Shadow of Death

ROME

“Ladies and gentlemen, we will shortly be starting our descent into Rome. The local time is 8:45 a.m.”

Father Koesler stirred in the narrow seat. He glanced at his watch. No, it isn’t, he thought; it’s 2:45 a.m. by my metabolism’s time. He seldom slept in his clothing and didn’t much care for the experience. On top of that, he was convinced he had, as the advertisement so euphemistically phrased it, the worst breath of the day.

“Did you watch the movie?” Koesler turned toward Inspector Koznicki, but not enough so that he would actually breathe in his direction.

“No, I must confess I fell asleep.” Every cell in Koznicki’s body felt constricted.

“Did you see any of it?”

“About the first half-hour. Then, since I could not leave the plane, I fell asleep.”

“Wasn’t it awful?” In an attempt to render his breath acceptable, Koesler swirled orange juice around his mouth.

“If there is an award that is the antithesis of the Oscar, that movie deserves it.”

“You’re absolutely right. We were both actually portrayed in that movie and neither of us could stay awake long enough to see how we did.”

The 707 touched down smoothly and began taxiing toward the terminal.

“For your safety, Captain Kamego requests that you remain seated with your seat belt fastened until he has turned off the seat belt sign. That will be your signal that we have arrived at the gate and that it is safe to move about.”

Koesler peeked around Koznicki. “Yes, I know, Wanda: Now that we’re on the ground we start the most dangerous part of our journey.”

The three chuckled.

“Ladies and gentlemen; our aircraft has now parked at the gate and we will be deplaning through the forward cabin door.”

Koesler lifted himself partially out of his seat. He could see into the first class compartment. Archbishop Boyle was standing, putting on his suit coat. Boyle, his close relatives and some of the more important diocesan personages had enjoyed the precious extra space provided in first class. Koesler envied them their unrumpled clothing and limber limbs.

Everyone passed through the passport check and customs uneventfully.

“By the way, Father, speaking of the ‘dangerous’ drive ahead, would you care to accompany Wanda and me? We are going to take a taxi to the hotel.”

Koesler gave the invitation a few moments’ thought. “Thanks just the same, Inspector, but I’d better take the chartered bus. I told Father Brandon I’d ride into Rome with him and I think he’s already aboard. I’ll see you later at the hotel.”

Brandon, head of the Archdiocesan Department of Education, was, indeed, on the bus. His short fuse was already burning. His furrowed brow resembled lowering clouds.

“Hey, why so glum?” Koesler lowered himself into the seat next to Brandon. “Look at all this sunshine! It’s just a beautiful spring day in sunny Italy.”

Brandon did not reply. He merely and significantly tapped his watch, making sure Koesler could see the dial. It read 3:25. Apparently, Brandon figured it should be self-evident that 3:25 in the morning was no time for banter, no matter how brightly the sun was shining.

Actually, Koesler felt no better about his compressed night than Brandon. Neither had slept well or long. Both wanted nothing more than to reach their hotel and relieve their jet lag with at least a nap.

After the luggage had been stowed aboard, the driver swung into his seat and the bus chugged off reluctantly. The driver said nothing, so it remained unclear whether he spoke English.

Koesler felt Brandon’s body began to slump in the next seat. He glanced over. Brandon’s chin neared his chest. He was falling asleep.

The bus came to a fork in the road. One signboard, pointing left, read Roma. The other, pointing right, read Castel Gondolfo. The bus turned right.

Koesler nudged Brandon.

“Huh?” Brandon mumbled, head slowly coming erect.

“Hey, Stew, this is interesting. We just turned down the road to Castel Gondolfo, the Pope’s summer residence. Isn’t that interesting?”

“Mmmmpf . . .”

Brandon had returned to sleep. Koesler, interest aroused, rubbernecked from his bus seat.

There it was: The entrance to Castel Gondolfo loomed just ahead.

“Hey, Stew, we’re here. It’s Castel Gondolfo!”

“Huh?” Brandon shook his head and peered through the window. If it was important enough to be awakened twice, he might just as well look at it.

