The Alchemist’s Code (29 page)

Father Palminteri took us into a small, spartan living room containing a couch, a coffee table and a couple of armchairs. Two paintings of missionaries in priestly garb adorned the walls.

“Mr Elpìda was our guest here for a few years, gentlemen,” the priest began again, with some tension in his voice, inviting us to take a seat. “A good person, very discreet, with great pain inside. A person clearly escaping something. He made a large donation to our Order, asking to be our guest in return and we welcomed him as Christians.”

Father Palminteri had been very vague to me on the phone and hadn't even said whether Anastasio Elpìda was still alive or not, or who the Giovanni who had signed the postcard was. We looked at each other in embarrassment for a moment, each of us weighing up the priest's words and our possible replies.

Father Palminteri seemed confused and almost annoyed by our behaviour, but then regained his composure and gave another shy smile. “So, who is Anastasio Elpìda to you? Why are you looking for him?”

I hesitated a moment before answering and Oscar intervened to prevent me giving away anything compromising. He must have thought that priest was hiding more than he was letting on.

“Look father, Elpìda is a close friend of Mr Aragona and Mr Navarro. The gentlemen haven't had any news from him for years, but recently they've come to know that Elpìda may have been your guest. Apparently, the information was correct.”

Father Palminteri weighed Oscar's words, exchanged a quick, intense look with Antonio and then his eyes lingered on me. “If he kept the place where he lived secret, he must have had his reasons,” he said finally, suggesting that he believed Oscar's words. The man knew something, but he was still suspicious.

I decided to intervene, taking a different tack and addressing him gently. “Father, please, tell us the truth. At least tell us if he's dead or alive.”

The priest looked at us for a moment more, then smiled again, this time sadly, and sighed. “Come with me.”

We crossed the villa, meeting only a couple of young missionaries ready to go out.

“Father, if we've finished here, we'll be on our way.”

“Of course, I'll see you at the Vatican this afternoon,” said Palminteri, then turning to us and adding, “As you may know, tomorrow the international summit on human rights organized by the Vatican and the European Union is taking place. It's an extraordinary event that will mark the beginning of co-operation between the Catholic Church and most of the governments around the world on the development of human rights. European leaders, the Secretary of State, the Russian Foreign Minister and the world leaders of the Church are attending. The summit is one of the many progressive initiatives the Vatican has been undertaking recently, after years of closing itself off to the realities of the world. The new pope is truly enlightened.”

“And you are involved in organising it?” Oscar asked.

Father Palminteri raised his eyebrows as if to emphasize his words. “Actually, I worked on part of the agreement. I'm in the Vatican commission of International Law. I helped to mediate between the perhaps
excessive
enthusiasm of our young pope and the rather too conservative perspectives of some of our bishops. I am a professor of canon law and advisor on international relations for the Vatican on the subject of human rights.”

He must have noticed the astonishment on our faces, because he felt the need to add, “Don't be misled by the fact that I live so far from the elite of the clergy. Now, let's go, I don't have much time.”

We reached a large hall, where the receptions of the noble residence must once have been held, and went through a wide French door into the garden. Father Palminteri walked round the villa and headed towards the small chapel we had seen before. “Villa Gondemar was built on an old estate that belonged to the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ, better known as the Templars. The chapel is very precious, it's one of the few medieval chapels in Rome that are well preserved. It was part of their ancient
commendam.
”

I was surprised that the priest talked about it with such nonchalance. “It's an extraordinary discovery for studies of the Templars, there was no knowledge of a
commendam
in this area of the city. What does the Cultural Superintendence think about it? Apparently its attribution to the Templars is recent.”

Father Palminteri paused for a moment and then looked back at me. “The superintendence can ask for a permit to study the chapel whenever they want, Mr Aragona, but if you expect us to open the doors to the army of those obsessed with the mysteries of the Templars, you're entirely wrong. This is first and foremost a place of prayer and study.”

He said no more and resumed walking, then went around the back of the chapel. In a piece of land enclosed by a low, very old iron fence, there was a small cemetery we hadn't been able to see before. As we walked towards it, our hopes vanished instantly.

We passed tombstones dating back to times when, supposedly, the Templars must have been just a memory, and continued until Father Palminteri stopped before a very recent, very simple tombstone, set a little apart from the others.

“Anastasio Elpìda is here. He passed away peacefully in his bed about five years ago. He was very old. I'm sorry, but you have arrived too late.”

There were no pictures on the stone and not even the date of birth, which my grandfather had obviously never told the monks. There was his pseudonym, Anastasio Elpìda, the date of death and a small and seemingly insignificant sign: a circled cross.

It was his signature – the symbol of the Nine. He made sure that it would appear on his tombstone so that we would recognize it.

I was more disappointed about what he could no longer tell me than upset by this certain proof of his death. For me he had died forty years before.

Navarro wore an expression of controlled pain. Clearly, he had been nourishing the hope of embracing his old friend again.

I tried to console him, but immediately understood that he wanted to be left alone with his suffering.

Oscar came up to me and, understanding my mood, put a hand on my shoulder.

I shook my head and stared at the tombstone. “Maybe it's just a sign of destiny, Oscar, maybe I just have to accept the fate awaiting my wife and be with her until the end. This is all insane, and has been since the beginning. Now it's starting to get grotesque.”

“You know, considering how sceptical of all this stuff I usually am, it's funny that I should be the one to say this to you, but until a few days ago, before all the various threads of this business started knotting up, I would have said you were right. I'm not so sure any more, though. I think there might be some truth behind this story. At the end of the day, your grandfather sacrificed his life to protect you from this secret. I can't believe it's just a legend.”

