Gordon Thomas - Gideon's Spies

As the pope extended his ring hand, Agca moved to shake it, hesitated, then bent to kiss the Fisherman’s Ring. Next he took the pope’s hand and placed it briefly against his forehead.

“Lei è Mehmet Ali Agca?” The pope framed the question softly. He had been told Agca had learned Italian in prison.

“Sì.” A quick smile accompanied the word, as if Agca was embarrassed to admit who he was.

“Ah, lei abita qui?” John Paul looked around the cell, genuinely interested in the place where his would-be killer might well spend the rest of his life.

“Sì.”

John Paul sat on a chair positioned just inside the door. Agca sank onto his bed, clasping and unclasping his hands.

“Come si sente?” The pope’s question as to how Agca felt was almost paternal.

“Bene, bene.” Suddenly Agca was speaking urgently, volubly, the words coming in a low torrent only the pope could hear.

John Paul’s expression grew more pensive. His face was close to Agca’s, partially shielding him from the guards and journalists.

Agca whispered into the pope’s left ear. The pope gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Agca paused, uncertainty on his face. John Paul indicated, with a quick chopping motion of his right hand, that Agca should continue. Both men were so close their heads almost touched. Agca’s lips barely moved. On John Paul’s face there was a pained look. He closed his eyes, as though it would help him to better concentrate.

Suddenly, Agca stopped in midsentence. John Paul did not open his eyes. Only his lips moved; only Agca could hear the words.

Once more Agca resumed speaking. After a few more minutes, the pope made another little chopping motion of the hand. Agca stopped talking. John Paul placed his left hand to his forehead, as if he wanted to shield his eyes from Agca.

Then John Paul squeezed the younger man’s upper arm, almost as if to thank him for what he had said. The exchanges lasted for twenty-one minutes, and then the pope slowly rose to his feet. He held out a hand, encouraging Agca to do the same. The two men stared into each other’s eyes. The pope ended this moment of near perfect drama by reaching into a cassock pocket and producing a small white cardboard box bearing the papal crest. He handed it to Agca. Puzzled, Agca turned the box over in his hand.

The pope waited, the gentlest of smiles on his lips. Agca opened the box. Inside was a rosary crafted in silver and mother-of-pearl.

“Ti ringrazio,” thanked Agca. “Ti ringrazio.”

“Niente. Niente,” responded the pope. Then he leaned forward and spoke again words only for Agca.

Then, saying no more, the pontiff walked from the cell.

Later, a Vatican spokesman said, “Ali Agca knows only up to a certain level. On a higher level, he doesn’t know anything. If there was a conspiracy, it was done by professionals and professionals don’t leave traces. One will never find anything.”

Not for the first time, the Vatican had been economical with the truth. Agca had confirmed what Luigi Poggi had been told by Mossad. The plot to kill the pope had been nurtured in Tehran. The knowledge would color John Paul’s attitude toward both Islam and Israel. Increasingly, he told his staff that the real coming conflict in the world was not going to be between the East and West, the United States and Russia, but between Islamic fundamentalism and Christianity. In public he was careful to separate Islam, the faith, and Islamic fundamentalism.

In Israel, Mossad’s analysts saw the pontiff’s new attitude as the first sign that the evidence presented to Poggi had been accepted. But while there was no immediate move made to invite Mossad to contribute to John Paul’s understanding of the world, the pope had become convinced of the value of Poggi’s dialogue with Eli. In Tel Aviv, Admoni told Eli to remain in contact with Poggi. They continued to meet in various European cities, sometimes at an Israeli embassy, other times in a papal nunciature. Their discussions were wide-ranging, but almost always focused on two issues: the situation in the Middle East and the pope’s wish to visit the Holy Land. Linked to this was John Paul’s continued effort to find a permanent homeland for the PLO.

Poggi made it clear the pope had both a liking for, and a fascination with, Yasser Arafat. John Paul did not share the views of men like Rafi Eitan, David Kimche, and Uri Saguy, that the PLO leader, in Eitan’s words, was a ruthless killer and “a butcher of our women and children, someone I would kill with my own bare hands.”

To the pontiff, raised against the background of the heroic Polish resistance against the Nazis, Arafat was an appealing underdog, a charismatic figure continuously able to escape Mossad’s various attempts to kill him. Poggi recounted to Eli how Arafat had once told John Paul he had developed a sixth sense—“and some measure of a seventh”—when he was in danger. “A man like that deserves to live,” Poggi had said to Eli.

Through such glimpses, Eli obtained a clearer view of the pope’s mind-set. But John Paul also paid more than lip service to the historical truth that the Jewish roots of Christianity must never be forgotten, and that anti-Semitism—so rife in his own beloved Poland—must be eradicated.

In May 1984, Poggi invited Eli to the Vatican. The two men talked together for hours in the archbishop’s office in the Apostolic Palace. To this day no one knows what they spoke about.

In Israel, this was once more a time of scandal involving the nation’s intelligence community. A month before, April 12, four PLO terrorists had hijacked a bus with thirty-five passengers as it headed for the southern town of Ashqelon. The official version of the incident was that Shin Bet agents had stormed the bus, and in the ensuing gunfight, two terrorists were shot dead and the two who had been wounded died on their way to the hospital.

Newspaper reports showed them being led from the bus, visibly not seriously injured. It emerged they had been so severely beaten in the ambulance by Shin Bet officers that both men died. Mossad, although not directly involved, was tarnished by the international condemnation of the incident.

Against this background, Poggi explained to Eli, there could be no question of John Paul establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. Until he did, Eli reiterated, there could be no question of the pope being allowed to visit the Holy Land.

Yet it was a measure of the bridge building they were engaged upon that both men agreed the issue was not dead.

On April 13, 1986, John Paul did something no other pontiff had done. He entered the Synagogue of Rome on Lungotevere dei Cenci, where he was embraced by the city’s chief rabbi. Each dressed in their regalia, the two men walked side by side through the silent congregation to the teva, the platform from where the Torah is read.

In the back of the congregation sat Eli, who had played his part in bringing about this historic moment. Yet it still did not achieve what Israel wanted—papal diplomatic recognition.

That would only finally come in December 1993, when, despite the continuing objections of the Secretariat hard-liners, diplomatic ties were established.

By then, Nahum Admoni was no longer Mossad’s chief. His successor, Shabtai Shavit, continued the delicate process of trying to bring Mossad closer to the Vatican. Part of that maneuvering was to show the pope that both Israel and the PLO at long last had a genuine interest in reaching a settlement, and recognized the common threat of Islamic fundamentalism. Pope John Paul bore the physical scars of the truth of that.

Meanwhile, Mossad had been busy on a continent where the Vatican pinned so many hopes for the future—Africa. From there the Holy See one day expected to see emerge the Church’s first black pope. But it was there that Mossad had already shown itself the past master at the black art of playing off one intelligence service against another to secure its own position.