“Hey, look at all those armed guards!” Koesler reached across Brandon, pointing.

“Security.”

“Security?”

“Yeah,” Brandon explained. “You know, it was after those attempts on the Pope’s life last year. They beefed up security. You must have heard about it.”

“Well, of course I did. But I had no idea the security was so intense. He must be in residence now. That’s a small army outside the gate. And armed to the teeth! Nobody could get through that.”

“That’s the idea.” Brandon slumped again and tugged the brim of his hat down, trying to shut out the sun.

Because he was napping, Brandon missed the next questionable turn. The bus circled Lake Albano and began transversing the paved layers of roadbed slowly ascending Monte Cavo on the opposite shore from Castel Gondolfo.

Koesler watched mesmerized as the bus drove back and forth, even higher up the mountain. He was convinced he was viewing Castel Gondolfo from every possible vantage. He was also convinced that he was seeing more of the palace than he cared to see. Especially since with each passing moment he longed more and more for a toothbrush, a shower, and a bed.

The bus finally left the mountain and the Castel and drove off. Despite his exhaustion, Koesler was enjoying the beautiful rural scenery and the tree-shaded roads.

Another fork in the road. Another signboard pointing left to Roma; another signboard pointing right to Marino. The bus turned right.

Koesler looked around the bus. No one else seemed to have noticed that while they were theoretically headed for Rome, they were consistently turning away from it. He decided, for the common good, that action was called for.

He rose and approached the driver. It was not an easy jaunt. The bus was swaying like a camel.

“Excuse me.” Koesler tapped the driver’s shoulder. The man gave no indication he was aware of Koesler’s presence. “Excuse me, but aren’t we going the wrong way? I mean, every time we see a road sign pointing toward Rome, we turn in the opposite direction. You see? Aren’t we going the wrong way?”

“No spika.”

“What?”

“No spika.”

“Oh.”

Feeling ineffectual, Koesler returned to his seat. He could not help thinking of the Koznickis’ offer of a taxi into Rome. They probably were comfortably asleep by now. He, too, could have been. But no, he had to accompany Father Brandon—who, like the Koznickis, was off in dreamland.

Up ahead was another fork. Koesler wondered if he dared hope for an end to this odyssey.

The sign pointing left read, Roma. The sign pointing right read, Grottaferrata. The bus turned right.

If he had not known better, Koesler would have sworn they were being shanghaied. Although recent news events made it not inconceivable that the Red Brigade—no, he shook his head; it couldn’t be. In any event, they might just as well be being shanghaied. They were captives on a bus in a foreign land traveling in the opposite direction from their destination, with a driver who could not—or would not—speak English.

The bus rolled slowly into a village so picturesque it almost seemed to be a picture postcard come to life.

They circled the town’s piazza, then slowly jolted to a stop near a curb. The driver turned off the engine, pulled on the emergency brake, opened the doors, stood, walked down the steps, halted outside the door, and lit a cigarette.

“What? What?” Father Brandon adjusted his hat and rubbed his eyes. “Where are we? Are we here?”

“In a manner of speaking, I guess you could say so,” Koesler replied.

“Where are we?” A sense of panic began intruding on Brandon’s consciousness. “This isn’t Rome!”

“No. If I had a free guess, I would say this is the lovely village of Grottaferrata. At least that’s what the latest road sign indicated.”

“Grottawhat? What’s the meaning of this? We’re supposed to be in Rome! What’s going on?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

Brandon rose and started for the front of the bus. “Well, I’ll find out pretty damn soon.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that.”

Brandon had to get in line to interview the driver, who, in response to all questions, passively repeated, “No spika.”

Brandon finally reached the head of the line. “What’s going on here? Why aren’t we in Rome?”

“No spika.”

“Get on this bus immediately and take us to Rome!”

“No spika.”

“Roma!” Brandon said, trying his hand at Italian.

“No spika.”

“It’s no use, Stew,” said Koesler. “For whatever reason, we are on a sightseeing expedition and I don’t think he’s going to take us to Rome till he’s good and ready.”

