He climbed the stairs with difficulty, helped by Stanislaw. Age was another kind of burden. But it was the bullets that weakened him like this, making other such obligations and pleasures difficult.
The last step was like a victory without particular savor. It marked the beginning of recovering his strength, his breath. Wojtyla let himself be led through the gray, ugly hallway toward the cell where the young Turk paid for his notorious crime against the life of the pope, the very pope who was walking to see him.
‘Are you all right, Holy Father?’ Dziwisz, who’d devoted his life to the pope for many years, asked.
‘Yes, I am,’ the Supreme Pontiff replied, panting.
‘Do you want to rest, Your Holiness?’ the director asked at his side.
‘Let’s keep going,’ Wojtyla said good-naturedly. A slight smile accompanying this wish could be taken as evidence of his sincerity.
Some dozen feet ahead they stopped in front of a gray, iron-plated door, where two guards were standing at attention, one on each side. The director ordered one of them to open the door. The subaltern obeyed quickly, not without first going down on his knees before the Holy Father and kissing his hand, as respect for the clergy demands from the faith of common men. He turned the key in the lock and entered the cell first, while his companion remained alert by the side of the door.
‘Please, Your Holiness.’ The director extended his hand, indicating the way in.
Wojtyla entered, followed by Stanislaw and the director, leaving the rest of the delegation at the door.
Inside, the young Turk was on his feet looking at the Pole with an ashamed expression. He couldn’t maintain it for long. He lowered his eyes at once like a good boy who has done mischief and awaits punishment.
‘Holiness, take as much time as you wish,’ the director instructed. ‘A guard will remain here at all times with the safety off on his gun.’
‘Perfect.’ The secretary acknowledged the security instructions.
Wojtyla had already entered another level looking indulgently at the young Turk. They waited for the director to exit the cell. They heard the lock closing from the outside, followed by silence, oppressive for some, but not for Wojtyla. He looked at the Turk, who lowered his face submissively. The pope approached him, spontaneously lifted his wrinkled hand to the Turk’s face and raised it. The dead-looking eyes of the young man had nowhere to hide, nor could he close his eyelids. They remained open, naked before the man who ought to have died two years ago, been wept over, buried, and replaced, since life continues and only those who are here matter, like these two now who must overcome cultural, religious, ideological, and other more deadly differences.
Suddenly the Turk allowed some life to revive his pale eyes. They filled with tears and seemed to give in to the pope’s scrutiny. Wojtyla’s hand lifting his chin was firm as a rock. There was neither censure nor reproach in his expression, no sign of visible condemnation, only a man, the holiest of them all, looking into the depths of the other’s soul and understanding everything without saying a word or showing emotion.
As soon as Wojtyla let him go, the young Turk knelt at his feet with such devotion the guard almost fired on him. The pope raised his hand, as if saying lower the gun, and the guard obeyed.
‘Forgive me, Holy Father,’ the Turk pleaded, with his head bent over the feet of Peter’s worthy successor.
Wojtyla crouched to lift him up and placed his hand on the Turk’s head.
‘Get up, my son. What has to be forgiven was already forgiven a long time ago.’
He helped the Turk up and led him to the bed.
‘Now, sit down,’ he ordered. ‘Take a deep breath and tell me everything, my son.’
36
Harvey Littel entered the crisis office room with the confidence of a sovereign handing down laws to his people. Certainly Littel didn’t make laws or carry out regulations. His world was a world apart, a world of intelligence, counterintelligence, military, civilian, industrial, and political espionage. There was only one rule on this battlefield: conquer at any price. Imbued with this spirit, Harvey Littel took his place at the table as the windows of the door automatically darkened to block the view from outside.
‘Good evening, once again, gentlemen. Any news?’ he asked, taking his seat in a comfortable leather easy chair.
‘We have the Russian contacts on permanent alert,’ Colonel Garrison informed him. He took a cigar from his pocket and put it in his mouth.
‘Perfect. Excellent.’ Littel raised his hand. ‘I’d appreciate it if you don’t smoke in my presence. Thank you.’ It was obviously an order, not a courteous request.
Stuart Garrison looked at him with the Cuban cigar unlit. He put it back in his jacket pocket for a better time.
‘And Barnes? Has he given us any information?’
‘He’s on the phone at this moment, Dr. Littel,’ Priscilla hastened to inform him, with her notebook at the ready.
‘Wonderful,’ Littel responded. ‘Let’s not make him wait any longer,’ he decided. ‘Cil, put him on the speakerphone.’
‘Geoffrey Barnes?’ said Priscilla, whose affectionate diminutive was only for her boss’s use and no one else’s.
‘Yes?’ They heard Barnes’s guttural voice filling the room from the speakers placed in the ceiling. The phone, as in the previous room, was near Littel on the table.
‘Barnes, how are you?’ Littel greeted him with audible friendliness.
‘Littel, good, thanks. You? Shut up in the second basement without seeing the full moon?’ His voice expressed confidence, which in itself calmed everyone who was listening.
‘You know how things are. We just get by. I bet you’re sitting at your desk on the sixth floor watching the lights of the city, knife and fork in hand, ready to devour some roast pheasant.’
‘You’re mistaken about the food, but it’s a good idea.’
‘Well, all right. How does it happen that one of our own has been killed in Amsterdam?’ He suddenly took a serious tone of voice.
‘My people have been there. I was, too, last night, and I can affirm that the victim, Solomon Keys, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘Solomon Keys. It’s confirmed.’ Littel corroborated the information Barnes gave him with what he already had.
Some sighs were heard in the room in recognition of the name. Most had heard him spoken about. Others knew him personally. Peace to his noble soul.
‘Yes. Well, he died because he was in the Amsterdam Centraal station, in one of the restrooms, specifically when a British couple came in to satisfy their carnal desire.’
Some listeners began to laugh nervously. It was humorous to hear Barnes tell a story like this with complete professionalism.
‘Someone came in to eliminate the couple, and Keys paid the price,’ Barnes concluded.
‘Okay, in any case we’re going to ask for his service order to confirm whether the motive of his trip was tourism or an operation,’ Littel said, while gesturing for Priscilla to carry out that task. She agreed and wrote it in her notebook.
‘He was over eighty years old,’ Barnes commented in the sense of excusing the old agent of the company of any blame.
‘It wouldn’t be the first time, Barnes,’ Littel clarified. ‘Sometimes they return to activity for a mission or two.’
Although separated by thousands of miles, both of them imagined the same thing. Little old men with canes, arthritic and breathing with difficulty, but, if the agency needed them… That was their life, the best marriage they ever made, until death do them part.
‘I agree,’ Barnes said. ‘But you probably won’t find anything. The subjects of this operation were two English journalists, Natalie Golden and Greg Saunders.’