God's Spy, Page 2

  A noise was heard from the other side of the door, and the Vatican’s head of security, Camilo Cirin, walked into the room at the head of the three cardinals who had the task of certifying the pope’s death. Worry and lack of sleep were etched on their faces as the three men in their red robes drew close to the bed.

  “Let’s get started,” said Samalo.

  Dwisicz held a small, open case at Samalo’s side. The chamberlain lifted the white veil that covered the face of the deceased, and opened a tiny phial containing holy oils. He began the age-old ritual in Latin.

  “Si vives, ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis, in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spritius Sancti. Amen. If you are alive, I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  Samalo made the sign of the cross over the deceased’s forehead and continued.

  “Per istam sanctam Unctionem, indulgeat tibi Dominum a quidquid. Amen. With this sacred oil, God forgives you the sins you have committed. Amen.”

  With a solemn gesture, he invoked the apostolic benediction.

  “By the power which the Holy See has placed in me, I hereby grant you full forgiveness for and remission of all sins, and I bless you. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  With the chamberlain holding the case open, he took a silver hammer out. Three times he tapped the forehead of the deceased man, each time gently, and each time asking, “Karol Wojtyla, are you alive?”

  There was no response. The chamberlain looked at the three cardinals who stood by the bed, all of whom nodded.

  “The pope is dead. There is no doubt.”

  With his left hand, Samalo removed the fisherman’s ring, the symbol of his authority in this world, from the dead man’s right hand. Using his right hand, he once again shrouded the face of John Paul II with the veil. He took a deep breath, and looked at his three companions.

  “We have a lot of work ahead of us.”

  CHURCH OF SANTA MARIA IN TRASPONTINA

  Via della Conciliazione, 14 Tuesday, April 5, 2005, 10:41 A.M.

  Inspector Paola Dicanti closed her eyes briefly and waited until they were accustomed to the darkness as she stood in the entrance to the building.

  It had taken her almost half an hour to get to the scene of the crime. If Rome is always a vehicular chaos, after the Holy Father’s death it was transformed into an auto inferno. Thousands were arriving every day in the capital of Christendom to bid their last farewell to the body lying in state in Saint Peter’s Basilica. This pope had gone to the next world with the fame of a saint, and there were already volunteers moving around the streets collecting signatures to begin the process of beatification. Every hour, eighteen thousand people passed in front of his mortal remains. “A smashing success for forensic medicine,” Paola commented to herself ironically.

  Her mother had warned her, before she left the apartment they shared on the Via della Croce.

  “It will take too long if you go by Cavour. Go up Regina Margherita and down Rienzo,” she said as she stirred the semolina porridge she was cooking for her daughter, just as she had done every morning for thirty-three years.

  So Paola had of course gone by Cavour, and had lost a good deal of time.

  The taste of semolina lingered in her mouth. It was always the first thing she would eat in the morning. During the year she spent studying at FBI headquarters in Quantico, Virginia, she had missed it so badly it almost became an obsession. She ended up asking her mother to send her a big box of the porridge, which she heated in the microwave in the Behavioral Sciences Division’s dining area. The taste wasn’t the same, but its presence made it easier to be far from home during a year that was both so difficult and so rewarding. Paola had grown up two steps from Via Condotti, one of the most exclusive streets in the world, but her family was poor. She never even knew the meaning of the word until she went to the United States, a country with its own measure for everything. She was overjoyed to return to the city she had hated so fervently when she was growing up.

  In Italy, the Department for the Analysis of Violent Crime (the UACV, or Unità per l’Analisi del Crimine Violento) was created in 1995, with a specific focus on serial killers. It seems incredible that at such a late date the country that ranked fifth in the world in the number of psychopaths lacked a unit organized to track them down. Inside the UACV there was a special department known as the Laboratory for Behavioral Analysis (LAC, or Laboratorio per l’Analisi del Comportamento) founded by Giovanni Balta, Dicanti’s teacher and mentor. Balta died at the beginning of 2004 after a sudden and massive heart attack, at which time Dottoressa Dicanti became IspettoreDicanti, the head of the LAC’s Rome office. Her FBI training and Balta’s excellent reviews were her references. Upon her supervisor’s death, LAC found its personnel drastically reduced: Paola became the entire staff. Even so, the department was part of the UACV, and they were able to count on technical support from one of the most advanced forensic units in Europe.

  Nevertheless, as of that moment, they had yet to solve a single case. In Italy there were thirty serial assassins running around free, unidentified. Of these, nine cases were considered “hot” since they were connected to the most recent deaths on record. No new bodies had turned up since Dicanti became head of LAC, and the absence of definitive evidence increased the pressure, so that her psychological profiles became at times the only thing available to lead the police to a suspect. “Castles in the air,” Carlo Troi called them. Troi was a physicist and mathematician by training, a man who spent more time on the phone than in the laboratory. Unfortunately, Troi was UACV’s director and Paola’s immediate boss, and every time they passed in the hall he gave her a sarcastic look. “My pretty little novelist” was his nickname for her when they were alone in his office: a mocking allusion to the abundant imagination in Dicanti’s profiles.

