The Devil Will Come (2 page)

‘Sit, sit,’ he said. ‘I was delayed. My meeting ran over, and the traffic was dreadful.’

‘I understand,’ Elisabetta said smoothly. ‘It was good of you to come back tonight to see me.’

‘Yes, of course. I know you’re upset. It’s difficult,
but
I think there are important lessons that in the long term will only help your career.’

De Stefano hung up his overcoat and sank into his desk chair.

She had rehearsed the speech in her mind and now the stage was hers. ‘But, Professor, here’s what I’m having great trouble with. You supported my work from the moment I showed you the first photographs of St Callixtus. You came with me to see the subsidence damage, the fallen wall, the first-century brickwork, the symbols on the plaster. You agreed with me that they were unique to the catacombs. You agreed the astrological symbology was unprecedented. You supported my research. You supported publication. You supported further excavation. What happened?’

De Stefano rubbed his bristly crew-cut. ‘Look, Elisabetta, you’ve always known the protocol. The catacombs are under the control of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology. I’m a member of the Commission. All publication drafts have to be cleared by them. Unfortunately, your paper was rejected and your request for funding to mount an excavation was also rejected. But here’s the good news. You’re broadly known now. No one criticized your scholarship. This can only work toward your benefit. All you need is patience.’

She leaned back in her chair and felt her cheeks flushing with anger. ‘Why was it rejected? You haven’t told me why.’

‘I talked to Archbishop Luongo just this afternoon and asked him the same question. He told me the view was that the paper was too speculative and preliminary, that any public disclosure of the findings should await further study and contextual analysis.’

‘Isn’t that an argument for extending the gallery further to the west? I’m convinced, as you are, that the cave-in exposed an early Imperial columbarium. The symbology is singular and indicates a previously unknown sect. I can make tremendous progress with a modest grant.’

‘To the Commission, it’s out of the question. They won’t support a trench beyond the known limits of the catacomb. They’re concerned about larger issues of architectural stability. An excavation could trigger further cave-ins and have a domino effect that could lead back into the heart of St Callixtus. The decision went all the way up to Cardinal Giaccone.’

‘I can do it safely! I’ve consulted with engineers. And besides, it’s pre-Christian! It shouldn’t even be the Vatican’s call.’

‘You’re the last person to be naive about this,’ De Stefano clucked. ‘You know that the entire complex is under the Commission’s jurisdiction.’

‘But, Professor, you’re on the Commission. Where was your voice?’

‘Ah, but I had to recuse myself because I was an author on the paper. I had no voice.’

Elisabetta shook her head sadly. ‘Then that’s it? No chance of appeal?’

De Stefano’s response was to splay his palms regretfully.

‘This was going to be my thesis. Now what? I stopped all my other work and immersed myself in Roman astrology. I’ve devoted over a year to this. The answers to my questions are on the other side of one plaster wall.’

De Stefano took a deep breath and seemed to be steeling himself for something more. When it came out it shocked her. ‘There’s another thing I need to tell you, Elisabetta. I know you’ll find this somewhat destabilizing and I do apologize, but I’m going to be leaving Sapienza, effective immediately. I’ve been offered a rare position at the Commission, the first non-clergy Vice-President in its history. For me, it’s a dream job and, frankly, I’ve had it up to here with all the bull I have to endure at the university. I’ll talk to Professor Rinaldi. I think he’ll make a good adviser. I know he’s got a full plate but I’ll persuade him to take you on. You’ll be fine.’

Elisabetta looked at his guilt-ridden face and decided there was nothing more to say besides a whispered, ‘Jesus Christ.’

An hour later she was still at her desk, hands resting in her lap. She was staring out the black window onto the empty parking lot behind the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, her back to the door.

They crept up in their crepe-soled shoes and came into the office unseen.

They held their breath lest she should hear air escaping from their noses.

One of them reached out.

Suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder.

Elisabetta let out a short scream.

‘Hey, beautiful! Did we scare you?’

She wheeled her chair around and didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry at the sight of the two uniformed policemen. ‘Marco! You pig!’

He wasn’t a pig, of course – he was tall and handsome, her Marco.

‘Don’t be mad at me. It was Zazo’s idea.’

