Pope's Assassin (27 page)

    "And the circus is part of those orders?"

    Jacopo sighed. "Rafael has no idea what's happening in Ben Isaac's house. All this is much bigger than him."

O
ne can, and should be, suspicious of assumptions. Just because a sinner says he has a gun pointed at the head of the confes sor doesn't mean it should be believed. Empirical proof is necessary, and the wooden screen between them does not allow for that. But the confessor opened the screen and saw the barrel of a gun pointed at his head, followed by a hand and body, and identified the man holding it.

    "Rafael?"

    "Robin."

    "What are you doing here? Drop that shit." He tried not to change his voice too much. Confessionals are not soundproof.

    Rafael didn't answer the question. He kept the Beretta pointed, holding it only in one hand, with the safety still on.

    "What's going on?" Robin asked.

    "You tell me. Put your hands where I can see them." He wasn't joking.

    Robin looked confused, but Rafael didn't believe it for a second. He needed answers and was there to get them.

    "Please, Rafael. We're men of God. Put that down, for the love of God," Robin argued, visibly uncomfortable.

    "Men of God don't murder innocent people. Tell me who the Jesuit is who's going around killing people who helped us in the past, and why." Rafael's voice expressed some anger.

    "What do I have to do with that?"

    "You should know what's going on in your society. Where can I fi nd Nicolas?"

    Robin did not reply. Rafael removed the safety. Robin remained pensive for a few moments. He considered the options, then opened the door of the confessional and got up.

    "I forgive you. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." He made the sign of the cross as he said each word. "Follow me, and put that away. Show some respect for my church," he whispered, and left.

    Rafael waited a few seconds, holstered the gun in the front of his jacket, and left the confessional, lighter, free of sins. He followed Robin to the sacristy. He looked around for acolytes, priests, auxiliary people; he didn't want to be surprised. It was ironic not to feel safe in the house of the Lord. If you couldn't find safety there, it existed nowhere in the world.

    They left the church from a side door, which opened onto a cream colored corridor. They passed a door with a plaque that read
Sacristy
and two more,
Secretary,
and the other unidentified. At the end Robin opened a final door. The plaque bore his own name, Father Robin Roth. He waited for Rafael and let him go in first, as good manners dictate, then he closed and locked it.

    "Would you like a drink?"

    "I'm fi ne, thanks."

    "Sit down," he invited, pointing at two stuffed chairs in the offi ce. A desk at the back displayed a computer screen, which was on; two bookcases with shelves from floor to ceiling filled one of the walls. A simple cross hung on the other wall, without Christ, but only an engraving on the horizontal arm with the three letters that were the soul of the Society, IHS.

    Rafael kept his hand on the gun, inside the pocket of his jacket, as if he were cold.

    "No one's going to hurt you in here," Robin assured him.

    "Start talking, Robin. I don't have all day."

    Robin sat down and sighed. It wasn't a subject he wanted to take on. "Were you with Gunter?"

    "Until the end."

    "That must have been shitty."

    Rafael agreed. A silent look said it all. Sure, it was shitty, one more image to forget, a friend to erase from memory, a past, a life. Fuck it. He'd deal with it later, one day when everything was confounded in a mass of dreams, thoughts, things that were and others that were not, a fog that time always had the ability to create to attenuate sorrow and happiness, the good and the bad.

    "Have you ever heard of the
Secret Monition
?" Robin asked, cross ing his legs for more comfort.

    "Of course. Its authority was attributed to Claudio Acquaviva, one of the first superior generals of the Society of Jesus in the seventeenth century. According to my memory, it was all a forgery by some Pole who was expelled from the society."

    "Do you know what it was for?" Robin asked in a professorial tone.

    "According to malicious tongues, it was instructions and methods for helping the society gain importance and influence in communities they infiltrated and in other institutions of power. Am I right?"

    "Correct."

