To Kill the Pope (44 page)

“Why, then, don't I leave this to you,” the monsignor said. “You are
the
pro . . .”

“You can count on it, dear cousin,” Georges promised him.

*  *  *

Late in the afternoon on Thursday, Gregory XVII called Sainte-Ange over their private line to ask him to come to his study.

“Romain,” the pope said in a tired, sad voice, “I am very disturbed by a series of recent events and I hope you can help me with some explanations.”

“Of course, Holy Father,” the monsignor replied with a sense of doom.

“I was very shocked by the death of Archbishop Leduc,” Gregory XVII told him. “He sinned by leading his people into schism. He caused a lot of damage. But I always had a certain respect for him because he had his own sense of integrity, I thought, even while performing or ordering evil deeds. Like trying to kill me . . .”

Sainte-Ange froze.

“Kill you, Holy Father? Leduc? I don't understand . . .”

“You see, my dear Romain, a secret letter from Archbishop Leduc was delivered to me—I prefer not to say by whom—yesterday morning, just about the time he was being murdered in Fanjeaux. It was a stunning letter. He wrote that since I was to learn the truth anyway, very soon, from the American Jesuit, including the fact that he had tried to have him killed because the American had discovered everything about the conspiracy, he wished to tell me that truth himself . . . And now I must wonder whether his death really was an accident . . .”

The monsignor was silent, breathing heavily.

“Leduc wrote that he had organized the conspiracy against me,” Gregory XVII went on, “because, in his opinion, I was destroying the Church by implementing the reforms of the Vatican Council and therefore he believed he had a divine mandate to conduct a crusade, a war, against me. Because it was a ‘just war,' he wrote, this justified assassinating me. He added, rather curiously, that theology and politics often blend.”

“He was a madman, a criminal madman!” Saint-Ange cried.

“Perhaps, perhaps,” the pope said. “Maybe he was a holy fool, as one used to say, maybe a heretic. But he begged my forgiveness and, I, of course, was prepared to forgive him—as I've foregiven Agca Circlic. But there is one thing I fail to comprehend.”

“Which thing, Holy Father?” Sainte-Ange asked. He was feeling weak.

“When you received the warning from de Marenches that a plot against me was being hatched in France,” the pope said, “you informed me about it. On your recommendation, we decided to ignore it. The reason you gave and I accepted was that any extravagant precautions might suggest that the pope is afraid of his own flock. You thought that de Marenches' warning might be leaked to the press—we've already discussed some of it the other day.”

“That is correct, Holy Father,” the private secretary agreed. “I was doing what I always do—trying to protect you in every way.”

“But, Romain, you did not tell me that the Archbishop was the head of the conspiracy,” Gregory XVII continued. “Leduc wrote me he had subsequently learned of de Marenches' warning from friends in the SDECE—you have a cousin running it, don't you?—and he wrote that it had identified him as the inspiration behind the conspiracy. Why did you keep this from me?”

Sainte-Ange looked away from the pope, staring at a painting of Our Lady of Fátima on the far wall of the study. He coughed, began to speak, halted, and started again.

“There was only one reason,” he said very quietly, “and the reason was that I was determined to prevent a complete and final split within the Church of France. I know how kind and understanding you are, Holy Father, but I felt we couldn't risk a violent reaction from you against Leduc if I had told you everything about de Marenches' warning. I feared, for example, that you would denounce him publicly before I could dissuade you . . .”

“Romain, you are my friend and helper, but you are not my brother's keeper,” Gregory XVII told him severely. “It was not for you to make judgments in my place. You seem to have developed such a proclivity . . . as, for example, you convinced me last week not to receive the American Jesuit and hear his report on the investigation that I had demanded in the first place. Now I see that if I had heard the truth from the American, Leduc might be
alive today and the scandal over his assassination would not be spreading across France. You surely realize that nobody believes it was an accident. You have caused the Church—and France and me—grievous damage, Romain . . .”