Zazo jumped up and down like a little kid, giddy at his success, his leather holster slapping against his thigh. Since she was a toddler he’d delighted in scaring his sister and making her howl. Always scheming, always a prankster, always the motormouth, his boyhood nickname, Zazo – ‘Be quiet, shut up’ – had stuck fast.

‘Thank you, Zazo,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I needed that tonight.’

‘It didn’t go well?’ Marco asked.

‘Disaster,’ Elisabetta muttered. ‘A complete disaster.’

‘You can tell me about it over dinner,’ Marco said.

‘You’re off work?’

‘
He
is,’ Zazo said. ‘I’m pulling overtime. I don’t have a girlfriend to feed me.’

‘I’d pity her if you did,’ Elisabetta said.

Outside, they braced themselves against the cutting wind. Marco buttoned his civilian greatcoat, concealing his starched blue shirt and white pistol belt. When he was off duty he didn’t want to look like a cop, especially on a university campus. Zazo didn’t care. Their
sister
Micaela liked to say that he loved being in the
Polizia
so much that he probably wore his uniform to bed.

Outside, everything moved and flapped in the wind except the immense bronze statue of Minerva, virgin goddess of wisdom, who loomed over her moonlit reflecting pool.

Zazo’s squad car was pulled up to the steps. ‘I can give you a ride.’ He got behind the wheel.

‘We’ll walk,’ Elisabetta said. ‘I want the air.’

‘Suit yourself,’ her brother said. ‘See you at Papa’s on Sunday?’

‘After church,’ she said.

‘Say hello to God for me,’ Zazo said lightly. ‘I’ll be in bed.
Ciao
.’

Elisabetta double-looped her scarf and headed arm in arm with Marco toward her apartment on the Via Lucca. Ordinarily at nine o’clock the university area would be bustling but the precipitously falling thermometer seemed to catch people unawares and pedestrian traffic was sparse.

Elisabetta’s flat was only ten minutes away, a modest walk-up shared with an orthopedic resident who was often on duty. Marco lived with his parents. As did Zazo, who occupied his childhood room like an oversized kid. Neither of them earned enough to rent their own place, though there was always talk of sharing an apartment after their next round of promotions. Ever since Elisabetta and Marco began seeing each other, if they wanted to hang out it had to be at her place.

‘I’m sorry you had a bad day,’ he said.

‘You don’t know how bad.’

‘Whatever it is, you’ll be fine.’

She snorted at that.

‘You couldn’t change the decision?’

‘No.’

‘Want me to shoot the old goat?’

Elisabetta laughed. ‘Maybe if you just wounded him slightly.’

The traffic signal wasn’t with them but they sprinted across the broad Viale Regina Elena anyway. ‘Where’s Cristina tonight?’ Marco asked when they got to the other side.

‘At the hospital. She’s on a twenty-four-hour shift.’

‘Good. Do you want me to stay over?’

She squeezed his hand. ‘Of course I do.’

‘Do we need to buy anything?’

‘There’s enough to whip something together,’ she said. ‘Let’s just go home.’

Ahead was the student district off the Via Ippocrate. On a warm night it would have been thronging with young people smoking at cafés and browsing the small shops but tonight it was nearly deserted.

There was a short stretch of road that sometimes gave Elisabetta pause when she walked alone late at night, a poorly lit zone flanked by a graffiti-daubed concrete wall on one side and angled parking on the other. But with Marco she was fearless. Nothing bad could happen to her while he was at her side.

There was a telephone booth ahead. A tall man was
standing
inside. The tip of his cigarette glowed brightly with each drag.

Elisabetta heard footsteps coming fast from behind, then an odd, deep groan from Marco. She felt his hand slip from hers.

The tall man in the phone booth was approaching fast.

All of a sudden a heavy arm enveloped Elisabetta’s upper chest from behind and when she tried to turn it slid around her neck and fixed her in place. The telephone-booth man was almost upon her. He had a knife in his hand.

A shot rang out, so loud that it interrupted the dreamlike quality of the attack.

The arm let go and Elisabetta pivoted to see Marco on the sidewalk struggling to lift his service pistol for another shot. The man who had grabbed her twisted toward Marco. She could see blood oozing from the man’s shoulder onto the back of his camel-hair coat.

