The Day of Atonement Read online

  I might be one of those old men, Bevo thought to himself, if I weren’t here instead. He found the current pope incomprehensible and ludicrous. He wondered how ordinary Romans had felt in the days of the bad Borgia popes, and thought of the many popes in history who had been chased from the city over some obscure point of politics. But Zacharias II seemed on the point of overthrowing everything that mattered. He had called the council now known as Vatican III to address the problem of a moribund church—the pews were empty, the priests dying off, the coffers drying up. Although flourishing in the Southern Hemisphere, the Church had lost its base of wealth in the north.

  But to Bevo’s mind, Zacharias and Vatican III had spun out of control: granting the priesthood to women, letting go of clerical celibacy, liberalizing constraints on abortion and divorce. Gay marriage. But the results were inarguable—in Europe and America, people were flooding back into the Church. Here in Rome, a new kind of energy flowed into the streets whenever Zacharias appeared. There had been a little gust of this sort of thing when Francis was pope, but nothing like this. Now a small knot of women dressed in new black suits with white clerical collars pushed wildly forward, weeping and clutching at their handkerchiefs. Pope Zacharias II had arrived.

  Bevo straightened up and looked at the GeM in his hand. Its screen blazed and its wireless earpiece chattered at him. He gave a few perfunctory orders. The bizarre crowd leaped forward as the Pope descended from the white-and-yellow Popemobile and raised both arms above his head like a prizefighter. Cheering young men waved their intertwined hands. A rotund little woman priest held up her cat to be petted and was nearly pushed over from behind. The Pope reached out, catching her with one hand, touching the cat with the other. The crowd roared.

  These people were mostly thin and young, thought Bevo, so different from what he was used to. It had been twenty years since he had seen really big crowds at events like these. In his early days, the crowds were groups of elderly tourists and diminutive, portly rural women in faded black who came to wave their handkerchiefs at the Pope. It had been a quiet assignment, but it was quiet no longer.

  The Pope moved briskly toward two large white vans that sat in front of the cathedral doors. He mounted the stairs and was fitted with a microphone even before his retinue had settled in around him. A few silky-haired old clerics were there to greet him, along with the Monsignor, the Pope’s ever present young secretary, who had quietly arranged everything and now watched over the crowd with a slight benedictory smile.

  The Pope’s elegant French-tinged voice filled the square, and the crowd applauded. A tall man with electric white hair encircling his cap, Zacharias offered an energetic blessing on the two vans, which were about to leave on some charitable mission. As always the Pope’s gaze was intense and a bit off-center due to an eye injury he received in Nicaragua years before during an anti-government demonstration. Bevo paid no attention to any of this. The crowd was his priority. He watched intently, alert to any unusual movement, listening hard to reports over his GeM earpiece.

  After a few words—this Pope was noted for short speeches—he shook hands with the van drivers and bustled up to greet the crowd. People pushed forward, straining to touch him, to catch a look from his clear brown eyes, but he dashed on to his next task with his retinue speeding along behind him.

  Bevo followed as the little party, the pope all in white and his attendants in black, crossed the square through a corridor of yellow caution tape. Suddenly, Bevo was worried. There was that faint iron taste of adrenaline in his mouth that told him something might be awry.

  The morning had started cold, but it was warming between waves of frigid wind, and he could now see his own men at every corner of the square, mixed into the crowd along with sober agents from the Vatican. They were like little immovable black stones in a flood of colored water, among the Gypsies in dirty red anoraks, idling Arab men in dusty sweaters, university students carrying rainbow banners to counter the modest banners of the protesters, and as usual lots of women. But they were unlike the women Bevo was used to. They were alarming, loud, energetic, and mostly foreign. Many were in clerical dress.

  “Women priests!” Bevo muttered, but then snapped around at the sound of a voice in his earpiece. It was just one of his men checking in. He sighed nervously—a tidal wave of people was flowing around the great obelisk at the center of the piazza and toward the pink-and-white Palazzo Fontana, where the next ceremony of the morning would take place. Bevo would not relax until the Pope had carried out his little drama and was safely inside that building.

