Papal Decree (3 page)

He pressed a small green button below the glass which beeped before sliding open. Ben Isaac lifted the document very carefully, as if it were a newborn baby, and brought it close to his eyes. What emotion! Touching an object that Jesus himself might have touched two thousand years before. How privileged he was. He could touch it whenever he wanted. If a pope had succeeded in putting his hands on this document, any pope, he would have immediately been accused of sacrilege. But Ben Isaac confirmed it was authentic, he knew it as true.

He returned the parchment to its place and pushed the button to return the glass to its protective position. He moved on to the middle case, in which a much older parchment lay, degraded in some parts, so that some of the written characters could not be seen. But it was possible to read the essential message, which he remembered every day with a shiver and didn’t have the courage to read aloud. He didn’t want to touch this, never wanted to. The parchment was many years older than the other, but more important. It wasn’t a simple legal authorization, but a gospel known only to two people: Ben Isaac and a learned man whom he had approached to interpret the text, under a pact of silence. Ben Isaac was an expert at this. He let nothing slip.

The last showcase held two documents on letterhead paper, with the papal coat of arms at the top. Both texts were in English and easy to read.

The other document was similar, with a different coat of arms and a shorter text.

Ben Isaac read and reread the documents. He remembered the negotiations. The cardinals, the prelates, the apostolic nuncios, the simple priests who came and went for two years with recommendations, offers, trivial details, curses, threats … the Five Gentlemen. He never met John XXIII or John Paul II, despite their having signed the documents. Perhaps it had been a mistake. Too many special envoys when it would have been simpler to sit down at the same table and talk. A nuncio came and offered him $2 million for the documents before the first agreement. He doubted that John XXIII had offered so much. Certainly, after the contract was signed, he was never troubled again. So many mistakes made over the course of his life. This had nothing to do with religion. He thought about Magda, tears blinding his eyes, and then Myriam filled his thoughts.

With a final glance at the parchments, Ben Isaac sighed. He looked at his watch. It was time. He left the vault and turned back to the stairs. He was too old for the battle, but he couldn’t turn his back on it. Life was a battle, nothing more.

Time was up. The agreement had expired.

The elderly archaeologist coughed and struggled. He didn’t have to wait for the blow, hard and clean, remorseless.

‘The next one will knock you out,’ a voice at his ear whispered, cold, terrifying.

The archaeologist knew he was telling the truth.

He had caught him in the most absurd way imaginable. A telephone call in the middle of the night, unusual, but not crazy. He awoke groggy and bad tempered, but the message woke him up at once. A parchment needed to be translated. It dated from the first century, but the language was unknown. The caller apologized profusely for the late hour, but he would pay whatever was necessary to get such a respected archaeologist to look at the discovery and assess its significance. Nice words his ego seldom heard. The rest was easy. A ticket was waiting at the airport for a morning flight that would carry him to his destination.
Idiot,
he thought. His mother had always told him you never get anything for nothing.

When he arrived, he took a taxi to the address the caller had given him. He encountered chaotic rush-hour traffic that took almost as much time as the flight, but at last arrived at the designated place. It looked like an abandoned refrigerator warehouse. A strange place for such a meeting.

The courteous greeting that he expected was a hard smack in the face that knocked him facedown on the floor. The attacker, a thin man who wore an elegantly tailored suit, placed his knee on his back and shoved his face into the floor with his hand. Immediately, revealing a vigorous physical form, he lowered his head to the archaeologist’s ear.

‘The rules are simple. I ask and you answer. Any deviation will have consequences. Understood?’

The archaeologist thought the man was going to foam at the mouth like a rabid dog.

‘Who are you?’ he asked in pain. He could hardly breathe.

Another blow drove his face into the dirty floor again.

‘I’m the one who asks the questions, understand?’

‘You’ve got the wrong person. I’m only an archaeologist.’ It was worth the effort to try to clarify things. Attackers are not infallible, like pontiffs.

‘Yaman Zafer. Is that your name?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘See how easy it is? We’ll get along perfectly,’ the man whispered, breathing right over Zafer’s ear.

‘Listen, I …’

Another blow to the neck that left him paralyzed.

‘I ask, you answer. Isn’t that a perfect relationship?’

Zafer shut up. He didn’t have many options. Better to keep quiet and see what the man would do. He could hardly breathe with the knee pressing his stomach to the floor. He was completely subdued.

‘If you cooperate I’ll let you breathe,’ said the attacker. He spoke seriously.

‘Okay,’ he acquiesced. He couldn’t make demands there. Why hadn’t he asked for more information before he got on the plane? Why had he let himself be persuaded so easily? He was so careless.

The attacker seemed to have heard his thoughts. ‘It’s very easy to say what people want to hear. Let’s get to the subject that brought us here,’ he licked his lips. ‘Have you heard of a man named Ben Isaac?’

Zafer shivered, despite the pressure on his back.

‘I’ll consider that a yes,’ the attacker said. ‘I want you to tell me everything.’

He raised his knee a little, and Zafer took the opportunity to breathe in as much oxygen as possible. Zafer raised his hand to his coat pocket, but the momentary relief was over. He felt the uncomfortable pressure against his lungs again. The attacker knew what he was doing.

‘What was the purpose of the project for which you were contracted in 1985?’

‘What project?’

Another hard blow to the neck.

