himself not to look round. ‘I remember... what happened in the nunciature, then being taken to the canal. But everything after that is a blank. You must know what happened.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to know.’
Patrick paused. ‘Very well,’ he said at last.
While he ate, Patrick told him all he knew, and in turn prompted him to explain the events that had led up to his capture at the gate of the nunciature -Balzarin’s death, the phone call to Fazzini, the arrival of the gunmen.
When the priest finished, Ruth poured more coffee for everyone. Back in his chair, Patrick indicated the papers strewn across the table.
‘So these don’t include the papers De Faoite sent to Balzarin?’
‘No. I took those to Fazzini in person. These are all from the nuncio’s safe, except for that mauve file, which I found on his desk.’
‘The one he was reading when he killed himself?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
There was a pause.
‘Have you looked at these papers, Father?’ The question was put by the woman.
‘Only at one of the folders of photographs.’
‘I see. We haven’t gone through those yet. We thought you might help us identify some of the people in them.’
Makonnen sighed. As the coffee cleared his head,
he began to understand just how deep had grown the waters in which he was swimming.
‘Please, can you tell me what this is all about? I want to know. I am willing to help you, but I must know what is happening.’
Ruth looked at Patrick, then back at Makonnen.
‘Father,’ she started, ‘I have to insist. Whatever Mr Canavan or I tell you must remain absolutely confidential. You must swear not to reveal it to anyone else without our permission. Do you understand?’
The priest shook his head.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but you must know that is impossible. I am a priest. I have taken sacred vows. Under my vow of obedience, I would be obliged to reveal any information I possessed to those set in authority over me.’
Patrick leaned over the table. Something in his manner told Makonnen that he and the woman were lovers. But he sensed an awkwardness between them, like an electric charge that was constantly ready to flare up.
‘Forget it, Ruth,’ said Patrick. ‘We can trust him.’ He turned to the priest. ‘All we’re asking, Father, is that you be discreet. Your vows do not require you to volunteer information, do they?’
For the first time, Makonnen smiled.
‘No,’ he replied, ‘they do not.’
Patrick leaned back.
‘Then I think we can begin.’
NINETEEN
Patrick went first. He spoke carefully, as though conscious that he had to forge a bond, a sense of trust between himself and the priest. The fact that he had saved Makonnen’s life and gunned down the two men who had threatened it was meaningless. For all Makonnen knew, he had fallen among fresh thieves, subtler and more well- meaning than the first, but thieves and killers for all that. Good Samaritans are not supposed to carry guns.
‘Father Makonnen,’ he began, ‘I think we may assume that, by now, Cardinal Fazzini has been alerted to the fact of your disappearance. He will not know how you came to make your getaway, and I imagine it will be some time before he learns what happened to the men he sent to kill you. In the meantime, he has to deal with some awkward details, the most embarrassing of which is likely to be Diotavelli’s body. Ruth will find out what she can through the American embassy, but it’s unlikely to be very much.
‘One thing is certain. If you return to the nunciature or the Vatican, you’re as good as dead. That you are in essence ignorant of Fazzini’s machinations is of no concern to him. You know too much, and you must be silenced. If it is any consolation, that applies to me as much as it does to you.’
Makonnen remembered Fazzini’s request for Canavan’s address.
‘They asked me where you lived. I’m sorry, I didn’t think. Did ... Did anyone try to ... ?’
‘Why do you think we’re here?’
The priest leaned forward.
What if I go to someone else in the Vatican, someone I can trust?’
Patrick shook his head.
‘Not until we know more about what’s going on and who is involved. You’re a marked man in every way. But in principle, yes: we shall need access to the Vatican, and for that we shall need your help.’
‘Please,’ Makonnen pleaded, ‘what is this all about?’
Patrick betrayed hesitation for the first time.
‘The simple answer to that question is that we don’t know.’
‘When you visited the nuncio yesterday, you said that a national intelligence bureau was involved in this. I assume you meant yourselves, the CIA.’
Patrick smiled.
‘At that point, no. I was referring to our distant cousins, the RGB.’ He spoke of them as a priest might, after Vatican II, have spoken of ‘our separated brethren’ in the Protestant churches. That was the first intimation Patrick had of how close they stood to one another, the spy and the priest - hand in hand almost, fingertip to fingertip, bullet to book, initiates into the most ancient of mysteries.
‘But I now think the CIA is involved in some way.’ He exchanged glances with Ruth. ‘To make things entirely clear, my own role in all this is, as far as I know, entirely personal. But I did at one time serve as an agent with the CIA, and the possibility of that connection cannot entirely be disregarded.’
He paused. Makonnen looked at him curiously, as though hearing his confession. Patrick felt uneasy, thinking back to the grille in his church at home, the priest’s voice prompting, seeking out sin like a scalpel probing for tumours.
‘Miss Ehlers is a sort of monitor,’ he went on. ‘She serves directly under the CIA chief of station at the embassy here. Her job is to monitor intelligence traffic into and out of the various embassies in Dublin. Most of that traffic is intercepted by the National Security Agency listening station at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. They pass it on to the British through their liaison office at Benhall Park in Cheltenham.’
Ruth broke in.
‘Patrick, I don’t think Father Makonnen needs ...’
‘Please, Ruth, I know what I’m doing.’ Patrick spread his hands in a placating gesture. ‘The Father is a diplomat. If you imagine that anything I’m telling him is not already intimately known to his superiors in the Vatican, you’re being very naive about the Catholic Church.’ He turned back to Makonnen.
‘Benhall Park puts this material together with what GCHQ gives them from their own monitoring stations at Hacklaw and Cheadle, as well as their telecommunications intercepts from Caroone House in London. It’s actually more complex than that, but the point I’m trying to make is that Ruth’s material is extremely comprehensive and extremely reliable.
‘Mostly she’s involved in assessing data for its relevance to the Irish situation. She checks through translated Arab material, for example, to see if it refers to possible links between, say, the Libyans or the PLO and the IRA. And you’re probably aware that your own transmissions are checked for much the same reason.’
Patrick did not have to spell out his meaning. In the late seventies and eighties, the Vatican nuncio in Dublin, Archbishop Gaetane Alibrandi, had attracted notoriety for his repeated contacts with IRA members. Alibrandi’s motives had been noble enough -to understand and, perhaps, to intercede with men of violence. But the unfavourable attention the nunciature had then drawn had not diminished under his successors.
‘Then you knew Balzarin was up to something. You were trying to draw him out.’
Patrick shook his head.
‘No. Until yesterday afternoon, I had no reason to suspect Balzarin of anything. He had some papers I wanted to see, that was all I knew. But when I spoke with him, he behaved like a man with something to hide. After I left
