Brotherhood of the Tomb (14 page)

The priest remained standing. Yesterday’s events were crumpled and blurred in his head.

‘I don’t remember coming here,’ he said. ‘I was ... I remember going to the canal. Two men ... drove me there. Then ...’

‘Come and sit down. You’ll feel better when you’ve had some coffee. How would you like it?’

Canavan took his arm and guided him to a chair.

‘I... Black, please. With a little sugar.’

He sat down. Deprived of the conventions of the seminary or the nunciature, his world was coming apart. He still had not said his morning prayers.

‘Coming up. What about some breakfast? We’ve got mushrooms - Ruth picked them this morning. There’s wholemeal bread from Bewley’s, plenty of real Irish butter, black cherry jam.’

‘Just the coffee, please. You said “breakfast” -what time is it?’

‘Well, perhaps “breakfast” isn’t really the right word. “Lunch” would be more appropriate. It’s just after twelve o’clock.’

‘How long have I been asleep?’

“We got here just after five. You were still pretty agitated. Ruth gave you a couple of sleeping tablets.’

‘I see.’ Makonnen paused and looked round the

room. It was clean and bright, with tall windows that looked out on the lake. ‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘where is “here”?’

Patrick glanced out of the window.

‘Don’t you recognize it?’

‘No. I don’t think I’ve ever been here before.’

The woman spoke for the first time. She was beautiful, he thought, but troubled by something. He had been trained to resist beauty, but not distress, and he found himself unwillingly drawn to her by it. She wore a soft dress of European manufacture, without the gilding he had come to expect in American women. Even his African eye, calibrated more to the nuances of poverty than style, could sense how finely her limbs were habituated to well-cut garments.

‘This is Glendalough,’ she said. As she spoke, she raised one hand nervously to her cheek, and he noticed how her fingernails had been chewed. What was making her so ill at ease? ‘The valley houses an old monastic city founded by Saint Kevin in the sixth century. That’s the round tower you can see just above the trees. It used to be the belfry. And a place to hide when the Vikings came burning down everything in sight. There are ruins all round it. You’ll see it all later.’

The priest nodded. He had heard of the place and often planned to visit it. There were close links between the early monks of Ireland and those of his own church.

He turned to Patrick, who had just finished pouring coffee into his cup.

What is going on, Mr Canavan? Why have I been brought here?’

He was not angry, just frightened, torn from everything familiar.

‘We were hoping you would provide some answers

to your first question yourself, Father. As for why we brought you here, surely you know your life is in danger?’

‘Danger. Yes, I understand.’ Again he could hear footsteps pounding after him in the dark. He had to force himself not to look round. ‘I remember... what happened in the nunciature, then being taken to the canal. But everything after that is a blank. You must know what happened.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like to know.’

Patrick paused. ‘Very well,’ he said at last.

While he ate, Patrick told him all he knew, and in turn prompted him to explain the events that had led up to his capture at the gate of the nunciature -Balzarin’s death, the phone call to Fazzini, the arrival of the gunmen.

When the priest finished, Ruth poured more coffee for everyone. Back in his chair, Patrick indicated the papers strewn across the table.

‘So these don’t include the papers De Faoite sent to Balzarin?’

‘No. I took those to Fazzini in person. These are all from the nuncio’s safe, except for that mauve file, which I found on his desk.’

‘The one he was reading when he killed himself?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

There was a pause.

‘Have you looked at these papers, Father?’ The question was put by the woman.

‘Only at one of the folders of photographs.’

‘I see. We haven’t gone through those yet. We thought you might help us identify some of the people in them.’

Makonnen sighed. As the coffee cleared his head,

he began to understand just how deep had grown the waters in which he was swimming.

‘Please, can you tell me what this is all about? I want to know. I am willing to help you, but I must know what is happening.’

Ruth looked at Patrick, then back at Makonnen.

‘Father,’ she started, ‘I have to insist. Whatever Mr Canavan or I tell you must remain absolutely confidential. You must swear not to reveal it to anyone else without our permission. Do you understand?’