    Robin got up from the chair and went to the desk. He took a key out of his pocket and opened a drawer. Rafael took the gun inside his jacket pocket in his hand. Robin took out an ancient book, whose cover was coming apart. It had seen better days. He returned to the chair and handed the book to the Italian.

    "What's this?"

    "Read it."

    Rafael felt the book, turned it over in his hands, looked at the cover, the title page, the back page, tried to identify a certain odor; the exte rior gave no clue whatsoever, no engraving, just brown leather, worn by time. He opened it. The first three pages were blank, yellowed, frayed, almost sticking together. On the fourth page he understood every thing. Stamped in capital letters,
MONITA SECRETA,
and in smaller letters, a subtitle, Me
thods and Advice.
The name of the author was below, a little indistinct, Ignatius Loyola, and the year, 1551.

    "Interesting," Rafael murmured. He turned to the next page, where the text began in Spanish.

    "The M
onition
is one of Loyola's works?"

    "Exactly. He always knew what he wanted for the society, and he left it in writing. What you have in your hand is the reason for our suc cess and longevity," Robin explained.

    The
Secret Monition
was a polemical work that many insisted didn't exist or was a fraud. There was always constant doubt about its author ship. It was attributed to Acquaviva, the superior general between 1581 and 1615, always with great uncertainty, but no one dared once to claim that Loyola was the author. This fact was new.

    "Why was this necessary?" Rafael wanted to know. "Why such intransigence?"

    "Don't speak nonsense," Robin criticized him. "We're not a reli gious order, and you know it."

    "Then what are you?"

    Robin didn't answer. He was searching for the right words.

    "What are you, Robin?" Rafael insisted.

    "We are the front line of the Roman Catholic Church."

    "Please, Robin. Spare me the bullshit."

    "Since 1523."

    "Now you have ten more years?" Rafael mocked. "Didn't the found ing in Paris occur in 1534 in Saint-Denis?"

    "You don't know the half of it, Rafael. Only two minutes ago you didn't know Saint Ignatius was the author of the M
onition,"
Robin admonished.

    Rafael had to concede the point. He was there for answers, and Robin was providing them. Rafael let him go on.

    "You should know about Saint Ignatius's voyage to Jerusalem in 1523." Robin didn't wait for Rafael to confirm. History said that Saint Ignatius had had visions and various spiritual experiences in Manresa. He decided to go to Jerusalem and devote himself to saving souls. He and some followers had gone to Rome at the time of the event to ask for Pope Adrian the Sixth's authorization. That's the offi cial version. But Loyola was never interested in going to Jerusalem. That was mean ingless for him. He had a project, a vision, and if, in order to achieve it, he had to do a favor for someone, he would do it."

    "Then who sent him to Jerusalem?"

    "The cardinal of Florence, Giulio de' Medici," Robin revealed.

    "It was Clement the Seventh who asked him to go to Jerusalem?" Rafael wanted to verify. He couldn't afford any misunderstandings.

    "Of course it was."

    "What did the pope want him to do there?"

    "Note that Giulio de' Medici was still not pope in September. He became pope only in November, and Loyola helped him with that. The correct question is, What did the cardinal of Florence want him to look for there?" Robin clarified, stroking his beard.

    Rafael waited for the answer. What the hell would it be? Robin delayed on purpose.

    "I'm dying of thirst from so much talking."

    "You're not going to stop now, are you?" Rafael grumbled.

    Robin laughed lightly. He was enjoying this.

    "What was he looking for?"

    "Papers," Robin answered, watching the reaction.

    "Papers?" Rafael was surprised.

    "Parchments," Robin specifi ed.

    Rafael had been sent several times for parchments and papyri that the church considered important for one reason or another. Jordan, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, as well as western Europe. Sometimes as a mere courier, other times as a thief or buyer, depending on the case or who possessed them. There was a black market in manuscripts, Rafael knew well. It was more than probable that it had existed for centuries or even millennia. Given that Loyola went to Jerusalem to recover parchments for the church five hundred years ago, the idea was not unbelievable.

