The Assassini (69 page)

Everywhere you looked, every time you looked, it was all changing. There was never time to get used to the situation as it appeared to be. The murder victims on Val’s list had just been transformed from martyrs, slaughtered innocents, to cynical bastards who’d been on borrowed time too damn long. They were being erased. Another man was erasing his own past. Rewriting his own personal history.

“Surely you don’t suggest that Curtis Lockhardt was some sort of Nazi.” It was Elizabeth again.

“Of course not, Sister. He was devious enough, certainly, a great player of odds, a man who hated to back a loser, so he sometimes backed everyone just a bit. But I’d have thought the reason for Lockhardt’s murder was perfectly obvious by this time.” He inserted a finger inside his starched white collar, loosening it. The fire was hot. “He was too close to Sister Valentine. She had to die because of what she knew. He had to die because she might have told him … that was almost certainly the cause of the attack on Driskill here. Fear that she might have gotten the story to him. And you, Sister Elizabeth, were marked for your big fall because you were learning too much and weren’t showing any signs of coming to your senses.” His face was flushed from the slivovitz as much as from the heat, but he was enjoying himself.
Every so often he winked at Father Dunn, who would smile back patiently.

“I wonder,” I said, “about Val’s list. Why was yours the sixth name? Your former name, I mean. You’re the only one who doesn’t share the crucial element—you haven’t been murdered.”

The dogs began barking outside. The wind had come up.

Calder wheeled himself over to the window, pulled the drapery aside, stared into the darkness.

“Sometimes they get nervous,” he said.

I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind.

Someone is erasing his past.… People are being erased, the past is being rewritten.… Someone …

Someone who wants to be pope
.

Calder’s valet came in to stoke the fire, bank the coals, bring a shawl for his master’s shoulders.

“My circulation is not what it used to be,” our host murmured, then turned to his servant. “Go tend to the hounds. Have Karl check the grounds, walk the perimeters. The normal drill.”

“Could you address the question,” I asked, “of Simon Verginius, the Pius Plot, the identity of the great man on the fateful train—”

“And the dog that barked in the night, eh? You begin to sound like Sherlock Holmes, Mr. Driskill.”

“—and the identity of someone called Archduke?”

“I feel like a waiter taking an order. But, but”—he held up the rawboned hand, waving away my apologies—“what the hell are we here for if not to chat about the old days? What else is there, really, but the old days … those
were
the days, let me assure you. Where do you want to start? I’ll tell you what I know … right, Father?” He looked at Dunn, who nodded.

“It all begins with Simon Verginius,” I said.

“And ends with him, too, perhaps? All right … the debriefing of Ambrose Calder, late of the Third Reich, will continue.” He suddenly slammed his palm down on the table. It was like a horseshoe landing. “Achtung!” For the first time he sounded like a German. There’d
been no trace of an accent before, just a vague European-ness, mid-Atlanticness, unidentifiable. “Vee haff vays uff making men talk.…” He laughed. “They used to have Germans in old American movies say that … I was one of those Germans.” He sighed. “Long time ago. Well, to Simon Verginius …”

Dunn took one of the Davidoff cigars, no longer able to resist the temptation. Elizabeth sat by the fire, legs crossed, hands cupping her knee. Her eyes, green and intense, never seemed to leave Calder’s extraordinary face. She was focusing all that wondrous energy, laser-like.

“You know, of course, about how Simon came to Paris on a mission from Pope Pius … to form a group of
assassini
, easier to do in those days than one might imagine in times of peace and calm. The Pius Plot designation was surely a reference to the Holy Father’s plan to use the
assassini
to carry out covert Church policy. Simon Verginius worked through Bishop Torricelli, made his contacts with the occupation authorities—working in intelligence is how I learned all this, from the German side, of course—and we know he also worked with the Maquis, the Resistance. Pius was hedging his bets and he wanted the Church to get its share of the loot, particularly the art, as well as gold, jewels, whatnot. But art, that was the thing. The thought of Goering and Pius fighting over a Tiepolo always amused me somehow. Greedy men. They’d have ripped it in half rather than give way to the other.

“Simon subsequently had his falling-out with the Nazis. This we know, this
I
know. Frankly, I believe his heart was never in it. It wasn’t in his nature to come to Paris and start doing the Germans’ dirty work. Pius made a mistake—the old bastard didn’t make many, but this one is echoing down the years. He merely picked the wrong man.”

