The Fifth Gospel: A Novel Read online

  “Babbo?” Peter says.

  I turn. He’s waiting expectantly.

  “Yes?”

  “I said, did the car break down in the rain?”

  It takes me a second to understand. He’s wondering why Simon and I were late coming home. Why he and Sister Helena were all by themselves when the man came.

  “We . . . had a flat tire.”

  The Fiat breaks down often. Peter has become an authority on leaking oil and faulty alternators. I worry sometimes that he’s becoming an encyclopedia of misfortunes.

  “Okay,” he says, watching his uncle shut the door after the police.

  Now the apartment is ours again. When Simon sits down beside his nephew, his size reassures Peter, who moves to the edge of his chair like a butterfly sunning itself on a branch.

  “They’ll come back tomorrow,” is all Simon offers.

  I nod. But what we need to navigate now, we can’t discuss in front of Peter.

  My brother puts a giant hand on his nephew’s hair and musses it. His cassock sheds a dust of dried mud everywhere.

  “Did you have to lift the car?” Peter asks.

  “What?”

  “When you changed the tire,” Peter says.

  Simon and I exchange a look.

  Foggily Simon says, “I just used a . . .” He snaps his fingers in the air.

  “Jack?” Peter supplies.

  He nods and stands abruptly. “Hey, Peter, I need to get cleaned up, okay?” He glances at me and adds, “Ubi dormiemus?”

  Latin. To prevent Peter from understanding. It means “Where will we sleep?”

  So he and I agree. It may not be safe to stay here.

  “The Swiss barracks?” I suggest. The safest place in our country after John Paul’s apartments.

  Simon nods and trudges back toward the shower, doing his best to disguise a slight limp.

  * * *

  WHEN HE’S GONE, I tell Peter to collect his favorite pajamas. Then I boot up our computer and wait impatiently for the old CPU to search my e-mail for Ugo’s name. My thoughts are uneasy. My ears search the air for sounds outside in the hall.

  Two dozen messages surface. All were written this summer. The last, from two weeks ago, is the one. As I reread it, I wonder if my eyes are fooling me. My judgment right now probably isn’t sound. But when I hear the familiar thump of water locking in the pipes, I print it and fold the paper into my cassock, then follow Simon into the bedroom Mona and I once shared.

  I find him holding his dirty cassock over the laundry bag that our mother once embroidered with the words GENESIS 1:4: GOD SEPARATED LIGHTS FROM DARKS. He looks even more agitated than before. I feel the same way. It’s settling over me now that Peter was in danger. That Sister Helena may have saved his life.

  “Who would’ve done this?” I whisper.

  Notching one of my drawers out of its track, he searches the hole for his emergency cigarettes. On this very dresser our father kept two ashtrays because one wasn’t enough. Until John Paul outlawed it, smoking was the national pastime. But Simon’s expression doesn’t lighten when he finds what he wants. The drawer won’t go back in its slot, so he shakes it and the whole dresser lurches.

  “Why would they come for us?” I ask.

  Flicking off his towel, he steps into his underwear. Now I see why he’s been favoring his leg: the skin is purple. Something has been cinched around the muscle.

  “Don’t say it,” he says, seeing that I’ve noticed.

  When Secretariat men enter the world of cocktail receptions and three-fork dinners, they feel they’ve betrayed the spirit of the priesthood. So they turn to old solutions. Some whip themselves. Some wear hair-shirts or chains. Some do what Simon has done: tighten a cilice around their thigh. These are quick medicines for the pleasures of embassy work. But he should know better. Our father taught us the Greek way: fasting, prayer, sleeping on a cold floor.

  “When did you—?” I begin.

  “Don’t,” he snaps. “Just let me get dressed.”

  There’s no more line on the reel. We need to get out of here.

  Peter appears in the doorway, holding a mountain of dinosaur sleepwear. “Is this enough?” he says.

  Simon quickly steps into the closet.

