James Benn - Death

“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.”

“Which door?” Kaz asked.

I looked through the report. “The left, facing the exterior.”

“Quite interesting,” Kaz said. “The leftmost door to Saint Peter’s is only used for funeral processions. It is called the Door of Death.” He raised an eyebrow, and grinned. “It seems Monsignor Corrigan was indeed found at death’s door.”

“Odd place to leave a body,” I said.

“Our killer has a sense of the macabre,” Kaz said. “Or was it coincidence?”

“There are no coincidences,” I said, remembering what my father drummed into my head. “Only reasons that we haven’t uncovered yet.” Did that hold true for Diana as well? Was there a hidden reason I’d been picked for this job? Was there some thread of a relationship between Corrigan’s murder and Diana being picked up by the Gestapo? If there were, would it lead me to her? Or to the Gestapo? I shook off these useless musings. Dad would have said not to worry about what the future holds until you look it in the eye.

“Anything else of value in these papers?” Kaz said, pawing through the sheets on the floor.

“Not that I can find. They’re all secondhand reports, no names mentioned. Except for references to ‘Rudder,’ which sounds like a code name.”

“Ah,” Kaz said, finding one. “Rudder reports that Commissario Filberto Soletto of the Vatican Gendarmerie Corps had been a regular informer to the OVRA, the Italian Fascist secret police, and now reports to the Gestapo.”

“Which is why we can’t expect much help from the Vatican police. Soletto has already decided that a Jewish asylum seeker killed Corrigan when he refused to help him. Most of the Gendarmerie are straight arrows, according to Rudder, but Soletto keeps a lid on things, and has powerful allies among the more conservative cardinals.”

“We will have to find this Rudder as well,” Kaz said. “He is obviously feeding information to the Allies. We could use his help.”

“Something tells me we’re not going to get much help with this one,” I said. I didn’t like how many powerful men had a stake in this investigation. FDR, Bishop Finch, a crooked Vatican cop, and the cardinals who protected him. That wasn’t even counting the Germans who ringed Vatican City, watching those who entered and left.