To Kill the Pope (17 page)

But, inexorably, the story went on. The French and the papacy could not leave well enough alone. Late in the fifteenth century, Charles VII of France occupied Rome on behalf of a clique of rebel cardinals, and threatened to depose Pope Alexander VI. For the next three centuries, Rome and Paris swung back and forth between conflict and collaboration—in power politics, not theology—until the milestone of the French Revolution.

The 1789 Revolution had declared a full-fledged war on the Roman Catholic Church, for which the Holy See has not really forgiven France—to this day. In fact, Tim knew an aging monsignor who spoke of François Mitterrand, then the French socialist president, in the same spirit as he spoke of Robespierre. Napoleon Bonaparte's Italian campaign led to the occupation of Rome by his armies and the capture of Pope Pius VI, who soon thereafter died in exile in France. But five years later, Pius VII anointed Napoleon as emperor, transforming the monarchy into an empire. Five years after
that
occasion, Napoleon annexed the Papal States in Italy and deposed his erstwhile friend Pius VII, removing him to France. It was a far cry from Christmas Eve in 800 A.D. when
Charlemagne, an earlier emperor, lay prostrate in St. Peter's basilica waiting for anointment by Pope Leo III. But when Napoleon finally fell from power after Waterloo, Pius VII returned to Rome in triumph. In the end, the Church always seemed to win.

Still, the rivalries continued. Pope Pius IX had been forced to flee Rome by the 1848 liberal revolution in Italy, but French armies restored him to power two years later. The papacy was protected by France until the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when the defeated French had to concentrate on their own affairs. In 1901, the French Third Republic demanded that religious orders—from the Benedictines to the Jesuits—leave the country, closed 14,000 Catholic schools, and confiscated Church property.

A lot of this long history was plain power-hunger warfare, bloodshed, and intolerance among some of Europe's most civilized people. With rare exceptions, the kings and the popes were not shining examples of virtue—most were capable of unspeakably dastardly deeds. Tim marveled that so much mischief and criminality on the part of the enlightened rulers and their courtiers could belong to the same epochs as much of Europe's splendid culture and creativity in arts and human thought.

Evidently good and evil could coexist happily in the Dark Ages as well as during the Enlightment. But, then, Tim thought, things were not all that different nowadays. It was just as plausible to kill a pope today as at any moment in the history of mankind and religion. The mindset was always present and there were always plenty of devout volunteers—not just mercenaries—believing that they were God's instruments in doing away with popes they thought were betraying the Church. For Tim, papal history offered valuable perspective he had lacked, and quite a few key findings. They included periodic outbursts of protest, resentment, and even violence by extremist French clerics and their followers against the papacy, especially after the Second Vatican Council in the mid-Sixties. Tim duly noted them in his ledger. Now he had to consider that the assassination attempt against Gregory XVII could, after all, have come from
within
the Church, discarding the conventional wisdom that it had to be plotted, say, by Moscow or Muslims—to the exclusion of other possibilities. On the other hand, conventional wisdom might have had it right.

Tim's research fascinated him as he delved deeper and deeper in the materials he was receiving from Sister Angela. But he was totally exhausted when he finished reading the hundreds of pages on the history of the papacy in the early morning that June day. Despite the newly acquired perspective, he had no sense of having achieved any meaningful progress in his work. All he had after a month of study were half-formed ideas and suspicions. Suddenly, he felt hopeless and depressed.

The sun was already hot and bright when Tim stepped out of the Villa Malta gate to walk down Via di Porta Pinciana to the convent at the bottom of the street. He entered the chapel and prepared to celebrate the Mass of 6.30 A.M., the first of the day, for the few pious elderly women who attended it daily. Tim did this once or twice a week. Saying Mass and being in communion with God always cleared his mind and restored his inner balance. This morning, Tim Savage needed it more than ever, certainly since his tour in Vietnam.

