House of Acerbi

side corridor and seated him outside the entrance to the pope’s private chapel.

“Is there anything I can get for you, Bishop?”

Bishop Anthony Morelli gazed up at the aging face and smiled. “No … thank you, Enzo. I think I’ll just sit here until His Holiness is finished with his prayers.”

Eyeing the bishop’s ruddy complexion and slight paunch, the pope’s secretary smiled.

“Holding out for some of Pope Michael’s private stock of French wine, eh, Anthony?”

“You know me too well, old friend. His Holiness always lets me sample one of his special wines when I visit, although I hear he’s developed a taste for the California reds since his last trip to America.”

The old priest’s eyes widened. “I just finished e-mailing a new order to a Napa winery this morning. I’m beginning to think what people say about you is true, Anthony.”

“And what would that be, Enzo?”

“That somehow, you really do know everything that goes on within the Vatican.”

The two men smiled at one another before the elder man turned and walked slowly back down the corridor, shaking his head as he disappeared into his private office.

Bishop Anthony Morelli had known the old Jesuit for over thirty years-ever since that memorable day when Morelli first arrived at the Vatican from America as a very young and newly-ordained priest with a PhD in archaeology. After an exhaust spewing green and black-painted taxi had dropped him off, he had stood in the courtyard next to his small suitcase and stared up at the imposing structure of the Apostolic Palace, afraid to go forward but not daring to retreat.

Peering from a fourth-floor window of the poorly-lit offices of the Vatican’s Department of Archaeology, Father Enzo Corelli had spotted the lost-looking priest standing alone in the courtyard below and had rushed down the stairs to welcome him.

Morelli had never forgotten the old man’s kindness for coming down to greet him that day, or the fact that during his first few months at his new job, Father Corelli had taken the young priest under his wing in an effort to educate him in the subtle game of avoiding the politics that existed within the Curia-the Vatican’s equivalent of a governmental civil service. The Roman Curia controlled the bishops, the bishops controlled the clergy, and the clergy controlled the laity. In short, the Curia oversaw all aspects of Vatican life, including all of its governmental offices.

Over time, Morelli’s superiors began to take note of the young priest’s talent for discovering long-forgotten libraries that lay hidden in plain sight. In tiny villages that dotted the ancient landscape around the Mediterranean, Morelli had uncovered dusty repositories of ancient wisdom that held previously unnoticed clues to the past-clues that would lead him to dig in weed-covered patches of ground where he would discover the remains of civilizations hidden from view for thousands of years. In less than two years from the day of his arrival in Rome, it was apparent to all that Morelli was rapidly becoming one of the most forward-thinking archaeologists in the world.

Morelli’s star continued to rise at the Vatican along with that of an old classmate by the name of Marcus Lundahl. The two priests had been friends since their days together in Jesuit seminary in America. Born in Norway, Lundahl, a quiet man with a superior intellect, was destined to become a Prince of the Church, but his appointment with destiny was yet to come. After becoming an authority on Canon Law and serving briefly as the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Lundahl had gone on to achieve the greatest title of them all, a title that would change his very name forever, for Cardinal Marcus Lundahl had become Pope Michael-the first Norwegian pope in Catholic Church history.

Known in Italian as the appartamento pontificio, the papal apartments were made up of ten large rooms and included a beautiful rooftop garden. The front section of the papal suite held the reception area, the secretary’s office, and a complete medical facility. Running through the center of the apartments, a long marble corridor led to the supreme pontiff’s private chapel located next to a vast library that contained over 20,000 books. From there, a passage through the thick inner walls led to a formal dining room, the kitchen, the pope’s private study, and finally, the papal bedroom.

Those few who had entered the papal bedroom were always surprised by its spartan appearance. In fact, in the early days of the palace, the small room had actually been the sleeping quarters of a servant-a very fitting analogy to the fact that one of the pope’s many titles was Servant of the Servants of God. A simple wooden cross hung over the bed, and instead of the beautifully inlaid marble floors found throughout the rest of the palace, the wooden floor in the pope’s bed chamber dated back to the palace’s original construction in the 1500’s. The worn flooring was polished daily to a high sheen by a group of nuns who watched over the papal apartments with a fierce dedication that resembled a mother lion guarding her young. It is said that, if an intruder ever made it past the Swiss Guards, he would never live to tell of his encounter with the nuns who watched over the pope.

Elected for life as the supreme ruler of the Catholic Church and known to millions the world over as the Vicar of Christ on Earth, the pope is also a world leader who wields extraordinary power over the political, ideological, and economic policies of millions of people all over the globe. And, as a monarch whose rule is absolute, he does so without the constraint of any legislative or judicial control to hinder his decisions.

Because of the pope’s immense worldwide power, along with the fact that the Vatican is a country unto itself, there must be a second in command waiting to step forward in case the pope suddenly dies or is incapacitated. In the Vatican, this distinction falls upon the Secretary of State. This position is always occupied by a cardinal who, by necessity, also happens to be one of the pope’s closest associates.

These facts were very much on Bishop Morelli’s mind as he waited in the hallway outside the private chapel, for he had just received the terrible news that the private jet carrying the much beloved Cardinal Orsini, the Vatican’s longtime Secretary of State, had just slammed into the side of a mountain in Spain.

Without fanfare, a tall man with blonde hair and piercing blue eyes emerged from the papal chapel, his long white cassock trailing on the floor behind him.

“Good evening, Anthony. I heard you were coming.”

“Thank you for seeing me, Your Holiness.”

The pope smiled as he clasped Morelli on the shoulder. “You are a welcome sight this evening, Bishop. What’s so important to bring you out in this horrible weather?”

Morelli paused just long enough for the pope’s blue eyes to focus in on him with a steely gaze.

“I’m afraid I bring Your Holiness some bad news.”

“Is it someone close to us?”

“Very close, I’m afraid. It’s Cardinal Orsini. We received word a short time ago that his plane disappeared from radar as it passed over the Pyrenees on the return trip home from America. We were waiting for further news when the Spanish Ambassador called to confirm that their military had found the plane’s wreckage on the side of a mountain in the northern part of the country.”

“Were there any survivors?”

“No, Your Holiness. The military rescue teams on the scene reported that it must have been a very high- speed impact. The weather at the crash site was clear, so the implication at this point is that there was some sort of mechanical malfunction. There was no radio communication from the aircraft.”

The pope glanced down at the gold papal ring on his right hand before removing his rosary from beneath his robes and reciting a brief prayer.

“Why don’t we go to my study and have a glass of wine, Anthony.”

The two men passed down a short corridor until they reached a tall-windowed room that looked out over Saint Peter’s Square. As the pope looked for an appropriate selection from inside a wood-paneled wine cooler built into the wall, Morelli took a seat on a facing sofa and casually scanned the selection of books lying on a side table.

Next to a few leather-bound editions of classic works by well-known theologians and philosophers, he noticed several copies of the International Defense Review along with other surprising titles like The Problems of Military Readiness, Military Balance and Surprise Attack, and Worldwide Terrorist Organizations. Then, next to these, he saw another interesting title: Spiritual Warfare.

Although it was well known that Pope Michael was a prolific reader and that his grasp of geopolitics was formidable, Morelli smiled with the knowledge that the subject matter of the books the pope was reading had always provided him with a window into the pontiff’s thinking at the moment.