Luis Rocha - Papal decree

The car was parked in the middle of a residential street. Francesco and JC were sharing the backseat. There was no sign of the cripple in the Armani suit. Francesco was afraid of JC. There was something about him, an invisible power, extrasensory almost — as ridiculous as it was to think — that radiated omnipotence more than any other person Francesco had known.

‘Now what?’ he asked suspiciously.

JC took something out of his jacket pocket — an airline ticket, a passport, some shekels — and handed them to Francesco.

‘Your participation has come to an end,’ JC declared firmly. ‘I don’t have to tell you that none of this ever happened.’

Francesco was puzzled. What kind of random plan was this?

‘Is that it? Call someone to instruct them to give some documents to Sarah to take to the Gare du Nord? Couldn’t you have done that?’ He wanted to understand, no matter what happened. ‘Why did you kidnap me in Rome and bring me here?’

JC looked at Francesco with a sardonic smile and raised two fingers. ‘Two reasons. The first, so Sarah would know everything was going as planned. Hearing your voice meant everything was under control. And there’s a second reason.’ But he said nothing.

Francesco waited for clarification, but he had to ask for it. ‘What is it?’

JC looked out at the street, calm in the midst of Jerusalem frenzy. ‘What are your intentions toward Sarah?’

‘What?’ What kind of question was that?

JC didn’t repeat himself. Francesco had heard him.

‘Are you her father?’ Francesco asked, irritated by the invasion of privacy. Although he did not personally know Raul Brandao Monteiro, retired from the Portuguese army, he knew who Sarah’s father was.

JC didn’t react, but only waited for an answer.

‘Sarah is an astonishing woman; discreet, professional, very responsible, and until recently I thought we might have a future together. But now, the truth is, I don’t know,’ Francesco confessed. It was not worth the trouble to make up a reason for the old man; besides, Francesco was afraid JC would have sensed the lie.

JC thought about Francesco’s words briefly. He was a practical man.

‘I’d like to give you a glimpse of what Sarah’s life is like. It’s not always luncheons at embassies and ministries, nights at the paper, a movie at the Odeon in Leicester Square or the Empire, a play at the Adelphi, lunches at Indigo or home to fuck all night.’

Francesco felt totally naked after that list of very specific, very real, intimate nights that he thought belonged to his private life.

‘Part of her life has no schedule or plan,’ JC continued. ‘Don’t expect that she’ll fulfill all your expectations, because she won’t. Or that she’ll come home after work every night, because there’ll be days she won’t. Or answer all your phone calls; some she’ll hang up on.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Francesco wanted to know, his heart full of foreboding.

‘So you’ll know how your future with her will be. I know about her morning sickness.’

This old man knows everything, Francesco thought.

‘If you’re thinking of continuing your relationship with her, you need to know these things. Marrying Sarah implies bringing me along. That’s why we’re having this conversation.’

‘You’re trying to dissuade me from having a relationship with her.’

‘Of course not.’ JC smiled and coughed. ‘I’m showing you the whole picture. I know it’s not common to do so in relationships. Only much later do you see the dark side of the one you marry. Consider this conversation a bonus. You can make a concrete decision about your future. Risk it or not, knowing all this implies.’

It was too much to digest at one time, and this wasn’t the place to do it.

He saw the cripple leave one of the houses on the other side of the street and come over to the car. He had a young man with him.

‘We’re going to take you to the airport. Don’t forget: you saw and know nothing. Only that will guarantee I forget about you,’ JC warned.

The cripple put the boy in the backseat with those already sitting there. He had dark bruises on his face and traces of dry blood in his nose and mouth. The rest were covered up by clothes.

‘Who are you?’ he asked fearfully.

‘Your father sent us. Don’t worry. Everything is fine,’ JC reassured him.

‘Where’s my father?’ he asked, looking around uneasily.

JC took his cell phone and dialed a number. A little later someone answered and spoke in French.

‘How did everything go?’ JC asked.

‘Just fine. The woman has the documents and is on the plane,’ someone responded.

‘Perfect. Can you get little Ben’s father on the line? His son wants to talk to him. Good work, Gavache.’ He handed the phone to the young man. ‘Talk to your parents. They’re very worried.’

While little Ben calmed parental anxieties, JC lowered the window of the door. The cripple bent down to listen.

‘Our work is almost concluded,’ JC whispered.

‘What about Jerome and Simon?’ the cripple asked, without looking at JC.

‘Thank them for taking care of the kid, and tell them to put in a good word for me when they meet their Creator.’

The cripple took a gun out of his holster, checked the chamber, and put it away again. ‘It’ll be done. I’ll be back in five minutes.’

Little Ben said good-bye to his father and gave the phone back to JC. ‘Thank you so much. That was terrible. I can’t thank you enough,’ he said breathlessly.

The old man smiled with satisfaction.

‘You’re going home now.’

‘What is your name, sir?’

‘You can call me JC.’

The Domus Sanctae Marthae was a five-story building ordered built by John Paul II in the 1990s to give some comfort to those visiting the Holy See on business or for devotion. Cardinals, bishops, or priests, some emissary from another country, it was for anyone who came under the good graces of the Holy Mother Church. It was best known for lodging the College of Cardinals in 2005. It was built on the site of the former Saint Martha Hospice, which Leo XIII constructed during a cholera epidemic, and served as a refuge for Jews and others with troubled relations with the Italian government during World War II.

It was certainly not a five-star hotel, but it provided all the necessary comfort for anyone whose only requirement was a good night’s sleep.

Hans Schmidt rested a little, not as much as his body would have liked, since he was no longer at an age when he could stay up all night and part of the following day without rest and food. He remembered he hadn’t had a decent meal since arriving the previous night. He’d had coffee, some water, eaten half a sandwich, but nothing nutritious.

He opened his eyes. The room was dark, but the afternoon was only half over. He turned on the light over the bed and looked at his watch. It was four fifteen. He’d slept only an hour. He’d give himself fifteen minutes more of rest before going to see Tarcisio and the final developments in his case.

He turned off the light and shut his eyes again. He shut off his mind, refusing to think about anything. During the hour of rest one shouldn’t think. Besides, any thought that had no practical effect was an excuse not to do what should be done when reality required it. People revived too many scenes from the past that they later embellished in the way they wished things had happened or anticipated events that had not yet come. Most people lived in expectations and illusions. Hans didn’t. He knew perfectly well that expectations grew to the extent they were imagined, and developed according to one’s own wishes. Illusion, or delusion, was also a hope, just different, since one hoped that something one didn’t really possess would bear marvelous fruit. Both attitudes were mistakes.