The telephone-booth man approached and knelt deliberately beside Elisabetta. His stony face was blank. He raised his knife hand over his head.
There was another shout, closer by, someone yelling, ‘Hey!’
The man swung round toward the call.
In the seconds before he turned back to Elisabetta and crashed his fist against her chest, just before she lost consciousness, she noticed a strange, disturbing detail.
She couldn’t be sure – she would never be sure – but she thought she saw something protruding from the man’s back just above his loosened trousers.
It was something that didn’t belong there, something thick, fleshy and repulsive, rising out of a swarm of small black tattoos.
TWO
The Vatican, present day
PAIN WAS HIS constant companion, his personal tormentor, and because it had become so intertwined with his mind and body, in a perverse way it had also become his friend.
When it gripped him hard, causing his spine to stiffen in agony, he had to stop himself from involuntarily uttering the oaths of his youth, the street language of Naples. He had a button he could push which would release a pulse of morphine into his veins but beyond occasional lapses of weakness, usually in the middle of the night when sleep seemed so dear, he avoided its use. Would Christ have availed himself of morphine to ease his suffering on the cross?
But when the worst of the present spasm receded, its passing left a pleasurable void. He was grateful for the teaching the pain imparted: that normalcy was a dear thing and a simplicity to be cherished. He wished he’d been more cognizant of this notion during his long life.
There was a gentle rap on his door and he responded in as strong a voice as he could muster.
A Silesian nun shuffled into the high-ceilinged room, her gray habit nearly brushing the floor. ‘Holiness,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Much the same as an hour ago,’ the Pope said, attempting a smile.
Sister Emilia, a woman not much younger than the elderly pontiff, approached and began fussing with the items on his bedside table. ‘You didn’t drink your orange juice,’ she chided. ‘Would you prefer apple?’
‘I’d prefer to be young and healthy.’
She shook her head and carried on with her business. ‘Let me raise you a little.’
His bed had been replaced with a motorized hospital model. Sister Emilia used the controls to elevate his head and when he was safely upright she held the drinking straw to his dry lips and stared sternly until he relented and took a couple of gulps.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Zarilli is waiting to see you.’
‘What if I don’t want to see him?’ The Pope knew that the old nun lacked even a rudimentary sense of humor so he let her silence last for only a few seconds and then told her that his visitor was welcome.
Dr Zarilli, the pontiff’s private physician, was waiting in an anteroom outside the third-floor papal apartment with another doctor from the Gemelli Hospital. Sister Emilia ushered them into the bedroom and parted the long cream curtains over the Piazza St Pietro to let in the waning sunlight of a fine spring day.
The Pope raised his arm weakly and gave the men a small official wave. He was wearing plain white pajamas. His last therapy had left him bald so for warmth he wore a woolen cap which had been knitted by the aunt of one of his private secretaries.
‘Your Holiness,’ Zarilli said. ‘You remember Dr Paciolla.’
‘How could I forget?’ the Pope replied wryly. ‘His examination of my person was very thorough. Come closer, gentlemen. Can Sister Emilia get you some coffee?’
‘No, no, please,’ Zarilli said. ‘Dr Paciolla has the results of your last scans at the clinic.’
The two men with their black suits and grim faces resembled undertakers more than doctors and the Pope made light of their appearance. ‘Have you come to advise me or bury me?’
Paciolla, a tall cultured Roman accustomed to tending to rich and powerful men, didn’t seem fazed by the setting of the house-call or this particular patient. ‘Simply to inform Your Holiness – certainly not to bury you.’
‘Well, good,’ the Pope said. ‘The Holy See has more important matters to attend to than calling for a Conclave. Give me the report, then. Is it white smoke or black?’
Paciolla looked at the floor for a moment, then met the Pope’s steady gaze. ‘The cancer has not responded to the chemotherapy. I’m afraid it’s spreading.’
Cardinal Bishop Aspromonte poked his large balding head into the dining room to make sure that Cardinal Diaz’s favorite sparkling wine was on the table. It was a trifling detail for the Secretary of State and Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church but it was entirely within character. His private secretary, Monsignor Achille, a wiry man who had long ago followed Aspromonte from Genoa to the Vatican, directed his attention to the green bottle on the sideboard.
Aspromonte mumbled his approval and disappeared for a moment, only to enter again when he heard the telephone ring. ‘That’s probably Diaz and Giaccone.’
Achille picked up the dining-room phone, nodded, then commanded starchily, ‘Send them up.’
‘Five minutes early,’ Aspromonte said. ‘We’ve trained our guests well over the years, haven’t we?’
‘Yes, Your Eminence, I believe we have.’
Monsignor Achille escorted Cardinals Diaz and Giaccone into the book-lined study where Aspromonte waited with his blue-veined hands clasped over his expansive belly. His private rooms were splendid, thanks to recent renovations courtesy of a wealthy Spanish family. He greeted the two men warmly, his jowls wobbling when he grasped their hands, then sent Achille scurrying for aperitifs.
The three old friends wore red-trimmed black cassocks with wide red sashes but that was the extent of their similarities. Cardinal Diaz, the venerable Dean of the College of Cardinals who had formerly held Aspromonte’s job as Secretary of State, was at seventy-five the oldest but the most imposing. He towered over his colleagues. In his youth in Malaga before joining the priesthood he had been quite the boxer, a heavyweight, and he had carried this athleticism into old age. He had large hands, a squared-off face and ample grey hair but his most remarkable feature was his posture which gave him a strong upright appearance even when he was sitting.
Cardinal Giaccone was the shortest, with a deeply lined and jowly pug face which could mysteriously change from scowl to grin with only the slightest shift of musculature. The little hair that he had left was confined to a fringe above his beefy neck. Though otherwise nondescript, if all the cardinals were to assemble on a sunny day he could always be picked out of the crowd because of his trademark oversized Prada sunglasses which made him look like a film director. He relaxed now, his worry about being late dissipated. There had been a traffic snarl-up on the way back from the Via Napoleone where, as President, he had held his monthly meeting with the staff of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology.
‘The lights are burning upstairs,’ Diaz said, pointing at the ceiling.
The Pope’s apartment was two floors above their heads in the Vatican Palace.
‘I suppose that’s a good sign,’ Aspromonte said. ‘Maybe he has made some improvement today.’
‘When did you see him last?’ Giaccone asked.
‘Two days ago. Tomorrow I’ll visit again.’
‘How did he look?’ Diaz asked.
‘Weak. Pale. You can see the pain on his face but he’d never complain.’ Aspromonte looked at Diaz. ‘Come with me tomorrow. I don’t have any formal business. I’m sure he’ll want to see you.’
Diaz nodded crisply, picked up the glass of Prosecco which Achille had placed by his chair and watched the tiny bubbles rise heavenward.
The pain had been at an ebb for a good hour or more and the Pope was able to take a bowl of thin soup. He had an urge to rise and take advantage of this rare surge of energy. He rang his buzzer and Sister Emilia appeared so quickly that he asked her jokingly if she’d had an ear pressed against his door.
