The Assassini (70 page)

“Why don’t we find a sophisticated old cleric and ask him, Artie? I haven’t had much to laugh about lately—”

“Oh, what a shame. We’ll have to remedy that one day. I was thinking more about the Hitler war.”

“Now you’re thinking what I’m thinking. Yes, if memory serves, Drew Summerhays was—I don’t know, in a strange sort of out of the ordinary way—one of Wild Bill Donovan’s Knights Templar, y’know, a Catholic, a Yale man, a natural for OSS, but he was more of a strategist than an agent. Look, I’m not quite clear on this, he’s led a life full of secrets, you’d always know you saw only a hundredth of his life. But he
was
in London during the war. My dad has let things drop about him at various times … he ran OSS men into occupied Europe, into Germany. He was my father’s boss, I’m sure of that. He may even have recruited my father.” I waited, letting it all sink in. “He knew Pius, he probably knew Bishop Torricelli. He’s been in the game since the time of the Borgias—Artie, honest to God, he’s still in the game and you know damn well what his code name was.…”

“Archduke,” Father Dunn said.

“He’s the only candidate,” I said. “Unless Kessler was lying to us to keep us off his tail … In that case, Kessler is Archduke. Sitting in his wheelchair at the center of the web, spinning.…”

“So what the devil was Summerhays doing in Avignon this particular night?”

“Well, that’s the hard part, isn’t it? Summerhays is a better fit … But, the story of my night on the town is only half done.”

“You amaze me,” Father Dunn said.

“Sister Elizabeth and I had a problem tonight, a difference of opinion—”

“I detected a chill on that front.”

“The point is, I was alone out there in the crowd when I saw Summerhays and his man. When they saw me I suddenly realized I wanted to get the hell out of there, there was something all wrong with that picture. Everything got confused and I was half running from, half looking for the weird little character with the chain-sawed throat and the feather in his hat … anyway, I was found by someone else, as if he knew where I was, as if I’d never been out of his sight, as if—I’m not kidding—he were waiting for me—”

“Give him a name, Ben.”

“Horstmann! It was Horstmann, here in Avignon, all of us here in Avignon—”

“You mean you think he was with Summerhays?”

“Who the hell knows? Who understands any of it?”

“Holy Mary, what happened? How did you get away?”

“He told me to go home. He didn’t kill me, he almost begged me to go home. Try to figure that one out.”

“Let’s just say that Archduke is Summerhays and Simon is D’Ambrizzi,” Dunn mused. “Both men have deep-rooted reasons for loving and respecting your father, your family, you. And if they are behind all of it, then Horstmann is working for them. That could explain the warning. They want you out of it.…”

“But in that case they killed my sister,” I said.

Dunn nodded slowly. “Maybe they did kill your sister. And if they did, they killed her to protect themselves.
And that’s all the more reason to save you … an expiation of their guilt. Your father saved D’Ambrizzi’s ass after the war, brought him to America when the heat was on, and Summerhays was your father’s patron on the road to power, God knows what kind of missions your father took for Summerhays during the war, so Summerhays owes him, too … so if they had to kill your sister, his daughter, for God’s sake, can you imagine the agony they must be going through? They don’t want to have to kill Hugh Driskill’s son, too.”

I hadn’t prayed in twenty-five years, but it was a prayer that leapt to my lips in that awful moment.

“God grant me the power,” I said, “and I will kill them all.…”

T
he cardinals were playing boccie on the lawn of Poletti’s villa. Ottaviani had just rolled the heavy, criss-crossed ball, and it sped across the perfectly manicured green grass with unerring accuracy, dislodging Vezza’s ball and nestling up against the small, gleaming white ball, or “spot.” Vezza moved ponderously toward a wooden lawn chair and slowly lowered himself, like an old building that was still settling. He coughed and wiped spittle from his dry, cracked lips. “Whatever happened to the idea of letting the oldest man win? Where has decency gone?” He sank back in the chair with a heavy sigh. He fumbled in his baggy flannel trousers, brought out a pack of cigarettes and a cheap disposable lighter. “I’ve had enough of this game. You know, they say these things can kill you.”

