen a draft of the letter: ‘. . . unjustly oppressed children of the Faith.’”

“Probably,” Deane said, “if Eisenhower freed Croatian POWs, they would sign up to fight Communists.” He thought a moment, then added, “Ante Pavelic is the Croatian leader, but he’s on the Allied war criminal list, and no one knows where he is.”

“Tardini does. I’m sure of it. There are cables coming in that are kept from me.”

“Who handles them?”

“That German.”

“Lehmann?”

“Yes. He has met privately with Tardini six times that I know of. And he brings others with him. German speakers, but they may be Austrian—or Croats.”

“Clerics?”

“They wear clericals.”

“But—?”

She shrugged. “Franciscans wear sandals. These blokes wear brogans. I don’t talk with them. But there is something off . . .”

Deane was quiet. When Sister Thomas met his pensiveness with her own, the silence built. Finally he said, “Lehmann was born in Argentina.”

“Like Bishop Caggiano.”

“Can you find out what Lehmann is up to?”

Sister Thomas did not answer. She had dropped her eyes, fixing them on her hands, which were fiercely clasped, pulling against each other.

“What?” he asked.

“Something else. I have no idea how to speak of it.”

He waited. Then he said, “You can speak of it with me.”

“I had a visitor. An Englishman. A man I knew in Bletchley Park.”

She paused, then continued, “I went, as usual, to the Wednesday general audience for the Holy Father’s blessing. As the crowd was leaving the auditorium, I was making my way toward the cloister and he appeared before me. I thought at first I was hallucinating.”

“A man you knew well?”

She nodded. “Because of him I fled to Blackfriars. Because of him I took my vows. I expected never to see him again. He asked to meet with me. I agreed. We met in the Belvedere Courtyard, chatting on a bench, to all appearances—cousins.” She stopped again.

Deane prodded, “What did he want?”

“He asked me to work for him.”

“Return to Bletchley?”

“Not precisely.”

“They brought him from Bletchley to Rome to ask you.”

“Yes. He was rather direct about it all. They have assigned him here, assuming I would be responsive to him. Military Intelligence, Group Six. Rome.” She stopped, palpably deciding whether she, too, should be direct. She plunged forward with, “He told me that his wife has died.” She laughed abruptly, bitterly. “Once I dreamed of Philip coming to me like that, with just such news. Think of it! Wishing a woman dead! The dream, of course, was that then he would insist upon my leaving the order to be with him, our love allowed at last. Married life, cottage in the Cotswolds, all of that.”

“Philip.”

“Philip Barnes Morton. He
did
propose, but what he proposed is for me to remain in my consecration, good Sister Thomas. Not his wife, but an agent inside the Holy See.”

Deane was lost. She had never spoken so personally to him before, never of a man or the dream of love. And now—had she said MI6? Deane sensed how thrown off she was, but still, it made no sense that he was the one she turned to with this anguish. “What did you say?”

“I said no, of course. Out of the question. How dare he? That was when the real surprise came.” Sister Thomas turned away, bracing herself against the vesting case. “He replied that the Crown has urgent need of an independent source in the Vatican, to balance what it learns from the Americans.”

“Learns from the Americans about the Vatican?”

“About
everything
, from what comes
through
the Vatican. During the war, London had need of nothing more than Bletchley, because German ciphers were being read. But now, against Moscow, they are scrambling. It’s what the Church knows that is of interest, especially of activities in the Catholic countries, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Croatia—the ‘captive nations.’” She turned her head toward Deane. “Philip told me to ask you about ‘Operation Captive Nations.’”

“Me?”

“You are the American source. He said you were sent to Rome last year as an OSS agent. He said that if you are working for the OSS, I should do as much for MI6, since most of what you know comes from me. What is ‘Captive Nations’?”

“I have no idea.”

“It’s the OSS project of undermining the Soviets in Eastern Europe, using the Church.”

“That’s ridiculous. What can the Church do?”

“You just said it: Croatians fighting Communists, a leading role for the archbishop of Zagreb. Croatia is the wedge, and Tardini is pushing on it. Hence the letter about freeing Croatian prisoners. Philip made it crystal clear how very much MI6 needs this. Are you working for OSS?”

“No. I am working for the Church. If I report to anyone, it’s Archbishop Spellman. You know that. His palace on Madison Avenue is called the Powerhouse, but the only real power he has, with Washington
and
with the Third Floor here, is information. Which is my role. Spellman’s intrigue is with the Communists, sure. But it’s also with the Curia. Especially your boss, Tardini. If I’m an agent, I’m Spellman’s agent.”

“Not OSS? Not even indirectly?”

“Only that fantasy last year about restoring the Habsburgs, a Catholic empire to stop Moscow. Cardinal Maglione’s fantasy, the Pope’s probably. Spellman’s for sure. Yes, OSS had a hand in that, and yes, I played the hand as long as the cards lasted. That’s what brought me to Lehmann. The Germans wanted the new Holy Roman Empire more than we did, which is what nixed it. Kaput. But you know all that. It was Irish mist and the Red Army stormed right through it. I’ve had nothing to do with OSS since.”

He slowed down. A new experience for him: a man making an explanation to a dubious woman can both tell the truth and realize that the truth is impossibly more complicated. “Sister, I would never betray your confidence. Except for Spellman, refugees are my only work now. And yes, I have been sharing information about the displaced, but with Warburg. You remember that—it was Budapest that first brought me to you. The WRB, not the OSS.”

“And now the WRB is gone.”

“Warburg is working with Zionists now, and obviously I’m wary. He’s making a big mistake. Is that what British intelligence is after? The Jews? Palestine? Was it the embassy bombing that sent them to you? They want to know what the Holy See hears from Jerusalem?”