SIXTY-FOUR
Katerina’s mind swirled with confusion. Michener had not trusted her with the fact that Clement XV took his own life. Valendrea surely must know—otherwise Ambrosi would have urged her to learn what she could about Clement’s death. What in the world was happening? Missing writings. Seers talking to Mary. A pope committing suicide after secretly loving a woman for six decades. Nobody would believe any of it.
She stepped from the inn, buttoned her coat, and decided to head back toward the Maxplatz and walk off her frustration. Bells pealed from all directions signaling noon. She swiped the quickening snow from her hair. The air was cold, parched, and sullen, like her mood.
Irma Rahn had opened her mind. Where years ago she’d forced Michener into a choice, driving him away, hurting them both in the process, Irma had ventured down a less selfish path, one that reflected love, not possession. Maybe the old woman was right. It mattered not about a physical connection. What counted was possessing the heart and mind.
She wondered if she and Michener could have enjoyed a similar relationship. Probably not. Times were different. Yet here she was, back with the same man, seemingly on the same tortuous path of love lost, then found, then tested, then—that was the question. Then, what?
She continued to walk, finding the main plaza, crossing a canal, and spotting the onion-domed twin towers of St. Gangolf’s.
Life was so damn complicated.
She could still see the man from last night standing over Michener, knife in hand. She hadn’t hesitated in attacking him. After, she’d suggested going to the authorities, but Michener had nixed the idea. Now she knew why. He couldn’t risk the exposure of a papal suicide. Jakob Volkner meant so much to him. Maybe too much. And she now understood why he’d journeyed to Bosnia—searching for answers to questions his old friend had left behind. Clearly that chapter in his life could not be closed, because its ending had yet to be written. She wondered if it ever would be.
She kept walking and found herself back at the doors to St. Gangolf’s. The warm air seeping from inside beckoned her. She entered and saw the gate for the side chapel, where Irma had been cleaning, remained open. She stepped past and stopped at another of the chapels. A statue of the Virgin Mary, cradling the Christ child in her arms, gazed down with the loving look of a proud mother. Surely a medieval representation—that of an Anglo-Saxon Caucasian—but an image the world had grown accustomed to worshiping. Mary had lived in Israel, a place where the sun burned hot and skin was tanned. Her features would have been Arabic, her hair dark, her body stout. Yet European Catholics would never have accepted that reality. So a familiar feminine vision was fashioned—one the Church had clung to ever since.
And was she a virgin? The Holy Spirit endowing her womb with the son of God? Even if that was true, the decision would have certainly been her choice. She alone would have consented to the pregnancy. Why then was the Church so opposed to abortion and birth control? When did a woman lose the option to decide if she wanted to give birth? Had not Mary established the right? What if she’d refused? Would she still have been required to carry that divine child to term?
She was tired of puzzling dilemmas. There were far too many with no answers. She turned to leave.
Three feet away stood Paolo Ambrosi.
The sight of him startled her.
He lunged forward, spinning her around and hurling her into the chapel with the Virgin. He slammed her into the stone wall, her left arm twisted behind her back. Another hand quickly compressed her neck. Her face was pressed against the prickly stone.
“I was pondering how I might separate you from Michener. But you did it for me.”
Ambrosi increased the pressure on her arm. She opened her mouth to cry out.
“Now, now. Let’s not do that. Besides, there is no one here to hear you.”
She tried to break free, using her legs.
“Stay still. My patience with you is exhausted.”
Her response was more struggling.
Ambrosi yanked her away from the wall and wrapped an arm around her neck. Instantly, her windpipe was constricted. She tried to break his hold, digging her fingernails into his skin, but the diminishing oxygen was causing everything before her to wink in and out.
She opened her mouth to scream, but there was no air to form the words.
Her eyes rolled upward.
The last thing she saw, before the world went black, was the mournful glare of the Virgin, which offered no solace for her predicament.
SIXTY-FIVE
Michener watched Irma as she stared out the window toward the river. She’d returned shortly after Katerina left, carrying a familiar blue envelope, which now lay on the table.
“My Jakob killed himself,” she whispered to herself. “So sad.” She faced him. “Yet he was still buried in St. Peter’s. In consecrated ground.”
“We couldn’t tell the world what happened.”
“That was his one complaint with the Church. Truth is so rare. Ironic that his legacy is now dependent on a lie.”
Which seemed nothing unusual. Like Jakob Volkner, Michener’s entire career had been based on a lie. Interesting how alike they’d turned out to be. “Did he always love you?”
“What you mean is, were there others? No, Colin. Only me.”
“It would seem, after a while, that you both would have needed to move on. Didn’t you wish for a husband, children?”
“Children, yes. That’s my one regret in life. But I knew early on that I wanted to be Jakob’s and he wished the same from me. I’m sure you realized that you were, in every way, his son.”
His eyes moistened at the thought.
“I read that you found his body. That must have been awful.”
He didn’t want to think about the image of Clement on the bed, the nuns readying him for burial. “He was a remarkable man. Yet I now feel like he was a stranger.”
“There’s no need to feel that way. There were just parts of him that were his alone. As I’m sure there are parts of you he never knew.”
How true.
She motioned to the envelope. “I could not read what he sent me.”
“You tried?”
She nodded. “I opened the envelope. I was curious. But only after Jakob died. It’s written in another language.”
“Italian.”
“Tell me what it is.”
He did, and she listened in amazement. But he had to tell her that no one left alive, save for Alberto Valendrea, knew what the document in the envelope actually said.
“I knew something was bothering Jakob. His letters the last few months were depressing, even cynical. Not like him at all. And he wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“I tried, too, but he wouldn’t say a word.”
“He could be like that.”
From the front of the building he heard a door open, then bang shut. Footsteps echoed across a plank floor. The restaurant was to the rear, beyond a small lobby alcove and a staircase leading to the upper floors. He assumed it was Katerina returning.
“May I help you?” Irma said.
He was facing away from the doorway, toward the river, and turned to see Paolo Ambrosi standing a few feet behind him. The Italian was dressed in loose-fitting black jeans and a dark buttondown shirt. A gray overcoat fell to his knees and a maroon scarf draped his neck.
Michener stood. “Where’s Katerina?”
Ambrosi did not answer. Michener liked nothing about the smug look on the bastard’s face. He stood and rushed forward, but Ambrosi calmly withdrew a gun from his coat pocket. He stopped.
“Who is this?” Irma asked.
“Trouble.”
“I am Father Paolo Ambrosi. You must be Irma Rahn.”