Poletti rolled his eyes, said, “Cigarettes are not exactly a newly recognized health hazard.”

“Not the cigarette, you silly fellow. I
know
that. I have reference to these sleazy lighters. Explode, they are said to do. Engulf you in fire.” He lit the cigarette. “God was with me that time.” He nodded toward Ottaviani. “Guglielmo cheats. He has always cheated. Why don’t I ever learn?” Vezza’s socks had slipped down low on his ankles, revealing hairless, spindly ankles and calves, unsuitable, it would have seemed, for supporting so large a body. “He thinks he’s allowed to cheat because of his crippled back. No sense of honor.”

Antonelli, who had been partnered with Ottaviani, sat down on the grass. The sun was bright behind a cloud of
pollution. “Gianfranco,” he said to Vezza, “you can’t cheat at boccie. No one can. In that way boccie is wholly abstract, unlike life in every detail.”

Ottaviani said, “He doesn’t bother me. He’s a bad loser, always has been. He’s had so much experience at it, you’d think he’d have mastered the decorum by now—”

“I lose only at games, my friend. I always win in the real world.” Vezza’s smile was full of oddly shaped teeth like yellow candy corn.

“The real world!” Poletti scoffed. “You haven’t noticed the real world since the dawn of time! Why, the real world is as foreign to you as—”

Cardinal Garibaldi interrupted, his round little eyes in his round face glittering and alert. “Speaking of the real world, where does the matter of the murdered nun stand—”

“She wasn’t murdered,” Antonelli murmured. “It was the man clad as a priest who died.”

“Ah, we’re at cross purposes. I was referring to the murdered nun in America, but it’s all the same, isn’t it? So, what of the nun who was
nearly
murdered? What’s the news?”

Cardinal Poletti was kicking the balls over toward the heavy gunny sack in which they’d brought them to the lawn. “There is no news. They haven’t yet been able to identify the priest—if priest he was. He had only one eye, apparently—”

“I’m not surprised,” Vezza said, “after that fall!”

“No, no, he had only one eye even before he fell.” Poletti sighed wearily. “But he was badly disfigured by the fall—”

“No, actually you are in error there.” Vezza waggled his ancient, wrinkled finger. “He was not disfigured by the fall. He was disfigured by the landing. And the truck or bus that then ran over him.”

“The real question which interests me,” Antonelli sighed from beneath the floppy hat that shaded his eyes, “is why did he try to kill the nun, Sister Elizabeth. We know of course that she was Sister Valentine’s dearest friend … which I presume ties her to Driskill and his
lot. But why kill her? And the Americans are playing too big a part in all this. That always leads to no good.”

“Oh, they’re not such bad chaps,” Garibaldi said diplomatically, “once you get to know them.”

“My God, man!” Ottaviani said. The corner of his mouth twitched with the pain which seldom left him. “You’re such an appalling innocent! How could you ever have reached your present station? Americans are the very worst. Bulls marauding in the china shop, no attention to tradition and the rules of the game … in short, I
like
them! They shake things up. And they think we’re the crafty, devious, plotting bastards … they flatter us. I haven’t known a truly crafty, devious cardinal in twenty years! We’re all children compared with our predecessors. And the Americans have charmingly little self-knowledge. They don’t quite understand what vicious, cold-blooded swine they are. Yes, I
do
like them.”

“Then you’ll be delighted to hear,” Garibaldi said, “that Drew Summerhays, no less, is here in Rome.”

“Good Lord,” Poletti said. “The Holy Father may already be dead and Summerhays knows it before we do!” His face showed that he was only half joking.

“What’s he sniffing around here for?” Vezza snorted.

“A professional vulture,” Poletti said. He was kneeling in the grass, putting the balls into the gunnysack. The sun was warm for the end of November.

“And I suppose we’re not?” Ottaviani smiled thinly.

Poletti took no notice of him. “A pope is dying, then Summerhays will not be far behind. He is bound to be here to force somebody’s hand, push his own man forward.… Who
is
this man, by the way?”

Ottaviani shrugged for all of them. “We’ll know soon enough.”

