The Confessor Read online

  ROBERTO PUCCI was a perpetual target of the Italian intelligence services, and it had been many days since the Villa Galatina had been swept for listening devices. Before Cardinal Brindisi could pronounce his death sentence, Casagrande raised his finger to his lips and his eyes to the ceiling. Despite a cold rain, they walked in Don Pucci’s garden, umbrellas overhead, like mourners following a horse-drawn coffin. The hem of the cardinal’s cassock quickly became soaked. To Casagrande it seemed they were wading shoulder to shoulder in blood.

  “Pope Accidental is playing a very dangerous game,” Cardinal Brindisi said. “His initiative to throw open the Archives is simply a ploy to give him cover to reveal things he already knows. It is an act of unbelievable recklessness. I believe it’s quite possible that the Holy Father is delusional or mentally unbalanced in some way. We have a duty, indeed a divine mandate, to remove him.”

  Roberto Pucci cleared his throat. “Removing him and killing him are two different things, Eminence.”

  “Not really, Don Pucci. The conclave made him an absolute monarch. We cannot simply ask the king to step aside. Only death can end this papacy.”

  Casagrande looked up at the row of cypress trees swaying in the gusty wind. Kill the Pope? Insanity. He turned his gaze from the trees and looked at Brindisi. The cardinal was studying him intently. The pinched face, the round spectacles—it was like being appraised by Pius XII himself.

  Brindisi looked away. “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest? Do you know who spoke those words, Carlo?”

  “King Henry the Second, if I’m not mistaken. And the meddlesome priest he was referring to was Thomas à Becket. Not long after he uttered those words, four of his knights stormed into the cathedral at Canterbury and cut Thomas down with their swords.”

  “Very impressive,” said the cardinal. “Pope Accidental and Saint Thomas have much in common. Thomas was a vain, ostentatious man who did much to bring about his own demise. The same can surely be said of the Holy Father. He has no right to bypass the Curia and launch this initiative on his own. And for his sins, and his vanity, he must suffer the fate of Thomas. Send forth your knights, Carlo. Cut him down.”

  “If the Holy Father dies a violent death, he will become a martyr, just like Saint Thomas.”

  “So much the better. If his death is choreographed properly, this whole sordid affair might end in a way that suits our purposes quite nicely.”

  “How so, Eminence?”

  “Can you imagine the wrath that will rain down on the heads of the Jews if the Holy Father is killed in a synagogue? Surely, an assassin with the skills of your friend can carry off something like that. Once he is gone, we will build a case against our papal assassin, the Israeli who settled in our midst and restored our precious works of art while he waited for his chance to murder the Holy Father. It is a remarkable story, Carlo—one the world’s media will find difficult to resist.”

  “If not difficult to believe, Eminence.”

  “Not if you do your job correctly.”

  A silence hung over them, broken only by the crunch of their footsteps on the gravel pathway. Casagrande could not feel his feet touching the earth. He felt he was floating, viewing the scene from above: the ancient abbey; the labyrinth gardens; three men, the Holy Trinity of Crux Vera, calmly deliberating whether to murder a pope. He squeezed the handle of his umbrella, assessing whether it was real or merely an object in a dream. He wished it could carry him away, transport him to another time—a time before his faith and his obsession for revenge had caused him to behave with the same cruelty and depravity as his enemies. He saw Angelina, seated on a blanket in the shade of a stone pine in the Villa Borghese. He bent to kiss her, expecting to find the taste of strawberries on her lips, but instead he tasted blood. He heard a voice. In his memory, it was Angelina, telling him she wanted to spend the summer holiday in the mountains of the north. In reality it was Cardinal Brindisi, holding forth on why the murder of a pope would serve the interests of both the Church and Crux Vera. How easily the cardinal speaks of murder, thought Casagrande. And then he saw it all clearly. A Church in turmoil. A time for proven leadership. After the Holy Father’s death, Brindisi would seize what the last conclave had denied him.

  Casagrande marshaled his forces and proceeded carefully.