I looked at him in amazement. He was right – he was usually so rational that he played counterbalance to my imagination, and hearing him talk like that made me think that perhaps he wasn't so wrong after all.

“We welcomed him warmly, he was a lovable person,” said Father Palminteri, giving several intense looks at Navarro, “but he carried within himself great sadness. We tried to make him feel the warmth of a family. Let him rest in peace. Now, I'm sorry, but I really need to prepare some papers for this afternoon. We can see each other again after the summit if you like, in a couple of days.”

As we were walking back to the villa, Oscar approached the priest.

“Father, I still have many questions about Elpìda. I'd like to see his things, I hope you've kept them. There are shadows in this person's past that I would like to shed some light on. Please let me know when you have more time.”

“I didn't know there was an ongoing investigation, Chief.”

“Are you asking me to come with a warrant?”

“Oh no, you don't need to, of course. I'll be happy to show you the few things Elpìda had, but you must give me a couple of days, as I said before, because it's a delicate matter and I can't entrust it to anybody else. I am the father superior of the Order in Rome and it's my responsibility.”

“All right, I'll wait until after the summit.”

“Even though—”

“Even though?”

Father Palminteri stopped for a moment and looked enigmatically at all of us, his gaze lingering for a long time on Navarro.

“Perhaps there are secrets in Elpìda's life which should remain so.”

Without another word he turned and headed for the exit of the villa. Before we got there, however, we came across the man in the wheelchair that I had caught a glimpse of in one of the rooms. Now that he was before me, I realised how old he was.

His face was serene and he had very thick eyebrows and long grey hair, thin on top. His nose was straight and his toothless mouth was moving grotesquely, as though he were whispering something. And the eyes! They were so incredibly intense that they unsettled me.

“Giovanni, how many times must I tell you that it's not safe to go out alone,” Father Luigi scolded him while hastily pushing him back to his room.

Giovanni! I looked at Navarro, who was out of the sight of the old man and seemed lost.

“My name is not Giovanni!” the old man protested, trying to cling to the wall, “my name is Sean, Sean Bruce!”

“Yes, very well,” Palminteri said, trying to calm him down, “don't worry, go ahead, Giovanni is perfectly harmless.”

We walked past the wheelchair, giving the old man shy smiles as we went. As I was passing, he suddenly grabbed me by the arm and pulled me towards him, so that I could hear him.

“I have all the ones that are left,” he whispered in a creaky voice, “he left them to me.”

Finally, the old man calmed down and Father Palminteri managed to get him off me and push him back into his room, asking, “Giovanni, what were you thinking of?”

We continued on towards the main door, but as the priest was catching up with us, we could still hear the old man repeating, “My name is Sean, Sean Bruce!”

Father Palminteri spread his arms apologetically.

“Be patient – Giovanni, like Elpìda, is an old war hero, alone in the world. We decided to take care of him here. He's generally very quiet but sometimes he gets it into his head that he is Father Sean Bruce, the devout Scottish priest who founded our order in the late nineteenth century.”

A war hero like Elpìda, like my grandfather.

“I have all the ones that are left,” Giovanni, alias Sean Bruce, had said. “He left them to me.”

A thought appeared in my mind. I thought I knew what the old man meant.

The phone call Oscar received from Benjamin Grazer half an hour afterwards only confirmed my suspicions.

From the testimony of Father Luigi Palminteri

Rome, January 2013

Father Palminteri was very upset by the visit he had just received.

He'd been aware that the business wouldn't have ended with Anastasio's death five years earlier, but he hadn't expected to find himself standing right before
him
– and what's more, together with Lorenzo Aragona. When he'd seen him, he had tried to remain calm and not to show his dismay, but he was sure that Commissioner Franchi was suspicious.

After about an hour, the phone in Villa Gondemar rang, and he realised immediately that he would not be able to feel entirely unworried. It was him.

“So it's true. It
is
you. What are you going to do? I thought all this was over. Forever. I told you it was none of our business any more,” Palminteri began, leaving his caller no time to speak.

“The Chosen One is in serious danger. I can't let anything happen to him.”

“The Chosen One no longer exists! As far as I'm concerned, we buried the last one in our cemetery five years ago! Now we must just protect those who are still involved in this story, without letting anything slip out.”

“That's exactly what I want to do, but we can't just stand by and watch, because
he
is back on the trail. He has already begun to kill again to achieve his ends, you know. I have to…
We
have to stop him.”

Palminteri sighed. He didn't want to give in – not again.

“Please, let the police deal with it. With a little luck they won't find out the truth. Listen to me for once.”

“Our inaction now would condemn many to death – and not only our loved ones, because he won't stop this time. He'll find it. We have to fight.”

Palminteri shook his head wearily. “It's no longer time for crusades, don't forget that.”

The other waited an instant before answering.

“This is the moment to take up arms. For the last time.”

Events reconstructed by Lorenzo Aragona

Rome, January 2013

At one o'clock, the door of Villa Gondemar opened and Father Luigi Palminteri came out wearing a large black coat and with a briefcase in his hand. He reached a saloon car in the parking lot and left for the Vatican. Exactly ten minutes later, another car arrived at the gate with three men on board.

“If we've messed up here, I might as well go directly to the chief of police and hand in my badge,” Oscar sighed a second before pressing the intercom button. “I'm almost three hundred kilometres outside my jurisdiction, I have no warrant, I haven't informed my local colleagues and I'm about to break into the home of a religious order—”

“Then why are you doing this?” I asked him.

“Because a bit of that damn sixth sense of yours for extraordinary things has rubbed off on me,” he said, sounding a little annoyed, as though my tone of voice had irked him, “and because I can't ignore what Grazer told us.”