  “Come on, Peter,” I say, leading him back toward the kitchen. “Let’s wait for Uncle Simon out here.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE SWISS GUARD barracks is down the street from our apartment. Outsiders are forbidden, but Simon and I spent many nights in these halls after our parents died. The recruits let us join their training runs, share their weight room, crash their fondue parties. My first hangover was born inside these walls. Most of our old friends have flown back to Switzerland for new adventures, but the rest have become officers. When the cadets at the desk call up for orders, we’re immediately waved through.

  I’m agog at how young the new halberdiers seem. Other than their required stint in the Swiss military back home, they look fresh from high school. Once, these were the men I most admired in our country. Now they’re overgrown boys, ten years my junior.

  Three long buildings form the barracks, each separated from the next by an alleylike courtyard. New men bunk together in the building that fronts the Rome border. The officers’ building, where we’re headed, is the innermost one, backing to the papal palace. We take the elevator up and knock at the apartment of my closest friend in the Guard, Leo Keller. His wife, Sofia, answers the door.

  “Oh, Alex, how awful,” she says. “I can’t believe what happened. Come in, come in.”

  News travels fast in this barracks.

  Peter exclaims, “Can I feel the baby?” And before Sofia can answer, he places both hands on her pregnant belly.

  I begin to pull him back, but she smiles and places her own hands over his. “Baby has hiccups,” she says. “Can you feel them?”

  She is a pretty woman, slight in figure like Mona was, similar in posture. Even her hair is reminiscent of my wife’s: a shale color that’s been brightened by the Roman sun so that it sometimes makes a red halo around her face, like filaments of steel wool about to catch fire. It’s been a year since she and Leo were married, but I still find myself staring at her, seeing what’s not there. The memories of Mona she brings back, and the appetites a man feels for his wife, make me blush. They also make me aware of a loneliness I’ve otherwise done well to bury.

  “You three, come sit,” she says. “I’ll get you something to eat.” But then she seems to change her mind. “Ah, ah, I see, no.” She’s staring over my shoulder, at Simon. “I’ll stay with Peter here. You Fathers get a drink downstairs.”

  She has seen something in his eyes.

  “Thanks, Sofia,” I say. Then I kneel before Peter and add, “I’ll be back soon to tuck you in. Best manners, okay?”

  “Come on,” Simon whispers to me, tugging at my cassock. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  THE SWISS GUARD CANTINA is downstairs in the barracks. It’s a dim place, dungeonlike, where the permanent haze is punctured by a few grim chandeliers. The walls, decorated with life-size murals showing this five-hundred-year-old army in its ancient heyday, were actually painted during John Paul’s lifetime. They’re so embarrassingly cartoonish that for an artist to have created them in the shadow of the Sistine Chapel seems to require a belief in the existence of purgatory.

  Simon and I drift to an empty table in the corner, looking for something stronger than wine. Because of his size, he must work hard at his drinking to feel any effects. Wine, though, is what they have here, so Simon’s first little goblet is already behind him when I say, “Why would someone come looking for us?”

  He rubs a thumb against the ridged glass of the thick goblet, armored like a grenade. His voice is full of darkness. “If I find out who did that to Peter . . .”

 
“You really think this could be related to what happened to Ugo?”

  He pulses with emotion. “I don’t know.”

  I take the printed sheet from my pocket and slide it across the table. “Did he ever say anything like this to you?”

  It takes him only a few seconds to read. Then he slides it back in my direction, frowning. “No.”

  “Do you think it could be something?”

  He leans back and pours another glass. “Probably not.” His giant finger alights on the page, pointing to the date on the message. Two weeks ago.

  I read the words a second time.

  Dear Ugo,

  Sorry to hear about that. From now on, though, I think you should ask someone else for help. I can recommend several other scriptural scholars who would be more than qualified to answer your questions. Let me know if you’re interested. Best of luck with the exhibit.

  Alex

  Below it is Ugo’s original message. The one I was replying to. These are the last words he ever wrote to me.