  “If I may approach the issue from an operational standpoint, Eminence, killing a pope is not something that can be done on the spur of the moment. It takes months, perhaps years, to plan something like this.” He paused, waiting for Brindisi to interrupt, but the cardinal kept walking, a man on a journey with a great distance still to go. Casagrande carried on. “Once the Holy Father leaves the territory of the Vatican, he will be under the protection of Italian police and security services. At the moment, they are on war footing because of our spurious papal assassin. There will be a wall around the Holy Father that will be impossible to penetrate.”

  “What you say is true, Carlo. But there are two important factors weighing heavily in our favor. You work for the Vatican Security Office. You have the ability to get a man close to the Holy Father whenever you please.”

  “And the second?”

  “The man you will get close to the Holy Father is the Leopard.”

  “I doubt even the Leopard would accept an assignment like the one you’re proposing, Eminence.”

  “Offer him money. That’s what creatures like him respond to.”

  Casagrande felt as though he were hurling himself against the walls of the old abbey. He decided to make one final assault.

  “When I came to the Vatican from the carabinieri, I swore a sacred oath to protect the pope. Now you are asking me to break that oath, Eminence.”

  “You also swore a sacred oath to Crux Vera and to me personally, an oath that binds you to absolute obedience.”

  Casagrande stopped walking and turned to face the cardinal. His spectacles were dotted with rain. “I had hopes of seeing my wife and daughter once again in the Kingdom of Heaven, Eminence. Surely the only thing that awaits the man who carries out this deed is damnation.”

  “You need not worry about confronting the fires of Hell, Carlo. I will grant you absolution.”

  “Do you really have such power? The power to cleanse the soul of a man who murders a pope?”

  “Of course I do!” snapped Brindisi, as if he found the question blasphemous. Then his demeanor and his tone softened. “You’re tired, Carlo. This affair has been long and difficult for all of us. But there is a way out, and soon it will be over.”

  “At what cost, Eminence? To us? To the Church?”

  “He wants to destroy the Church. I want to save it. Who do you stand with?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Casagrande said, “I stand with you, Eminence. And the Holy Mother Church.”

  “As I knew you would.”

  “I have just one question. Do you intend to accompany the Holy Father to the synagogue? I wouldn’t want you to be anywhere near the Holy Father when this terrible deed is done.”

  “As I told the Holy Father when he asked me the same question, I intend to have a case of the flu on Friday that will not permit me to be at his side.”

  Casagrande seized the cardinal’s hand and feverishly kissed his ring. The prelate extended his long fingers and made the sign of the cross over Casagrande’s forehead. There was no love in his eyes; only coldness and a fierce determination. From Casagrande’s vantage point, it seemed he was anointing a dead man.

  CARDINAL BRINDISI departed for Rome first. Casagrande and Roberto Pucci remained behind in the garden.

  “It doesn’t take a terribly perceptive man to see that your heart is not in this, Carlo.”

  “Only a madman would relish the opportunity to murder a pope.”

  “What do you intend to do?”

  Casagrande moved some gravel around with the toe of his shoe, then looked up at the cypress trees bending in the wind. He knew he was about to embark on a course that would ultimately lead to his o
wn destruction.

  “I’m going to Zurich,” Casagrande said. “I’m going to hire an assassin.”

  26

  VIENNA

  ELI LAVON’S OFFICE looked like the command bunker of an army in fighting retreat. Open files lay scattered across the tabletops, and a map hung crookedly on the wall. There were ashtrays overflowing with half-smoked cigarettes and a wastepaper basket filled with half-eaten remnants of a dismal carryout meal. A cup of cold coffee was balanced precariously atop a stack of books. A silent television flickered unnoticed in the corner.

  Lavon had clearly been expecting them. He had flung open the door before Gabriel had even pressed the buzzer and hauled them inside like guests late for a dinner party in their honor. He had waved the facsimile of Sister Regina’s letter and peppered Gabriel with questions as he led him down the corridor. Where did you find this? What were you doing back in Munich? Do you know the trouble you’ve caused? Half the Office is looking for you! My God, Gabriel, but you gave us a scare!