  The Papal Party had arrived at the line of black-uniformed guards who stood security outside the palace. They looked fishlike in their tight black helmets and visors. Bevo walked to a point where he could see clearly into the entrance. He spoke a few words into his mouthpiece and saw the guards come to attention, open the line, and close it again around the party. The crowd cheered as the Pope knelt in the vestibule of the palace.

  Just beyond the vestibule was a wide staircase, which the Pope began to climb on his knees. These were the Sacred Stairs by which Jesus had entered the palace of Pilate on the day of his crucifixion. Saint Helena had brought them to Rome from Jerusalem in the fourth century, and since then countless pilgrims had climbed the staircase on their knees as an act of piety. It was said that the bloodstains of Christ could still be seen on the marble. Every year of his papacy on his election anniversary, the Feast of the Guardian Angels, this pope had climbed the stairs in this way. At the top of the staircase, Bevo knew, was the ancient private chapel of the popes of Rome, used only at Easter and a few other feasts. Today the Pope would celebrate his morning mass privately in this most holy of chapels after following on his knees in the footsteps of Christ.

  Bevo watched the guards to make sure they were alert. A couple of them seemed distracted. He snapped his fingers in the air as he walked toward them, and they stiffened to attention. He wanted as many eyes as possible on this mob.

  The Pope climbed resolutely up the stairs, his private secretary close behind him. He stopped briefly at each step and referred to a prayer book the Monsignor held for him. Bevo knew that there were twenty-eight stairs and that it would be roughly half an hour before the Pope was safely inside the chapel. The crowd was now subdued; there was a sound like a river as many prayed quietly, and the banners overhead could be heard waving in the wind.

  At last the Pope arrived at the top. He turned around, tall and white-robed in the shadow under the archway over the stairs, and raised his hands in benediction just beneath the stormy fresco of the Crucifixion that marked the portal of the chapel. The crowd broke into applause—even the protesters were clapping—and the Monsignor preceded the Pope through the grillwork of the gate. Bevo breathed with relief but ordered his men to stay alert. The Pope would descend again after he said his private mass.

  The crowd began to shrink as most of the curiosity seekers passed on or went back to work, but many would stay until the Pope reappeared. Bevo relaxed and lit a cigarette as the Vatican chief in his nondescript dark suit walked over to greet him. While they exchanged pleasantries they never took their eyes off the people in the square, most of whom were gazing up at the Sacred Stairs and waiting. The peculiar menace of these new worshipers discomfited both men, but as the hour wore on they relaxed a little. Then suddenly a flock of startled birds fled the palazzo.

  Bevo would relive the next moment for the rest of his life.

  There was a catch in a thousand throats; Bevo whirled around and stared unbelieving as the gate at the top of the staircase opened and the Pope stumbled out, his white cassock a river of blood. “Au secours!” he cried. “Help me!” and then fell headfirst down the steps.

  Interpol Headquarters, Lyons, France, 1030h

  “The Pope has been assassinated.”

  The sentence ran in six languages quickly around the meeting room. David Kane, the secretary-general of Int
erpol, turned to speak to the aide who had brought the news. They conferred for a moment.

  “We need to verify this,” he said, and walked quickly out of the meeting. The aide followed him. In the room behind him, a big flatscreen came on.

  Kane, a tall, well-built man with white hair cropped in a style a quarter of a century old, moved with the stride of the commando soldier he had once been. His aide filled him in as they walked to Kane’s office. “The Pope was conducting a ceremony at the church of the Lateran. At first glance, it appears to be a murder-suicide. His private secretary shot him and then himself.”

  Kane pulled off his suit coat, removed his GeM from the pocket, and touched the screen almost in one swift movement. A bright panel inlaid in the wall flared on, fixed on the backs of hundreds of heads and a virtually still picture of the pinkish façade of a Roman building. At a distance, there was the minute and frantic motion of the emergency workers. Kane whispered as he read the stark text running across the screen and mentally translated: “Pope Zacharias II assassinated in Rome.” He crossed himself and breathed out what was almost a whistle.