    "Loyola went to Jerusalem and returned shortly afterward," Rafael refl ected.

    "It was extremely quick," Robin added. "If it were today, he would have gone and returned the same day. Considering the travel condi tions in the sixteenth century, he traveled fast. He spent only twenty days in Jerusalem."

    Rafael nodded his head in agreement. "So what were the parchments?"

    "Parchments that mentioned parchments that talked about bones," Robin said cryptically.

    
Parchments that talked about parchments that talked about bones,
Rafael repeated mentally. Nothing strange. Many of the sepulchers most visited by tourists in modern times owed their existence to information about their exact location found in ancient texts. It was customary to record in several places the locations of those who had departed this world.

    "You know as well as I do that Jewish funeral rites in Jerusalem in the first century were very different from ours," Robin continued.

    "I have some idea, but I'm not well versed in the subject."

    "I understand. You're more versed in how they put their dead in caves rather than burying them," Robin said a little scornfully.

    Rafael said nothing. He who speaks truth does not deserve punishment.

    "In general the Jews did not bury their own as frequently as we do, or didn't bury them completely. They put them in tombs carved in the rock. There could be one or many chambers, well carved or not, depending on the owner or how much money he had, and they were constructed for entire families, except for the women who mar ried into other families. They washed the corpse with water, always from top to bottom, so that impurities from the feet didn't contami nate other parts of the body. Then they applied oils and perfumes. The corpse was wrapped in a linen shroud, a
sadin.
Sometimes they used expensive, imported, woven cloth, but we know that He was wrapped in a new linen shroud. This whole procedure was carried out by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, according to the Holy Scriptures. The arms were stretched along the sides of the body, and the feet tied before wrapping the corpse in the shroud. There was a clear separation between the head and the body. The head was never covered by the
sadin
. What covered the head was called a
sudarion
."

    "A burial cloth," Rafael repeated.

    "This way, if the
dead
man"—Robin sketched quotation marks with his fingers—"should come back to life, he would not suffocate. There are numerous stories of relatives who found their dear departed sitting up, waiting for them inside the tomb. One of them is about Anaias, who was found waiting for his family sitting in the tomb, and went on to live more than twenty-five more years."

    "I've heard of him."

    "From this custom in antiquity, the Byzantines began to install small bells in their cemeteries connected by a cord to the coffi n. It could be activated if the dead should wake up."

    Rafael knew about this custom. There was even possible evidence from very ancient European cemeteries. With advances in medicine these customs disappeared, but in Latin countries, where they interred the dead as quickly as possible, it was not rare to find on the lids of exca vated coffi ns fingernail scratches of those who had awakened too late.

    "The Jewish custom was to keep the corpses in niches carved in stone walls in places called ko
khim.
Unless the death occurred from mutilation or execution, relatives always wanted to be certain their loved one was dead, and not in a kind of coma between
sheol,
the world of the dead, and that of the living. People were afraid of being buried alive. So they visited their dead for three days or more, not only to verify the actual death, but because this was part of the ceremony. They prostrated themselves before the corpse in respect and used lotions and potions so that the passage to
sheol
was made correctly. In any case, the subsequent visit to the tomb of Christ was a perfectly normal custom established in the Jewish community. The body remained in the ko
khim
for a year or more. Because of the geological and climatic conditions of Jerusalem, at the end of a year the body would be totally decomposed, and another ritual began. The bones were taken from the
kokhim
and placed in ossuaries, stone chests, normally engraved with the name or names of the dead inside. They were then deposited in another place in the tomb, another chamber or space, depending on how the tomb was constructed. No two tombs were alike. Also there were excavated trenches, the
ossilegium,
where the bones of previ ous generations reposed. It was not uncommon for the dead man to awaken during the ritual of three days' visitation. There are even some who claim . . ." Robin hesitated. Even for him it was a sacrilege to sug gest such a theory.