The Second Messiah (15 page)

“Anything interesting?”

“The usual coverage you’d expect about the new Holy Father.” The secretary smiled bleakly. “It seems the press have nothing else to talk about.”

“Thanks, Guido.”

The priest withdrew and Ryan sipped the hot chocolate, ignoring the biscuits and the clutch of newspapers and magazines. The usual reports of violent death and destruction in the media would only depress him. The secret documents Umberto Cassini had shown him had disturbed him enough.

Ryan got up, crossed to the window, and stared down at the cobbled square below, manned by two Swiss Guards. The Vatican’s security services consisted of just over two hundred men and two dozen women. In times of high security, Ryan considered the women particularly useful. As they were often dressed as nuns, it amused him to think that they mingled so easily with the crowds near the pontiff, high-powered pistols concealed under their habits.

Ryan patted his left side and felt a gentle bulge. He pulled back his jacket.

He wore a snug, inside-the-pants Galco leather holster, in suitable clerical black. It neatly concealed the subcompact Glock 27, .40 caliber he always carried. He removed it from the holster. An ultrareliable weapon, the black Glock semiautomatic pistol had been altered to his own requirements: Ryan had added titanium night sights for low-light conditions, an extender magazine, and a Pearce Grip to accommodate his bulky hands and to give him a couple of extra rounds. He also had a spare clip in a leather magazine holder he carried in his pocket.

He saw no contradiction in being a priest and carrying a loaded weapon. The gun was to help defend the pope’s life. Ryan had always been a keen shot but he abhorred killing, and had never once shot an animal, not even a gutter rat.

Still, he could punch a tight group into the center of a standard silhouette target at twenty-five yards, which was impressive enough. And the Glock’s .40-caliber round packed a massive punch, could do almost as much damage as a .45. He tucked the Glock back in the holster.

Many of Ryan’s security officers were former Italian police detectives and carabinieri, others were security professionals specially hired for the job, but all were dedicated professionals whose task it was to protect the pope and the Vatican, and safeguard its many priceless works of art and religious artifacts.

Ryan had gone over his security arrangements in detail with Cassini, and the head of the Curia seemed more than happy. He felt certain that Cassini was simply trying to reassure himself that everything was in order.

Ryan turned back to his desk, sat down, and studied the Nut File, so called because it contained details on every crazy and deranged person who had threatened to kill or harm the various popes over the last forty years. There were hundreds of letters, mostly anonymous, but a few were signed. Some threats were blatant, promising certain death, others more veiled, the mad, dangerous intent hidden between
the
lines, and quite a few came from oddball religious groups and sects throughout the world in whose warped minds the pontiff was marked for assassination.

All the letter writers’ identities that could be traced and verified were recorded, along with reports from the relevant country’s police and intelligence authorities who had copies passed on to them for investigation—the Security Office liaised with most of the Western intelligence organizations—but Ryan’s office kept the originals.

Ryan read through the files again. They came from America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle and Far East. Most of the writers were quite obviously mad. It was amazing to think that anyone would want to kill a pontiff, but there you had it.

Ten minutes later, Ryan had just finished reading when there was a knock on his door and his secretary returned, looking worried. “Monsignor, I’ve just phoned the papal office to confirm your appointment at three
P.M.
”

“Good man, Guido.” Ryan had a raft of security issues he wanted to thrash out with his new boss.

“I’m afraid the Holy Father decided to cancel your meeting at the last minute and gave no reason. Now it seems there’s a major security problem.”

Ryan jumped to his feet, alarmed. “Explain.”

“The appointments secretary tells me the Holy Father isn’t in his rooms. He’s searched the entire building and phoned all the Vatican offices but he’s nowhere to be found. I’ve never heard the secretary so distressed.”

“What are you saying? Out with it, Guido.”

“It appears Pope Celestine has vanished.”

VATICAN

AT THAT SAME
moment, less than two hundred yards away, a man dressed in a simple white gown stepped into the cool vaults of the Sistine Chapel.

There were no throngs of tourists admiring Michelangelo’s ceiling or Botticelli’s angels, for the Sistine was closed to pilgrims that morning. Just inside the chapel doors a young attendant was putting the finishing touches to an array of fresh flowers on the altar. When he looked round he saw a tall, imposing figure with the hood of his gown up, his face half covered.

The attendant frowned. “I’m sorry, but the chapel is out of bounds right now.”

The man in the habit pulled back his hood and smiled. It was a smile of great warmth and charm, a smile that could melt the coldest heart. “I thought the chapel might be empty. My apologies.”

The attendant flushed with embarrassment. “H—Holy Father. Please forgive me. I didn’t recognize you.”

The pope said gently, “It is I who should be forgiven, my son. I had thought I might visit the chapel. But I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed your work.”

“No, of course not. The chapel was merely out of bounds while I tidied the altar. Please stay, Holy Father.”

The pope nodded. “I wanted some time alone to say some prayers. Half an hour, no more. Would that be okay?”

“Of course. A great pleasure, Holy Father.”

The pope nodded modestly as the attendant knelt to kiss his ring,
then
the man left, the chapel doors closed with an echo, and John Becket was alone.

