Michener said nothing. Surely there was a point to all this. Why else would Clement delay everyone for this conversation, which could have waited?
“I loved that cathedral,” Clement said. “It was a part of my youth. I can still hear the choir singing. Truly inspiring. I wish I could be buried there. But that’s not possible, is it? Popes have to lie in St. Peter’s. I wonder who fashioned that rule?”
Clement’s voice was distant. Michener wondered who he was really talking to. He stepped close. “Jakob, tell me what’s wrong.”
Clement released his grip on the cloth and clenched his trembling hands before him. “You’re very naÏve, Colin. You simply do not understand. Nor can you.” He talked through his teeth, hardly moving his mouth. The voice stayed flat, stripped of emotion. “Do you think for one moment we enjoy any measure of privacy? Don’t you understand the depth of Valendrea’s ambition? The Tuscan knows everything we do, everything we say. You want to be a cardinal? To achieve that you must grasp the measure of that responsibility. How can you expect me to elevate you when you fail to see what is so clear?”
Rarely in their association had they spoken cross words, but the pope was chastising him. And for what?
“We are merely men, Colin. Nothing more. I’m no more infallible than you. Yet we proclaim ourselves princes of the Church. Devout clerics concerned only with pleasing God, while we simply please ourselves. That fool, Bartolo, waiting outside, is a good example. His only concern is when I am going to die. His fortunes will surely shift then. As will yours.”
“I hope you don’t speak like this with anyone else.”
Clement gently clasped the pectoral cross that hung before his chest. The gesture seemed to calm his tremors. “I worry about you, Colin. You’re like a dolphin confined to an aquarium. All your life keepers made sure the water was clean, the food plentiful. Now they’re about to return you to the ocean. Will you be able to survive?”
He resented Clement’s talking down to him. “I know more than you might think.”
“You have no idea the depth of a person like Alberto Valendrea. He is no man of God. There have been many popes like him—greedy and conceited, foolish men who think power is the answer to everything. I thought them part of our past. But I was wrong. You think you can do battle with Valendrea?” Clement shook his head. “No, Colin. You’re no match for him. You’re too decent. Too trusting.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“It needs to be said.” Clement stepped close. They were now only inches apart, toe-to-toe. “Alberto Valendrea will be the ruin of this Church—if I and my predecessors have not already been. You ask me constantly what is wrong. You should not be as concerned with what troubles me as with doing what I ask. Is that clear?”
He was taken aback by Clement’s bluntness. He was a forty-seven-year-old monsignor. The papal secretary. A devoted servant. Why was his old friend questioning both his loyalty and his ability? But he decided to argue no further. “It is perfectly clear, Holy Father.”
“Maurice Ngovi is the closest thing to me you will ever have. Remember that in the days ahead.” Clement stepped back and his mood seemed to shift. “When do you leave for Romania?”
“In the morning.”
Clement nodded, then reached back into his cassock and withdrew another powder-blue envelope. “Excellent. Now, would you mail this for me, please?”
He accepted the packet and noticed it was addressed to Irma Rahn. She and Clement were childhood friends. She still lived in Bamberg, and they’d maintained a steady correspondence for years. “I’ll take care of it.”
“From here.”
“Excuse me?”
“Mail the letter from here. In Turin. You personally, please. No delegation to others.”
He always mailed the pope’s letters personally, and had never needed a reminder before. But again he decided not to question.
“Of course, Holy Father. I’ll mail it from here. Personally.”
ELEVEN
VATICAN CITY, 1:15 P.M.
Valendrea stepped directly toward the office of the archivist for the Holy Roman Church. The cardinal in charge of L’Archivio Segreto Vaticano was not one of his allies, but he hoped the man was perceptive enough not to cross someone who might soon be pope. All appointments ended at a papal death. Continued service was dependent solely on what the next Vicar of Christ decided, and Valendrea well knew that the present archivist wanted to keep his position.
He found the man behind his desk, busy at work. He calmly entered the sprawling office and closed a set of bronze doors behind him.
The cardinal glanced up, but said nothing. The man was nearing seventy and possessed brooding cheeks and a high, sloping forehead. A Spaniard by birth, he’d worked in Rome all his clerical life.
The Sacred College was divided into three categories. Cardinal-bishops who headed the sees of Rome, cardinal-priests who were heads of dioceses outside Rome, and cardinal-deacons who were full-time Curia officials. The archivist was the senior of the cardinal-deacons and, as such, was granted the honor of announcing from the balcony of St. Peter’s the name of any newly elected pope. Valendrea was not concerned with that hollow privilege. Instead, what made this old man important was his influence over a handful of cardinal-deacons still wavering in their preconclave support.
He stepped toward the desk and noticed his host did not rise and greet him. “It isn’t that bad,” he said in response to a look he was receiving.
“I’m not so sure. I assume the pontiff is still in Turin?”
“Why else would I be here?”
The archivist let out an audible sigh.
“I want you to open the Riserva, along with the safe,” Valendrea said.
The old man finally stood. “I must refuse.”
“That would be unwise.” He hoped the man understood the message.
“Your threats cannot countermand a direct papal order. Only the pope can enter the Riserva. No one else. Not even you.”
“No one needs to know. I won’t be long.”
“My oath to this office and the Church means more to me than you seem to assume.”
“Listen to me, old man. I’m on a mission of greatest importance to the Church. One that demands extraordinary action.” It was a lie, but it sounded good.
“Then you wouldn’t mind if the Holy Father granted permission to allow access. I could place a call to Turin.”
Time for the moment of truth. “I have a sworn statement from your niece. She was more than happy to provide it. She swears before the Almighty that you forgave her daughter’s sin in aborting her baby. How is that possible, Eminence? That’s heresy.”
“I’m aware of the sworn statements. Your Father Ambrosi was quite persuasive with my sister’s family. I absolved the woman because she was dying and fearful of spending an eternity in hell. I comforted her with the grace of God, as a priest should.”
“My God—your God—does not condone abortion. That’s murder. You had no right to forgive her. A point I’m sure the Holy Father would have no choice but to agree with.”
He could see that the old man was fortified in the face of his dilemma, but he also noticed a tremor that shook the left eye—perhaps the precise spot where fear was making its escape.
The cardinal-archivist’s bravado did not impress Valendrea. The man’s entire life had been spent shoving paper from one file to another, enforcing meaningless rules, throwing roadblocks before anyone bold enough to challenge the Holy See. He followed a long line of scrittori who’d made it their life’s labor to ensure that the papal archives remained secure. Once they perched themselves on a black throne, their physical presence in the archives served as a warning that permission to enter was not a license to browse. As with an archaeological dig, any revelations from those shelves came only after a meticulous plunge into their depths. And that took time—a commodity the Church had only in the past few decades been willing to grant. The sole task, Valendrea realized, of men like the cardinal-archivist was to protect the mother Church, even from its princes.