“ ‘Killed by a group of soldiers and several bishops and priests who were shooting bullets and arrows at him,’” Sarah repeated to herself. “What other secrets was the Church hiding, replaced by lies proclaimed as absolute truths?” she mumbled.
“Are you okay?”
Rafael’s question pulled her out of her ruminations. He’d just come out of the bathroom, dressed after his shower.
“Yes, fine. Are you going somewhere?”
“I’m leaving. My mission is finished.”
The comment struck Sarah like a splash of cold water.
“You’re going?”
“I’m sorry for all I put you through. You should know I did it all for your benefit.”
“You’re going… where?” Her surprise and disappointment were quite evident.
“To save more souls in difficult situations,” he said jokingly.
Sarah got up and went to him.
“What about us?”
“Us?” Rafael was confused by her question. Sarah’s face got closer and closer to his. Her soft perfume started to reach him.
“Us… what about us? When are we going to see each other again?” she asked, gazing intently into his eyes. “Why don’t you stay a few more days?”
Rafael was visibly nervous, something that didn’t square with his usual self-assurance.
“I already told you that none of this ever happened, Sarah. Understand?”
She got a bit closer, without fear, without any shyness.
“Aren’t you going to stay with me?” she whispered to him. “You could rest, I’d keep you company.”
Their lips almost touched, but he stepped back at the last moment.
“No. I can’t. I really must leave now. I have to take these papers and return them to the Vatican. They will decide there what they want to do with them.”
Sarah got the impression he wanted to leave as soon as possible, as if he were fleeing from the devil, not from her.
“If this is because of my father-”
“No,” Rafael said. “It has nothing to do with your father.”
“Then?”
Rafael took the papers and walked to the door.
“It’s a life choice.” And he opened the door to leave.
“Wait,” Sarah held him back. “At least, tell me your real name.”
He looked at her for the last time.
“But, Sarah, what did I tell you when we met? My name is Rafael.”
Those were the last words they exchanged.
64
Time was running out. Lying on his deathbed, Archbishop Marcinkus knew that his real problems were about to begin when the time came to render accounts to the God he now feared so much, the one he had so often disregarded. “God’s banker” pictured himself showing the Almighty the account books of income and expenses, debits and deposits, the details of specific frauds committed, in an attempt to convince Him of the need to diversify investments and launder the money received from organized crime. His feverish state and the anguish of dying made him see God as the president of a board of directors, a CEO incapable of recognizing that everything his servant had done throughout his eighty-four years had been for the good of the enterprise.
Many thought that Paul Marcinkus, the old archbishop of Chicago, had been too isolated from the world in a remote parish in Illinois, and though he in fact had stepped aside, he had never intended to give up his power, and still remained in the service of the Catholic Church, in the diocese of Phoenix.
But the Sun City was very far from the center of the world, very far from Rome, and very far from God. Ever since the Italian judges charged him with the Banco Ambrosiano embezzlement, he couldn’t shed the anguish this had caused him, and that, in turn, had weakened his heart. He was afraid his old friends suspected him of having ratted them out to the police and the court, because vengeance could be extreme.
With his gaze fixed on the whiteness of the ceiling, Marcinkus could see himself as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Calvi, Sindona, Gelli, and himself, sent by God to put the world in order.
Marcinkus remembered Roberto Calvi’s horrible fate. He himself had barely managed to stay solvent after the bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano. And this depended on bribes and blackmail.
“What was that woman’s name?” Marcinkus asked himself out loud.
Graziella Corrocher was her name, and she was the one who had informed on Calvi before jumping out the window of her office and smashing herself on the pavement.
When the Milan judges sent him to the Lodi jail, he told them more than he should have: “The Banco Ambrosiano isn’t mine. I’m only in someone else’s service. I can’t tell you any more.” Friends don’t forgive indiscretions, and if Calvi was able to gain conditional freedom, it was only by betraying family and friends.
Hounded and desperate, Calvi fled from Italy and hid in various locations until he was found. Unfortunately the Mafia got to him before the police did. It was probably Gelli’s men or Sindona’s. On June 18, 1982, they put some bricks and $15,000 for services rendered in his pockets. Then they tied a rope around his neck and dropped him under the Blackfriars Bridge in London. The police reported that poor Roberto had committed suicide.
Morons! You don’t understand anything! Marcinkus thought. Poor Roberto.
In contrast, Michele Sindona got what he deserved. The old man used to be proud of his deals, but he was incapable of keeping a bank going. The Franklin Bank collapsed, and he lost his project with the Banca Privata Italiana to the Genovese family. He said he had studied law, but his beginnings were rooted in the fruit business, hence his nickname, the Lemon Man. At the time, he asked the Sicilians for help, and thanks to them he prospered. He went around-oh, so stupidly-bragging that he controlled the Milan stock market. In the United States he made an alliance with the Inzerillos and the Gambinos, who were even bigger scoundrels than the Genovese. With their help, he managed to get rich and to make deals with the Holy See, that is, with Marcinkus and Calvi. “Only an idiot could have people call him Master of the Universe,” Marcinkus had once said. In the midsixties, when his finances and those of the Vatican collapsed, Sindona asked Calvi for help, but by then Sindona couldn’t do much. Sindona felt besieged both in the United States and in Italy, where the charges and accusations against him were endless. So he put pressure on Calvi to save his empire with Banco Ambrosiano funds, but this Catholic bank and its holding company were already under the scrutiny of the judicial authorities. Marcinkus and Calvi claimed they didn’t know the Sicilian, and abandoned him to his own luck. In a desperate attempt to avoid jail, Sindona ordered the murder of a Milanese judge who presided over the cases connected with their dirty dealings, but this last stupidity only served to add one more crime to his long list. He was arrested in the United States, and the Italian government asked for his extradition. Sindona had made few friends but incurred many debts along the way, and he paid for them all on March 23, 1986.
“Would you like hemlock with your coffee, Michele?” Marcinkus asked sarcastically in the solitude of his bedroom, attempting to smile for the last time.
Jail isn’t a good refuge for those with a lot of outstanding debt. So Michele Sindona ended his days with the taste of hemlock in his throat.