  “Get the Vatican police on the line. Offer them whatever assistance they need. Also Interpol Rome,” he said to the aide, who turned away immediately and began talking quietly into his headset.

  Kane spoke a single number into his GeM, adjusted his earpiece, and his intelligence chief picked up. “What do you have on the Pope?” Kane asked without preliminaries.

  The usually smooth voice in his ear sounded edgy. “We know what’s on the emergency band. The Pope was saying his private daily mass inside a chapel in the Lateran square. He was alone except for his private secretary…Monsignor Chandos. Apparently Chandos had a gun, went berserk, shot the Pope and then himself. The Pope was dead on the scene, and so is the shooter.”

  “Why ‘berserk’? Who says that?”

  “There was some damage to the interior of the chapel. We don’t have details.”

  “I want everything you have on this Chandos. Who’s in charge there?”

  “The Vatican have jurisdiction in this particular building. But the Rome police and the Ministry of Justice are on it as well.”

  “So they think this one man is responsible?”

  “No one is suggesting otherwise.”

  “Okay. Keep me informed.” Kane stood up, thought for a moment, and then put his suit coat back on.

  “There’s nothing to do for it now. But I should go back and adjourn that meeting,” he said to no one in particular. He left the office and walked thoughtfully back to the meeting room, the aide following mechanically along. No one was sitting; everyone stood, eyes fixed on the video screen though nothing could be seen but a shifting, silent crowd and officials moving in and out of a dark archway. A French voiceover babbled along, repeating the same basic facts over and over. The people in the room, all powerful people, looked on helplessly.

  Kane cleared his throat and spoke up. “We should adjourn the meeting. You’ll all want to check in with your people, I suppose.”

  There were whispers of acknowledgment, but no one left the room. Everyone focused on the useless picture on the wall panel. At length, the commander of the Royal Thai police shook his head and motioned to his aides to follow him; he touched Kane’s arm and left. Then others shuffled out of the room: the head of the Russian Interpol office, the governor of the Turkish police, the UK deputy Home Secretary, who muttered, “This is hard.”

  The picture on the wall did not waver. Still nothing but the pink façade and a crowd of hypnotized people. This was the frustration of cataclysm, Kane thought. He remembered staring fixated at television screens when the American space shuttles went down and when the Twin Towers were destroyed in 2001—when he and the rest of the world were forced to contemplate for hours a picture empty of information just when they thirsted the most for it. He hated this waiting.

  He sat down and began racing through the satellite channels, all bursting with a sea of worthless commentary. They all showed the same scene. Finally he arrived at an English language channel, where a young reporter was telling the story again, her sculptured fashion model’s face unaccustomed to communicating this kind of news.

  “Pope Zacharias the Second has been assassinated,” she announced in an angular Italian accent. “He was in the midst of prayer when he died on the Holy Stairs here in Piazza San Giovanni at ten o’clock this morning.” Video then showed the Pope climbing the steps with his secretary close behind. “The Pope had just ascended the Holy Stairs on his knees, a ritual he observed twice a year, once on Easter, and once on this day, which for Catholics is the Feast of Guardian Angels and the anniversary of his accession. He had only moments before blessed a shipment of goods to be sent abroad for humanitarian purposes.”

  “According to eyewitness reports, a few minutes after entering the chapel at the top of the Holy Stairs, the Pope came out apparently wounded.” The reporter gestured at the building behind her. “He fell partway down these stairs. An ambulance helicopter arrived within minutes to transport him to hospital. We have now received confirmation from the authorities at the Vatican that the Pope has died.”

  An urgent question from some network person. “And the alleged assassin?”

  “We know at this point that the Pope’s private secretary, Monsignor Peter Chandos, was found dead on the floor in the chapel, the victim of what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Apparently, no one else had access to the chapel during the ceremonies. Authorities here are in shock, of course. We are told that Monsignor Chandos was a close confidant of the Pope.”

  “What do we know about Monsignor Chandos?”

