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James Benn: Death

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James Benn Death

Death: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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So I played out that scene here, far from my home in Southie, leaning into the motions of my father, hoping by some mysterious means to fall into his routine and absorb his experience-moving files and papers around, tapping key phrases with my finger as if casting a spell and drawing out the truth from a mass of tangled details and the occasional well-placed lie. I found myself doing this more and more, copying the rhythms of my old man, fooling my mind into thinking I had half his smarts, until I failed all on my own-or something clicked and the movements became my own, the memory of then mingling with the here and now, and I saw what had been hidden in plain sight. But not today.

I was lost in thought when Kaz came in and flopped down in a chair opposite mine, hitching his trousers up as he crossed his legs.

“Well, this ought to be fun,” he said.

“You heard?”

“Captain Croft gave me the news as soon as I got here. The driver stopped at that fleabag hotel of yours and packed up your gear. It’s in the room next to Big Mike’s. He was sleeping when I looked in on him.”

“Easy for him,” I said, getting up and closing the door, keeping my voice low. “He’s not visiting Rome ahead of the Allied armies.”

“Billy, we are on a secure base, in an SOE building. Do you think there are spies about?” Kaz gave a little laugh, to show he wasn’t serious, but I saw in his eyes that he was, as worry briefly furrowed his brow.

“Of course there are spies here, Kaz. That’s what these people do. Which means there could be double agents, too. Or SOE security checking on us.” It sounded crazy, but the secret stuff was the craziest part of this war, and that was saying something.

“You have a point,” Kaz said, in a tone that said it was one I’d taken too far. “As for Rome, it is where you wanted to go, you said so yourself last night. Now we have the SOE to get us there. It is a gift from heaven,” he said, twirling his fingers upward.

“Well, God Himself does have something to say about it,” I said. “Our orders come direct from the White House. General Eisenhower’s only the messenger.” I told Kaz about FDR and the bishop, and the warning to steer clear of Diana.

“That does complicate things,” Kaz said, tapping his finger on his knee, already figuring the odds. “It seems as if we must fool not only the Germans, but our own people. It would not be the first time, Billy.”

“True,” I said. “I’d hoped you’d go along with it.” It meant a lot that he would, but I expected nothing less. Kaz and I were bound together in this war. Each of us had risked his life for the other, and we both cared deeply about Diana. Kaz, because of his love for her sister Daphne, and all that she had meant to him. Me, because I loved her, and felt I had something to live up to, a responsibility to the dead to make the most of life. It was complicated.

“It would make things more interesting,” he said.

Kaz liked things interesting. He didn’t have a lot to look forward to, and when he got bored, he tended to dwell on that fact. Things weren’t as bad as they once were, but I still worried about him. Yet I knew I could count on him whatever the odds. He was a thin, bookish-looking guy with horn-rimmed glasses, but he was tough, too. The real thing, the kind of toughness that didn’t show until the odds were ten to one.

“I will see what I can find out about the prison, the Regina Coeli,” Kaz continued. “Now tell me what else we know about the unfortunate Monsignor Edward Corrigan.”

“Well, he was a smart guy. Went to Columbia Law School after he became a priest. I’m guessing his cousin the bishop helped grease the skids since he got sent to Rome right after that. He went to work for the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office,” I said, looking up to see if Kaz knew what that meant. Kaz knew something about everything.

“The Inquisition,” he said. “Much tamer now than in previous centuries. Go on.”

“He also worked for the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, which sounds like missionary work.”

“Yes, it is called by its Latin name, Propaganda Fide.”

“Kaz, how do you know so much about the Vatican? Are you religious?” I knew that Kaz, like most Poles, was Catholic, but I’d never once asked him about what he believed. We’d talked about love, death, fear, and loss, but never about God. It felt strange asking now, after so long.

“No, not at all. I was an altar boy for a while, which made my mother happy. But I asked too many questions which the father could not answer, so he asked me to leave. That made me happy, since I preferred reading the newspaper on Sunday mornings. I never could take all those Bible stories seriously.”

“I was an altar boy myself,” I said. “I kind of liked it. The ceremony, being part of something larger than myself, separate from everything else.” I shrugged, embarrassed to admit I liked getting dressed up in white lace.

“You will have plenty of pomp and ceremony where we are going,” Kaz said. “I’ve been there, to visit an older cousin who became a priest. He worked at Propaganda Fide, teaching students from Africa.”

“Is he still there?”

“No, they sent him on a mission to Bulgaria, to evangelize among the members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was never heard from again. He was quite happy with his life in Rome, and was distressed at being sent to the Balkans. He was not the evangelizing type.”

“Quiet and studious, like you?”

“Yes. We were close. Our families would spend time each summer in the mountains, and we got along well. I was glad when he became a priest, not because I believed in all that nonsense, but because the life suited him. Until they sent him to Bulgaria. There is still resentment toward Catholic missionaries there among the Orthodox, and I am sure he was killed for his efforts.”

“Dangerous work,” I said. “But our man Corrigan never left Rome. Looks like he mainly did legal work for the Holy See.”

“He was a scrittore,” Kaz said, heaving a sigh and returning to the present, leafing through pages of the report. “It means ‘writer,’ but is used as a rank for lawyers within the Vatican.”

“It looks like the typical career of a successful bureaucrat. Good schools, influential relatives, plum assignments, and leaving the tough jobs to others, like your cousin. Except for this,” I said. I handed Kaz a file of letters. “They’re all from British POWs who wrote home about visits from a delegation from the Vatican.”

Kaz flipped through the letters, scanning them quickly. “They all mention Father Corrigan,” he said. “How helpful he was.”

“Right. Seems that with the war on, there wasn’t much news on the missionary front, so the Vatican sent out a delegation to tour the prisoner-of-war camps in Italy. Corrigan was part of that delegation, and helped bring letters out to families, and supplied winter clothing to a lot of the POWs who’d been captured in the desert.”

“Interesting,” Kaz said. “It gives us somewhere to start. Perhaps he picked up some information that was too dangerous for him to possess. Or got mixed up in spy business. We can try to find the rest of the delegation. I wonder if the Germans allowed them to visit prisons in Rome, like the Regina Coeli?”

“Maybe we can arrange something,” I said quietly. I still didn’t trust everything about this setup.

“There are no photographs of the body,” Kaz said. “Where was he found?”

“Outside one of the main doors to Saint Peter’s Basilica,” I said. “His body was found before dawn by one of the Swiss Guards.”

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