“Not so very mere, then,” Elizabeth said.

“No so mere,” Calder repeated. “The looting, the killing, the Nazi-Church ties … all that formed a perfect basis for the mutual blackmail. They could keep each other honest, or dishonest, if you prefer, down the dusty
halls of time so long as some of the players remained alive and in place. Well, some of them are still in place and Simon knows them all—”

“Simon is definitely still alive, then?” Dunn cleared his throat to show he was still awake and in the game.

Calder smiled again. “Simon knew everybody in the old days, didn’t he? Torricelli, LeBecq, Richter, Brother Leo, and August Horstmann, a great many more. Simon knew everyone but only a very select handful knew he was the legendary Simon, the Simon whom D’Ambrizzi said was many men.”

I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and took out an envelope, placed it on the table. That got Calder’s attention. “You brought a prop!” he exclaimed. “Good for you, Mr. Driskill. I performed in amateur theatricals myself once. Long ago. Army days. I always said an actor was only as good as his props! Something in the envelope?”

I opened the envelope and took out the old snapshot with which I had begun. I smoothed it flat. I pushed it across the table toward Calder. His eyes followed the dog-eared scrap of paper from another age, another world.

“My sister knew she was in terrible danger,” I said. “This is the one clue she left me.”

“Nothing more?”

“That’s it.”

“She had much faith in you, Mr. Driskill.”

“She knew me well. She knew I loved her. She knew I never know when I’m licked. She knew the picture would get me started—”

“And the rest was up to you.” He picked up the snapshot.

“Torricelli, Richter, LeBecq, and D’Ambrizzi,” I said as if reciting a litany. “All along I’ve wondered who might have taken the picture. It was Simon, wasn’t it?”

Calder’s thick wiry eyebrows went up, his eyes rose to meet mine. Then he began to laugh, a loud laugh, full of humor at last. He knew a joke I hadn’t heard. I looked at Father Dunn. He shrugged.

“No, no,” Calder said, calming himself. His eyes
were watering. “No, Mr. Driskill, the one thing I can tell you for sure is that Simon Verginius did not take
this
picture.”

“What’s so goddamn funny?”

Calder shook his head. “D’Ambrizzi told the story of Simon in those papers he left behind in America—this is true? Yes. But he refrained from identifying Simon. And Horstmann killed Brother Leo before he could tell you who Simon was.… This leads one to believe Simon wishes to remain anonymous.” He smiled broadly, seemed on the point of laughter again. “You really don’t know who Simon is—”

“Cut all the bullshit,” I said. “Who is he?”

“
D’Ambrizzi, of course
. Simon is dear old Saint Jack! The sly old bastard! Surely, you must see. D’Ambrizzi wants to be pope … and he was Simon … he’s a murderer … and he collaborated with the Nazis … and none of it can come out now, so he must become a murderer again. Who better to be his instrument than a man who is used to doing his killing for him?” He sighed, the wicker in his wheelchair creaking under his weight. “A public relations nightmare, Mr. Driskill, if you see my point,” and he began to laugh again.

“You tell me that there seems to be no success at all in the Vatican’s investigation, Sister. Well, why should there be? It is a joke! D’Ambrizzi professes to believe that the
assassini
have always been a legend and Simon Verginius a myth—well he might, well he might! Simon, or call him D’Ambrizzi, is investigating himself. His job is to blur the lines of inquiry. The pope is dying—so how carefully can
he
oversee the investigation? D’Ambrizzi is in charge. When he succeeds with his own agenda, the killings will stop. The sleeper, Horstmann, will be put back to sleep. Think—when did the killings on Sister Valentine’s list begin? When did D’Ambrizzi learn of the pope’s illness! My reading of it is simple—the latter triggered the former! Let me be frank—if you find prayer efficacious, I suggest that you pray for yourselves and you may yet survive all this.”

“Archduke,” I said. My mind was staggering here
and there like a drunk on a late New Year’s Eve, but I wanted to keep pressing homeward.

