‘Ah, you’re just in time for the news bulletin.’
He stood and went across to a small television set in the corner. It warmed up in seconds. He switched it to the local channel and returned to his seat.
They did not have to wait long. Half a minute later, a female announcer appeared. The second item was the first public announcement of tomorrow’s audience and the conference that would follow it. A photograph of the Pope greeting Presidents MacMaolain and Mirghani was followed by film of other dignitaries arriving at Fiumicino airport. A professor from Rome’s Istituto di Studi Orientali mumbled platitudes about Muslim-Christian relations, only to be outdone by a spokesman from the SNCR, the Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions, who managed to slip in quotations from Saint Francis, the Qur’an and Herman Hesse.
Fischer did not switch off after the piece came to an end. He made them sit and watch the rest of the local news: an item about housing in the EUR, another about a by-election, and one on the price of salami. Finally, the announcer shuffled her papers and came to the last item.
‘News has just reached us of a road accident in the city involving a fatality. A car with a single driver collided with a heavy lorry in the Via del Corso, not far from the Palazzo Chigi. First reports indicate that the car skidded into the path of the lorry and was crushed on impact. The driver of the car was dead on arrival at San Giovanni hospital. His name has just been released by the Vigili Urbani. He was Roberto Quadri, a lawyer who worked for a Catholic organization for ex-convicts. The driver of the lorry is reported to be unhurt. There are no further details at this time.
‘And that’s all for this evening. We’ll be on the air again tomorrow at seven with the first news bulletin of the day. There will be a full report on the papal audience and full coverage of the event at ten. Please join us then.’
Fischer used a remote-control device to turn the set off. The room filled with an unhurried silence. Dermot O’Malley did not move. Tears ran down his cheeks, but he did not lift a hand to wipe them away.
‘What about that other matter, Tommaso? Has it been taken care of as well?’
‘Oh, yes - the American and the Contarini girl. I have men on their way there now. It shouldn’t take long.’
O’Malley looked up. All the gentleness had gone from his face as though it had never been. In its place was a look of blind rage mixed with pain. He threw his head back and roared at the top of his voice, then leapt to his feet, grabbing for Fazzini, toppling the old
man from his chair. They fell together, O’Malley on top, his anger overpowering, his hands on the cardinal’s neck.
Fischer stood and reached a hand inside his soutane. He took out a small handgun, took two steps towards O’Malley, kicked him off Fazzini, and shot him twice. The big Irishman was thrown backwards by the force of the shots. He looked at Fischer with a puzzled expression, raised himself on one elbow, and tried to stand. Fischer fired again, two more shots. O’Malley fell back again, choking. Fischer helped Fazzini back to his chair. When he looked round again, O’Malley was on his knees in a pool of blood, reaching for a chair to pull himself up. The American raised the gun.
‘No!’ shouted Assefa. The Ethiopian ran for Fischer, grabbing at his wrist. The cardinal swung his arm round, striking him hard across the cheek with the gun barrel. Assefa staggered and fell back against an armchair. O’Malley was on his feet now. With a roar, he made a lunge for Fischer. The American emptied the rest of the magazine, three shots in quick succession. O’Malley collapsed face downwards and lay still.
FIFTY-ONE
‘In the kitchen,’ he said, ‘you said that Roberto was patient in spite of something. Then you broke off.’
They had left the study after Francesca failed to get a reply from Roberto’s apartment. She had not noticed his unease at being in the study. Back in the living-room, she had poured grappa for them both. She was standing by the window, staring into the street.
‘Did I?’
‘Yes.’
She did not answer. With her hands flat against the pane, she rested her cheek on the cold window. Beyond the glass, the sound of traffic was muffled. There was a stillness in the night, a quietness that seemed to have its origin in her, as though she were the calm point in a storm.
‘We were lovers once,’ she said, her voice hushed, her breath clouding the windowpane. ‘Not like you and me, Patrick. With Roberto, it was ... quieter. Less happy, often sad. But after so long away from the world, he brought me back to it. He showed me how to live again. That wasn’t easy. It took all our energy. There was very little time for love.’
She looked out into the night, and for the first time he sensed how lost she was, like a child waking from a dream to find herself in a strange bedroom, thousands of miles from home.
‘We’d both had our gods and lost them,’ she went on, ‘and we understood that well enough, I think. But he had danced and sung for his god, while I had wept and bled for mine. I had no understanding of his rapture, he mistook my tears for blindness.
‘But we made a certain happiness for each other. A sort of balance. Is that the right word? Not like scales, I don’t mean that, one weight lying against another. It was more like ... a tightrope walker, someone who finds balance only by constant movement, who will fall to his death if he remains still for more than a moment. We were like that, always moving, always seeking a new point of equilibrium.’
One hand stretched out and brushed the glass, wiping away a film of misted breath like gauze. There were bars across the window, heavy bars designed to keep intruders out. She looked past them as though this apartment had been, not a refuge, but a prison for her.
‘Perhaps if we had been more like weights, it would have lasted longer. I don’t know. Our balance was too fine; we lost it in the end. Roberto became too involved in his investigation of the Brotherhood. He let it become his life. But I was just the opposite, you see. It had already been my life, I was trying to put it behind me, to find new ways to live. We might have found a balance there, I can’t say. But it was already too late anyway. Roberto’s sick. He doesn’t have long to live.’
She looked away from the window, into the room, but her eyes did not meet Patrick’s.
‘Three years ago,’ she said, ‘he was diagnosed as suffering from AIDS. His doctor told him he had about a year to eighteen months to live. He was shattered at first. For a month or more, he went about like a zombie, as though he’d lost interest in everything and was just waiting to die. And then, quite suddenly, he changed. He’d found out he could fight it, that a diagnosis of AIDS wasn’t a death sentence, whatever his doctors said.
‘There were scores of people in the United States who’d lived seven, eight years with the disease. Some of them were completely free of symptoms, living normal lives. What they had in common was a decision not to give in. They meditated, practised visualization, had acupuncture, herbal remedies - anything that might turn their immune systems round and give them a fighting chance. That sounds incredible. You’d think it should make headlines. But the media aren’t interested. They want people to die of AIDS. What use is an epidemic if some of its victims won’t lie down?
‘It’s the same with doctors. Roberto’s already outlived their predictions, but every time he tells them what he’s doing, it’s like a wall comes down. They don’t want to know about people getting better outside their control.’
She sighed.
‘The way he’s been fighting, by now he should be like some of those people in America, living a normal life again. But any energy he gains, he uses up fighting the Brotherhood. That’s what’s killing him now, not AIDS. Isn’t that stupid?’
She turned back to the window.
‘I think of all those people out there, frightened to death of AIDS. They’d come to believe a myth, you see, that medicine could cure them of anything. And then AIDS came along and they were powerless again. But AIDS is just a word, just four letters: they’re dying of four letters. They think a virus is killing them, but it isn’t. People with healthy immune systems can catch the virus and hardly notice it. It’s people who are already tuned in to death who die of AIDS. And our whole society encourages them. Their priests tell them they’re sinners and deserve to die. Their doctors say they’re incurable and their deaths are certain. The media treat them like lepers.
‘I’ve already been as good as dead, I know just what it’s like to be outside the world. That’s how Roberto felt