  Fr. Alex—Something has come up. Urgent. Tried calling you, but no answer. Please contact me immediately, before word of this gets out. —Ugo

  “He never said anything about this to you?” I say.

  Simon shakes his head dolefully. “But trust me,” he says, “I’ll find out what’s happening.”

  In his tone is a touch of Secretariat superiority. Stand by while we save the world.

  “Who would’ve known you were staying at the apartment tonight?” I ask.

  “Everyone at the nunciature knew I was flying back for the exhibit.” The nunciature: the Holy See embassy. “But,” he adds, “I didn’t tell them where I was staying.”

  His tone suggests that this bothers him, too. The Vatican has a small phone book that lists the home and work numbers of most employees, including my own. But it provides no addresses.

  “And how,” I ask, “could anyone have gotten from Castel Gandolfo to here so fast?”

  Simon is a long time answering. He rolls the glass between his palms. Finally he says, “You’re probably right. They couldn’t have.”

  And yet he says it without any relief, as if he’s just trying to assuage me.

  Distant church bells toll ten PM. The change of shifts begins. We watch as guard patrols appear in their night fatigues, returning from duty, making the room repopulate like a tide pool. It becomes clear that this will be no refuge from the shocks of tonight. These men, while on duty, have heard the news trickle in from Castel Gandolfo. Simon and I are celebrities in a way we hadn’t anticipated.

  The first man to sit down beside us is my old friend Leo. We met the spring of my third year of seminary, at the funeral after the only other murder I can remember on Vatican soil. A Swiss Guard had killed his commanding officer in this barracks before turning the service weapon on himself, and Leo was the first man on the scene that night. Mona and I nursed him through more than a year of recovery, including double dates with women who saw no upside in an underpaid foreigner who was bound by oath not to discuss the memory that haunted him. When Mona left, though, it was Leo who helped Simon tend to me. At his wedding to Sofia this spring, I was scheduled to officiate until Cardinal Ratzinger honored them by volunteering. Now, after years of heartache, we will both have sons. I’m gladdened to see his face tonight. Ours is a friendship of survivors.

  Simon lifts his glass an inch, acknowledging Leo’s arrival. A handful of cadets follows their leader to our banquet table. Soon beer and wine make the rounds. Glasses clink. After hours of compulsory motionlessness, arms and mouths move with gusto. The men here usually speak in German, but they toggle to Italian so we can participate. Not realizing that we’re anything more than their leader’s friends, they begin asking each other questions that are grotesquely military.

  What caliber was the round?

  Forehead or temple?

  One shot had enough stopping power?

  But when Leo explains who the guests are, everything changes.

  “You’re the one whose apartment got robbed?” one of the men says to me excitedly.

  I begin to see how these stories will spread through the Vatican village. My first instinct is that this is dangerous for Simon. Secretariat men must avoid scandal.

  “Have the gendarmes caught anyone?” I ask.

  There’s confusion about which event I am referring to, until Leo says, “Not for either one.”

  “Did any of my neighbors see anything?”

  Leo shakes his head.

  Ugo’s murder, however, is what captivates these boys.

  “I heard they wouldn’t let anyone see the body,” one cadet says.

  Another man adds, “I heard there was something wrong with it. Something about his hands or feet.”

  They’re mistaken. I saw Ugo’s body with my own eyes. Yet before I can speak, other men make callous jokes about stigmata. Simon thumps a fist on the table and growls, “Enough!”

  The silence is instant. He is the sum of authority in their world—tall, commanding, priestly. At thirty-three years old, I realize, he may also seem old.

  “Do they know how someone could’ve gotten into the gardens?” I ask.

  The men twitter like birds on a wire. The consensus: no.

  “So nobody saw anything?” I press.

  At last it’s Leo who speaks up. “I saw something.”

  The table grows hushed.

  “Last week,” he says, “when I was running third shift at Saint Anne’s, a vehicle pulled up to request entry.”

