In any case, Sandoz healed poorly. Dental implants were impossible; he'd been fitted with a couple of bridges so he could eat normally, but he had no appetite and remained underweight. And the surgeons wouldn't touch his hands. 'There's no point in trying, as things stand,' one of them said. 'His connective tissue is like a spider web. It'll hold if you don't disturb it. Maybe in a year…'
So the Society brought in Father Singh, an Indian craftsman known for his intricate braces and artificial limbs, who fabricated a pair of near-prostheses to strengthen and help control Sandoz's fingers. Delicate-looking as spun sugar, the braces were fitted over his hands and extended back toward his elbows. Sandoz was courteous, as always, and praised the workmanship and thanked Father Singh for his help. And he practiced daily with an obstinate persistence that first worried and then frightened Brother Edward.
Eventually, they were told, Sandoz would learn to use only the wrist flexors to activate the servomotors that ran off electrical potentials generated in the muscles of his forearms. But even after a month, he couldn't seem to isolate the movement he needed, and the effort to control his hands took every bit of strength he had. So Brother Edward did his best to keep the sessions short, balancing the progress Emilio made against the price they both paid in tears.
Two days after another reporter was caught climbing an outside wall near Sandoz's bedroom, the Father General called Edward Behr and John Candotti into his office, just after his regular morning meeting with his secretary. To John's dismay, Voelker stayed.
'Father Voelker has suggested that Emilio might benefit from a retreat, gentlemen,' Vincenzo Giuliani began, glancing at Candotti with eyes that said quite clearly, Shut up and play along. 'And he has kindly offered to conduct the Spiritual Exercises. I am interested in your views.'
Brother Edward shifted in his chair and leaned forward, hesitant to speak first but with a definite opinion about this. Before he could form a sentence, Johannes Voelker spoke. 'We are taught that we should make no decision in times of desolation. It's clear that the man is experiencing a darkness of the soul, and no wonder. Sandoz is spiritually paralyzed, unable to move forward. I recommend a retreat with a director who would help him focus on the task he has before him.'
'Maybe if the guy didn't have people breathing down his neck, he'd do better,' said John, smiling genially and thinking, You pedantic prig.
'Forgive me, Father General,' Brother Edward broke in hastily. The animosity between Candotti and Voelker was becoming the stuff of legends. 'With respect, the Exercises are a very emotional experience. I don't think Emilio's ready for them now.'
'I'd have to agree with that,' John said pleasantly. And Johannes Voelker is the last man on Earth I'd choose as a spiritual director for Sandoz, he thought. Shit or get off the pot, my son.
'Strictly from a safety standpoint, however,' Edward Behr continued, 'I'd like to see him elsewhere. He feels as though he's under siege, here in Rome.'
'Well, in a manner of speaking, he is,' the Father General said. 'I agree with Father Voelker that Emilio must face up to his situation, but now is not the time and Rome is not the place. So. We are agreed that it's a good idea to take Emilio out of the Residence, even if we have different motives for the move, correct?' Giuliani rose from his desk and went to his windows, where he could see a morose crowd standing around under umbrellas. They'd been fortunate with the cold, wet weather, which had discouraged all but the most persistent reporters that winter. 'The retreat house north of Naples would provide more privacy than we can guarantee here.'
'The problem, I should think, is how to get Sandoz out of Number 5 without being detected,' Edward Behr said. 'The bread van won't work a second time.'
'Reporters follow every vehicle,' Voelker confirmed.
Giuliani turned from the windows. 'The tunnels,' he said.
Candotti looked puzzled. 'I'm sorry?'
'We are connected to the Vatican by a complex of tunnels,' Voelker informed him. 'We can take him out through St. Peter's.'
'Do we still have access to them?' Behr asked, frowning.
'Yes, if one knows whom to ask,' Giuliani said serenely and moved toward the door of his office, signaling the end of the meeting. 'Until our plans are in place, gentlemen, it is best, perhaps, to say nothing to Emilio. Or to anyone else.'
Finished at Number 5, John Candotti stood by the front door with his umbrella at the ready, irrationally irritated that the weather had been so bad for so long. Sunny Italy, he thought, snorting.
He shouldered his way through the media crowd that rushed at him as soon as he opened the door and took perverse pleasure in answering all the shouted questions with pointless quotations from Scripture, making a great show of piety. But as soon as he left the reporters behind, he turned his thoughts to the meeting that had just ended. Giuliani obviously agreed it was crazy to put Sandoz through the Exercises in his present state, John thought as he walked back to his room. So what was the point of that little show with Voelker?
It wasn't in John Candotti's nature to be suspicious of motives. There were people who loved to play organizational chess, to pit one person against another, to maneuver and plot and anticipate everyone else's next three moves, but John had no talent for the game and so he was nearly home before he got it, at the very moment that he managed to step into a fresh pile of dog droppings.
Crap, he thought, in observation and in commentary. He stood there in the rain, contemplating his shoe and its adornment and his own guileless good nature. This meeting, he realized, was part of some kind of good cop, bad cop balancing act Giuliani was encouraging. Gee, nice thinking, Sherlock! he told himself mordantly.
Obedience was one thing. Being used, even by the Father General, was another. He was offended but also embarrassed that he had taken so long to wise up. And even suspicious, now, because Giuliani had agreed so easily to find a way out of town for Sandoz. But, scraping the shit off his shoe and considering things, John was also sort of flattered; after all, he'd been brought here all the way from Chicago because his Jesuit superiors knew he was almost genetically programmed to despise assholes like his beloved brother in Christ, Johannes Voelker.
John was so anxious to get away from Rome himself that he didn't want to inquire too closely into the Father General's permission to leave. Just play the cards the way they lay, he told himself, and hope that God is on Emilio's side.
On Easter weekend, the Vatican was packed with the faithful: 250,000 people, there to receive the Pope's blessing, to pray, to gawk, to buy souvenirs, to have their pockets picked. The Jihad promised bombs, and security was tight, but no one noticed a sickly man bent over his own lap, wrapped against the April chill, being wheeled out of the plaza by a big guy in a popular tourist jacket that proclaimed VESUVIUS 2, POMPEII 0. Anyone watching might only have been surprised at how easily they flagged down a central city taxi.
'Driver?' Sandoz asked as John belted him into the back seat. He sounded close to tears. The crowds, John supposed, and the noise. The fear of being recognized and mobbed.
'Brother Edward,' John told him.
Edward Behr, in a cabbie's uniform, raised a dimpled hand in greeting from the front seat before turning his attention back to the streets. Outlawing private vehicles in the city had reduced the density of traffic but acted as Darwinian selection pressure for the most combative drivers. Edward Behr was, for good reason, an exceptionally careful driver.
John Candotti settled into the seat next to Sandoz and got comfortable, pleased with himself and with the day and with the world. 'A clean getaway,' he said aloud as Edward pulled onto the clogged autostrada to Naples. He turned to Sandoz, hoping that he'd caught the infectious, boyish spirit of getting away with something, of skipping school for a day of stolen freedom…And saw instead a desperately tired man, slumped in the seat beside him, eyes closed against a jarring, exhausting journey through the city, against new pain layered over scurvy's constant hemorrhagic ache and a damnable bone-deep weariness that rest could not remedy.
In the silence, John's eyes met those of Brother Edward, who had seen the same man in the rearview mirror, and he watched Ed's smile fade, just as his own did. They were quiet after that, so Brother Edward could better concentrate on feathering the turns and smoothing out the ride while driving as fast as he dared.
The routinely awful traffic through the Rome-Naples sprawl was made worse by additional security
