In time, they would watch a scene play itself out in grisly fashion with the same unflinching pose, and their eyes as dead and pale as marbles would betray nothing of what they were about to become witness to.
After dinner, Bishop Angelo aided the pope to his bedroom and hung his vestments in the walk-in closet while Pius prepared himself for bed by putting on his sacred undergarment, a cotton pullover that covered the man from neck to ankle.
After the pope labored to the edge of his mattress, Bishop Angelo assisted the elderly man beneath the sheets, then pulled the blankets tight around him.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked.
The pope moved as if trying to settle contentedly into the mattress, his back and shoulders digging. “Well, it’s not home,” he answered, his movement slowing after finding a relaxing spot. “But it’ll do.”
Angelo laid a hand upon the pontiff’s shoulder and felt the pointed bonelike protrusion of a man having wasted away by the progression of age. “Perhaps you would like to read before you retire.”
The pope nodded. “Not tonight, Gennaro. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day for all of us and we‘ll need to be at our best.”
“Then have a good night.”
On his way out Bishop Angelo took time to straighten out the pope’s pearl-white miter sitting on top of the dresser, a king’s crown, then closed the door softly behind him until the snicker of the bolt locked in place.
On most evenings Pope Pius XIII either read from the Bible or gazed through the passages of Paradise Lost from John Milton, finding the language and meter of the poem masterful, and looked upon the work as a liberal effort affirming that the Church would always be seen through the critical eyes of its followers.
But tonight he was too tired to even flip back the cover of the leather-bound volume and switched off the table lamp, the darkness sweeping across the room in a blink of an eye.
In an attitude of prayer, Pope Pius placed his hands together and worshiped his Lord, thanking Him for raising him from the ranks of obscurity to that of prominence.
He had come from a family of eleven, all poor, some sickly, but none without faith or hope. Never in his life had he witnessed war or famine or the plagues of man due to living in a small village sixty kilometers west of Florence, Italy. Nor did he have an epiphany to follow the Lord’s path. Amerigo was simply enamored as a boy who loved God and everything He stood for: The Good, the Caring, and the ability to hold dominion over others and lead them toward the world of Light and Loving Spirits.
He also dreamed of sermonizing, of passing The Word.
But his father would have none of it and obligated his son to work the fields of the homestead alongside his brothers knowing that the true measurement of a man was calculated by the crops he yielded rather than the knowledge of academia, which in this village took a man nowhere.
So having been taught by his mother at home, having read and memorized all the passages of the Bible, having learned the basics in rudimentary math, and having tilled the fields with his siblings for nearly a decade, Amerigo Giovanni Anzalone had become a learned man with calloused hands from driving the yolk, and came to realize that tilling the soils was not his calling in life.
Every Sunday he went to church with his mother and siblings. And for every day thereafter, as he worked the soil beneath a relentless sun, he dreamed of wearing the vestments of a priest and giving sermon. What Amerigo wanted, what he needed, was to be empowered by the Church to give direction.
Upon his eighteenth birthday, and against his father’s wishes — but with the aid of the village priest, which his father was unwilling to contest — Amerigo gave up the yoke and headed to the Divinity School in Florence, his first stepping stone toward Rome.
In the years to follow, Amerigo was recognized as a cardinal and became a respected member within the Curia, which ultimately led the College of Cardinals to choose him as the successor to John Paul the Second. Upon his acceptance, Amerigo took the name of Pope Pius the XIII.
And like his predecessor, Amerigo would offer a hand to every race and religion, leaving nobody out, nobody alone. He would simply embrace the world with love and tolerance, beginning with the United States.
With that thought on his mind, Pope Pius XIII fell asleep with his hands slowly drifting apart, and then falling idly to his sides.
CHAPTER FIVE
He was nine years old when he lost his mother and sister to a suicide bomber on a trip to Ramallah. After going to the market, the boy, his mother, and his twelve-year-old sister boarded a bus for home.
Even to this day his memories recalled the pain and confusion of the explosion with fresh intensity, as if the blast happened just the day before.
It was a hot day in Ramallah. His mother had removed her shoe to massage her foot, and his sister sat quietly beside her. From the rear of the bus, the boy watched a man board, his coat much too bulky for such a warm day, and took a seat a few rows ahead of them. As the bus moved along its route picking up passengers and filling to capacity, he could not take his eyes off this man.
The man appeared nervous and uneasy, his brow slick with sweat as he took several glances around him, finally spying the boy in the back. Their eyes locked, and somehow the man knew that the boy was perceptive, while others all around him had no suspicion of what he was about to do.
Offering a scarcely perceptible smile, the man gave him what seemed to be an affable nod, then raised his hand. In it he held a switch that was to be depressed with his thumb. “To all occupiers of the nation of Islam, Allah is great!”
Just as he was about to turn to his mother and ask her who Allah was, the man pushed the button.
With the slowness of a bad dream, the boy watched the man break up into countless pieces. Flame and pressure blew out the walls of the bus. People sitting close to him disappeared within the licks of fire and ash. Piercing cries filled the air, hanging as thick as the acrid smoke. And propelled by the force of the blast, a piece of metal caught the boy on the chin, gashing his flesh into a horrible second mouth that seemed to open wide with the awe of confusion.
After that he could only remember seeing a swatch of blue sky tainted with greasy black smoke and feeling the heat of a nearby fire.
Only when he awoke several days later to the haggard face of his father, his skin as loose as a rubber mask, did he finally feel the agonies of his pain. With second degree burns over thirty percent of his body and the severe gash beneath his chin, the boy was incredibly lucky. The real pain came when he learned that his mother and sister had died in the blast.
When he asked why the man did what he did on the bus, his father told him.
That was the day he learned what life would be like for a Jew living in a land of open hostilities.
Taking a deep breath, and with the images of his childhood fading, Team Leader opened his eyes to see the members of his team meditating as the van made its way to the Governor’s Mansion. Every soldier, every stolid commando, as dictated by his constant training, was visualizing in detail his every movement, to assure that there would be no room for mistakes during actual combat.
Each man was equipped with an Israeli Bullpup assault weapon — a product of Israeli technology with devastating capabilities — and dressed identically, from the black tactical jumpsuit to the ski mask and night-vision monocular. Nobody on his team deviated in appearance.