Daniel Silva - The Confessor

Casagrande sat down, worked the combination locks on his attaché, and lifted the lid. Brindisi held out his hand and accepted a single sheet of typescript on Vatican Security Office letterhead, then looked down and began to read. Casagrande folded his hands across his lap and waited patiently. Roberto Pucci paced the floor, a restless hunter looking for a target of opportunity.

A moment later, Cardinal Brindisi stood and took a few teetering steps toward the fireplace. He dropped the report on the flames and watched it curl and disintegrate, then turned and faced Casagrande and Pucci, his eyes hidden behind the two white discs of light. Brindisi's uomini difiducia--his men of trust--awaited the verdict, though for Casagrande there was little suspense, because he knew the course that Brindisi would choose. Brindisi's Church was in mortal danger. Drastic measures were in order.

Roberto Pucci was a perpetual target of the Italian intelligence services, and it had been many days since the Villa Galatina had been swept for listening devices. Before Cardinal Brindisi could pronounce his death sentence, Casagrande raised his finger to his lips and his eyes to the ceiling. Despite a cold rain, they walked in Don Pucci's garden, umbrellas overhead, like mourners following a horse-drawn coffin. The hem of the cardinal's cassock quickly became soaked. To Casagrande it seemed they were wading shoulder to shoulder in blood.

"Pope Accidental is playing a very dangerous game," Cardinal Brindisi said. "His initiative to throw open the Archives is simply a ploy to give him cover to reveal things he already knows. It is an act of unbelievable recklessness. I believe it's quite possible that the Holy Father is delusional or mentally unbalanced in some way. We have a duty, indeed a divine mandate, to remove him."

Roberto Pucci cleared his throat. "Removing him and killing him are two different things, Eminence."

"Not really, Don Pucci. The conclave made him an absolute monarch. We cannot simply ask the king to step aside. Only death can end this papacy."

Casagrande looked up at the row of cypress trees swaying in the gusty wind. Kill the Pope? Insanity. He turned his gaze from the trees and looked at Brindisi. The cardinal was studying him intently. The pinched face, the round spectacles--it was like being appraised by Pius XII himself.

Brindisi looked away. "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest? Do you know who spoke those words, Carlo?"

"King Henry the Second, if I'm not mistaken. And the meddlesome priest he was referring to was Thomas a Becket. Not long after he uttered those words, four of his knights stormed into the cathedral at Canterbury and cut Thomas down with their swords."

"Very impressive," said the cardinal. "Pope Accidental and Saint Thomas have much in common. Thomas was a vain, ostentatious man who did much to bring about his own demise. The same can surely be said of the Holy Father. He has no right to bypass the Curia and launch this initiative on his own. And for his sins, and his vanity, he must suffer the fate of Thomas. Send forth your knights, Carlo. Cut him down."

"If the Holy Father dies a violent death, he will become a martyr, just like Saint Thomas."

"So much the better. If his death is choreographed properly, this whole sordid affair might end in a way that suits our purposes quite nicely."

"How so, Eminence?"

"Can you imagine the wrath that will rain down on the heads of the Jews if the Holy Father is killed in a synagogue? Surely, an assassin with the skills of your friend can carry off something like that. Once he is gone, we will build a case against our papal assassin, the Israeli who settled in our midst and restored our precious works of art while he waited for his chance to murder the Holy Father. It is a remarkable story, Carlo--one the world's media will find difficult to resist."

"If not difficult to believe, Eminence."

"Not if you do your job correctly."

A silence hung over them, broken only by the crunch of their footsteps on the gravel pathway. Casagrande could not feel his feet touching the earth. He felt he was floating, viewing the scene from above: the ancient abbey; the labyrinth gardens; three men, the Holy Trinity of Crux Vera, calmly deliberating whether to murder a pope. He squeezed the handle of his umbrella, assessing whether it was real or merely an object in a dream. He wished it could carry him away, transport him to another time--a time before his faith and his obsession for revenge had caused him to behave with the same cruelty and depravity as his enemies. He saw Angelina, seated on a blanket in the shade of a stone pine in the Villa Borghese. He bent to kiss her, expecting to find the taste of strawberries on her lips, but instead he tasted blood. He heard a voice. In his memory, it was Angelina, telling him she wanted to spend the summer holiday in the mountains of the north. In reality it was Cardinal Brindisi, holding forth on why the murder of a pope would serve the interests of both the Church and Crux Vera. How easily the cardinal speaks of murder, thought Casagrande. And then he saw it all clearly. A Church in turmoil. A time for proven leadership. After the Holy Father's death, Brindisi would seize what the last conclave had denied him.

Casagrande marshaled his forces and proceeded carefully. "If I may approach the issue from an operational standpoint, Eminence, killing a pope is not something that can be done on the spur of the moment. It takes months, perhaps years, to plan something like this." He paused, waiting for Brindisi to interrupt, but the cardinal kept walking, a man on a journey with a great distance still to go. Casagrande carried on. "Once the Holy Father leaves the territory of the Vatican, he will be under the protection of Italian police and security services. At the moment, they are on war footing because of our spurious papal assassin. There will be a wall around the Holy Father that will be impossible to penetrate."

"What you say is true, Carlo. But there are two important factors weighing heavily in our favor. You work for the Vatican Security Office. You have the ability to get a man close to the Holy Father whenever you please."

"And the second?"

"The man you will get close to the Holy Father is the Leopard."

"I doubt even the Leopard would accept an assignment like the one you're proposing, Eminence."

"Offer him money. That's what creatures like him respond to."

Casagrande felt as though he were hurling himself against the walls of the old abbey. He decided to make one final assault.

"When I came to the Vatican from the carabinieri, I swore a sacred oath to protect the pope. Now you are asking me to break that oath, Eminence."

"You also swore a sacred oath to Crux Vera and to me personally, an oath that binds you to absolute obedience."

Casagrande stopped walking and turned to face the cardinal. His spectacles were dotted with rain. "I had hopes of seeing my wife and daughter once again in the Kingdom of Heaven, Eminence. Surely the only thing that awaits the man who carries out this deed is damnation."

"You need not worry about confronting the fires of Hell, Carlo. I will grant you absolution."

"Do you really have such power? The power to cleanse the soul of a man who murders a pope?"

"Of course I do!" snapped Brindisi, as if he found the question blasphemous. Then his demeanor and his tone softened. "You're tired, Carlo. This affair has been long and difficult for all of us. But there is a way out, and soon it will be over."

"At what cost, Eminence? To us? To the Church?"

"He wants to destroy the Church. I want to save it. Who do you stand with ?"

After a moment's hesitation, Casagrande said, "I stand with you, Eminence. And the Holy Mother Church."

"As I knew you would."