The Pope remained motionless.
Another tap. ‘Get up, Domenico Savarino,’ Aspromonte said again.
The room was quiet.
He tapped the Pope’s forehead with the mallet for the third and last time. ‘Get up, Domenico Savarino.’
Aspromonte rose to his feet, crossed himself and loudly proclaimed the awful words: ‘The Pope is dead.’
‘The Pope is dead.’
This time the words were uttered by a man speaking into a mobile phone.
There was a pause and a deep exhalation. The man could almost hear the relief flowing from the other’s chest. Damjan Krek replied, ‘During Pisces. As predicted.’
‘Do you want me to proceed?’
‘Of course,’ Krek said sharply. ‘Do it tonight. Tonight is the perfect time.’
As the man walked calmly through the Piazza St Pietro, he knew that K was correct. Tonight was the perfect time. As word of the Pope’s death spread within the Vatican, laity and clergy alike scurried to say a prayer in the Basilica, then rushed to their desks for the onslaught of work.
The man was toting a black nylon bag, the kind used to shift tactical gear. If it was heavy no one would have known. Like those of a modern Atlas his prodigious shoulders looked like they could shift any weight. He wore a dark blue business suit with a small enamel pin in his lapel, his usual attire on most days. He was not handsome but his lean angularity and midnight hair turned heads quickly enough; he had always done well with the ladies.
Instead of heading up the stairs of the Basilica he veered toward a non-public door leading to the Sistine Chapel. He picked up his pace and heard the night air whistling through his clenched teeth. He felt the SIG pistol lying tight against his heart and the Boker folding knife against his thigh. At the door, a Swiss Guard in ceremonial dress stood stiffly, bathed in floodlight. The guardsman looked the man in the eye, then glanced at his shoulder bag.
‘Korporal,’ the man said quickly.
The guardsman saluted crisply and stepped aside. ‘Herr Oberstleutnant. Sad day.’
‘Indeed it is.’
Oberstleutnant Matthias Hackel moved through the drab deserted hall, his leather-soled shoes tapping the tiles. Ahead was a locked doorway leading directly to the Sistine Chapel. He had the keys, of course, but everything on this level was covered by security cameras. While the second in command of the Swiss Guards could go virtually anywhere in Vatican City with impunity, it was better to pass through basement corridors where surveillance cameras were few.
He climbed a set of stone stairs to the first basement level and followed a corridor until he was directly under the Sistine Chapel within a rabbit warren of small and medium-sized rooms packed with uninteresting and low-value items. The Vatican had intensely secure spaces for documents, books and art treasures but the contents of these rooms were rather more prosaic: furniture, cleaning supplies, outdoor security barriers.
The room which he now entered had no cameras and was visited so infrequently that he was certain he’d be able to work without any surprise interruptions. He switched on the lights and the chamber sputtered into sickly yellow-green fluorescence. There were stacks of simple, inexpensive wooden tables, each a meter and a half long, less than a meter wide, high enough for use by a seated man. They’d been purchased in bulk in the 1950s from a Milanese factory but still seemed relatively new owing to their light use. They had been taken out of storage and carried upstairs into the Sistine Chapel only five times in nearly six decades, each on the occasion of selecting a new Pope.
They didn’t look like much. But when covered in floor-length red velvet and crowned with gold-brocaded brown velvet they would take on a certain splendor, especially when laid out in precise rows underneath Michelangelo’s ceiling.
The nearest table would serve a more immediate purpose. The man placed his bag on it and smiled.
THREE
TOMMASO DE STEFANO LINGERED OVER his cigarette, seemingly fretful about his appointment. Above him, water cascaded from the fountain of entwined sculpted dolphins which had stood at the center of the Piazza Mastai since 1863. His wife had been trying to get him to stop smoking and even he wheezily acknowledged the necessity. Yet this entire Roman square was a monument to tobacco and it was, perhaps, historically appropriate to pay homage with a smoke.
Besides, he was nervous and even a bit timid. His awkwardness bore a similarity to the trepidation he felt a few years earlier when a cousin emerged from a six-year jail term for larceny. At the time he’d asked his wife helplessly, ‘What do you say to a man who’s life’s been interrupted like this? How are you doing? Haven’t seen you for a while? You’re looking good?’
Behind him was the rather grand nineteenth-century Pontifical Tobacco Manufacturing factory erected by the entrepreneurial family of Pope Pius IX, now a state facility concerned with monopolies. Facing him was a more pedestrian four-story structure of red sandstone built by the same Pope in 1877 to house and educate the girls employed by his tobacco factory. It probably hadn’t been an act of pure papal charity, more likely a calculated maneuver to keep a cheap workforce off the streets and free of venereal disease.
De Stefano stamped out his cigarette and crossed the square.
Though the tobacco factory was long gone the red building had endured as a school. A bevy of well-behaved teenage girls in blue and white tracksuits milled around under a sign: SCUOLA TERESA SPINELLI, MATERNA-ELEMENTARE-MEDIA.
De Stefano took a sharp breath and pushed the iron gate open. In the marble forecourt a young nun was conversing with the harried mother of a little girl who was running in circles, working off pent-up energy. The nun was black – African, judging by her accent – wearing the light blue smock of a novice. He chose not to interrupt her so he carried on through the courtyard into the cool dark reception hall. A diminutive bespectacled older nun in a black habit saw him and approached.
‘Good day,’ he said. ‘My name is Professor De Stefano.’
‘Yes, you’re expected,’ the nun said in a business-like manner that contrasted with the friendly way her eyes crinkled. ‘I’m Sister Marilena, the Principal. I think her class is finished. Let me get her for you.’
De Stefano waited, adjusting his necktie, watching the young girls rushing past to get outside.
When she appeared, a look of fleeting disorientation crossed his face. What had it been? Eleven years? Twelve?
She was still statuesque and darkly beautiful but seeing her now in a black scapular with her hair all but obscured by a nun’s veil seemed to derail him.
Her skin was milky, only a few shades darker than the high-necked white vest that she wore under her square-scooped habit, the traditional dress of her order, the Augustinian Sisters, Servants of Jesus and Mary. Though she wore no make-up, her complexion was perfect, her lips naturally moist and pink. In her university days she had dressed better than the other students and had used lovely fragrances. But even allowing for the plain garb of a nun she couldn’t help but look stylishly impeccable. Her eyebrows were carefully plucked, her teeth lustrous, her nails unvarnished but manicured. And despite her billowing habit it was clear that she still cut a slim figure.
‘Elisabetta,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Professor.’
‘It’s good to see you.’
‘And you. You look well.’ She held out both her hands. De Stefano grasped them, then quickly let go.
‘That’s nice of you to say. But I think I’ve become an old man.’