Forbidden Sanctuary (14 page)

Things were getting a bit
too
interesting now.

Chapter 12

Ed Fitzgerald enjoyed meeting with the President, most of the time. Most of the time his people did their jobs properly, and that meant the President would be pleased. The President liked competence.

By rights the meeting he was on his way to should have been particularly enjoyable, therefore. His agent had cracked the case inside a day; well, at least she had started to crack it. Pretty impressive, anyway. But Fitzgerald was nothing if not an astute judge of character, and he had a feeling the President would not be pleased. Not with what he had to tell him.

The White House was virtually deserted this time of night, the tourists long gone, the hotshot aides all home in bed dreaming of ways to speed up their careers. Fitzgerald had been a hotshot once himself. The rooms he passed were dim and silent, the corridors empty. Only important events happened here at midnight. Well, this would be no exception.

Jim Elias met him outside the Oval Office. He was dressed in suede pants and a silk shirt. God help us: was that the fashion nowadays? "Better be good," Elias said as they shook hands. "I was in the middle of a heavy date."

"You're not old enough to go on a date by yourself, are you?" Fitzgerald asked.

Elias shook his head. "I'm really not, but I got a friend at the FBI to forge me an ID so I could buy beer."

"They do good work over there, I hear. Is himself in?"

"After me."

Harold Gibson was striding toward them, hand outstretched, as they entered the room. He didn't look like a man who had been up since five that morning. Fitzgerald dreaded Gibson's handshake; his hand always ached for hours afterward. "Mr. President."

"Fitzie, good to see you. Have a drink?"

"Oh well, if you insist."

Gibson smiled and gestured to Elias, who was already getting out the Jameson's. The kid dressed funny, but his memory was amazing.

"Sit sit sit. Don't tell me, you have good news. The alien's back in the ship, the Numoi are happy, God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world."

Fitzgerald sat and sipped his Jameson's. "Well, not exactly. God does enter into this, though."

"You intrigue me. Tell us everything, from the very beginning. You have thirty seconds."

Fitzgerald took a somewhat larger sip. Gibson sat opposite him, his eyes boring into Fitzgerald's skull, trying, so it seemed, to suck all the useful information out of him so that he wouldn't have to be bothered with a time-wasting conversation. The President could be quite intimidating if you weren't used to him.

"Here's what we have, as best we can figure it. This alien—his name is Tenon—secretly belongs to some forbidden religious cult on Numos. He had a conversation with one of the UN interpreters a couple of days ago, and evidently something came up about religious freedom here. So the fellow jumped ship and made his way into town, where he met up with the local parish priest. This priest handed him over to a friend of his, another priest, and the two of them took off. We have our best people tracking them down right now. Is my time up?"

Gibson's eyes shifted momentarily, puzzling it out. "Doesn't make sense," he said. "Why would the priests help this guy?"

"That's not entirely clear to me. There seem to be some correspondences between his beliefs and Christianity. Also, presumably he would be put to death if he gets sent back to his ship."

The President shook his head. "Still sounds funny." Then he paused. "You've got something more. What is it?"

Very astute. And now the sticky part. "The way we broke this," Fitzgerald said, "was by getting the log of this parish priest's long-distance calls. On the night of Tenon's disappearance there was an overseas call placed. To the Vatican. To a personal number assigned to the Pope's private secretary. This local priest says his pal—name of Bernardi—won't let go of Tenon without Clement's say-so. The Vatican is evidently in this thing up to their scapulars."

"Good grief. This private secretary—what's his name?"

"Collingwood. He's an American."

Gibson turned to Elias, who was slouched in a chair across the room.

"He's in his late thirties," Elias said, "ambitious, intelligent, kind of a cold fish. I thought he was still in America, at the synod or whatever you call it in New York City."

"Would he get involved in something like this without the Pope's knowledge?"

"Doubt it. He's a team player."

The President was silent. Fitzgerald braced himself. It was about time for Gibson to get angry. "Goddammit," he roared on schedule. "What kind of Mickey Mouse shit are those assholes trying to pull? I've put my head on the block for them! I've kept them in business in this country! If they tried they couldn't come up with anything that could be more damaging to me. I've got half of Congress screaming for blood because I've handed the aliens over to the UN—as if the aliens were some sort of goddam national treasure—and now the Vatican has set one of them loose on the countryside." His eyes riveted on Fitzgerald. "And you're doing a fine job of keeping it secret, by the way. The
Post
and the
Times
have already all but said flat out that it's an alien we're after."

Fitzgerald's ears hurt. He was getting a headache. "You can't do an investigation like this in total secrecy," he offered. "Not and get any results."

"Fat lot of results we've gotten," Gibson muttered, but it was clear that his anger had spent itself. Elias looked bored. This must happen every half hour during the day. If only he weren't so
loud.
After a moment the President smiled and said, "Now let's get constructive. What is our response?"