“But I tried to do everything right,” Sainte-Ange said pleadingly. “To protect you. I went to see Leduc—yes, behind your back—after the shooting on May thirteenth to beg him not to attempt another attack against you. He wouldn't promise me . . . So I had to engage in damage control, to make sure that nobody knew about the conspiracy. With the help of my SDECE cousin, we caused de Marenches' ‘mysterious death' and the shooting of his top aide, a colonel. The secret had to be protected, I thought, at all costs. When you demanded the investigation, I carefully chose someone who appeared to be highly qualified in intelligence and Islam—I was pushing the ‘Muslim Connection' to conceal Leduc's role—but who, not knowing France, was unlikely to come up with much. In short, I had hoped that the ‘Muslim Connection' track would be accepted once and for all and bury forever the Leduc secret . . . Oh, God, I was so frightfully wrong! I wish I were dead! . . .”

Gregory XVII rose from behind his desk.

“I wish to celebrate at the Basilica tomorrow a Solemn High Pontifical Mass in memory of Archbishop Leduc,” he said. “It will, of course, be Mass according to the Tridentine Rite—in Latin.”

*  *  *

“Monsignor Sainte-Ange died suddenly this morning, right after the pope celebrated a solemn Mass—a Tridentine Mass—in memory of Archbishop Leduc,” Angela told Tim Savage. “It was a heart attack or, at least, that's what the pope's personal physician said to us. He is such a loyal man and would not countenance even the thought of mortal sin on the Monsignor's part. Sainte-Ange was found in his chair behind his desk in his office. There will be no autopsy, on orders from the Holy Father, and the burial in hallowed ground is tomorrow. I guess it was God's will to wind up matters in this fashion.”

Angela had telephoned Tim at Villa Malta from the Vatican, and they talked briefly about the monsignor.

“Yes,” he said, “and I think that the Holy Father is no longer in danger. The conspiracy, too, is dead now that Leduc is gone—and
I hope the pope's next private secretary is wiser when it comes to protecting him.”

“So, I guess all that's left is us,” Angela told Tim. “I've lost my employer and my job. The new private secretary will select his own staff, and I no longer wish to be part of it. Now I have to think about my future. And I was hoping that we might think together. Does that appeal to you?”

“I think it's the greatest idea I've heard in all my life,” Tim announced with boundless enthusiasm. “It's
our
future we must think about. And, you know, I realized that this phase of life had ended for me when my mother telephoned me from Washington yesterday with the news that Father Hugh Morgan, my great friend and mentor, had died from cancer; he had been ill for a long time . . . I guess it was a sign from above.”

*  *  *

Tim's next caller was Paul Martinius.

“I thought you'd like to know that Georges de Sainte-Ange has just resigned in Paris as the head of the French intelligence service and has vanished from sight,” he said. “Nobody knows where he is. . . .”

*  *  *

At the Holy See, Pope Gregory XVII chose to maintain public silence about the “full truth” and its aftermath. He began exchanging letters with the mother of Agca Circlic in Turkey, and the Vatican announced its official support for Circlic's petition to the Italian tribunal for clemency and immediate release from prison. It said the pope was praying for the gunman who had nearly killed him.

The Pius V Fraternity named young bishop Charles Laval, who was Leduc's right-hand man, to replace him as its new head, proclaiming that it now had nearly a million members and was determined to carry on the battle to “save” the Church.

“Sic transit gloria mundi
—Thus passes away the glory of this world,” Father Tim Savage, the obscure American Jesuit, said sadly to Sister Angela. “It is time for us to go . . . it is time for a new beginning.”

T
O
K
ILL THE
P
OPE
is a work of fiction.

It is based, however, on real events, facts, and persons: the attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981, its aftermath, and the secret investigation of the conspiracy conducted subsequently at the behest of the Holy See.

The secret investigation was launched after the Italian government and intelligence and law enforcement agencies worldwide had decided not to pursue the matter any further—for complex political reasons. Officially, although the case is closed, the crime remains unsolved nearly twenty years later, and the Turkish terrorist who shot the pope is serving a life prison sentence in Italy.

