“I assure you, Colin. I won’t die while you are gone. I may look bad, but I feel fine.”
Which had been confirmed by Clement’s doctors not less than a week ago. After a battery of tests, the pope had been proclaimed free of any debilitating disease. But privately the papal physician had cautioned that stress was Clement’s deadliest enemy, and his rapid decline over the past few months seemed evidence that something was tearing at his soul.
“I never said you looked bad, Holiness.”
“You didn’t have to.” The old man pointed to his eyes. “It’s in there. I’ve learned to read them.”
Michener held up the slip of paper. “Why do you need to make contact with this priest?”
“I should have done it after I first went into the Riserva. But I resisted.” Clement paused. “I can’t resist any longer. I have no choice.”
“Why is the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church without choices?”
The pope stepped away and faced a crucifix on the wall. Two stout candles burned bright on either side of the marble altar.
“Are you going to the tribunal this morning?” Clement asked, his back to him.
“That’s not an answer to my question.”
“The supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church can pick and choose what he wants to answer.”
“I believe you instructed me to attend the tribunal. So, yes, I’ll be there. Along with a roomful of reporters.”
“Will she be there?”
He knew exactly who the old man was referring to. “I’m told she applied for press credentials to cover the event.”
“Do you know her interest in the tribunal?”
He shook his head. “As I told you before, I only learned of her presence by accident.”
Clement turned to face him. “But what a fortunate accident.”
He wondered why the pope was interested.
“It’s all right to care, Colin. She’s a part of your past. A part you should not forget.”
Clement only knew the whole story because Michener had needed a confessor, and the archbishop of Cologne had then been his closest companion. It was the only breach of his clerical vows during his quarter century as a priest. He’d thought about quitting, but Clement talked him out of it, explaining that only through weakness could a soul gain strength. Nothing would be gained from walking away. Now, after more than a dozen years, he knew Jakob Volkner had been right. He was the papal secretary. For nearly three years he’d helped Clement XV govern a derisive combination of Catholic personality and culture. The fact that his entire participation was based on a violation of his oath to his God and his Church never seemed to bother him. And that realization had, of late, become quite troubling.
“I haven’t forgotten any of it,” he whispered.
The pope stepped close to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Do not lament for that which was lost. It is unhealthy and counterproductive.”
“Lying doesn’t come easy to me.”
“Your God has forgiven you. That is all you need.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I am. And if you can’t believe the infallible head of the Catholic Church, who can you believe?” A smile accompanied the facetious comment, one that told Michener not to take things quite so seriously.
He smiled, too. “You’re impossible.”
Clement removed his hand. “True, but I’m lovable.”
“I’ll try and remember that.”
“You do that. I’ll have my letter for Father Tibor ready shortly. It will call for a written response, but if he desires to speak, listen to him, ask what you will, and tell me everything. Understand?”
He wondered how he would know what to ask since he had no idea why he was even going, but he simply said, “I understand, Holiness. As always.”
Clement grinned. “That’s right, Colin. As always.”
THREE
11:00 A.M.
Michener entered the tribunal chamber. The gathering hall was a lofty expanse of white and gray marble, enriched by a geometric pattern of colorful mosaics that had borne witness to four hundred years of Church history.
Two plain-clothed Swiss guards manned the bronze doors and bowed as they recognized the papal secretary. Michener had purposely waited an hour before walking over. He knew his presence would be cause for discussion— rarely did someone so close to the pope attend the proceedings.
At Clement’s insistence, Michener had read all three of Kealy’s books and privately briefed the pontiff on their provocative content. Clement himself had not read them since that act would have generated too much speculation. Yet the pope had been intently interested in what Father Kealy had written and, as Michener slipped into a seat at the back of the chamber, he saw, for the first time, Thomas Kealy.
The accused sat alone at a table. Kealy appeared to be in his midthirties, with bushy auburn hair and a pleasant, youthful face. The grin that flashed periodically seemed calculated—the look and manner almost intentionally whimsical. Michener had read all of the background reports the tribunal had generated, and each one painted Kealy as smug and nonconformist.
Kealy was being questioned by Alberto Cardinal Valendrea, the Vatican secretary of state, and Michener did not envy the man’s position. Kealy had drawn a tough panel. All of the cardinals and bishops were what Michener regarded as intensely conservative. None embraced the teachings of Vatican II, and not one was a supporter of Clement XV. Valendrea particularly was noted for a radical adherence to dogma. The tribunal members were each garbed in full vestments, the cardinals in scarlet silk, the bishops in black wool, perched behind a curved marble table beneath one of Raphael’s paintings.
“There is no one so far removed from God as a heretic,” Cardinal Valendrea said. His deep voice echoed without need of amplification.
“It seems to me, Eminence,” Kealy said, “the less open a heretic is, the more dangerous he would become. I don’t hide my disagreements. Instead, open debate is, I believe, healthy for the Church.”
Valendrea held up three books and Michener recognized the front covers of Kealy’s works. “These are heresy. There is no other way to view them.”
“Because I advocate priests should marry? That women could be priests? That a priest can love a wife, a child, and his God like others of faith? That perhaps the pope is not infallible? He’s human, capable of error. That’s heresy?”
“I don’t think one person on this tribunal would say otherwise.”
And none of them did.
Michener watched Valendrea as the Italian shifted in his chair. The cardinal was short and stumpy like a fire hydrant. A tangled fringe of white hair looped across his brow, drawing attention to itself simply by the contrast with his olive skin. At sixty, Valendrea enjoyed a luxury of relative youth within a Curia dominated by much older men. He also possessed none of the solemnity that outsiders associated with a prince of the Church. He smoked nearly two packs of cigarettes a day, owned a wine cellar that was the envy of many, and regularly moved within the right European social circles. His family was blessed with money, much of which was bestowed on him as the senior male in the paternal line.
The press had long labeled Valendrea
