Aspromonte whispered to Diaz, ‘Under the circumstances, you can omit the prayers, even the Misereatur, and proceed to the Communion.’
‘Yes,’ Diaz said. ‘Yes.’
Both Giaccone and Aspromonte helped Cardinal Diaz lower himself next to the Pope’s body where he knelt and said a silent prayer.
The Pope’s secretaries ran back in with a tray of communion wafers and a red leather bag. Diaz took one of the wafers and said in a clear voice, ‘This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Happy are those who are called to His supper.’
The Pope was unable to respond, but Aspromonte whispered what he would have said, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.’
‘The body of Christ,’ Diaz intoned.
‘Amen,’ Aspromonte whispered.
Diaz broke off a small particle of wafer and placed it into the froth inside the Pope’s mouth. ‘May the Lord Jesus protect you and lead you to eternal life.’
Zarilli was on his feet now, looking mournful, ‘Are you finished?’ he asked Diaz. ‘It’s over. The Pope has passed.’
‘You are wrong, doctor,’ the old cardinal said icily. ‘He’s not dead until the Cardinal Camerlengo says he’s dead. Cardinal Aspromonte, please proceed.’
Everyone dropped back while Aspromonte took the leather bag from Father Diep and extracted a small silver mallet engraved with the Pope’s coat of arms.
He fell to his knees and gently tapped the Pope’s forehead with the mallet, ‘Get up, Domenico Savarino,’ he said, using the name that the pontiff’s mother had whispered to him as a child, for it was said that no man would remain asleep at the sound of his baptismal name.
The Pope remained motionless.
Another tap. ‘Get up, Domenico Savarino,’ Aspromonte said again.
The room was quiet.
He tapped the Pope’s forehead with the mallet for the third and last time. ‘Get up, Domenico Savarino.’
Aspromonte rose to his feet, crossed himself and loudly proclaimed the awful words: ‘The Pope is dead.’
‘The Pope is dead.’
This time the words were uttered by a man speaking into a mobile phone.
There was a pause and a deep exhalation. The man could almost hear the relief flowing from the other’s chest. Damjan Krek replied, ‘During Pisces. As predicted.’
‘Do you want me to proceed?’
‘Of course,’ Krek said sharply. ‘Do it tonight. Tonight is the perfect time.’
As the man walked calmly through the Piazza St Pietro, he knew that K was correct. Tonight
The man was toting a black nylon bag, the kind used to shift tactical gear. If it was heavy no one would have known. Like those of a modern Atlas his prodigious shoulders looked like they could shift any weight. He wore a dark blue business suit with a small enamel pin in his lapel, his usual attire on most days. He was not handsome but his lean angularity and midnight hair turned heads quickly enough; he had always done well with the ladies.
Instead of heading up the stairs of the Basilica he veered toward a non-public door leading to the Sistine Chapel. He picked up his pace and heard the night air whistling through his clenched teeth. He felt the SIG pistol lying tight against his heart and the Boker folding knife against his thigh. At the door, a Swiss Guard in ceremonial dress stood stiffly, bathed in floodlight. The guardsman looked the man in the eye, then glanced at his shoulder bag.
‘Korporal,’ the man said quickly.
The guardsman saluted crisply and stepped aside. ‘Herr Oberstleutnant. Sad day.’
‘Indeed it is.’
Oberstleutnant Matthias Hackel moved through the drab deserted hall, his leather-soled shoes tapping the tiles. Ahead was a locked doorway leading directly to the Sistine Chapel. He had the keys, of course, but everything on this level was covered by security cameras. While the second in command of the Swiss Guards could go virtually anywhere in Vatican City with impunity, it was better to pass through basement corridors where surveillance cameras were few.
He climbed a set of stone stairs to the first basement level and followed a corridor until he was directly under the Sistine Chapel within a rabbit warren of small and medium-sized rooms packed with uninteresting and low-value items. The Vatican had intensely secure spaces for documents, books and art treasures but the contents of these rooms were rather more prosaic: furniture, cleaning supplies, outdoor security barriers.
The room which he now entered had no cameras and was visited so infrequently that he was certain he’d be able to work without any surprise interruptions. He switched on the lights and the chamber sputtered into sickly yellow-green fluorescence. There were stacks of simple, inexpensive wooden tables, each a meter and a half long, less than a meter wide, high enough for use by a seated man. They’d been purchased in bulk in the 1950s from a Milanese factory but still seemed relatively new owing to their light use. They had been taken out of storage and carried upstairs into the Sistine Chapel only five times in nearly six decades, each on the occasion of selecting a new Pope.
They didn’t look like much. But when covered in floor-length red velvet and crowned with gold-brocaded brown velvet they would take on a certain splendor, especially when laid out in precise rows underneath Michelangelo’s ceiling.
The nearest table would serve a more immediate purpose. The man placed his bag on it and smiled.
THREE
TOMMASO DE STEFANO LINGERED OVER his cigarette, seemingly fretful about his appointment. Above him, water cascaded from the fountain of entwined sculpted dolphins which had stood at the center of the Piazza Mastai since 1863. His wife had been trying to get him to stop smoking and even he wheezily acknowledged the necessity. Yet this entire Roman square was a monument to tobacco and it was, perhaps, historically appropriate to pay homage with a smoke.
Besides, he was nervous and even a bit timid. His awkwardness bore a similarity to the trepidation he felt a few years earlier when a cousin emerged from a six-year jail term for larceny. At the time he’d asked his wife helplessly, ‘What do you say to a man who’s life’s been interrupted like this? How are you doing? Haven’t seen you for a while? You’re looking good?’
Behind him was the rather grand nineteenth-century Pontifical Tobacco Manufacturing factory erected by the entrepreneurial family of Pope Pius IX, now a state facility concerned with monopolies. Facing him was a more pedestrian four-story structure of red sandstone built by the same Pope in 1877 to house and educate the girls employed by his tobacco factory. It probably hadn’t been an act of pure papal charity, more likely a calculated maneuver to keep a cheap workforce off the streets and free of venereal disease.
De Stefano stamped out his cigarette and crossed the square.
Though the tobacco factory was long gone the red building had endured as a school. A bevy of well-behaved teenage girls in blue and white tracksuits milled around under a sign: SCUOLA TERESA SPINELLI, MATERNA- ELEMENTARE-MEDIA.
De Stefano took a sharp breath and pushed the iron gate open. In the marble forecourt a young nun was conversing with the harried mother of a little girl who was running in circles, working off pent-up energy. The nun was black – African, judging by her accent – wearing the light blue smock of a novice. He chose not to interrupt her so he carried on through the courtyard into the cool dark reception hall. A diminutive bespectacled older nun in a black habit saw him and approached.
‘Good day,’ he said. ‘My name is Professor De Stefano.’