The Vatican has chosen not to reveal publicly the results of its own secret investigations, which is the main theme of this book. But the truth about the investigation and the assassination attempt against John Paul II is disclosed here for the first time.

The fictional form was adopted for
To Kill the Pope
in order to honor commitments of discretion to my principal sources. Most of the crucial knowledge was acquired in the course of my years of research, in and out of Rome, for my biography of John Paul II, published in 1995. This story could not have been written without the guidance, advice, and encouragement of key individuals I had come to know during that period.

The characters in this novel are often, of necessity, composites of existing persons, although many are pure invention. Certain peripheral facts, including dates and specific events, have been altered, to a greater or lesser extent, for storytelling purposes. All the
dramatis personae
prior to 1950 represent themselves and is faithful to history, as are the events before that date and in the remote past as described herein.

Pope Gregory XVII, of course, does not exist.

Monsignor Romain de Sainte-Ange, the papal private secretary, was wholly created for story plot requirements. No papal secretary in memory has ever behaved in the manner presented in this novel nor has he died in office from a heart attack—nor has he committed suicide. Naturally, all popes have powerful private secretaries.

Father Timothy Savage, the American Jesuit and the central personage in this tale, is a composite figure: he is patterned after the man who conducted the actual secret investigation, though liberties were taken concerning Tim's background. Any similarity between this fictional character and the former Head of the Office for Islam in the Vatican's Council for Interreligious Dialogue, an American Jesuit, Father Thomas Michel, S.J., is entirely coincidental. Placing Savage's office at Via dell'Erba was my invention for storytelling purposes only.

Archbishop Leduc is modeled after a now deceased retired French archbishop. The latter died in 1991, four years after the fictional Archbishop Leduc, apparently from natural causes—not in a highway “accident.” However, all the quotations attributed to Leduc come from the published writings by the role model.

John Paul II was actually attacked by a bayonet-wielding Spanish priest, Juan Fernando Krohn, a member of the real archbishop's Fraternity, at the sanctuary of Our Lady of Fátima, in Portugal, on the first anniversary of the 1981 Vatican assassination attempt. At the same time, all other characters mentioned in the book as members or followers of the Fraternity are imaginary.

Alexandre de Marenches, the late chief of the Service de Documentation Extérieure et Contre-espionage (SDECE), the French equivalent of the CIA, was a real-life figure and the bearer of the warning about the impending assassination attempt against John Paul II. Controversy about the circumstances of his death—heart attack, suicide, or murder—persists in France to this day as a sensitive “cause célèbre.”

Jake Kurtski has never existed: That is why he had to be invented.

The actual secret investigation by the real Tim Savage character was conducted in the early 1990s—for narrative reasons, it occurs
in the novel five years earlier. The Vatican had announced as late as 1999 its official support for clemency and immediate release from Ancona Prison for the Turk who had shot John Paul II on St. Peter's Square. This act follows the Holy See's acceptance of the findings of its own secret inquiry, in effect exonerating the gunman. Shortly afterward, John Paul II announced that he would travel to Fátima on May 13, 2000—the first time in eighteen years. All loose ends now appear to have been tied up.

Much of the basic material in the book is factual. Some of it remains highly classified by the Italian, U.S., and other governments. Most of my substantive knowledge has originated in interviews and conversations at the high Vatican and Rome levels—and sources elsewhere in Europe and the Middle East.

Finally, original textual materials include actual CIA testimony before Senate committees in Washington, the Central Intelligence Agency's internal reports on the 1981 attack on John Paul II, reports by Italian government investigators, findings by Italian investigating magistrates and courts, and by Interpol, and quotations from editorials in
L'Osservatore Romano.
There is even the text of an interview granted to a French newspaper by Alexandre de Marenches shortly before his death. And soon after Pope John Paul I died in 1978 after his monthlong reign,
Civilita Cristiana,
an integrist publication in Rome, charged intriguingly that Church “liberals” had planned to kill him because they “feared” that he would reverse the reforms mandated by the Vatican Council Two.