The Fifth Gospel (37 page)

Strange: the Casina has been vacant all summer.

“When's the next meeting of the Pontifical Academy?” I ask.

“A working group is coming next month to discuss international water conflicts,” Diego says.

That's long after opening night of Ugo's exhibit.

To be sure, I say, “Do you have the list of attendees?”

“I can get it by tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Diego.”

Just as he leaves, my phone rings.

Michael
, I think.

But the number is local.

“Father Andreou?” says the voice.

Mignatto. He sounds shaken.

“Is everything okay?” I ask.

“I just got word. They're opening the trial tomorrow.”

“
What?
”

“I don't know where these orders are coming from. But I need you to find your brother immediately.”

C
HAPTER
22

D
IEGO AGREES TO
watch Peter while I hurry down to the Swiss Guard barracks. But Leo and I almost run into each other on the stairs of Lucio's palace.

“Come on,” he says. “I've got something for you. Follow me.”

Outside, late afternoon has struck. The angry heat of the Roman summer bakes my outer cassock. I don't understand how Leo ran here in full uniform, beret in hand, eight pounds of ribbons tied to his body with straps and cords. Yet he only urges me to move faster. “Shifts are changing,” he says. “We need to get there before he's gone.”

“Who?” I say.

“Just come on.”

We cross half the country until we're nearly at Saint Anne's Gate, the border entry from Rome that employees and residents use. Here the papal palace reaches its eastern terminus in the hulking tower of the Vatican Bank, which casts a long shadow at this hour. Just before reaching it, we stop.

Here in the immense defensive wall is one of the strangest spots in our country. Just across the wall is a part of the palace so private that even villagers never see it. Up there, in a private wing, lives John Paul. Any vehicle trying to reach his apartments must enter a guarded gate one-eighth of a mile west of here, pass through tunnels and checkpoints, cross the patrolled cortile of the Secretariat, and enter a private
courtyard across from where Leo and I now stand, which is kept behind locked wooden doors. From there, I don't know the rest of the procedure, since I've never even seen the inside of that courtyard. And yet one hundred years ago, part of the Vatican near the palace exit was occupied by enemy soldiers, so Pope Pius X cut a hole right through that courtyard wall, straight down to where Leo and I now stand. Whether he did it to give his palace employees a route home to the village or to give himself a back door into his gardens, I've never known, but today that hole is the biggest weakness in the pope's security bubble. An iron gate has been built inside the tunnel, and pickets of Swiss Guards keep watch there around the clock. It must be one of those guards we've come to see.

“This way,” Leo says, waving me up into the tunnel.

It's dark and cool inside. I peer up the staircase. Silhouettes of four men impress themselves against the grid of the iron gate. Leo reaches out his hand to stop me from taking another step. We wait in the darkness.

Above us, the two pairs of guards are switching places. Second shift is beginning. As the replaced men descend, Leo says, “A word, Corporal Egger?”

Both silhouettes stop. “About what?” says the first sharply.

“This is Father Andreou,” Leo tells him.

A flashlight clicks on. Its beam plays over my face. The silhouette I take to be Corporal Egger turns to Leo and says, “No it's not.”

In the reflection of the flashlight, I briefly see his face. Now the name registers with me. I realize why Leo has brought me along.

“You're thinking of my brother,” I say. “Simon. I'm Alex Andreou.”

There's a long hesitation. “Simon's your brother?”

Six years ago, when a guard committed suicide in the barracks with his service weapon, Simon volunteered to counsel any other men considered at risk. Egger's CO identified him. My brother worked with him for more than a year, and according to Leo, Simon is now the only man in this country other than John Paul whom Egger would lift a finger to defend.

“Okay,” Egger says.

His voice is deadpan. The other guards have a clipped, military way of speaking. Egger just sounds vacant.

“Last night,” Leo begins, “a gendarme at the railway service post saw Father Andreou enter a car outside the Governor's Palace. He says the
car drove down toward the basilica. It didn't turn right toward the gate, so he thinks it went left toward Piazza del Forno.”

This must be the car that drove Simon to house arrest. Leo has been tracking where it took him.

“Captain Lustenberger tells me,” Leo continues, “that you were stationed at first gate last night. Is that right?”

Egger scratches a lump at the corner of his lip and nods.

