Aspromonte nodded. ‘I did. I tell you, Giaccone had a tail.’
Franconi rubbed his hands in agitation. ‘Lemures?’ he asked nervously. ‘One of us – a Lemures?’
Aspromonte said, ‘Before he shot himself he declared to the officers, “I am Petrus Romanus.”’
Diaz sputtered, ‘My God! Malachy! Is this prophecy coming to pass?’
‘We have many more questions than answers,’ Aspromonte said. ‘But there is no doubt now that the Church faces a time of unprecedented turmoil and struggle, the outcome of which we cannot be certain.’
‘Nothing must be said to the press about Giaccone’s “condition” or the circumstances of his death,’ Diaz insisted. ‘He had a heart attack when he heard the explosion. A heart attack. We must close ranks.’
‘The tragedy!’ Franconi sobbed. ‘Our greatest treasure, Michelangelo’s Chapel, gone!’
‘No, you’re wrong!’ Aspromonte scolded. ‘Somewhere in the world, perhaps here in Italy, is another Michelangelo. Buildings can be rebuilt. New paintings can be commissioned. But our greatest treasure, the Church, thank God, and its leadership have been saved because of the acts of a simple policeman and a simple nun.’
Diaz nodded. ‘We have work to do. I’m told that the Basilica only has damage to its northern exterior façade. The Sala Regia is quite badly damaged but the Palace is intact. We must find a place for the Electors to convene tomorrow. The Conclave must continue. We need a new Holy Father, now more than ever.’
Elisabetta and Micaela held each other and wept as they watched the terrible images on the television.
A reporter for RTV was interviewing a Slovenian family on pilgrimage to St Peter’s Square when the bomb went off.
The camera shook and thousands of people fell to the ground as one, screaming at the fireball that rose into the air.
‘Oh, God! Zazo!’ Elisabetta screamed.
Before Micaela stepped over Krek’s body, she kicked his chest just to make sure. She snatched the telephone from the coffee table and rang Zazo’s mobile. It went straight to voicemail.
‘I’m sure he’s okay,’ she mumbled. ‘He’s got to be okay.’
Elisabetta fell to her knees and began to pray.
She prayed for Zazo.
She prayed for the Cardinals.
She prayed for the Church.
She prayed for Micaela.
She prayed for herself.
In the distance they heard sirens. The insistent whooping got louder and louder until it stopped.
There were shouts in Slovenian, a brief but terrifying exchange of gunfire from the entrance hall and finally, after an unpleasantly long time, an urgent banging against the heavy oak door.
‘Police! We’re coming in!’
THIRTY-THREE
THE MOOD INSIDE the Basilica was as somber as it had been for any funeral Mass ever held under its hallowed dome. A few dozen Vatican insiders huddled in the dust-filled pews praying silently, as shell-shocked as the victims of the physical blast the day before.
Matthias Hackel’s black suit, white shirt and polished black shoes had been found on the bank of the Tiber near the Ponte Sant’Angelo. Perhaps he’d drowned himself, perhaps not, but the internal investigation was in its infancy and there were certainly no conclusions about possible accomplices yet. Because of this, Oberst Sonnenberg reluctantly ceded primary security to the Polizia di Stato and the Swiss Guards were remanded to barracks. The Gendarmerie were deployed to seal off Vatican City to all but critical employees and a small pool of international reporters.
Elisabetta, Micaela and their father sat in a rear pew, waiting silently.
At noon, Monsignor Achille, Cardinal Aspromonte’s private secretary, approached them, leaned over and whispered into Elisabetta’s ear.
She told Micaela and her father. ‘Wait here. They want to speak to me now.’
Elisabetta followed Achille through the aisle under the monument of Pius VIII to the passageway of St Peter’s Sacristy and Treasury. They walked over the marble floors to a museum-like room where three plush chairs faced each other. She looked up at the Crux Vaticans, the Vatican Cross, covered in leather, silver and precious stones. It was the Vatican’s greatest treasure, said to contain fragments of the True Cross.
Achille asked her to wait. Soon Cardinals Aspromonte and Diaz appeared. When Elisabetta rose to greet them Aspromonte smiled and told her to sit down again. They joined her, their chairs so close that their knees almost touched.
Diaz was rigid and imposing but Aspromonte’s full face was kind and avuncular; she warmed to him immediately.
‘Elisabetta Celestino,’ he said, clasping her thin, cold hand in his warm, generous ones. ‘Sister Elisabetta. The Church owes you an incomparable debt of gratitude.’
‘I was only serving God, Your Excellency. He has been my guide through this ordeal.’
‘Well, you’ve served Him well. Imagine what the world would look like today if you hadn’t succeeded. Tell me, how is your brother?’
‘We saw him this morning. They hope to release him from intensive care later today. He’s doing well.’
‘Good, good. He was so bold, so brave,’ Aspromonte said. ‘He saved many lives.’
‘Yes, he’s amazing,’ Elisabetta said. ‘But it’s sad that good men like Professor De Stefano, Father Tremblay and Cardinal Giaccone died. It’s sad that the great Sistine Chapel is no more.’
‘The Chapel will be rebuilt,’ Aspromonte said, releasing her hand. ‘De Stefano and Tremblay are greatly mourned. Cardinal Giaccone is a different matter.’
‘He was one of them,’ Diaz said curtly. ‘The head of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology was one of them!’
‘My God,’ Elisabetta said. ‘That’s how they knew. Even years ago when I was a student. He was a Lemures?’
The cardinals were dumbstruck by her response. ‘You know of them?’ Diaz whispered.
Elisabetta nodded. ‘I discovered some facts. I shared them with Father Tremblay and in return he told me certain things in the strictest confidence.’
‘Then you understand what we’ve been up against. Lord knows what harm Giaccone would have done to the Church if he’d been the only Cardinal Elector left,’ Diaz said angrily.
‘He would have been Pope,’ Aspromonte said.
‘A disaster,’ Diaz said, gritting his teeth and pumping a fist, as if the old boxer in him was itching to leave his corner and go another round.
Aspromonte opened his palms. ‘Sister, you must tell us what you think because you have seen them up close. You have spoken with one of their leaders.’
‘And God forgive me, and forgive my sister,’ Elisabetta said, ‘we took lives.’
‘Later, you will give your confession and you will be forgiven,’ Diaz said impatiently. ‘What is your impression of them?’
Elisabetta took a breath. ‘They want to destroy the Church. They hate it and everything it stands for. They want to trample all that is good, and if everything is destroyed in the process they’ll feel satisfaction at seeing the world in flames. They are pure evil.’
Aspromonte listened to her, doleful, his head shaking, as if keeping time to an unseen metronome. ‘We speak of the Devil all the time,’ he said, ‘but even for me, a man who is quite literal in my beliefs and my interpretation of the Bible, the Devil has always been something of a metaphor. Evil exists, of that there can be no doubt, but for there to be a physical embodiment like this! It is a fearful notion.’
Elisabetta felt she should only listen, not speak anymore, but she couldn’t hold back. ‘It makes the word of Christ that much more important, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes!’ Aspromonte agreed. ‘You are exactly right, Sister. We’ve always had work to do. Today we have work to do. Tomorrow we have work to do. It will never be done until the day Christ returns. We must be perpetually vigilant.’