“To fall over this railing is highly improbable, since the railing was constructed exactly for that reason — as a safeguard to keep one from falling over its edge.” He shook his head. “No, Giuseppe. Either he took his own life…” He let his words trail. But a heartbeat later, said: “Or someone aided him in his fall.”
The cardinal was taken aback. “What you say, Bonasero, is nothing but absolute nonsense — this talk of murder and suicide. Gregory was sound of mind the night of his death. He would never put the Church in such a position by taking his own life.”
“Exactly. And that leaves us with the other option, doesn’t it?”
Cardinal Angullo’s nostrils flared the same moment his brow dipped sharply over the bridge of his nose in anger. “The days of heresy have been abandoned by rational thought over the years, Bonasero. But if anything provides a strong case for such profanation, it’s what you just stated.”
“Is your memory so short, Giuseppe? Have you forgotten the attempt on the life of John Paul the Second?”
The cardinal bit his lower lip.
“What I say holds a measure of probability. Therefore, I will not turn a blind eye to the reality of what might have been.”
Cardinal Angullo turned away from Bonasero, his eyes alighting on the landscape of Vatican City. “So what will you do?” he asked. “Open an investigation when there are less than ten days left before we enter the conclave to vote on the successor?”
“Hardly. I’m simply voicing my opinion.”
“But you believe the pontiff was murdered?”
Bonasero remained quiet.
“You do realize once the newly elected takes the Papal Throne, then you will return to Boston along with your foolish notion.”
“Unless, Giuseppe,” he faced the cardinal directly, “I’m elected to the pontifical post.”
There, a laryngeal microexpression, a quick bob of the Adam’s apple, was a sign of fear from Angullo.
“And if you are,” Angullo returned dispassionately, “then what? You’ll spearhead a quest to find something that does not exist? You’ll just end up like a dog chasing after its tail, Bonasero. There’s nothing out there for you to find. And if you are elected, don’t you think you’d be better suited to apply yourself to the needs of the Church rather than the needs of yourself, since you are newly appointed?”
“To seek the truth, Giuseppe, is always the need of the Church.”
Whether Cardinal Angullo shook his head in disagreement or disgust, Vessucci could not determine.
The cardinal then looked over the railing, then back to Vessucci. “Do what you must,” he told him. “Chase your foolish notions while I seek to better my position with the Electors. If I take the throne, Bonasero, let it be known right now that you will return to Boston and seek the truth from there. And believe me when I say that such notions will fall on deaf ears.”
Vessucci smiled. “God is never deaf or blind to the truth, Giuseppe. And the truth will always find its way, whether I’m at the Vatican or across the ocean.”
Angullo began to circle the cardinal, and Vessucci took a conscious step back away from the railing.
“Perhaps you think me the killer, is that it? Is that how you plan to win the Electors votes, by politicking with foolish and unfounded theories — that the good Cardinal Giuseppe Angullo murdered the pope? Is that your strategy, Bonasero?” The cardinal was now standing directly behind Vessucci, who could not see the man through either corner of his eyes.
Vessucci turned enough to offer a sidelong glance. “I politick with the strengths I offer as a newly elected and nothing more,” he said.
“I see.” Angullo maneuvered back toward the railing. And then: “I understand that your camp remains strong, even after Pope Gregory sent you to America.”
“And yours a little less powerful.”
Angullo smiled, nodded. “It will be interesting when the Electors take to the conclave. But tell me, Bonasero, should you be selected to the papal throne, will you bring these Vatican Knights, these abominations, back to the Church?”
“Whatever I do, Giuseppe, you will have no knowledge of my stance in any position within the Church, believe me.”
“As the Vatican’s secretary of state, I’m afraid you’d have no choice.”
“Oh, but I do,” he returned adamantly. “In the same manner that Pope Gregory has seen me fit to leave my post that you now hold, I would yield the same power of authority to see the same. Perhaps, Giuseppe, Boston would suit you well.”
The cardinal nodded. “You forget one thing, Bonasero. You seem overly confident when everyone within the Church knows you were summarily sent to the Boston as something punitive. Your camp will dissolve on that tainted issue and your bid to seek the papal throne will end before it even begins.”
“Is that how you plan to politick?”
The right corner of the cardinal’s lip lifted into a sardonic grin. “Would I be lying if they learned why you were truly dismissed to America to begin with? That you were summarily dismissed from your post because of these Vatican Knights and the Society of Seven. These clandestine organizations within the Church nobody knew about?”
He had just played his trump card and the cardinal immediately picked up on it.
“I see,” said Vessucci. “But you forget one thing.”
“And that would be?”
“These Knights were highly beloved by every pope going back to World War Two. And no one loved them or pressed them more into duty than Pope Pius and John Paul the Second.” He now stood before Angullo so that he faced him directly, almost toe to toe with his back to the railing. “Should you use this as a tactic, then you’d be besmirching the good name of John Paul, a man who is being sent up to sainthood.”
Angullo’s smile widened. “Bonasero-Bonasero-Bonasero, are you listening to yourself? When you speak you do so as a hypocrite.”
Vessucci appeared quizzical.
“Did you not just say that ‘the truth will always find its way’?”
“I did.”
“Yet it’s all right to keep the truth of the Vatican Knights from the members of the entire College of the Cardinals for fear that they may think of them in the same light as Pope Gregory, as mercenary abominations.”
Touché.
Angullo turned away and headed for the chamber door. “There’s no place in the Church for a hypocrite,” he said over his shoulder. “I suggest you think your position over clearly and bow out before your image is so badly tainted that you’ll end up in a parish somewhere in East Africa.”
“Is that a threat?”
Cardinal Angullo hesitated at the chamber door, his hand on the knob, and studied Vessucci through obsidian eyes. “My stance with the Church is clear. What I want is clear. If you stand in my way, then I will destroy you.”
“The same way you destroyed Pope Gregory?” As much as he didn’t want to, he said it.
Cardinal Angullo let his hand fall and took two steps back inside the chamber. He shook his head. “Think what you will,” he told him. “But the man died by accident and nothing more. Worse, you’re beginning to sound like a man of desperation, which is sad since at one time you were highly esteemed.”
“I still am, otherwise you wouldn’t have come here to share your game plan and intimidate me to fall out.”
“I came here to talk about politicking, which we did. But you also accused me of possible murder. And that, Bonasero, is stepping over the line. Politicking is one thing, wild accusations are another.”
In Bonasero’s mind he conceded. As strong a politic as he was, Angullo bested him at every corner, at every turn, his tongue sharp and his reasoning even sharper. He had turned Vessucci’s considerations of Pope Gregory’s death into the possible realm of one man’s desperation, should it be spoken in certain circles. Secondly, in his statement of seeking the truth, didn’t Angullo purposely use the Vatican Knights as the optimum example of why Vessucci’s ‘truth’ was hypocritical since the Knights remained a well-hidden secret from the College? Wasn’t keeping them a secret for fear of internal dissatisfaction within the religious hierarchy in essence a ‘lie’?