“M
Y
G
OD
,” I haven't seen you since 'Nam, since the Delta!” Paul Martinius shouted, bouncing out of the deep armchair at the chic Via Veneto bar near the American Embassy and hugging Tim Savage tightly. “I knew you had become a priest, but I didn't realize you were in the Eternal City . . . Boy, it's great to see you again!”

Martinius, an exuberant, powerfully built man, was the CIA Station Chief in Rome, a new-generation intelligence officer with a doctorate in political science. He and Tim had served together in Vietnam as young Phoenix operatives, and Martinius had gone on to build an impressive career with the Agency. Tim, trusting him as a friend, made an exception to his rule of total secrecy about his mission in deciding to get in touch. There was a chance, he thought, that Martinius might have some knowledge concerning investigations of the assassination attempt even though he had not been in Rome at the time. It would be normal for the Station to have kept files on the subject and, as a matter of course, Martinius would be informed of any new developments.

Tim had not explained over the telephone why he wished to see Martinius, and the Station Chief asked no questions. He was not surprised that Tim knew about his current assignment: Agency and ex-Agency people tended to keep track of former colleagues. They had agreed to meet the following evening at the bar suggested by Martinius, and Tim dressed with casual elegance in slacks, a polo shirt, and a sports jacket to fit the surroundings. The two men brought one another up to date on what they had done with their lives after their farewell beer in the Mekong Delta town, and Martinius proposed they keep the tradition alive.

“Birra, prego,”
he told the waiter, then turned to Tim. “So, tell
me, what
are
you doing here?” he inquired. “And what can I do for you?”

“I work on Islamic affairs at the Inter-Religious Dialogue Council over at the Vatican,” Tim replied. “And I thought I'd touch base with some of my old pals. I figured you would be interested in my subject, and it gave me an excuse to call you.”

“Oh, that's right,” Martinius said, taking a swig of his beer. “Islam was the stuff you had been working on before they brought your sorry ass over to 'Nam. I almost forgot. And, yes, we obviously follow Islamic affairs in my shop. There's a lot of Muslim traffic through Rome; we worry about Muslim terrorism, and that sort of thing.”

They chatted awhile about the rise in Islamic fundamentalism, Martinius repeating his concerns about terrorism. Tim saw his opening.

“Well,” he asked, “do you think, for example, that Muslims were really behind the assassination attempt against the pope five years ago? I mean that Turk, Agca Circlic, who's now in prison?”

Martinius put down his beer carefully on the table. His eyes narrowed.

“Tim, my boy, is this a casual question, or what?” he asked.

“No,” the Jesuit said. “I won't lie to you. It's not casual. It's professional. But that's all I can say now about my interest in it.”

The Station Chief lit a long cigar, a Cuban Cojiba, a forbidden pleasure in the United States, where imports of Cuban cigars are banned by the embargo law. “Okay,” he told Tim, blowing smoke. “I understand. What, exactly, do you want to know from me? I'll try to be helpful, but you realize that I, too, am under severe constraints on this one. It's graveyard . . .”

“I was hoping that you could help me make sense out of the attitude of the Agency—and of the U.S. Government—in this matter,” Tim explained. “I find it very confusing, especially after reading the Director's testimony before that Senate committee last year.”

*  *  *

Tim was referring to rather startling documents: the transcript of the CIA director's answers to questions at a Senate committee hearing on terrorism and the Agency's internal reports on the
assassination attempt. The Apostolic Nunciature in Washington had secured the whole set of documents, forwarding it to Saint-Ange's office. Angela forwarded it to Tim at Villa Malta by motorcycle courier.

To Tim's trained eye, the CIA's overall performance in tracking down the attack on Gregory XVII was immensely disconcerting and disturbing. The accepted view in the White House and the public opinion in general was that Circlic had simply been an instrument of a Soviet-Bulgarian conspiracy to kill the pope because of his very active and effective support of dissident movements in Eastern Europe, much more so than support given by any previous popes, anticommunist as they all fervently were. This was particularly true and successful in overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Poland. But while the CIA seemed not to subscribe to the Soviet-Bulgarian scenario, it appeared to have none of its own and, indeed, acted in the most inexplicably detached and unprofessional manner.