  Saint Anne’s is the gate beside this barracks. Swiss Guards are posted there at all hours to check incoming vehicles from Rome. During third shift, though, the border gates are closed. No one is allowed into our country at night.

  “It’s oh-three-hundred,” Leo continues, “and a cargo truck starts flashing its lights at me. I wave it off, but the driver steps out.”

  The men grimace. This isn’t the protocol. Drivers must lower their windows and display their IDs.

  “I approach,” Leo goes on, “with Vice Corporal Frei in a supporting position. The driver has an Italian license. Lo and behold, he also has a permission of entry. Guess whose signature is on this permission.”

  He waits. These men are still young enough to be thrilled by the possibilities.

  “It was signed,” Leo says, “by Archbishop Nowak.”

  There are whistles. Antoni Nowak is the highest-ranking priest-secretary in the world. The right-hand man of Pope John Paul.

  “I tell Vice Corporal Frei to call upstairs,” Leo continues, “to confirm the signature. Meanwhile, I have a look in the truck bed.” He leans forward. “And there’s a coffin back there. With a sheet covering it, and Latin words written on top. Don’t ask me what they say. But under the sheet is a big metal casket. And I mean big.”

  All around the table, the halberdiers cross themselves. Every man in this barracks, hearing of a metal casket, shares the same thought. When a pope dies, he’s buried in a triple coffin. The first is cypress, the last is oak. But the middle one is made of lead.

  John Paul’s health has been the subject of urgent concern. He’s weak. He’s been unable to walk. His face is a mask of pain. The Cardinal Secretary of State, the second-most powerful man in the Holy See, has broken the code of silence by saying retirement is possible, that if the pope’s health prevents him from ruling, it’s a matter of conscience whether he must step down. Journalists circle like vultures, some of them offering to pay Vatican villagers for any whiff of intelligence. I wonder why Leo is risking a story like this in front of such an unseasoned audience.

  But he answers that question by saying: “And who should I find sitting on the bench beside this casket? The name on the ID says: ‘Nogara, Ugolino.’ ” Leo raps the table gently with his knuckles. “A minute later, we get the callback. Arch
bishop Nowak confirms the permission of entry. My truck pulls away, and that’s the last I ever see of the coffin or Nogara. Now: someone please tell me what that means.”

  It has the ring of a ghost story. A waking dream that has intruded on dark third-shift hours. These are superstitious men.

  Before anyone can respond, Simon stands up. He murmurs something that sounds like I’m sick, or possibly I’m sick of this. Without apologizing or saying good-bye, he walks out of the cantina.

  I get to my feet and follow him, my body feeling clumsy beneath me. Leo’s story has added a giant new circumstance to Ugo’s death. These Swiss Guards have missed it, because the days are gone when any Roman Catholic with a few years of school would’ve known Latin. But my father raised his sons to read both Greek and Latin, so I know the words Leo saw on that coffin drape. They form a prayer:

  Tuam Sindonem veneramur, Domine, et Tuam recolimus Passionem.

  In the dark, Leo must’ve been unable to form anything but a vague impression of the box’s dimensions, because this coffin was much too big for a pope. I know, because I saw it once with my own eyes.

  I know what Ugo was hiding.

  CHAPTER 5

  SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS ago in a small French village, a Christian relic surfaced for the first time in Western history. No one knows where it came from or how it got there. But slowly, like all relics, it trickled up into better hands. The royal family of that region came to own it. And in time they transferred it to their Alpine capital.

  Turin.

  The Shroud of Turin purports to be the cloth in which Jesus Christ was buried. On its surface is a mysterious, almost photographic image of a crucified man. For five centuries it has lain in a side chapel of the cathedral in Turin, so carefully cared for and protected that it’s displayed to the public only a few times each century. Just twice, in half a millennium, has it been removed from the city: once when the royal family was fleeing Napoleon, and again during World War Two. That second journey brought it to a monastery in the mountains near Naples, where the cloth was protected in secrecy. It was on the way to that monastery that the Shroud, for the only time in history, passed through Rome.