  Shamron had said nothing. Shamron had survived enough disasters to realize that in due time he would learn everything he needed to know. As Lavon berated Gabriel, the old man paced the floorboards before the window overlooking the courtyard. His reflection was visible in the bulletproof glass. To Gabriel, the mirror image seemed like another version of Shamron. Younger and more surefooted. Shamron the invincible.

  Gabriel sat heavily upon Lavon’s couch. With Chiara at his side, he produced the envelope Frau Ratzinger had given him in Munich and laid it on the file-strewn coffee table. Lavon shoved a pair of reading glasses onto his face and carefully removed the contents: a photocopy of two pages of single-spaced typescript. He looked down and began to read. After a moment, his face drained of color and the papers were trembling between his fingertips. He glanced up at Gabriel and whispered, “Unbelievable.”

  Lavon held it up for Shamron. “I think you’d better take a look at this, boss.”

  Shamron paused long enough to scan the letterhead, then resumed his journey. “Read it to me, Eli,” he said. “In German, please. I want to hear it in German.”

  REICH MINISTRY FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS

  To: SS–Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, RSHA IV B4

  From: Unterstaatssekretär Martin Luther, Abteilung Deutschland, regarding the policy of the Holy See concerning Jewish matters

  Berlin, March 30, 1942

  64–34 25/1

  My meeting with His Grace Bishop Sebastiano Lorenzi at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in northern Italy was an unqualified success. As you know, Bishop Lorenzi is the leading expert on relations between Germany and the Holy See inside the Vatican Secretariat of State. He is also a member of the orthodox Catholic society known as Crux Vera, which has been very supportive of National Socialism from the beginning. Bishop Lorenzi is very close to the Holy Father and speaks with him on a daily basis. They attended the Gregorian College together, and the bishop was a leading player during the negotiations over the Concordat reached between the Reich and the Holy See in 1933.

  I have worked closely with Bishop Lorenzi for some time. It is my opinion that he agrees wholeheartedly with our policy toward the Jews, though, for obvious reasons, he cannot say so. He couches his positions regarding the Jews in theological terms, but in candid moments, he betrays his beliefs that they are a social and economic menace as well as heretics and mortal enemies of the Church.

  During our meeting, which was held in the pleasant surroundings of a convent situated on the shores of Lake Garda, we discussed many aspects of our Jewish policy and why it must go forward unencumbered. Bishop Lorenzi seemed most impressed by my suggestion that failure to deal with the Jews in a timely and thorough manner could lead to the creation of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. To buttress my arguments, I quoted heavily from your 1938 memorandum on that topic, in which you argued that a Jewish state in Palestine would only increase the power of world Jewry in law and international relations, because a miniature state would permit the Jew to send ambassadors and delegates around the world to promote his lust for domination. In that respect, the Jew would be placed on equal footing with political Catholicism, something Bishop Lorenzi is eager to prevent at all costs. Nor does he, or the Holy Father, wish to see Jews controlling the sacred Christian sites of the Holy Land.

  I made clear our position that a papal protest of the roundups and deportations would be a clear violation of the Concordat. I also vigorously pressed my position that a papal protest would have profound and disastrous effects on our Jewish policy. Lorenzi, more than others, realizes the power possessed by the Holy See in this matter, and he is committed to making certain the Pope does not speak. With the help of Bishop Lorenzi, I believe the Holy Father will be able to weather the storm of pressure put on him by our enemies and will maintain his position of strict neutrality. In my opinion, our position with the Vatican is secure, and we can expect no meaningful resistance to our Jewish policies from the Holy See or from Roman Catholics under Reich control.

  Shamron had stopped pacing and seemed to be studying his face in the glass. He took a long time lighting his next cigarette. Gabriel could see he was thinking four moves ahead. “It’s been some time since we last spoke,” he said. “Before we go any further, I think you need to explain how you came by these documents.”

