rolled off the scaffold and landed at Marlowe’s feet.
He watched her mouth open and close as if she were trying to kiss his boot, and with each deathly movement he felt his tail twitching with life.
EIGHTEEN
MICHELANGELO’S SISTINE CHAPEL WAS not created for hordes of tourists craning their necks and strobing the chamber with their digital flashes.
It was created for this.
Sealed and empty, it was grandly silent and expectant, evenly and naturally lit from the high windows which lined the chapel from their position just below the painted ceiling.
Rows of brown-velvet-topped tables were carefully laid out on either side of the chapel, facing each other, each table with a simple white card bearing a cardinal’s name.
There was a sound of an ancient key in an ancient lock and a heavy door groaned open. Then a sound of sniffing and claws scratching on the mosaic floor.
The Alsatian dog strained at its leash, its ears erect and eager, its tail wagging with purpose. Its handler from the security contractor Gruppo BRM let it do its job. It went straight for the nearest table, sniffed at the floor- length velvet drape and poked its large black and brown head underneath.
The dog resurfaced, its tail in the same state of readiness. It strained for the next table down the line.
Hackel motioned to his man, Glauser, who seemed overjoyed that he’d been given a plain-clothes assignment for the Conclave, a black suit cut with enough room to conceal a modified Heckler & Koch submachine gun. ‘Bring in the electronics team to start sweeping behind the dog.’
Glauser nodded and went to fetch the bug sweepers.
When they were done with the chapel, the security detail proceeded en masse to the small adjoining rooms including the Room of Tears – where the new Pope would briefly contemplate his fate alone – the Vestments Room and on down to the basement rooms where they completed the sweep.
In the courtyard behind the chapel, Hackel watched the Gruppo BRM people packing up their gear and loading the dog into a van. Glauser approached him and said, ‘From this point on, I’ll double the guard and maintain the highest level of sterility.’
Hackel pointed a finger at him and growled, ‘You make sure of that.’
Elisabetta had the apartment to herself. She’d returned there after mass at Santa Maria in Trastevere and the day stretched out oddly in front of her. She wasn’t at all used to unstructured time but she wasn’t going to turn on the television, was she?
First she spent an hour on her father’s computer researching Lumbubashi and the Republic of Congo. Such a poor country, she thought. So many needs. But despite the poverty, the children on the Order’s website seemed so cheerful and fresh-faced. That, at least, buoyed her spirits.
She sighed and rose. The light streaming through the windows accentuated the dust on the furniture. Unlike her father’s cleaning lady, she could move his books and papers with impunity and dust and polish under surfaces that hadn’t been tended for years.
Elisabetta went to her bedroom, slipped off her shoes and then her robes. The drawers of her old dresser were swollen with humidity and it took several determined tugs to open them. She hadn’t looked at her clothes in years and the sight of her old jeans and sweaters brought back a torrent of memories. She reached for a faded pair of Levis she’d bought on a school trip to New York and her fingertips brushed something underneath them.
It was a velvet box.
She sat back on her bed, her chest shuddering, trying to suppress tears. The box was on her bare knees. She opened the lid. The sunlight caught Marco’s pendant and bounced wildly off its faceted surface. It was as pretty and sparkly as the day she’d first put it on.
It was a hot night. Elisabetta’s window was wide open but the air was hardly moving.
Marco put his forefinger onto the heart-shaped pendant, pressing it lightly against the top of her breast. Her skin was glistening and she was breathing heavily. They were bathed in candlelight.
‘Do you still like it?’ he asked.
‘Of course I do. Don’t you notice I never take it off?’
‘I have noticed. Even when you make love.’
‘With the other boys, I take it off,’ she said, poking him in the ribs.
He pouted. ‘Ah, very nice.’
Elisabetta kissed his cheek, then ran her tongue playfully over Marco’s stubble. He tasted salty. ‘Don’t worry. You’re the only one.’
He sat up beside her in the bed, pulled his knees against his chest and suddenly said. ‘We’re going to get married, aren’t we?’
She sat up too and looked at him quizzically. ‘That’s not a proposal, is it?’
Marco shrugged. ‘It’s just a question. I mean, I think I know the answer, I just want to make sure you know it too.’
He was like a man-child that night. So big and potent, but at the same time so vulnerable and insecure. ‘Who else would I marry?’ Elisabetta placed her palm on his naked back and moved it slowly down over his spine until she got to the hollow at the small of his back. It was smooth and strong and, for a reason she didn’t understand, was her favorite spot on his body.
Elisabetta put the velvet box back into the drawer, as carefully as if she were handling a saint’s relic. She pulled on the old Levis – which still fit – and then a musty sweatshirt.
As she cleaned the apartment, she tried not to think about Marco. She had always been good at blotting out thoughts of him but today the only thing with any chance of accomplishing that was Africa.
The news from Sister Marilena had shaken her deeply. She’d spent the night in denial, suppressing a sense of indignation, even anger. Who was playing with her life, pulling strings as if she were a marionette? Why was she being ripped from her convent and her students, indeed from the very membrane of her life?
But as she’d prayed at Mass that morning her attitude had begun to shift and her mood had lightened. How arrogant and self-important of her to question her fate! Not only was she in God’s hands but it dawned on her that the Congo was His gift. It was a chance, Elisabetta realized, to shed the heavy load she’d been forced to carry. She could leave behind the skeletons and the men with tails and their dark little tattoos and get back to her true calling, the service of God and the education of His children. The convent school in Lumbubashi was far away and pure and good and she would be restored there. Of course she would miss her family and her community of Sisters but her sacrifice was nothing compared to the sacrifice that Christ had made. Christ’s love would sustain her in a foreign land and the happy faces of the little children called to her from the pages of Lumbubashi’s website.
The sitting room, kitchen, dining room, hall and guest lavatory were gleaming and smelled of fresh cleaning products. She’d do the bedrooms next, starting with her own and doing her father’s last. Elisabetta pushed the vacuum cleaner into her bedroom, plugged it in and began to run it over the carpet when the
She sighed at her weakness. She couldn’t let go.
Armed with a cup of coffee and a phone number from the University of Ulm web page, Elisabetta sat in her father’s kitchen cradling a telephone under her chin. She talked her way past an imperious secretary and was soon on the line with the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Daniel Friedrich.
Dean Friedrich listened quietly to Elisabetta’s request for information about Bruno Ottinger but as soon as she spoke she knew he couldn’t be helpful. He was relatively new at the University and although he had a vague knowledge that Ottinger had been in the department years earlier, he had no personal knowledge of the man. He