Leo clears his throat. “So if the car came through Piazza del Forno, and you were at first gate, then it would've driven right in front of you.”

Egger turns to me. “I don't know you. And I didn't see Father Simon in any car.”

“Hey,” Leo says, tapping him on the chest. “I'm
telling
you he was in that vehicle. So did you see it or not? This would've been about . . .” He draws a scrap of paper from his pocket and plays his own flashlight over it. “Eight ten PM.”

“There was a car at eight oh seven,” Egger says.

Leo glances at me. “Okay, so where did it stop?”

I know what Leo's thinking, so I just say it. “Was it going to the old jail?”

When the Vatican became its own country, the pope built a three-cell jail in the courtyard Leo mentioned. It used to hold the occasional thief or Nazi prisoner of war, but these days it's used as a storage warehouse. No one looking for Simon would search for him there.

“Maybe you should just look at the sheet,” Egger says.

Leo grits his teeth. “I did, Egger. And since you didn't record a sedan passing
through
the gate, we're asking if the car stopped in the courtyard beside the jail.”

“Corporal,” I say, “Simon helped you. Please help him.” I try to lock eyes with Egger, staring into the black zeroes. Simon always chooses the lost sheep.

“The car didn't stop in the courtyard,” Egger murmurs. “It came through the gate.”

“Into the
palace
?” Leo's anger flashes. “Then why the hell is there no record on the sheet?”

Egger's head slowly pivots. “Because I was doing what I was told.”

Leo grabs Egger's uniform, but I pull him back and whisper, “That means there'll be records of it on the other sheets, right?”

Leo never takes his eyes off Egger. “Wrong. I checked all the sheets for last night, and there's no car on any of them. So what are you telling us, Corporal?”

I can see it in Egger's eyes, though. The spell is broken. He's done helping us.

“Leo,” I whisper, “I believe him.”

But Leo clamps a hand on Egger's jaw and says, “Tell me how it's possible for a car to go past three checkpoints and not get recorded once.”

For the first time, Egger's partner speaks up. “You're out of line, Corporal Keller.” He breaks Leo's grip and pulls his partner away. Leo stands in their way, blocking the end of the tunnel, but I sense we're not going to get more information than this. We may have hit on something bigger than Egger.

“Let them go,” I whisper to Leo. “You got me what I needed. I'll take it from here.”

AFTER DROPPING LEO AT
his post beside Saint Peter's Square, I weave down a route I've known since I was a boy. Between the square and the Vatican village is a narrow no-man's-land where walls have been built and torn down for centuries as the borders between public and private have changed. In the untraveled darkness beyond Bernini's colonnade there are small gaps where the walls meet. I slip back into our village and head for a forgotten place.

For years it's been Uncle Lucio's job to quietly demolish historic sites inside our walls. Our country of five hundred people hosts fifteen hundred commuters and ten thousand tourists a day, so the sad fact is that we need parking spaces more than we need ancient ruins. The first place to receive the treatment was the Belvedere Courtyard. Where Renaissance popes once held jousts and bullfights, palace employees now park their Fiats and Vespas. Next came a Roman temple beside our oldest church, which Lucio converted to underground parking for two hundred fifty. More recently he excavated a second-century villa to fit another eight hundred cars and a hundred tour buses. When people saw garbage trucks leaving our land with ancient mosaics heaped up like shavings of Parmesan, there was an uproar. But the granddaddy of them all is the garage I'm headed to now.

In the 1950s, a strip of land between the Vatican Museums and my
apartment building was excavated to build a covered lot for the pope's own cars. A few feet down, workmen discovered the corpse of a Roman emperor's secretary with his pen and inkpot. His grave became our autopark, home to the Vatican car mechanics and papal car service. The place is constructed like a bomb shelter, dark and low-slung, with plantings of trees on its roof. The only way inside is through hangar doors that are unlocked for a few seconds when a car comes in or out. The sun hasn't set, but the street is so sunken that the landscape is shadowy. Motor oil bleeds out from under the door, shining like chrome under an electric light.

“Help you, Father?” says the man who answers my knock at the door.

He wears the uniform of a Vatican driver: black trousers, white shirt, black tie.

“I'm looking for Signor Nardi,” I say.

