“Who was only trying to restore justice.”
“Justice is a very subjective ideal. By now, surely you understood that. Licio Gelli felt obliged to devise a plan that could be executed in a matter of hours, a drastic plan. That’s how I came on the scene as Albino Luciani’s executioner. My job was to stay by the phone and wait. Villot tried to postpone the plan as long as possible. He tried to dissuade the pope, arguing, offering reasonable alternatives. But the pope showed his inflexibility. He sealed his fate on September 28, when he told Villot and the other monsignors about the replacements to be made over the next few days, starting with Marcinkus, effective immediately. When we got wind of the papal decision, we had no choice but to act.”
“The final solution,” Sarah threw in with enraged sarcasm. “The solution to all problems. If he doesn’t serve our purposes, we kill him, and the sooner the better. There are numerous victims of that attitude.”
“You can’t imagine how many. Anyway, the night of the twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, I showed up at the Apostolic Palace. One of the monsignors had arranged to keep the entrances open and for me not to be intercepted. And that’s how it happened. He did his job perfectly.”
“Do you mean you were wandering around the Apostolic Palace at midnight?”
“No. I entered the pope’s private quarters directly, by one of the out-of-service stairways. The doors to the lower and third floors were generally locked. As you can imagine, that night was an exception. The Swiss Guard hasn’t been guarding the papal quarters since the times of Pope John XXIII. I didn’t cross paths with anybody on my way in. I had no trouble at all getting into the pope’s private rooms. He was still awake and we exchanged a few words. When I left, I had completed my assignment. The cardinals would have to bury the new pope and elect another one.”
“You talked with the pope? I hope you haven’t forgotten that conversation.”
“That’s irrelevant,” J.C. retorted, now starting to show his impatience. “The next day, the same monsignor who helped me get in also asked me to go see him in the Vatican. So I went. He wanted to give me the papers, the ones we’re now trying to recover, for safekeeping, and that’s what I did”-the old man smiled sneakily-“putting them in the safest place in the world. Besides, the idea amused me. How could I have imagined that Firenzi, the idiot, would finally find them and end up taking them out?”
“But weren’t you asked to destroy them?”
“No, not at all. Except for the list and the secret of Fátima, the rest is harmless. There were only papal orders concerning Church reorganization. Some of them more controversial than others, but nothing explosive, at least for anybody who follows religious matters.
“But the list is another story. As you surely know, it’s not about the list of P2 names that everybody knows, but a much more sensitive version. It includes the names of great personalities and, specifically, of one prime minister. Any third-rate judge would have a clear basis to prosecute them for the death of a pope. Nobody could have imagined that any such thing was going to happen. That damned prosecutor of the District of Rome…
“Nobody would have suspected any irregularity in the pope’s death, except that Villot, in his excessive zeal, made a series of mistakes after the body was found by Sister Vincenza. He demanded an absolutely unnecessary vow of silence from all the residents of the palace, and he then invented an official story, later proved false by the Vatican itself.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The first official version said that John Magee, the pope’s secretary, found him dead at five thirty in the morning, when actually he was found forty-five minutes earlier by Sister Vincenza, his personal assistant.”
“Why did he do that?”
“It didn’t seem appropriate for a woman, even though she was a nun, to be freely entering the pope’s private quarters. Image issues. Then Villot got too personally involved. He issued a series of mistaken declarations and made outlandish decisions. He said that the pope had his bedside book, The Imitation of Christ, by Kempis, in his hands. This special edition was actually in Venice. He hastily summoned the embalmers. Soon it was learned that the nun had discovered the body. If one added the rushed cleaning of the papal private quarters to all these incongruities, it became easy to understand why everybody would think this reflected the personal behavior of somebody who had something to hide.
“On the other hand, the doctors would collaborate with us only if they didn’t have to face another doctor’s opinion. Luciani’s physician was Dr. Giuseppe de Rós, who always attended him in Venice, and during his month in the Vatican. It was important that he corroborate the diagnosis of his colleagues when he arrived in Rome. Villot would not, however, authorize an autopsy, also prohibited under canon law. Villot was the cardinal camerlengo and, as such, the head of the Church until the end of the next conclave. He was very busy, and very nervous about all that had occurred.”
“Understandable,” Sarah remarked.
“Dr. Giuseppe de Rós approved the diagnosis of the other doctors, but he actually had little chance to do anything else, because he could only conduct a superficial examination. Since an autopsy was out of the question, if Villot had not acted so precipitously, it would have been a perfect crime. A new pope was elected and life went on. But the death of John Paul I had already aroused too many suspicions, and everything began to fall apart, and in a way particularly damaging to the P2, which disbanded in 1981. Since then, we’ve been more in the shadows than ever.”
“And how did they manage to bury the P2?”
“The details are complicated. Let’s just say that, for years, judges, journalists, and some police organizations followed clues that led to the IOR, the Banco Ambrosiano, the P2, and businesses that connected them.”
“And what happened with Villot, Marcinkus, and the manager of the Banco Ambrosiano?”
“Villot was very sick at the time of Luciani’s assassination. He himself had asked to be relieved, but he wouldn’t allow Benelli to serve as his replacement. Villot wanted to choose his own successor. Benelli was a man too much like John Paul I. He, too, would have caused irreparable damage. After Luciani’s death, Villot relaxed a little, and he died in peace in March 1979, very well attended.
“Marcinkus continued with his shenanigans in the IOR for a long time, until he was taken away, and he returned to Chicago. Later he retreated to a parish on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona.”
In old J.C.’s opinion, Marcinkus was a villain. He had no friends, no associates, no allies. He was only a friend to himself and served his own interests. Because of that, he could continue his businesses for a long time, after both John Paul I and Villot had left this world. There he was, at the head of the IOR until 1989, under the aegis of Pope John Paul II himself.
“As for the others,” J.C. went on, “Calvi was found dead in 1982, strangled beneath the Blackfriars Bridge in London. The embezzlement of the Banco Ambrosiano finally amounted to some two billion dollars. That money was lost, but it was very profitable for Gelli and Marcinkus.
“Would you like to know where Gelli is?” the old man asked, making a dramatic pause. He knew he was nearing the end of his story. “He’s fulfilling a residential imprisonment in Arezzo, Italy. And as for me, well, I’m not anywhere.”
Again he fell silent. Then Sarah threw out a question that still hadn’t been answered, perhaps the one she was most interested in.
“How did you kill the pope?”
“Come on, Miss Sarah Monteiro, you can’t expect to be told everything in exchange for nothing, right? One thing for another, isn’t that what you said? I more than fulfilled my part. Now it’s your turn.” He smiled, satisfied, like someone who knew he had reason on his side.