And, of course, Tim was stunned to discover that the Agency had no opinion of its own on whether the assailant had acted alone or as part of a wider conspiracy—a running controversy among investigators everywhere. It was the eternal question, Tim kept repeating to himself, just like the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations. Did John Wilkes Booth act alone? Did Lee Harvey Oswald almost one hundred years later? And did Agca Circlic nearly twenty years after that?

As for the CIA, which
always
had opinions on virtually everything, it was as caught up in the controversy as all the other players, Tim realized, but in a very strange way. Thus the Italian court that had found Circlic guilty and sentenced him to life in prison, had concluded in its fifty-one-page Statement of Motivation that “it was unthinkable” that the Turk “could have undertaken this difficult project in absolute autonomy.” But the CIA Director informed the Senate committee that Circlic was “a known crazy . . . too unstable to be included in an assassination plot, let alone be trusted to do the shooting.” The Director also testified in executive session that in the CIA's opinion the Soviets “were not so insane as to organize a plot to kill the pope, knowing full well that an assassination would almost certainly lead to uncontrollable popular explosions throughout Eastern Europe, notably in
Poland, and destroy their relations with us and everybody else. They could not have risked being caught red-handed. . . .”

Why was the CIA insisting, in effect, that the Turk had acted entirely on his own? Tim knew that in almost every instance the Agency's views and conclusions were linked to political considerations at home and abroad. So why was it taking this stance now? Tim had also found totally incomprehensible the Senate testimony by a senior Agency official that “in the first several years after the attempted assassination, CIA moved very awkwardly and slowly in trying to deal with the problem” and that “at least at the outset, it was due to a mindset that accepted the idea that a lone gunman was responsible.” He read with growing disbelief that “while the inconsistencies in Circlic's accounts and the shortcomings of the evidence do not lend conclusive support to a Bulgarian-Soviet conspiracy theory,” the CIA's own investigations “reveal some serious shortcomings.” The internal critique stressed that “in the absence of evidence, [the CIA's] production was hamstrung, mindsets replaced evidence, and the issue became increasingly polarized.”

Next, Tim learned that the CIA's “upper management had strong and in some cases conflicting views on the issue” and that “analysts and managers were reluctant to investigate alternative scenarios.” And he discovered from the documents that a “knee-jerk approach was at least partly responsible for the spotty quality of current intelligence coverage of this subject.” Tim was accustomed to battles within the Agency when National Intelligence Estimates, the NIEs, were being drafted—and the clash of views was often healthy—but this was pure insanity.

*  *  *

“What am I to make of all this?” he asked Martinius after summing up the reports he had read and the nagging questions they had raised.

“I am familiar with the material,” Martinius said quietly. “I was briefed at Langley before I left for Rome. But there isn't a hell of a lot I can tell you. The fact is that I don't know the truth and I'm not sure that
anybody
on our side knows it. I'll tell you one thing for sure: in my opinion, my personal opinion, mind you,
nobody
really wants to find out what happened.
Nobody
wants to know
the truth.
Nobody
wants to touch it. And this is a tip from your old buddy. . . .”

Tim sat petrified, staring at Martinius.

“What do you mean ‘
nobody
' wants to know the truth? How's that possible?” he asked incredulously.

“It means, in
my
opinion, that everybody who matters in this affair has concluded that knowledge of certain events is more dangerous than ignorance,” the Station Chief said softly. “You see, Tim, if you discover the truth, whatever it may be, and this truth becomes widely known, you have to do something about it. And chances are that you are not really served by doing ‘something' because it could lead to disaster . . . like a nuclear war . . . or whatever. . . .”

“Okay, okay,” Tim said, “you are telling me that if, for example, it could be proven that Moscow was behind the assassination attempt because Bulgarian intelligence types were spotted near the scene, the United States would have to do something drastic about them? Like the nuclear war you just mentioned? And that the U.S. obviously was not prepared to launch a war over the life or death of Gregory XVII and that the crowd at the White House don't want it either?”