“I’ll get to the bottom of this! I’m going to call Monsignor Iming!”

“The Archbishop’s secretary? What can he do?”

“For one thing, he can speak Italian. I’ll get the bus driver on that phone and Joe can damn well tell him to get us the hell into Rome!”

Koesler decided to accompany Brandon. There wasn’t likely to be a better show in Grottaferrata.

It was, indeed, Koesler who located the public phones. The entire small storefront was given over to public phones. There were nine separate booths along one wall, and one control panel behind a counter near the front of the building.

Behind the counter stood one of the most pleasant-appearing women Koesler had ever seen. Pasta had made her round, but pleasantly so. Her face was beautiful and her smile beatific. She was obviously pleased to see two priests in her establishment.

“I want to make a phone call.” Brandon mimed holding a phone and speaking into it. “I want to call Villa Stritch.”

“Si.” She smiled.

“Where do I make the call? Where?” He tried Latin: “Ubi?”

“Numerosette.” She smiled and pointed.

That seemed clear enough. Brandon walked to the seventh booth, stepped in, and disappeared.

A few moments later, his scowling face reappeared. He was holding the receiver to his ear. “There’s no dial tone,” he complained.

“Si.” She smiled.

“No dial tone! There’s no dial tone!” He pointed at the receiver.

She nodded. She comprehended. She clarified. “Non como a Novo York . . .” then she made a high-pitched, prolonged humming sound.

Even Brandon understood. Unlike New York, there was no dial tone. One simply dialed. On faith.

Brandon disappeared again. After some time he emerged. The call had not removed his scowl. He offered the operator a handful of American coins. She checked the amount of time he’d used, and removed several coins from his outstretched hand.

“Gratia.” She smiled.

“Prego,” Koesler tried.

She smiled even more broadly.

Koesler turned to Brandon. “What happened?”

“Nothing. Not a damn thing. No answer. Probably disconnected the phone and enjoying a nice long nap.”

“Or shower.”

They, as well as their fellow passengers, proceeded to mill about the streets of Grottaferrata for the better part of an hour. It was beginning to feel like home. Finally, their driver called out something that could have been “Andiamo!” and entered the bus, followed quickly by his passengers.

Now, Koesler happily concluded, they were on the right track and following the signs toward Rome. Finally they did indeed enter the Eternal City. They drove, haltingly due to heavy midday traffic, down the Corso Vittorio Emanuele. Just before they crossed the bridge over the Tiber, Koesler looked to his right and, down the wide Via della Conciliazione, he caught his first sight of St. Peter’s Basilica, the world’s largest church. Oddly, he wasn’t as impressed as he had expected to be.

It was nearly noon when they arrived at the Garibaldi. As a group, there were few things in life they had wanted more than to reach this hotel.

As they walked into the hotel, Koesler spotted the Koznickis seated in large upholstered chairs in the lobby, surrounded by their luggage.

He hurried to them. “What happened? Why aren’t you in your room?”

“The rooms were not ready for occupancy until after noon,” Koznicki wearily replied.

The dawn came up like thunder. Koesler clapped a hand to his head. “That explains it!”

“Explains what?”

“Our sightseeing tour of the countryside. We’ve been on the bus or in a small village since we left you.”

Koznicki smiled ruefully. “Perhaps you had the better of it after all. At least you saw some scenery. We have been confined to people-watching. And mostly Americans, at that.”

“And we recognized only one person in this lobby all morning,” added Wanda. “That was Cardinal Gattari.”

“The Secretary of State?” Koesler whistled. “You were involved in Very Important People-watching. I wonder what the next Pope was doing in the lobby of the Garibaldi?”

“I do not know,” said Koznicki, “but he surely is an imposing figure of a man.”

An announcement was made that the rooms were now ready. Everyone converged on the registration desk.

As he stood in line, Koesler could not help but overhear a conversation emanating from behind a nearby pillar.