The Sistine Chapel never ceased to amaze him, a testament to the mad genius of Michelangelo. A man who had spent ten years of his life lying on his back, hand-painting the murals and ceilings, for no payment but his board and lodging. John Becket glanced up at the vivid ceiling.

He always marveled at the way the many colors and images all came together to create an incredible whole. And it always reminded him that there were too many coincidences in this universe. The way it dovetails, fits together, the way physics so finely balances nature’s existence.

In the seminary he had rediscovered what the Jesuit thinkers discovered long ago when they began searching the skies from their Vatican observatories, looking for answers. That whatever begins to exist has a cause—that the universe began to exist and has a cause. That this earth wasn’t the product of some random unguided nature. How could it be when each single cell in the human body contained more information than entire volumes of an encyclopedia? We were not monkeys, not freakish mistakes of nature, not accidents. We were made deliberately and for a purpose by God.

John Becket believed that with all his heart.

Since his election, he had wanted to come here again, to pray alone. He was about to kneel in front of the altar when he felt something brush against the inside of his habit.

He remembered what it was. The envelope had been delivered to him by one of the Vatican secretaries.
“A letter for you, Holy Father. The lady who brought it said it was urgent, that its contents were private, meant for your eyes only. She said you would want to see the letter at once.”

Becket removed the plain white envelope from his habit. His name was handwritten in blue ink
Holy Father, Pope Celestine VI
—and in the top left corner, the words
Personal and Private
. He tore open the envelope with curiosity. Inside was a single handwritten page and a folded
newspaper
clipping. As he read the page’s contents, his face turned ashen. His hands shaking, he then unfolded the cutting from an Italian daily newspaper, dated two days previously. An article was headlined in typically dramatic Italian style:

MYSTERIOUS TWO-THOUSAND-YEAR-OLD SCROLL FOUND IN ISRAEL VANISHES AFTER BRUTAL MURDER

For a long time Becket stood there in deep shock, reading the article and the sheet of paper, his eyes devouring both with a look of utter disbelief on his face. Then he refolded the papers with trembling fingers, replaced them shakily in the envelope, and tucked it under his habit.

He felt struck by his own hypocrisy.

I insist that the church reveal its darkest secrets, while I keep my own dark secret to myself. One that could destroy not only me but also the church
.

He was sweating despite the coolness of the chapel and he put a hand to his brow. There was a hint of agony in that simple gesture, and then slowly he lifted his garb and sat cross-legged on the floor. In moments like this, there was only one refuge that always gave him comfort.

He stretched out his body and prostrated himself in front of the altar, lying on his stomach, pressing his sweating face against the cold marble floor. He closed his eyes and began to pray, remembering the words of St. Augustine,
There are secrets in my heart that only You can know, my Lord
.

When he finished minutes later Becket heard a bell ringing in the Vatican grounds. He knew what he would have to do. Raising himself from the marble tiles, across the chapel he saw an ancient wooden door. He recalled that it led out through the gardens, toward the Vatican’s east gate.

He crossed the floor, lifted the door’s latch, and found himself in a familiar hallway that served as a cloakroom for the religious who toiled in the Vatican’s gardens. Along one wall was a row of frayed
gowns
and friars’ habits hung on garment hooks, below them pairs of muddied work boots.

The pope removed his own gown and changed into one of the brown habits. Then he covered his face with the hood, opened the door, and stepped out.

FIVE MINUTES LATER
he walked toward the gate’s security hut, his head down, his habit flapping about his legs. A pair of nuns passed him, their faces bowed in whispered conversation.

Becket smiled to himself as he imagined them both armed with pistols under their habits. He had heard that Vatican security used female officers dressed as nuns. He also heard the joke among the religious in Rome that it was impossible to purchase a new habit or clerical suit, because Sean Ryan’s personnel had bought them all up so they could dress as priests and nuns for security purposes.

He approached the east gate, where a pair of Swiss Guards and a plainclothes officer manned the exit. Becket was hoping that it would be easier to get out of the Vatican than to enter it, and sure enough the guards said nothing as he went past them. The Holy City was full of clerics and he was just another one. He strode out into the bustling streets of Rome, filling his lungs with deep breaths as if to celebrate his freedom.

After the hushed walls of the Vatican, the city’s bustle and traffic noise hit Becket like a brick. The air was warm and dusty, the streets alive with pedestrians and cars. He always considered Rome the most insane city on earth. Every driver was a lunatic and every car appeared to have at least one side mirror missing while their drivers tried to maneuver in the narrow backstreets.

Impatience and testosterone crackled like electricity in the air. But whether he liked it or not it was his city, too, for it belonged to him now, to Peter’s successor. He kept walking east, crossing a bridge. Plunging his way through the crowds, he thought how absurd it
was
—here he was, the most protected man in Rome, and yet he had escaped his protectors. It neither alarmed nor amused him, no more than it did that no one in the passing crowds realized his true identity.

He walked for a long time and passed a pair of young men hanging out on a street corner. When they saw him they sneered and made the sign against the evil eye. He knew of this old Roman custom: its citizens either loved or hated the Vatican’s clerics. Soon he left the crowds on the Via Cavour behind and when he turned into an alleyway he saw the young woman.