  “The Vatican have declined any comment to this point, except to say that the Pope and the Monsignor are both dead and that all are shocked at these acts of violence.”

  Kane clicked impatiently through the channels again. Each was fixed on Rome from a different touristic angle—the dome of St. Peter’s, the façade of St. John Lateran, the obelisk in the piazza, and of course the Holy Stairs—with voiceover accounts in a dozen languages. Thousands were collecting, praying in St. Peter’s Square. Now there was audible anguish from the crowd at the Lateran. Finally he had made the circuit of channels and settled back on the BBC.

  “…the most controversial pope in decades, perhaps in centuries, Zacharias stirred powerful feelings within and without the Roman Catholic Church.” A grizzled Scottish anchorwoman in London had taken over from the young reporter. “With his call for radical reforms that have gone well beyond the mandates of Vatican II in the 1960s, he has awakened an entire generation to what many call a new kind of inclusive Christianity and others call heresy.”

  “Excuse me,” came the Italian reporter’s voice again. The picture changed abruptly, focusing on a boxy black vehicle at the foot of the Holy Stairs. “We have new developments here in the Piazza San Giovanni. Another ambulance has arrived, we assume to remove the body of the Pope’s private secretary…”—she hesitated over a small piece of paper—“Monsignor Peter Chandos, who apparently has been found dead in the Pope’s private chapel. Initial reports indicate that Monsignor Chandos was found with a pistol in his hand and that he has apparently shot himself to death. I emphasize that none of these reports have been verified, but we received that information about half an hour ago from the principal police authority at the scene.”

  Kane leaned forward. The Roman policeman’s report was being replayed. The caption read “Antonio Bevo, Rome Constabulary.”

  Bevo’s face looked frozen. He was obviously mortified and frightened, too, thought Kane. He knew exactly what the man was feeling—a long, steady career had just run violently aground. Bevo was fighting animatedly for words over the crush of reporters’ questions, while the translator’s voiceover was flat, emotionless.

  “The Pope was shot within a few minutes of entering the chapel. What happened in the chapel
no one knows. No witnesses were present. He was accompanied inside by Monsignor Chandos, his personal secretary…no one else. The Monsignor was also shot and a weapon recovered.”

  There was a tide of questions. “Yes, yes. The weapon was found in the Monsignor’s hand. We do not know why. We have no answers at this point. The possibility of murder-suicide is strong.” Bevo looked suddenly stricken, realizing he had said more than he intended. “Thank you.” He muttered and turned away abruptly.

  “Toppled by a lightning stroke,” thought Kane.

  After this came a flotsam of eyewitness interviews. An elderly female priest, a man in a filthy coat, a bankerly businessman who happened to be passing through the square and seemed exceptionally pleased to have seen the whole thing. Finding the accents tough going, Kane muted the television and read the captions racing across the screen. The Pope had called out, he had fallen immediately, he had stumbled forward, such a man of God, such a saint, his blood now mingles with the Lord’s on the Holy Stairs. Who could have done this? Terrorists?

  Kane sighed and smiled ruefully. The terrorists. He had fought them all his life but had never made an inch of headway. He looked around at the electronic wallboards covered with scenarios, contingency plans, what to do if they came from this angle, from that angle. The situation map that covered an entire wall indicated threats to the peace by fluorescent arrows that faded and reappeared somewhere else moment by moment. Most of the arrows radiated from a single small portion of the globe—the Middle East.

  It was like an angry red spot on the map, like the bloody storm on the planet Jupiter. Long before, as a child, Kane had feared the Soviets with their atomic bombs; now he feared the implacable jihad that worsened every year, making endless, unpredictable stabs at the heart of the world. Lethal gassings, hostage beheadings, more and more sophisticated suicide bombings in totally unanticipated places—a school in Wales, a convention of dairy producers in Belgium, a dance club in São Paulo. As he watched the map, a new arrow appeared, pulsing right at the heart of Rome. The great stylized sword that pierced the globe from pole to pole was his organization’s symbol: to him that sword seemed locked uselessly in its sheath.