“Ah, yes, Archduke. Well, there you have me. I had good reason to know him—but only at a distance, only as Archduke. I never saw him, never spoke with him except once, in a bombed-out church in the outskirts of Berlin. I don’t know how he got there, or how he got away. He needed to see me, needed to debrief me personally. He had a flair for the dramatic. He was in the priest’s box in the confessional. I went in, couldn’t see him, it was raining and cold, the roof bombed off the church, that awful smell of burned wood that’s soaking wet and lasts forever … Archduke. What he may have had to do with Torricelli, why there was an exclamation point after the name, what LeBecq and the others may have had to do with him, I have no idea. Archduke. Who knows? In the end, he was one of the most secret men … more secret than I, by far. The sort of man who spends his entire lifetime in deep cover.”

Like Drew Summerhays … Like Kessler himself, as Dunn had described him to me in Paris
.

It had taken so long, but finally it was all taking shape.

Father Dunn said, “One last thing. I can’t get it out of my mind, maybe it means nothing, but it’s irritating me, not knowing … who was the chap on the train that Simon was setting out to kill? I’ve read D’Ambrizzi’s account of Simon’s career, and now you say that D’Ambrizzi and Simon are the same man—well, maybe, maybe not—”

“They
are
the same man,” Calder said softly.

“But who was, the Great Man on the train?”

Calder heaved his massive shoulders. “Could have been a Reich bigwig. That would be my suspicion. Goering or Himmler, someone along those lines. Or a prominent collaborator—but no, on the whole I’d bet on the high-ranking Nazi. But that wasn’t in my area. In the end, what difference does it make?”

“Father LeBecq thought it was important enough to betray,” I said. “Do you know where Archduke was headquartered?”

“London. Then Paris.”

Sister Elizabeth said, “And the man the Vatican sent to Paris to find Simon … or to prove that Simon had refused to do what the Vatican wanted him to do—this man we hear called the Collector. Do you know who he was? Isn’t he a significant figure, someone who must have known a great deal of the truth? And who had the trust of Pius?”

“He must have been all those things, yes,” Calder said. “But by that time my life had grown exceedingly complex itself. The Gehlen Org was coming apart, the war was in its final stages, I was trying to stay alive, but arranging to surrender safely to the Americans was a complicated problem. I was looking for Archduke, figuratively and literally—I had to get word to him, I wanted to come over, preferably in one piece, but he was moving around, London, Paris, Switzerland … I was sweating blood. And I wasn’t paying any attention to what some renegade Catholics were doing in Paris. I have no idea who the Collector was. The Vatican had some enforcers who knew what they were doing … it was one of those tough guys, I suppose … he’s probably dead, all things considered. Archduke may be dead, too, by now. All we know for certain is that Simon is alive.” He looked up, taken by a fresh thought. “If Archduke is alive, then maybe Archduke is behind Simon’s plan to become pope, maybe Archduke is still pulling some strings. Or … 
or
, look at it another way—Archduke knows the truth about Simon, his identity. Maybe Archduke is the next to die.… And maybe Archduke is ready and waiting.” The thought seemed to amuse him.

I drove the three of us back into Avignon. It was four o’clock in the morning when we reached the hotel. The streets were empty but for street cleaners sweeping up the debris from the previous evening’s revelry. Sister Elizabeth spoke hardly a word. Everything about her was subdued, as if she’d had more bad news heaped upon her than she could handle. The D’Ambrizzi revelation had hit her hard. In the quiet of her solitude she was having to reinvent her world, her Church.

Father Dunn asked me if I wanted to join him in a
nightcap. He took a silver hip flask from his jacket pocket and nodded to a deserted corner of the lobby. A table lamp cast a dim amber glow, and outside on the corner there was a streetlamp swaying in the wind. He took a swig from the flask, handed it to me, and I felt the brandy burning my throat. It hit my stomach like a depth charge. Immediately I felt light-headed.

I told him about seeing Summerhays in the crowd. His face played all the proper, startled reactions.

“Do you know much about Summerhays, Ben?”

“A fair amount. You’ve got a gleam in that gimlet eye.”

“I was just thinking. He’s like an older version of Lockhardt, isn’t he?” Casually, as if he were hardly thinking about it, he said, “I wonder what he was doing during the war?”

“Which one? Civil? Spanish-American?”

“Yes, my son, he’s old.” His pink face was a mask of sour patience. “Your wit may work wonders with sheltered nuns, not with sophisticated old clerics.”