"Finding the alien would help," Elias remarked.

Fitzgerald shrugged. "We've got our best people on it." Nice little phrase. No arguing with
that.

"You know," Elias went on, "Clement is not the world's number-one ace political strategist. It may be that he's just acting reflexively here. This guy lands in the Church's lap asking for sanctuary, and they grant it. They don't consider anything else."

"So where does that leave us?"

"Well, we bring other considerations to his attention. Tell him the alien isn't worth his tax-exempt status in America. And so on. Put the screws to him. Diplomatically, of course."

Gibson nodded thoughtfully and turned to Fitzgerald. "You a Catholic, Fitzie?"

He spread his palms. "You know how it is."

Gibson sighed. "I have difficulty dealing with religious people. They look at everything so differently, you know?"

"Like Republicans," Fitzgerald suggested.

The President laughed—loud enough to wake Lincoln's ghost, Fitzgerald thought. "What time is it in Italy?" Gibson asked Elias.

"Seven a.m.," he answered promptly.

"Jesus, what a mind. Offhand, would you happen to know the Pope's phone number?"

Chapter 13

The Pope's office was bare and functional—far from the baroque opulence or even the sleek modernism of some of his predecessors. The walls held nothing but a cheap crucifix and portraits of Pious the Tenth and John the Twenty-third. The only artworks worth mentioning were a couple of ancient sculptures rescued from the Vatican grottoes.

Clement was well aware that people admired the simplicity of his life. "Whatever else you might say about him," he could imagine them remark, "he certainly doesn't pamper himself." It was an odd quirk of fate, he felt, that the things people praised him for he found totally unworthy of praise. He could not help being uninterested in material possessions; that was the way he was. May as well praise an Irishman for having red hair, or a German for being able to speak German. If someone had placed a Delia Robbia in front of his desk, he would not have noticed it; if the most expensive wine in the world had been served for his dinner, it would not have tempted him.

In some people, of course, such abstinence
would
have been a virtue. While his celibacy, for example, had been a tolerable burden, he knew of many priests whose struggle to maintain
theirs
had been truly heroic. For some people, just living from day to day was a triumph of the will.

Ah yes, his humility too was well known. Always deprecating himself; his virtues are worthless, his vices numberless. Clement was aware that his protestations could sound ludicrous.

That was the trouble, of course. He was aware of so much, and so incapable of doing anything about it.

He sat in his chair (a special orthopedic chair, one creature comfort he was almost forced to allow himself) and consulted his schedule for the day. Nine o'clock meeting with Cardinal DiStefano to discuss reorganization of the Congregation of the Faith. Eleven o'clock audience in the Hall of the Consistory. Twelve o'clock audience with the South American ambassadors... He shoved the paper aside. It was easy to fill up the days just being a symbol. At least he was not a disgrace to his office. God had seen fit not to make him totally incapable.

The knock sounded lightly on the door, and Collingwood's face appeared immediately afterward. "You wanted to see me, Holiness?"

"Come in, Anthony. Sit."

Collingwood sat on the other side of the desk. No trace of worry or deception. He had once thought himself good at spotting such things. He was no longer very sure of his skill. "Anthony, I want you to tell me about the phone call you received from America two nights ago."

Collingwood was silent for a moment. The confrontation didn't seem to trouble him. "It was Father Bernardi," he replied. "The alien had escaped from his ship, and Bernardi wanted to know what to do with him. We agreed he should go into hiding with Tenon until you told him otherwise."

Clement fingered his pectoral cross. "And why, Anthony, did I learn of this from the President of the United States, and not from you?"

That
cracked Collingwood's composure a bit. He pushed at his glasses and rubbed his nose. "I'm sorry," he said finally. "That must have been unpleasant for you. I felt I should wait, you see—"

"Because if the alien were caught before you told me then you would not have been implicated in this harebrained scheme?"

"It is not a scheme, Holiness," Collingwood protested. "If the alien had been handed over to the UN he would have been sent back to the ship. It would have been like turning a Jew over to the Nazis—or a Christian over to Nero. We just wanted to save his life."

Collingwood had made that point about the Jews before.

Clever fellow:
you don't want to be another Pius the Twelfth, do you?
"You have taken quite a risk, Anthony," Clement remarked. "You have put us in a very delicate, a very painful position without our knowledge or approval. I would be perfectly justified in dismissing you, in ending your career in the Church. It would save face with the President, it would show I can be a forceful leader. Why shouldn't I do this?"

The priest said nothing.

Clement's back had begun to hurt. He stood up and walked over to the window. At this early hour only the pigeons and a few hardy tourists inhabited the vast expanse of Saint Peter's Square. He had seen it full of waving, cheering people, jumping up and down to get a glimpse of
him.
"Gibson said: 'I've put my head on the block for your Church. You can't expect me to keep it there, if this is what you pull.' A blunt man, the President."