  As Gabriel began his account, Shamron resumed his private journey before the window. Gabriel told him about his meeting in London with Peter Malone and how in France the following morning he learned of Malone’s murder. He told him of his meeting with Inspector Alessio Rossi at the Pensione Abruzzi and the gun battle that left Rossi and four other men dead. He told him of his decision to hijack the motor yacht to continue his investigation rather than return to Israel.

  “But you’re forgetting something,” Shamron interjected. He spoke with uncharacteristic gentleness, as though he were addressing small children. “I saw Shimon Pazner’s field report. According to Pazner, you were followed as you left the safe flat—a pair of men in a beige Lancia sedan. The second team dealt with the Lancia, and you then proceeded without incident to the departure point on the beach. Is that correct?”

  “I never saw the surveillance. I only heard what Pazner told me. The people in the Lancia might have been watching us, or they might have been a couple of ordinary Romans on their way to dinner who got the surprise of their life.”

  “They might have been, but I doubt it. You see, a short time later, a beige Lancia was discovered near the train station. Behind the wheel was a Palestinian named Marwan Aziz, a man known to be an agent of PLO intelligence. He’d been shot three times and was quite dead. And by the way, the Lancia’s left rear bumper was damaged. Marwan Aziz was one of the men who was following you. I wonder where the second man went. I wonder whether he was the one who killed Aziz. But I digress. Please continue.”

  Intrigued by Shamron’s revelations, Gabriel pressed forward. The boat journey to Cannes. The meeting with Antonella Huber at which she surrendered the letter written by her mother, the former Sister Regina Carcassi. The dying man he had left behind in the field outside St-Cézaire. The midnight search of Benjamin’s flat and the near-fatal confrontation with his caretaker, Frau Ratzinger. Shamron ceased his pacing only once, when Gabriel admitted that he had actually threatened Carlo Casagrande. An understandable reaction, said the look on the old man’s creased face, but hardly the behavior one would expect from an agent of Gabriel’s training and experience.

  “Which brings us to the obvious next question,” Shamron said. “Is the document real? Or is it the Vatican equivalent of the Hitler diaries?”

  Lavon held it up. “Do you see these markings? They’re consistent with documents from the KGB archives. If I had to guess, the Russians came across this while they were cleaning out their archives after the collapse of the empire. Somehow, it reached Benjamin’s hands.”

  “But is it a hoax?”

  “Taken in isolation, it might be easy to dismiss as a cleve
r forgery concocted by the KGB in order to discredit the Catholic Church. After all, they were at each other’s throats throughout much of the century, especially during the reign of Wojty—la and the crisis in Poland.”

  Gabriel leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “But if it’s read in concert with Sister Regina’s letter and all the other things I’ve learned?”

  “Then it’s probably the single most damning document I’ve ever seen. A senior Vatican official discussing genocide with Martin Luther over dinner? The covenant at Garda? It’s no wonder people are dying because of this. If this is made public, it will be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off in St. Peter’s Square.”

  “Can you authenticate it?”

  “I have a few contacts inside the old KGB. So does the quiet little man standing in the window over there. It’s not something he likes to talk about, but he and his friends from Dzerzhinsky Square did quite a lot of business together over the years. I bet he could get to the bottom of this in a couple of days if he set his mind to it.”

  Shamron looked at Lavon as if to say it would take him no more than an afternoon.

  “Then what would we do with the information?” asked Gabriel. “Leak it to The New York Times? A Nazi memorandum, via the KGB and Israeli intelligence? The Church would deny that the meeting ever took place and attack the messenger. Very few people would believe us. It would also poison relations between Israel and the Vatican. Everything John Paul the Second did to repair relations between Catholics and Jews would go up in flames.”

  Frustration showed on Lavon’s face. “The conduct of Pope Pius and the Vatican during the war is a matter of state concern for the government of Israel. There are those in the Church who wish to declare Pius the Twelfth a saint. It is the policy of the Israeli government that no canonization should take place until all relevant documents in the Secret Archives have been released and examined. This material should be turned over to the Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv and acted upon.”