‘There are hours for visiting the basilica and the brothers,’ he scolded. ‘This isn’t one of them.’ His eyes were red with sleep and anger.
‘Get out of the way,’ Marius Ferris said, shoving him aside roughly.
The man didn’t resist and let him enter. Brothers aren’t used to violence, no matter what order.
‘Where do you think you’re going? Who are you?’ he managed to ask.
‘I’m the guy who pays you,’ Marius Ferris answered immediately, turning his back and walking toward the interior of the church.
The man recovered and ran after him.
‘Listen, I don’t know who you think you are, but you can’t come in like this. Identify yourself or I will have to call the carabinieri.’
If, on the one hand, Marius Ferris loved being flattered, put on an altar, and adored, the contrary infuriated him. He stopped and looked at the Redemptorist.
‘Tell Brother Vincenzo I’m going to be in the crypt for five minutes. He already knows.’
‘You know the prior?’
‘I know everyone. If you want to continue in your position, I suggest you go to bed.’
‘Very well, sir. Do you know the way?’
Marius nodded his head. Just what he needed. A friar acting important with him. He waited until the other returned to his room and entered the immense nave with a gold ceiling, silent, dark, holy.
He retraced the way that someone else had taken twenty-six years earlier, with the opposite purpose. He went down the center aisle, unhurriedly, a slight fear rising within as the baldachin could be seen closer and closer. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t sweating. The light was dim but showed the moisture covering the rest of his face. It was dampening his suit, drops falling on the holy floor. Even great men react to great moments.
The crypt was under the altar. Two small gates on either side served as an entrance and exit. They opened onto two narrow steps that descended to the crypt where the wooden boards of the manger were found, the alleged material that formed part of the infant Jesus’ crib.
When he found himself before the relic, he knelt down and bowed his head submissively. He joined his hands and whispered a litany, bursting from a heart full of doubts. He wouldn’t turn his back on the challenge that awaited him. Meanwhile nothing could separate him from his encounter alone with God, from Whom he asked discernment and strength to carry out his purpose.
He roused his courage and got up from the prie-dieu. He took off the gold chain around his neck and opened the glass cover that protected the relic containing the holy boards from the altar consecrated to the Virgin. He searched in the place he’d been told to look, and… nothing.
No envelope, object, nothing. He tried again over and over until there was no doubt. Beyond the boards, guarded inside the gold reliquary supplied with a plastic screen to permit viewing by the countless faithful who visited the crypt daily, there was nothing more. What he was looking for had been removed already.
His sweat and nerves overwhelmed him. He’d looked forward to this moment so much, had wanted to feel a whirlwind of contradictory emotions… and now… nothing. Only the boards remained inside their protective reliquary, but, with all due respect, they weren’t as important as the secret that should have been hidden there.
His doubts overcame him. Had it ever been here? He looked at the chain and the gold key hanging from it. It was the only one, he was sure of that. He remembered how the other obtained the original when it had been decided this would be the hiding place under the protection of the Holy Child. He’d had to make a Franciscan drink until he passed out. The key disappeared that night, and this was the same key in his hand now. He remained on his knees in front of the sacred memorial. His legs weakened and gave out under the weight of his disillusion.
Think. Think, he thought.
He could reach only a not very optimistic conclusion.
Treason.
He closed the glass that protected the reliquary from the implacable atmosphere and climbed the stairs two steps at a time. He jumped the small gate and ran down the nave toward the exit.
Simultaneously he dialed a number on his cell phone. Two rings later, someone answered.
‘We’ve been betrayed. Kill them all.’
59
John Paul II.
‘Everything comes down to him.’
‘He’s the beginning and the end.’
‘John Paul the Second is dead.’
‘A man like that never dies.’
Where have I heard that before? Sarah asked herself, while she listened to the debate between Rafael and the barber.
They were seated at a narrow table, Sarah facing James Phelps and the barber facing the priest.
The conversation was between the latter two men alone. No one else was permitted to interrupt.
‘How did you get mixed up in this?’ Rafael wanted to know.
‘It’s Mitrokhin’s fault,’ Ivanovsky explained. ‘Have you heard of him?’
‘Of course. He worked in the KGB archives for forty years and put together his own archive transcribing the most important documents. Later he went into exile somewhere in the UK.’
‘Convenient, wouldn’t you say?’
‘You’re the ones who have to check for double agents. Naturally he quickly became the best friend of the British.’
‘He was anti-Russian, an idiot, a traitor.’
‘He passed your greatest secrets to the enemy,’ Rafael said provocatively.
Ivanovsky shrugged his shoulders, dismissing his importance.
‘Very few secrets. The British were the ones who took him in. The Americans didn’t believe him. After a certain point, we suspected him of duplicity and decided to give him misinformation.’
Rafael wrinkled his nose.
‘I don’t know if I believe that.’
‘Believe it.’
‘The powerful Soviet Union has an agent suspected of high treason and decides to give him false information instead of arresting and executing him?’
‘That’s exactly what happened. The majority of what is known as the Mitrokhin Archive is pure fiction.’
‘Bullshit,’ Rafael accused him. ‘He deceived them, and they made up this excuse.’
‘Don’t forget we are talking about transcriptions, not original documents. We don’t have to make up anything. Or even comment on the subject.’
‘But the British classified it as the most complete intelligence source in memory.’
‘And why wouldn’t they? Imagine that an agent of the CIA or MI6 transcribed documents, whether true or false, for thirty or forty years and passed them to us. Do you think we wouldn’t classify them as true?’
The two men looked at each other. Their scrutiny had ended, the analysis of each other’s words and character over. From here on nothing needed to be explained.
‘Everything begins with Mitrokhin,’ Rafael said as if thinking out loud, ‘who accuses you, among other things, of having planned and carried out the attack in 1981 in Saint Peter’s.’
‘With the help of the Bulgarians, Poles, and the now defunct East Germans,’ Ivanovsky added.
‘That’s where Mitrokhin caused problems,’ Rafael declared.
Ivanovsky frowned.
‘I see you’re well informed.’
‘I try to keep current. If Mitrokhin thought the USSR had something to do with the attempt, it was because he was led along.’ A meaningful wink.
‘That’s right. They tricked us.’
‘I know.’
‘We knew an attempt on the pope was imminent. We filled Saint Peter’s Square, and the blame fell on us.’
‘Who did you suspect?’
‘For two years we suspected the Americans.’
‘Why?’
‘The Polish pope at that time was enough to make anyone wet his pants with fear. It was Americans or the Iron Curtain. The Americans have done it before. They killed their own president in 1963.’
Sarah listened openmouthed.
‘Look who’s talking,’ Rafael observed sarcastically. ‘How many did your Stalin kill?’