Morini closed and then locked the door of his office — some of the documents he had been studying were fairly sensitive and, even within the Vatican, curious eyes were to be discouraged — and the two clerics strode away down the corridor.
A few minutes later, Gregory opened the door to Gianni’s room and stood to one side as Father Morini stepped into the chamber. The dying cleric’s eyes were closed and he did not appear to have moved, but Gregory noticed that there were flecks of blood around his mouth that had not been there before. The medically trained nun was still in attendance, and as they entered she was again altering the dosage of the opiates the old man was receiving. Seeing Morini, she dipped her head in respectful salute and retreated to sit on a chair in one corner.
Morini crossed the short distance to the head of the single bed and looked down. He reached out and took hold of Gianni’s right hand and applied gentle pressure.
The dying man opened his eyes and looked up, summoning a weak smile.
‘Thank you for coming, Antonio,’ he said.
Then he glanced around the room and noticed the two other people in attendance there. He gestured to Morini to bend forward slightly and murmured into his ear.
‘You must be my confessor, Antonio, and what I have to tell you is for your ears alone,’ he muttered. ‘Please ask the others to leave the room.’
Morini nodded. Like every other Roman Catholic priest, he fully appreciated the sanctity of the confessional.
‘The Father would like me to take his confession,’ he said, turning to Gregory. ‘Can you and the Sister please give us a few minutes alone?’
When the door closed behind Gregory and the nun, Morini again turned to face the old man, and knelt down beside the bed so that his head was as close as possible to Gianni’s.
‘We are quite alone now, my old friend — just you and me and the heavenly Father. I will gladly hear your confession and grant absolution.’
Gianni nodded, the movement of his head barely perceptible.
But what he said next was not at all what Morini had expected.
Gianni clutched the younger man’s hand with a grip that was surprisingly firm and began to speak in a low and weak voice.
‘I am not confessing my sins, Antonio. I attended to that matter regarding my departure from this world some two weeks ago. I didn’t believe I could commit any important sins just by lying here, except perhaps being guilty of sloth.’
Morini smiled at the feeble joke.
‘So how can I help you?’ he asked.
‘What I have to tell you is a confession of sorts, I suppose, but it is far from personal, and involves my professional position here in the Vatican hierarchy, a position that you now occupy. I have some important information to impart to you, and you must solemnly swear never to share what I have to say with anyone else, inside or outside the Vatican.’
Gianni sank backwards onto his pillow. The effort of speaking at all was clearly taking its toll on his ravaged body.
Morini stared at him, wondering if the opiates — or even the disease itself — had deranged the old man, if he was hearing drug-or pain-induced ramblings with no basis whatsoever in fact. But Gianni neither looked nor sounded as if that were the case. His voice was weak and slightly slurred, but his eyes were bright with intelligence.
‘What information?’
‘First you must swear never to reveal what I’m about to tell you.’
Morini shook his head in slight irritation, then did as the old man asked.
‘I swear by Almighty God that I will tell no one anything I learn in this room. I would never breach the secrets of the confessional under any circumstances, and I will accord whatever you tell me here exactly the same status.’
‘Good. How long have you been here, in the holy city?’
Morini looked slightly taken aback at the question.
‘Just under twenty years,’ he replied. ‘Why?’
‘I arrived here in the mid-seventies, and I became Prefect at the end of the nineties. Even now I still remember having an interview, a very similar interview to this one, in fact, with my predecessor. Who also, if I recall correctly, had contracted a form of cancer. Perhaps the disease is one of the risks of this particular job.’
Gianni paused for breath, and perhaps to order his thoughts before he continued.
‘I have a good idea what you’re thinking at this precise moment, because when I was in your position I, too, wondered if my predecessor as Prefect was deluded or suffering from some kind of mental instability in addition to his other infirmities. But he wasn’t, and neither am I.
‘I’m quite sure, Antonio, that you know most of the history of the Vatican and of the Church that we both serve, but there is one incident that took place almost half a century ago that only received a limited amount of publicity at the time, and that has been virtually forgotten about today. You’ve probably never even heard of it, but it was perhaps the most dangerous event ever to take place here in the Holy See.’
‘Dangerous? Dangerous to whom?’
The old man’s grip tightened on Morini’s hand.
‘To everyone. To the very foundations of our Church, and to the faith espoused by countless millions of followers of our true religion around the world.’
Morini felt a sudden chill run through his body. Whatever he’d been expecting, that wasn’t it.
‘You’d better tell me exactly what you mean,’ he said.
What the old man had to say didn’t take long. But the implications of what he said were shattering.
4
‘Dear God,’ Morini murmured when Gianni finished speaking ‘Dear God, save us all.’
And then Morini fell silent, as his mind processed the information he had just been given. Finally, he began questioning the dying man.
‘But why did they put it there? Why didn’t they lock it away somewhere in the archives? Or even destroy it?’
Gianni shook his head. ‘I don’t know. I suppose the fear was that wherever it was hidden in the archives there was always a chance that some researcher might stumble over it one day. Destroying it was not really an option. You know as well as I do that the Vatican hardly ever destroys anything. I suppose putting it inside another exhibit in a glass case, in a part of the Holy See to which public access was never granted, and choosing a display case that would never be opened except under the tightest supervision and only then by senior Vatican officials, was seen as the safest alternative.’
‘Which we now know wasn’t safe at all,’ Morini retorted. Then he asked the obvious question. ‘Does anybody else know about this?’
‘The Prefect of the Archivum Secretum Vaticanum at the time we are talking about obviously knew what had happened, and he conveyed that information to the Holy Father. In return, he was ordered to reveal the facts to nobody except his immediate successor in charge of the archive. I was the third Prefect to bear the weight of this information and this responsibility, and you are now the fourth.’
‘And his Holiness? Does he know about this?’
Gianni nodded slightly.
‘Since that date, every pope has been made aware of it, and keeping each pontiff informed is one of your duties. If our present Holy Father should succumb while you are in the post, you will be required to explain the situation to the new occupant of the throne of St Peter. It is likely that you will be summoned to a private audience with his Holiness over the next few weeks to discuss this, once I am no longer here. But nobody else, nobody at all, inside or outside the Vatican, must ever learn what you now know.’
Morini nodded, his mind still reeling.
Then Gianni’s grip tightened on the younger man’s arm.