“I don’t care what they do to me,” the voice was saying, “I’m never going to take on another contract like that. It’s too dangerous. For a while, I didn’t know: It could have been them or me. I mean, toward the end they were getting pretty ugly. I tell you, I’m through with it. Finito. Never again.”

The voice spoke in heavily accented English. Koesler peered around the pillar. The voice belonged to their bus driver.

2.

The technical process of making a Cardinal comprises three steps.

On April 28, Pope Leo XIV presided over a secret consistory involving all the Cardinals then present in Rome. During this consistory, the Pope read off the names of his candidates for the Cardinalate. At each name, each Cardinal raised his biretta and bowed his head, indicating his assent to the nominee. A gesture that is the closest thing there is to a rubber stamp.

On April 29, the candidates assembled at prearranged locations in Rome. The three American candidates gathered at a crowded Roman Chancery building. A monsignor from the Vatican Secretary of State’s office, accompanied by one of the laymen attached to the papal household, presented each candidate with the official biglietto—the letter informing him of his elevation. As Archbishop Boyle accepted his biglietto, he became His Eminence Mark Cardinal Boyle.

Tonight, April 30, the final ceremony in the process of becoming a Cardinal was scheduled. In one of the great halls adjoining the papal residence, the Pope would receive in audience all the new Cardinals. During the ceremony, he would place on each Cardinal’s head a scarlet biretta, the sign of their office, and he would reveal the name of the individual Roman parish each Cardinal would become titular bishop of.

For tonight’s ceremony, Father Koesler had been given a blue ticket. A quick study of others’ tickets revealed there were also gold and red tickets to this event. He was unable to determine the exact import of a blue ticket. Apparently, there was no way of knowing where one’s ticket would lead until one got there.

As Koesler began climbing the seemingly endless staircase, he realized Detroit reporters Joe Cox and Pat Lennon were only a step behind him. He dropped back to join them.

“Evening, Father.” Lennon greeted him brightly. “We haven’t seen much of you since we got to Rome.”

“Are you kidding?” said Cox. “The good Father wouldn’t be traveling in the same low-life circles we move in.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.” Koesler winced. Among many appellations applied to him, he most despised “the good Father.” Like most epithets, the user gave little thought to it. “By the way,” Koesler continued, “may I inquire as to the color of your tickets for this event?”

Cox searched his pockets.

“Blue,” said Lennon.

“Yeah,” Cox located his ticket, “blue.”

“Mine too,” said Koesler. “Would you happen to know what that entitles us to?”

“Haven’t a clue, Father,” Lennon replied. “We won’t know till we get there.”

Somehow, Koesler now felt more confident of a good seat. He knew he personally was relatively unimportant in the scheme of things. But he was sure reporters for major American newspapers would not receive short shrift.

Cox and Lennon were just ahead of Koesler as they reached the tuxedoed master of ceremonies at the top of the stairs. He waved them behind two sawhorses to the left. Koesler was thus surprised when, after displaying his blue ticket, he was directed behind the sawhorses on the right.

Koesler looked about, trying to comprehend what was going on.

He was in a huge vaulted chamber. The only furnishings were sets of sawhorses arranged to create an aisle down the middle of the room and across the back. Behind these sawhorses milled a growing throng. One thing was certain: This was a way station; whatever was going to happen was not going to happen in this anteroom.

Koesler was not alone in reaching this conclusion. After a brief conference, Cox and Lennon agreed they had no chance of covering the ceremony from this room. But where was the room, and how could they get to it?

The desired direction was soon made evident. An ecclesial procession was filing through the door at the left rear of the room, proceeding along the rear wall, and heading through the door at the right rear.

Koesler angled as close as he could to the path of the procession. There were several rows of people in front of him. However, his height made it possible for him to see at least the upper half of the procession. The crossbearer was followed by acolytes, then bishops, then Cardinals, then the new Cardinals—among them Cardinal Boyle—and finally, the Pope.

Applause rang out along the length of the procession, swelling when segments of the crowd recognized a favorite son. For the Pope, the applause was near-deafening.

