‘At the opening ceremony, Mr MacMaolain will be present, along with the President of Egypt and ambassadors from several Muslim states.’
‘Did you say the President of Egypt? That wasn’t in any of the papers.’ O’Malley’s face bore a look of deep concern. Assefa nodded.
‘Do you remember the papyrus I showed you this
morning?’ asked the Irishman, turning to Patrick, who was seated on his left. ‘Do you recall what Simon the Levite said about Egypt?’
Patrick nodded numbly.
‘Well man, come on, what did he say?’
‘ “If any still be alive ... he shall go unto Egypt, which is Babylon, that he may strike down Pharaoh ...” I... I can’t remember the rest.’
‘ “And that shall be the true Passover, that God’s chosen people shall pass out of the land of Egypt and come into the Land of the Promise ... Egypt shall fall, and Babylon, all them that have scattered the children of God among the nations.” I know the text well, Patrick. It’s a good many times I’ve read it now. But, by God, it never made as much sense to me before as it does this instant.’
There was a shocked silence as the meaning of the ancient words became clear. Simon and John and all the dispossessed of Jerusalem would have their revenge. A different pharaoh in a different age, yet perfect somehow for such a vengeance: the ruler of Egypt struck down side by side with the man who had inherited the mantle of the old Roman emperors. And struck down, for that matter, in Rome itself, the Babylon of so many apocalypses.
‘Is there anything more we should know?’ O’Malley asked at last, his tone subdued and hesitant for the first time since Patrick and Assefa had met him.
Assefa nodded.
‘Yes. Two things. First, the conference is only going to last two days. Press coverage has been kept deliberately low-key. Only the more important agencies and correspondents have been invited to be there. By the time hostile elements in Iran or Libya or Egypt can so much as react, the last session will have finished and the delegates will be on their way
home. And the Holy Father will have won a major public relations success. He will be able to say that he has sown the seeds of Muslim-Christian unity, wiping out centuries of mutual distrust and bigotry in forty-eight hours. Whatever the fundamentalists on either side will say, he will have made a gesture for peace. Since Gorbachev came to power, the value of such gestures in international affairs has become very great.’
He fell silent.
‘You said there were two things.’
Assefa hesitated.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Two things. The second is this. At ten o’clock tomorrow morning, a special papal audience will be held in the Apostolic Palace, in the Sala Clementina. All the high-ranking delegates will be there, along with the Irish and Egyptian presidents and members of the Curia who will not be present at the actual conference. But the highlight of the audience will be an event which His Holiness hopes will win the hearts of men and women throughout the world.’
He paused and closed his eyes for a moment.
‘After he has greeted the dignitaries and seated them round the chamber, the Pope will welcome a party of orphans selected from every country of Europe and the Middle East, but chiefly from Italy and Egypt. Christian children and Muslim children, the hope of a new generation.’
Assefa looked at the others one by one.
‘Do you understand what I am saying?’ he whispered. ‘Tomorrow morning, the Pope will give his blessing to over one hundred children.’
No one said a word. From the street below, a faint sound of feet and voices and engines rose up to them, a thousand miles away, empty, without meaning. Assefa’s final words seemed to echo and re-echo around the little room, filling it until there was space for nothing else.
Dermot O’Malley broke the silence. He sat in his chair without moving, listening to the echo wipe away the world outside.
‘ “And it came to pass,”’ he said in a flat voice from which all emotion had gone,’ “that at midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon.” ‘
But Patrick did not hear him. He sat rigid in his chair, staring ahead as though he saw something there in the dying afternoon light, a television screen, red and blue lights flashing, a child’s face stained with blood, small teeth on bloodless lips, dead eyes, bodies like dolls, scattered across a patterned marble floor.
FORTY-EIGHT
They were on the terrace at the rear of the apartment. O’Malley had gone with Assefa to the Vatican. Roberto was on his way to deliver sealed letters to several members of the government and the judiciary. There seemed to be nothing for either Patrick or Francesca to do but wait.
The last light had almost faded from the sky. Directly opposite, in the grey dome of Sant’ Andrea della Valle, a pair of kestrels were nesting. As they flew back and forth, their wings caught fire in a strip of sunlight that lay slantwise across the back of the dome.
‘That’s the male,’ said Patrick, pointing as one of the birds hovered briefly before darting away in search of fresh building material. ‘The one with blue wings.’
‘Yes,’ said Francesca. The birds set her on edge. She had never been that free, to wing effortlessly in unencumbered air, to turn feathers into light, to be the hunter, not the hunted. ‘They come here every year,’ she said. ‘They build a nest and hatch their chicks and fly away again.’
She wished she could just flap a pair of wings and fly away with a kestrel’s ease, away from Rome, from Italy, from the past.
‘How did you find me?’ he asked. ‘How did you come to follow me in Venice, the night I visited your father?’
She smiled. Not her old smile, he thought. That had gone forever. But another very much like it, wry, enigmatic - not in the manner of the Gioconda, but darker, as though it were not a smile at all but a mask embellishing fear. Fear, great sadness, longings that had grown stale and useless - motifs for an entire life. He thought of masks: the white alabaster masks in Claudio Surian’s workshop, the coloured mask on his dead face, the bautas worn by the figures in his dreams, the high, elaborate costumes he and Francesca had worn at the carnival the year before she died and did not die - an entire city cloaked and veiled and sworn to silence.
‘Your arrival in Italy did not go unnoticed by the Brotherhood,’ she said. ‘They lost you in Rome and put out an alert to all their members. That was how we came to hear that you were here. At first I thought it was some sort of trap for me, but I couldn’t understand how you could have become involved. And then we found out who Father Makonnen was and realized it made some sense after all.
‘Anyway, I guessed you would go to Venice. The rest was easy. There were two places you could not avoid - my tomb on San Michele and the Palazzo Contarini. Brother Antonio told Dermot you had been on San Michele, and ...’
‘He knows?’
She nodded.
‘Only a little. He’s an old friend of Dermot’s, they used to be in Rome together. Dermot once told him a little, asked for help. Since all burials in Venice take place on San Michele, he’s been able to trace back many of the Dead for us, and through them their families. We’ve uncovered some very useful information that way.’
She looked out towards the dome again. The light had gone completely now, leaving the sky a dark shade of purple, like a heavy bruise. The kestrels were gone. A sound of moving traffic rose up from the city below, like a caged beast circling.