He rubs the back of his neck as if I've caught him at a busy time. As if the prelates who call for rides in these cars aren't all heading to bed now as late afternoon slips into evening. The night shift here seems to exist only for the morbid emergencies of clerical old age.

“Sorry, Father,” he says. “Could you come back later?”

“It's important. Please ask him to come out.”

He glances over his shoulder. I wonder if he has a visitor. Girlfriends sometimes visit these drivers on the night shift.

“Hold tight. I'll see if he's here.”

A moment passes. The door reopens, and out comes Gianni Nardi.

“Alex?”

The last time I saw Gianni was more than a year ago. My old friend has gained weight. His shirt is wrinkled and his hair is too long. We clamp hands on each other and trade kisses on the cheek, holding on longer than we should, because as the distance has grown, so has the enthusiasm of our greetings. Someday we will be the greatest of strangers.

“What's the occasion?” he says, looking around as if to locate the parade on the streets.
Alex Andreou, coming to see
me
.
He has always made this kind of thing funny.

“Can we talk somewhere private?” I say.

“You got it. Follow me.”

And when he doesn't even ask why, I already have my first answer. Gianni must've heard about Simon.

We climb a set of stairs to the tree-lined terrace of the autopark roof.

“Listen,” he says before I can get a word in, “I'm sorry, Alex. I should've called. How are you and Peter holding up?”

“Fine. How'd you hear the news?”

“Are you kidding? The gendarmes won't leave us alone.” He points a finger downward, indicating the cavernous parking lot underneath us. “I've got three of them in my garage right now asking questions.”

So that's why I wasn't allowed inside. “Questions about what?”

“About some Alfa they towed back from Castel Gandolfo. It's in their impound lot.”

Ugo drove an Alfa Romeo.

“Gianni,” I say, “I need your help.”

WE WERE BEST FRIENDS
growing up. This building is where we cemented our friendship. One summer we heard a rumor that when the autopark was built, the workmen discovered a whole necropolis under there, tunnel upon tunnel of ancient Roman tombs. This meant we villagers were living on top of a cemetery, over the dead bodies of the pagans who once vowed Christians would never replace them. Gianni and I needed to see it with our own eyes.

Getting down to those tunnels wasn't hard. A sewer will take you almost anywhere. But one night we shimmied through a whole maze of stone passageways until we found ourselves at a new metal grate. The grate led to a utility closet. And the utility closet opened inside the autopark, right next to the papal limousine.

Driving age in Italy was eighteen years old. We were thirteen. And the keys to eighty luxury automobiles were hanging from a board on the wall. One year earlier, my father had taught Simon how to drive in our old Fiat 500. That summer, I taught myself in an armored Mercedes 500 custom-fitted with a papal throne in the backseat.

Right off, I wanted to invite girls down with us. Gianni said no. I wanted to hide in a car trunk and hitch a ride with John Paul. Gianni said no.
Don't get greedy
, he said when I wanted to drive a limo into the gardens.
You always want too much.
That was my first taste of the real Gianni. For years afterward, he would end up making a religion of not getting greedy. Of not wanting too much. After graduation, I went off to college, but Gianni said he was going to become a surfer. He went to
Santa Marinella the way the blind go to Lourdes. A year later, his father found him work as a sampietrino. But there are a lot of inches in Saint Peter's, and the sampietrini have to clean all of them. So when Gianni lost interest in scraping gum off walls and buffing marble floors with the riding machine, he thought hard about what he really wanted in life. And he decided to become a driver for the car service.

It couldn't have been an accident that he ended up here. When he thought back to a time when life had really felt big, I doubt there was anything that came close to our summer in the autopark. And ever since he made that choice, just the sight of Gianni has made me wonder if any of us Vatican boys, other than Simon, has really ever had the guts to experience the world outside these walls.

“They took Simon into house arrest,” I tell him. “The Swiss Guards saw his car enter the palace complex. I need to find out where it went.”

The Swiss may not know. But the driver of that car can tell me.

“Alex,” Gianni says, “we're under orders not to talk about that.”

This is what I was afraid of. Egger was telling us the same thing: he was under a gag order.

“Can you tell me anything?” I say.

Gianni lowers his voice. “It's been pretty weird around here since that man was killed. We're not supposed to talk about
anything
.” He smiles that old mischievous smile. “So all of this stays between us.”