Poletti said, “Indelicato is going to be asking me for a head count. Core support … people he can count on for votes and for rounding up others.” He scanned the faces. The sun was shining in his eyes. He shielded them like an Indian scout.

“Well,” Vezza muttered, “it’s only common sense to hear what Summerhays has to say before we commit ourselves—”

Ottaviani grinned wolfishly. “Greed dies only with the man himself. It never lessens with great age. Exhibit A, our old,
very
old friend Vezza. I rest my case.”

“I gather that Fangio is lining up the outlanders,” Garibaldi said. Like a plump sponge, he always seemed to soak up a surprising amount of peculiar news. “He promises them access whether they be Marxists, Africans, Japs, Eskimos, South Americans, Trobriand Islanders, Methodists, or ax murderers. And, of course, D’Ambrizzi is very cool. He never gives a hint, says he hasn’t really thought about it … but the fact is he knows a great deal and he can call in a lot of debts. Between the blackmail and the gratitude, the Throne of Peter may await him. And if Summerhays is behind him, then we know the money’s there if it comes to that.”

“Who’s working for him on the outside? Do we know it’s Summerhays?”

Antonelli crossed his legs, inspected his sneakers, flicked at a grass stain, sighed. “With Lockhardt dead, my guess would be he’d have the other Americans. Summerhays, Driskill—”

“Driskill is a sick man,” Poletti said, “and Summerhays is two hundred years old. Maybe,” he added hopefully, “they don’t carry the weight they once did—”

“Money,” Vezza said, “is always heavy.”

“But Driskill isn’t well, I tell you,” Poletti insisted. “His daughter has been murdered. His son is apparently on the verge of madness—Indelicato remains our strongest choice. He will know how to deal with the crisis at hand.”

“Driskill,” Ottaviani said, “will give Summerhays his proxy and stay home. We need to know where Summerhays stands.”

“The man’s frail as a leaf!” Poletti said. “Do we actually
know
what he’s up to?”

“Well, he doesn’t wear a flashing neon sign,” Ottaviani observed sourly. “Line up behind me if you support D’Ambrizzi, right this way for the latest thing in indulgences, step right up and claim your bribes.… It’s rather more subtle than that. Summerhays was in Paris, by the way.”

“D’Ambrizzi’s just back from Paris.”

“Precisely. They’re plotting, take my word for it.” Poletti looked away, out into the cloud of crud drooping over Rome. “How do we stand now, D’Ambrizzi or Indelicato? We each represent a great many votes.”

“I won’t commit myself,” Vezza said, shaking his head. “Not with Summerhays in the game.”

“Are there any clean candidates in the field?”

“What in the world are you talking about? Getting into the running gets you dirty. Don’t be fatuous.”

“But are they dirty enough to hurt them in the voting?”

“Well, now, nobody’s that dirty!”

“How is the Holy Father?”

“Sinking,” Poletti said. “But hanging on.”

“Is he going to take a hand in this?”

“Who knows?”

“Indelicato’s picked a wonderful time for a party.”

“Perhaps it will cut the tension.”

“Nonsense. He’s turning up the heat. He thrives on tension. He’ll never crack.”

“Well, if he expects D’Ambrizzi to crack … he’s going to have a hellishly long wait.”

“The point is someone is going to have to start leaning hard on people.”

“The point is either Indelicato or D’Ambrizzi is going to have to be forced out—or throw his support to someone else—or we’re going to have a nobody sneaking in to win … we’ve seen that happen. And we know what had to be done.”

“Start leaning on people? What are you talking about? Indelicato is already leaning on us. On me!” Poletti stood up. “I have another tape for you to hear. The second conversation between D’Ambrizzi and the Holy Father—”

“You know, I feel uneasy about all this taping—”

“Garibaldi, you are made of noble stuff. If it makes you uneasy, by all means stay out here, sharpen up your boccie, and don’t sully your ears.”

“My God, I only said
uneasy
 … don’t jump all over me this way! Relax.” He shrugged his narrow, round
shoulders. “Come. It is our duty—however disagreeable—to listen to these tapes.”