  Paola was desperately hoping her work would begin to bear fruit, just so she could stick it in her boss’s face. He was an old goat, and she had made the mistake of giving in and sleeping with him one night. The long hours of work were piling up, her guard was down, her heart was overwhelmed by an emptiness with no name . . . and then came the time-honored, morning-after regrets. Especially when she reminded herself that Troi was married and nearly twice her age. He had been a gentleman, hadn’t gone on about the subject at length, and was careful to keep his distance, but he never let Paola forget it either, hinting at it with phrases halfway between sexist and charming. God, how she hated the man.

  And now finally, for the first time since her promotion, she had a case she could tackle from the outset, one where she wouldn’t have to work with shoddy evidence gathered by dimwitted agents. She had taken the call in the middle of breakfast, and immediately hurried into her room to change. She combed her long, dark hair, tied it up in a bun, put away the pants and jersey she was going to wear to the office, took out an elegant suit with black jacket. She was intrigued: the call had not supplied a single detail, except that a crime had been committed that fell within her expertise, and they summoned her to Santa Maria in Traspontina “with utmost urgency.”

  And there she stood in the doorway of the church. Behind her, a surging mass of people milled about in a line that stretched for almost two and a half miles, coming to an end just short of the Vittorio Emanuele II Bridge. Paola looked worriedly out over the scene. The people had spent all night on line, but those who might have seen something were already far away. The pilgrims glanced in passing at the discreet pair of carabinieri standing at the entrance to the church. The police diplomatically assured the occasional group of believers that the building was undergoing repairs.

  Paola took a deep breath and crossed the threshold of the darkened church. The church had one nave, with five chapels on either side, and the air inside was full of ancient, musty incense. The lights in the church were dimmed, no doubt because that is how it had been when the body was discovered. It was one of Troi’s mottos: “Let’s see it the
way he did.”

  She looked around, her eyes trying to pick things out in the darkness. Two men conversed in low tones in the rear of the church, their backs to her. A Carmelite friar, nervously saying the rosary at the foot of the baptismal font, stared at her as she surveyed the scene.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it, signorina? It dates from 1566. Constructed by Peruzzi, its chapels . . .”

  Dicanti interrupted him, without losing her smile.

  “I am afraid I have no interest in art at right this moment. I’m Inspector Dicanti. Are you the parish priest?”

  “Indeed. I was the one who discovered the body. I’m sure that’s of more interest to you. Blessed is the Lord in days such as these. . . . A saint departs and leaves us with devils in his stead!”

  The Carmelite looked very old. He wore tortoiseshell glasses with thick lenses, and the traditional brown habit, with a large scapular knotted at the waist; a thick white beard covered his face. He took several steps around the small fountain, enough for her to see that he was hunched over and limping slightly. His hands nervously thumbed his prayer beads, shaking uncontrollably at odd moments.

  “Calm down. What is your name?”

  “Francesco Toma, Ispettore.”

  “Tell me in your own words what took place today. I know you’ve gone through it six or seven times already, but it can’t be helped. Take my word for it.”

  The friar exhaled.

  “There’s not much to tell. In addition to the parish, I am charged with care of the church. I live in a small room behind the sacristy. I woke up as I do every day, at six in the morning, washed my face, put on my robes. I crossed the sacristy, and entered the church through a hidden door at the foot of the large altar. I went to the chapel of our Lady of Carmen, where I say my prayers every day. I noticed that there were candles burning in front of the chapel of Saint Thomas, yet when I went back to my room they had all gone out. That’s when I saw it. I started running towards the sacristy, scared to death because at that point the killer could still be in the church. I called 113.”

  “You touched nothing in the crime scene?”

  “No. Nothing. I was frightened out of my wits, may God forgive me.”

  “And you didn’t try to help the victim?”

  “He was clearly beyond any sort of earthly help.”

  A figure moved toward them down the main aisle of the church. It was Detective Maurizio Pontiero, from the UACV.

  “Dicanti, hurry up. They’re going to turn on the lights.”

  “Just a second. Take this. It’s my card. My mobile phone number is at the bottom. Call me anytime if you remember anything else.”

  “I will. Here’s a gift for you.”

  The Carmelite handed her a small, brightly colored card.

  “Santa Maria del Carmen. Take it with you wherever you go. It will help you find the right road in these uncertain times.”

  “Thank you.” Dicanti accepted the card from the old friar without giving it a second look, and slipped it into the breast pocket of her coat.

  The inspector followed Pontiero through the church to the third chapel on the left, which was cordoned off by the UACV’s classic red-and-white crime scene tape.

  “You got here late,” Pontiero said, reproaching her.

  “The traffic was murder. It’s a big circus out there.”

  “You should have taken Rienzo.”

  Even if, in the hierarchy of Italian police, Dicanti occupied a higher rung than Pontiero, he was the agent in charge of UACV Field Investigations, and for that reason he outranked any laboratory researcher, even someone like Paola, who was the head of her department. Pontiero was fifty-one years old, trim and hot tempered. His face, which resembled an old raisin, wore a perennial frown. It was quite clear to Paola that Pontiero adored her, but he took care not to show it.