Wordlessly, the telephone-booth man rushed past, ignoring Elisabetta for the immediate threat. He and the wounded man fell upon Marco, their arms pounding down like pistons.

She screamed ‘No!’ and went for one of the flailing arms, trying to stop the killing, but the telephone-booth man threw her off, using his knife hand. She felt the blade slash her palm.

They resumed their butchery and this time Elisabetta grabbed blindly at the tall man’s legs, trying to pull him away from Marco’s body. Something gave, but it
wasn’t
him – it was his trousers, which started to slide down his waist.

He rose and swatted Elisabetta violently across the face with a forearm.

She fell to the sidewalk, aware of blood – Marco’s blood – spreading towards her. She saw the man whom Marco had shot squatting on his haunches, breathing hard under his stained coat.

There were shouts in the distance. Someone called out from a high-rise balcony half a block away.

The telephone-booth man approached and knelt deliberately beside Elisabetta. His stony face was blank. He raised his knife hand over his head.

There was another shout, closer by, someone yelling, ‘Hey!’

The man swung round toward the call.

In the seconds before he turned back to Elisabetta and crashed his fist against her chest, just before she lost consciousness, she noticed a strange, disturbing detail.

She couldn’t be sure – she would never be sure – but she thought she saw something protruding from the man’s back just above his loosened trousers.

It was something that didn’t belong there, something thick, fleshy and repulsive, rising out of a swarm of small black tattoos.

The Vatican, present day

PAIN WAS HIS
constant companion, his personal tormentor, and because it had become so intertwined with his mind and body, in a perverse way it had also become his friend.

When it gripped him hard, causing his spine to stiffen in agony, he had to stop himself from involuntarily uttering the oaths of his youth, the street language of Naples. He had a button he could push which would release a pulse of morphine into his veins but beyond occasional lapses of weakness, usually in the middle of the night when sleep seemed so dear, he avoided its use. Would Christ have availed himself of morphine to ease his suffering on the cross?

But when the worst of the present spasm receded, its passing left a pleasurable void. He was grateful for the teaching the pain imparted: that normalcy was a dear thing and a simplicity to be cherished. He wished he’d been more cognizant of this notion during his long life.

There was a gentle rap on his door and he responded in as strong a voice as he could muster.

A Silesian nun shuffled into the high-ceilinged room, her gray habit nearly brushing the floor. ‘Holiness,’ she said. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Much the same as an hour ago,’ the Pope said, attempting a smile.

Sister Emilia, a woman not much younger than the elderly pontiff, approached and began fussing with the items on his bedside table. ‘You didn’t drink your orange juice,’ she chided. ‘Would you prefer apple?’

‘I’d prefer to be young and healthy.’

She shook her head and carried on with her business. ‘Let me raise you a little.’

His bed had been replaced with a motorized hospital model. Sister Emilia used the controls to elevate his head and when he was safely upright she held the drinking straw to his dry lips and stared sternly until he relented and took a couple of gulps.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Zarilli is waiting to see you.’

‘What if I don’t want to see him?’ The Pope knew that the old nun lacked even a rudimentary sense of humor so he let her silence last for only a few seconds and then told her that his visitor was welcome.

Dr Zarilli, the pontiff’s private physician, was waiting in an anteroom outside the third-floor papal apartment with another doctor from the Gemelli Hospital. Sister Emilia ushered them into the bedroom and parted the long cream curtains over the Piazza St Pietro to let in the waning sunlight of a fine spring day.

The Pope raised his arm weakly and gave the men a small official wave. He was wearing plain white
pajamas
. His last therapy had left him bald so for warmth he wore a woolen cap which had been knitted by the aunt of one of his private secretaries.

‘Your Holiness,’ Zarilli said. ‘You remember Dr Paciolla.’

‘How could I forget?’ the Pope replied wryly. ‘His examination of my person was very thorough. Come closer, gentlemen. Can Sister Emilia get you some coffee?’

‘No, no, please,’ Zarilli said. ‘Dr Paciolla has the results of your last scans at the clinic.’

The two men with their black suits and grim faces resembled undertakers more than doctors and the Pope made light of their appearance. ‘Have you come to advise me or bury me?’