Koesler was surprised. And a little disappointed. He was surprised that up this close the Pope lost much of his mystique. He was merely a wizened little old man. Koesler was disappointed that the Pope was so surrounded by Swiss Guards that it was difficult to catch sight of him. It must be the increased security.

It was incredible. Where else would one be given a special ticket just to stand in an unfurnished hall and look at other ticket holders for two to three hours while the ceremony you had come to see was going on somewhere else?

The only extraordinary item in the hall worth studying was the tall, imposing Swiss Guard securing the entrance to what was presumably the ceremonial room. Interesting history. Their uniform was said to have been designed by no less than Michelangelo, who was said to have modified it from a 1496 battle uniform. And, if memory served, during the sack of Rome in the sixteenth century, all but twelve of the Swiss Guard had died defending the Vatican Palace. One wondered what had been wrong with those twelve.

The present stance of this particular guardsman seemed to be what passed for “at ease.” Koesler recalled the ritual which demanded that each guardsman snap to attention each time a bishop or similar high ecclesiastic passed before him. What would happen, he wondered, if a bishop were to walk back and forth repeatedly in front of a guardsman, just to get him to salute. How long would the guardman’s patience last? But then, one probably wouldn’t be able to find a bishop with that peculiar a sense of humor.

Koesler glanced at his watch. 8:15. Theoretically, fifteen minutes into the ceremony. How long was one expected to stand in one place and study a Swiss Guard? It’s 8:15; do you know where your Swiss Guard is?

Then, something out of the ordinary took place. Joe Cox and Pat Lennon coolly stepped out from behind the barrier, walked purposefully to the guardsman, spoke to him briefly, displayed something in their wallets and walked past him into the ceremonial room.

Koesler pondered their maneuver a moment and decided, why not? It was unlikely the guardsman would run a poor priest through with his halberd.

He stepped into the aisle, walked up to the guard, opened his wallet, and displayed his supermarket check-cashing card, pointed toward the ceremonial room and said, “I’m with them.”

The guardsman, who seemed to neither recognize the card, nor understand English, simply shrugged.

Koesler, bracing himself, despite his earlier mental bravado, for a poke from the halberd, walked past him through the doorway. When nothing happened, he relaxed.

An opulent kaleidoscope unfurled before him.

Heads of state were glowing in their resplendent uniforms and brilliant sashes. The hierarchical vestments were, as always, magnificently impressive. And withal, there was that distinctive color known as cardinal red. The vivid meld of vermilion and orange was perhaps the most eye-boggling shade in the spectrum.

Even so, it was not as sumptuous as it had been before Pope Paul VI had simplified the Cardinal’s garb in 1969. Gone were the voluminous capa magna, the train of scarlet moire, the ermine cape, the golden tassels, the red leather slippers with gold or silver buckles.

But most of all, gone was The Red Hat.

It had been a purely ceremonial galero. With a normal crown but an overlarge brim and two strings of fifteen tassels each hanging from it. Of course, it was never actually worn. But heretofore, in the installation of a Cardinal, the hat, borne by two monsignors, had been touched symbolically to his head. It was then shipped home with the Cardinal and held in limbo until, at his death, it was hung from the ceiling of his cathedral.

Till recent years, it had been so distinctive a symbol that being named a Cardinal was more popularly referred to as receiving the red hat.

It was at this ceremony that the new Cardinals would have received the red hat. But now, the Pope would merely place on each Cardinal’s head a simple scarlet biretta.

The Pope had been speaking for a very long time. Every three or four paragraphs, he would switch to a different language. Koesler had lost count of the number of languages in which the Pope was proving himself fluent.

The time had come. As each Cardinal knelt before him, the Pope placed a biretta on the head of the new Prince of the Church, intoning, ‘For the praise of the omnipotent God and for the honor of the Apostolic See, receive the red hat, symbol of the great dignity of the Cardinalate, which means that you must show yourself to be fearless even to the shedding of blood for the exaltation of the Holy Faith, for the peace and tranquility of the Christian people, and for the liberty and expansion of the Holy Roman Church.”