The priest shook his head.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but you must know that is impossible. I am a priest. I have taken sacred vows. Under my vow of obedience, I would be obliged to reveal any information I possessed to those set in authority over me.’

Patrick leaned over the table. Something in his manner told Makonnen that he and the woman were lovers. But he sensed an awkwardness between them, like an electric charge that was constantly ready to flare up.

‘Forget it, Ruth,’ said Patrick. ‘We can trust him.’ He turned to the priest. ‘All we’re asking, Father, is that you be discreet. Your vows do not require you to volunteer information, do they?’

For the first time, Makonnen smiled.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘they do not.’

Patrick leaned back.

‘Then I think we can begin.’

NINETEEN

Patrick went first. He spoke carefully, as though conscious that he had to forge a bond, a sense of trust between himself and the priest. The fact that he had saved Makonnen’s life and gunned down the two men who had threatened it was meaningless. For all Makonnen knew, he had fallen among fresh thieves, subtler and more well-meaning than the first, but thieves and killers for all that. Good Samaritans are not supposed to carry guns.

‘Father Makonnen,’ he began, ‘I think we may assume that, by now, Cardinal Fazzini has been alerted to the fact of your disappearance. He will not know how you came to make your getaway, and I imagine it will be some time before he learns what happened to the men he sent to kill you. In the meantime, he has to deal with some awkward details, the most embarrassing of which is likely to be Diotavelli’s body. Ruth will find out what she can through the American embassy, but it’s unlikely to be very much.

‘One thing is certain. If you return to the nunciature or the Vatican, you’re as good as dead. That you are in essence ignorant of Fazzini’s machinations is of no concern to him. You know too much, and you must be silenced. If it is any consolation, that applies to me as much as it does to you.’

Makonnen remembered Fazzini’s request for Canavan’s address.

‘They asked me where you lived. I’m sorry, I didn’t think. Did ... Did anyone try to ... ?’

‘Why do you think we’re here?’

The priest leaned forward.

What if I go to someone else in the Vatican, someone I can trust?’

Patrick shook his head.

‘Not until we know more about what’s going on and who is involved. You’re a marked man in every way. But in principle, yes: we shall need access to the Vatican, and for that we shall need your help.’

‘Please,’ Makonnen pleaded, ‘what is this all about?’

Patrick betrayed hesitation for the first time.

‘The simple answer to that question is that we don’t know.’

‘When you visited the nuncio yesterday, you said that a national intelligence bureau was involved in this. I assume you meant yourselves, the CIA.’

Patrick smiled.

‘At that point, no. I was referring to our distant cousins, the RGB.’ He spoke of them as a priest might, after Vatican II, have spoken of ‘our separated brethren’ in the Protestant churches. That was the first intimation Patrick had of how close they stood to one another, the spy and the priest - hand in hand almost, fingertip to fingertip, bullet to book, initiates into the most ancient of mysteries.

‘But I now think the CIA is involved in some way.’ He exchanged glances with Ruth. ‘To make things entirely clear, my own role in all this is, as far as I know, entirely personal. But I did at one time serve as an agent with the CIA, and the possibility of that connection cannot entirely be disregarded.’

He paused. Makonnen looked at him curiously, as though hearing his confession. Patrick felt uneasy, thinking back to the grille in his church at home, the priest’s voice prompting, seeking out sin like a scalpel probing for tumours.

‘Miss Ehlers is a sort of monitor,’ he went on. ‘She serves directly under the CIA chief of station

at the embassy here. Her job is to monitor intelligence traffic into and out of the various embassies in Dublin. Most of that traffic is intercepted by the National Security Agency listening station at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. They pass it on to the British through their liaison office at Benhall Park in Cheltenham.’

Ruth broke in.

‘Patrick, I don’t think Father Makonnen needs ...’

‘Please, Ruth, I know what I’m doing.’ Patrick spread his hands in a placating gesture. ‘The Father is a diplomat. If you imagine that anything I’m telling him is not already intimately known to his superiors in the Vatican, you’re being very naive about the Catholic Church.’ He turned back to Makonnen.