‘I never did any work for Ben Isaac,’ Zafer explained. Maybe he would be left in peace.

‘If you want to be like that,’ the attacker warned, ‘I’ll be happy to make a visit to Monica and Matteo. I’m sure they will adore me.’ He smiled mockingly.

Zafer felt a cold shiver hearing the names of his children. Not them. He couldn’t put their lives in danger. He had lost.

The elderly archaeologist coughed and struggled. He didn’t have to wait long for the blow – hard, clean, remorseless.

‘The next one will kill you,’ the voice at his ear whispered, cold and terrifying.

The old archaeologist knew he was telling the truth.

‘Do I need to rephrase the question?’ the attacker insisted coldly.

‘No,’ Zafer said with difficulty. It was hard for him to talk from the lack of air. ‘I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.’

The knee relieved the pressure, supplying air to Zafer, who gulped it down.

‘I’m all ears.’

Zafer felt ashamed and humiliated. He thought he wouldn’t survive, but he had to protect his children.

Forgive me, Ben.

Nothing lasts forever.

Everything is endlessly changing. The river’s water, the sea, the wind, the clouds, the body as it ages, the cadaver as it rots, seconds, days, nights … nothing is static, not even a chair, this chair inside a grimy, brown room with a forty-watt lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, over the chair itself. The chair’s wood is riddled with woodworms; one day it will cease being what it is and turn into something else. The bulb will stop lighting up one day, or one night, but not tonight, and this room inside this abandoned warehouse will be demolished, together with the warehouse, to give way to a luxury condominium, which will later turn into something else.

Everything changes … always.

The light from the bulb failed from time to time, plunging the room into an ominous darkness. At times it flashed like a thunderstorm inside the glass, before glowing again with agreeable intensity, reflected over the chair, leaving the corners flooded in shadowy phantasmagoria.

The room had no windows. A white wooden door was the only way in. Time had worn down the original color of the walls and door with dark stains.

A violent kick threw the door open, adding another dent to countless others. At this precise moment the bulb went out, as if in protest.

‘Shit,’ the attacker swore, turning the light switch on and off impatiently.

After a while the capricious bulb flicked back on.

‘I was about to give up,’ he growled.

He entered the room with a show of power. I want, I can, and I command. A very confident attitude, since he knew of no one who could stop him.

He approached the chair, grabbed the back, and lifted it. Then let the legs of the chair hit the floor in unison. It would support him.

Next to the chair was a small black bag the attacker glanced at. Everything was ready.

He went out and left the door open. The bulb threatened to go out, but when the man returned, it was illuminating the chair as it should. He was dragging someone who appeared lifeless, and sat him in the chair. It was an old man, badly beaten. At first it was difficult to keep him seated, since he didn’t have the strength to support himself, and tended to fall forward. The attacker steadied him with a hand on his head. He had time. While the old man recovered consciousness, he would pull himself together.

A blindfold prevented him from seeing the place or his tormentor. Dried blood smeared his lips, a remnant of recent beatings. A bruise marked his neck. This old man had been tortured methodically and brutally.

He coughed a little to open his throat passages, but even that was difficult. He was in pain all over. The attacker interpreted the cough as a return to consciousness, and he was ready. He bent over the sack and opened it.

‘Who’s there?’ the old man asked in a startled voice. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’

He was so naive. He had attended to the request of a friend who knew someone who needed a translation of a parchment. The next morning he caught a plane, and when he landed, instead of characters written on a parchment, he saw the floor a few inches from his face. A hard blow to the neck dropped him to the ground. He never even saw who attacked him. They blindfolded him and continued to beat him. He couldn’t say how many there were, maybe only one, or what the motive was. He offered money, the little he had, but apparently they weren’t after money. In the midst of his desperation, he tried to maintain lucidity. His mental faculties were all he had left, but even those he lost momentarily from a harder blow. He regained consciousness sitting in a chair with someone rummaging around in something at his feet.

‘I don’t have anything that could be of interest. I’m a professor, l live an honest life. Have mercy.’

The attacker got up. He had a syringe and a glass container in his hands. He inserted the needle into the plastic top of the container and drew up the colorless liquid. He expelled the air, pressing the handle until a drop appeared at the point of the needle. He let the container fall and it shattered into shards of glass. He stared at the blindfolded old man, who was silent, as if expecting the worst.

‘The rules are simple. I ask and you answer. Any exception to this rule will have consequences, understood?’ the attacker recited.

‘Two books published?’ Francesco asked her, rolled up in the sheets of the bed in a suite on the eighth floor of the Grand Hotel Palatino in Rome.

‘Sure. They let anyone publish a book these days,’ she joked, downplaying the importance of the question.

‘How did you get such important information about the Vatican?’ Francesco asked, looking at the white ceiling. ‘You must know someone inside with excellent contacts.’

Sarah thought about the last two years. They had been too intense. She’d discovered things she would never have imagined about subjects that, until now, hadn’t interested her in the least. She could consider herself an expert on Vatican affairs, well versed in John Paul I and II, without ever having lifted a finger to make it all happen. Life could reveal itself in strange ways, certainly. She was at the top of the list of competitive television commentators and print journalists when the subject was the Holy See. Her opinion was so respected that some even nicknamed her the pope’s lover behind her back, since much of what she knew could come only from him. It was ironic that the opinion of a woman, highly suspect within the sacred walls, was most respected outside them.