At the words, “the shedding of blood,” Koesler was arrested by the memory of the slain Cardinal Claret and the airport attack on Cardinal Boyle. Clearly, the Pope’s words were not empty ones. For whatever reason, the Cardinal Archbishop of Toronto had shed his blood in violent death. And, if not for the alertness and swift action of Inspector Koznicki just a few days ago, Cardinal Boyle might not have lived to hear those words. Koesler wondered what thoughts were going through Boyle’s mind at this minute.

The attacks were incomprehensible to Koesler. The phenomenon of a deeply insecure person seeking instant fame by assaulting someone famous was, as Koznicki had sadly noted, becoming all too increasingly common. But Koesler, while accepting the explanation, could not understand it. And Cardinal Claret? Was his murder the same manifestation of a modern phenomenon, or was there something deeper, more sinister involved?

Ceremony completed, the exit recessional had begun. Now each Cardinal wore his new biretta. Again the applause. Again the cordon of Swiss Guards surrounding the Pope. Anyone determined to make the pontiff shed blood would have to smash his way through a phalanx of tall stalwart young men.

Koesler made his way out of the hall and down the seemingly infinite steps. Clearly, it was lots easier going down than coming up. He continued across St. Peter’s Square to the far section where the buses huddled like a herd of elephants.

As he was walking along the row of vehicles, Koesler heard his name called. Turning quickly, he struck his head against an outside rearview mirror on one of the buses. Feeling blood running down his face, he quickly put a handkerchief to the wound.

“Hey, Bob; sorry!” It was Father Brandon. “I wouldn’t have called to you if I had thought this would happen.”

“That’s all right; my own stupid fault . . . how bad is it?”

Brandon examined the wound in the bright glow of the bus’ headlight. “Not bad. Little more than a scratch. But you know how head wounds bleed.”

“Lucky I didn’t break my glasses.” Koesler applied as much pressure as he could to the cut. If it was as small as Brandon had described, it should clot in a matter of minutes. Meanwhile, with the blood that had already splotched the right side of his face, he looked as if he had been in a street fight.

“Just like a Cardinal,” Brandon commented.

“How’s that?”

“They get a commission to go out and shed their blood and they send some poor priest to do it for them.”

3.

“‘Venus of Cnidus—Roman Copy after Praxiteles.’ Hmmm.”

They walked on.

“‘Sleeping Ariadne—Imperial Roman Art.’ Hmmm.”

And on.

“‘Bathing Venus—Roman Copy after a Bronze Original by the Bithynian Artist Doidalses.’ Hmmm.” Joe Cox turned to his companion. “So what do you think it is; do you suppose women were built differently back then?”

Pat Lennon smiled. “Large ladies, aren’t they?”

Lennon and Cox were in the middle of the Pio-Clementino Museum on a route they hoped would lead them to the famed Sistine Chapel. There were no affiliated ceremonies scheduled for today, so, as was the case with most of the entourage associated with the new Cardinals, they had gone sightseeing.

“It’s not just that they’re large,” said Cox, “it’s that each and every one of these statues depicts a very zaftig lady. And I’ve got to assume the artists were not doing posters for Weight Watchers.”

“You’ve got to admit they’re shapely.”

“Oh, yes. Hourglass figures. Except that their hours look more like days.”

“This is a good lesson for you, Joe. It’s all relative. Until comparatively recently, only large, fleshy females were considered beautiful. Today’s slender models would have been considered unattractive. Men wanted their women amply endowed all over. Today, ‘amply endowed’ is Jayne Mansfield or Dolly Parton. It’s all a matter of taste . . .and tastes change.”

“The more there is of you, the more there is for me to love, eh?”

Lennon smiled again. “Feel cheated?”

Cox moved close and slid an arm around her waist. Far from feeling cheated, he was always proud to be in her company. She resembled a slightly taller, younger Brenda Vaccaro with that actress’ husky, sexy voice. And she was a first-class journalist to boot.