‘Benhall Park puts this material together with what GCHQ gives them from their own monitoring stations at Hacklaw and Cheadle, as well as their telecommunications intercepts from Caroone House in London. It’s actually more complex than that, but the point I’m trying to make is that Ruth’s material is extremely comprehensive and extremely reliable.

‘Mostly she’s involved in assessing data for its relevance to the Irish situation. She checks through translated Arab material, for example, to see if it refers to possible links between, say, the Libyans or the PLO and the IRA. And you’re probably aware that your own transmissions are checked for much the same reason.’

Patrick did not have to spell out his meaning. In the late seventies and eighties, the Vatican nuncio in Dublin, Archbishop Gaetane Alibrandi, had attracted notoriety for his repeated contacts with IRA members. Alibrandi’s motives had been noble enough -to understand and, perhaps, to intercede with men

of violence. But the unfavourable attention the nunciature had then drawn had not diminished under his successors.

‘Then you knew Balzarin was up to something. You were trying to draw him out.’

Patrick shook his head.

‘No. Until yesterday afternoon, I had no reason to suspect Balzarin of anything. He had some papers I wanted to see, that was all I knew. But when I spoke with him, he behaved like a man with something to hide. After I left the nunciature, I phoned Ruth and asked her to run a check on it. Phone calls, diplomatic telegrams, radio messages - everything. I think she’d better tell you what she found herself.’

Ruth hesitated. For some reason the priest made her anxious. For all the range of her parents’ friends, she had had little contact with Catholics and almost none at all with priests. Like many women, she found their conscious option for celibacy a rejection of something essential to herself. She supposed men felt the same about nuns. For the first time in years, her social skills betrayed her. She was ill at ease and aware that she showed it. The fact that he was black made her feel even more awkward. Racial distinctions had never meant anything to her, but that very fact made her more conscious that her uneasiness might be misinterpreted.

‘Father Makonnen,’ she began, ‘you probably know that your people - I mean the Vatican State - and the CIA regularly exchange intelligence information. As Patrick ... Mr Canavan so kindly pointed out, you naturally understand that we also like to keep ourselves independently informed of any items of interest that may for any reason have been omitted from our regular briefings. And I’m sure your own intelligence people have their ways of informing

themselves of some of our less well-kept secrets.’

She hesitated. There was no telling how Makonnen might react to what she had to tell him. She took a deep breath and plunged on.

“Yesterday,’ she said, ‘after Patrick phoned, I went across to the embassy and looked up some old computer files. Patrick has explained to you that we were looking for something with the word “Passover”. He didn’t mention that, on one occasion, we ran the word “Easter” through as well. “Pasqua” in Italian. Well, all we came up with were a few messages to and from the nunciature. Nobody even bothered to read them. After all, what could be more normal than the Vatican talking about a major Christian festival?’

She paused and glanced out the window. A large bird circled the tower, its wings catching fire momentarily in the early afternoon light.

‘But someone had been careless. “Passover” isn’t the sort of word our translators usually have to handle. Anyway, it turns out that Pasqua isn’t just Italian for “Easter”. It’s also the word Italian Jews use to refer to “Passover” if they happen to be talking to Christians: Pasqua Ebraica - the Jewish Easter.

‘So I went back through the messages involving the nunciature. The first two could have referred to either Passover or Easter, it wasn’t clear. But the third was more puzzling. It was dated February third, it was in code, and it was signed, not with a proper name, but with a sort of pseudonym -Il Pescatore, the Fisherman.’ She paused. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’

The priest thought for a moment. She saw the faint shadow that crossed his eyes, sensed his hesitation.

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, it means nothing to me.’

But she knew what he was thinking, that Peter

had been the first Fisherman of the Church. And the first Pope.

‘The message was addressed to Balzarin in person. It instructed him to have courage. All was going well. Plans had been completed. Pasqua would take place in exactly one month, on March the third.’ She paused. ‘Someone should have noticed that Easter this year isn’t until April nineteenth.’

Makonnen listened with growing bewilderment. Where was this leading? He fumbled with the beads of his rosary, moving them nervously in a form of silent prayer. He felt compromised and abandoned, like a child on the verge of adulthood.