  Dicanti was about to cross the line when Pontiero’s arm shot up to stop her.

  “Hang on a second, Paola. Nothing you have ever seen will prepare you for this. It’s absolutely demented, I promise you.” His voice was trembling.

  “I’m sure I’ll know how to handle it, Pontiero. But thanks.”

  She walked into the chapel. A technician from the UACV had arrived before her, taking photographs. At the rear of the chapel, against the wall, was a small altar adorned with a painting of Saint Thomas at the moment he pressed his fingers into Jesus’s wounds.

  The body sat underneath.

  “Holy Mother of God.”

  “I warned you.”

  It was a spectacle straight out of Dante. The dead man leaned against the altar. His eyes had been torn out, leaving in their place two gaping wounds the color of dried blood. From the mouth, left wide open in a horrendous, grotesque grimace, hung a grayish brown object. In the sudden flash of a camera bulb, Dicanti saw the worst: the victim’s hands had been severed and were resting one on top of the other near his body. Cleansed of any bloodstains, they sat together on a strip of white linen. One of the hands was adorned with an unusually large ring.

  The dead man wore the black robes with the red sash and piping of the cardinals.

  Paola’s eyes widened.

  “Pontiero, tell me it’s not a cardinal.”

  “We don’t know, Dicanti. We are investigating, although there isn’t much left of the face. We held things up for you so you could take a look at the place and see it the same way the killer did.”

  “Where is the rest of the team from Crime Scene Analysis?”

  The Analysis team were UACV’s big shots. All of them were highly skilled pathologists, specializing in the recovery of traces, prints, hairs, and anything else a criminal might have left behind. They worked according to the rule that in every crime there is an exchange: the killer takes something and he leaves something.

  “They’re on their way. The van is stuck in traffic on Cavour.”

  “They should have gone by Rienzo.” The technician put in his two cents.

  “No one asked for your opinion,” Dicanti snapped back.

  The photographer left the chapel muttering unpleasant things about Paola under his breath.

  “You have got to get that character of yours under control.”

  “Why in God’s name didn’t you call me earlier, Pontiero?” Dicanti asked, completely ignoring the detective’s recommendation. “This is a very serious case. Whoever did this is really sick in the head.”

  “Is that your professional analysis, Dottoressa?”

  Carlo Troi strolled into the chapel, directing one of his mocking glances her way. He was enamored of surprise entrances like that. Paola realized now that he was one of the two men talking with their backs turned in front of the baptismal font when she entered the church; she blamed herself for having let him catch her unprepared. The other man was standing near the director, but he never uttered a word and he didn’t enter the chapel.

  “No. My professional analysis will be on your desk as soon as it’s ready. I simply put forward the observation that, whatever else we might say, the man who committed this crime has a few screws loose.”

  Troi was about to say something, but at just that moment the lights of the church came on. And then all of them saw something that they had missed: written on the floor of the church, close to the body of the dead man, in letters of no great size, was

  “Looks like blood,” Pontiero said, putting into words what everyone was thinking.

  A mobile phone began playing the chords of Handel’s “Hallelujah” Chorus. The three looked at the man who was standing near Troi, and who with great seriousness took the cell phone out of his coat pocket and answered the call. He hardly said a word, little more than a dozen ahas and mmms.

  After he hung up, he looked at Troi and nodded.

  “It’s what we feared,” UACV’s director said. “Dicanti, Pontiero, needless to say, this is a very delicate case. The body we have here is the Argentine cardinal Emilio Robayra. If the assassination of a cardinal in Rome is in and of itself a
n indescribable tragedy, it is that much greater at the present instant. The victim was one of one hundred and fifteen men who in the next few days will participate in the conclave that will choose the next supreme pontiff. The situation is consequently extraordinarily delicate. This crime cannot reach the ears of the press for any reason whatsoever. Imagine the headlines: ‘Serial Killer Stalks the Papal Election.’ I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “One moment, Director. You said a serial killer? Is there something we don’t know?”

  Troi cleared his throat and looked at the mysterious person who had come in with him.

  “Paola Dicanti, Maurizio Pontiero, let me introduce you to Camilo Cirin, inspector general of the Corpo di Vigilanza, the police force in the independent state of Vatican City.”

  Cirin nodded as he stepped closer. When he spoke, he did so with effort, as if he strongly disliked having to use words at all.

  “We believe this man is the second victim.”

  THE SAINT MATTHEW INSTITUTE

  Sachem Pike, Maryland August 1994

  “Come in, Father Karosky, come in. Take your clothes off behind the screen, if you would be so kind.”

  The priest started to remove his cassock. The technician continued to talk to him from the other side of the white screen.

  “No need to worry about the test, Father. It’s the most normal thing in the world, right? Very normal.” The technician laughed under his breath. “Maybe you’ve heard other residents here talking about it, but the lion isn’t as fierce as they make him out to be, as my grandmother used to say. How long have you been with us?”

  “Two weeks.”

  “Time enough to get acquainted with the test, yes, indeed. Played any tennis yet?”

  “I don’t like tennis. Can I leave now?”

  “No, Father, put on the green nightshirt so you don’t catch cold.” The technician laughed again.