“Watch it, Cox!” She laughed. “This is the Vatican. You want to create bad thoughts for some Swiss Guard?”

They wandered on through the museums, gazing at figures of statuesque women and superbly muscled men.

“Hey,” Cox called from several feet away, reading from a small sign attached to a windowsill, “there’s hope. Here’s a sign that gives directions for the Sistine Chapel.”

“Really? Which way is it?”

“These are not directions for finding it. They are directions on the decorum expected in it if you find it.”

“Oh . . . and what do they suggest?”

“These are not suggestions. They read more like instructions.”

“Like what?”

“Well, it points out that the Sistine Chapel is a sacred place. You’ve got to wear modest clothing, and you’re expected to observe a reverential silence.”

“That makes sense, I guess.”

It was not long afterward that they found the steps leading to that structure distinct in so many ways from all others.

“Modest clothing!” warned Cox.

“Reverential silence!” affirmed Lennon.

Actually, they heard the Sistine Chapel before they saw it. And when they did see it, the scene brought to mind the Tower of Babel. Throughout the chapel, clusters of tourists gathered about their guides. That which differentiated one group from another was language. Here a German bunch, there a French, here a Polish, there an English, and so on. Many members of each group, in the age-old tourist custom, were chatting with their fellows. Thus the guides had to deliver their spiels at nearly peak volume.

It took Cox and Lennon several minutes to adjust their hearing as well as their psychological sensitivities to this cacophony. Once adjusted, they decided to explore together the marvels of Michelangelo and friends.

Father Koesler had found the chapel about half an hour earlier and had attached himself to the fringe of a tour being conducted in English. From a distance of only a few feet, he found it a definite challenge to hear and understand the guide, who was speaking very loudly, if not distinctly.

“This building,” the guide was saying, “is a bit more than five hundred years old. It was built in the reign of Pope Sixtus IV by Giovannino de’ Dolci, based on plans by Baccio Pontelli. The Sistine is the Pope’s official private chapel. In addition to many liturgical functions, the conclaves for the papal elections are held here.”

Koesler’s gaze was fixed on the famed ceiling. Michelangelo’s ceiling art was so busy the priest couldn’t decide what to focus on first. There was the renowned creation of man wherein God reaches out to touch the finger of a flaccid Adam. Human life is about to begin.

“The pavement is a prominent example of fifteenth century Roman mosaic artistry,” the guide went on. “The two groups of six frescoes each on the main walls depict events in the life of Moses, the ‘liberator of Israel,’ over there,” she pointed to the left, “and events in the life of Christ, the ‘liberator of all mankind,’ over there,” she indicated the group to the right.

Or, thought Koesler, still examining the ceiling, there is the scene of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. How many times had he seen these celebrated paintings reproduced in framed prints, in textbooks, magazines, seemingly everywhere. He was deeply moved that he was actually in the presence of Michelangelo’s original work.

“After discarding his initial design,” the guide had now caught up to Koesler and was explaining the ceiling, “which involved the depiction of the twelve Apostles, Michelangelo decided to relate his work to that already existing on the walls, where the history of mankind is depicted. His subjects were the Biblical stories of the Creation, Adam and Eve, the Flood, and the resumption of life on dry land by Noah and his family.”

Ah, yes, there was the drunken Noah and his naughty children over in the corner of the ceiling, near the top of the entrance to the chapel. Head tilted back, Koesler had been looking at the ceiling so long he was finding it difficult to breathe. He dropped his gaze to the crowd and massaged his neck. One problem with looking at the ceiling for an extended period was that it hurt.

There was something different about that man. What was he doing? He seemed to be contemplating his hand, which he held at belt level, palm upright. Curious. He just stood there, studying his palm. Then Koesler was able to see that the man was holding a thin, flat object in his open hand. It was a mirror. The clever fellow was looking at the Sistine ceiling as reflected in the mirror he was holding! Koesler marveled at the simplicity of it. There was one person who would suffer no crick in his neck. It was too late for Koesler, but he would be telling others of this marvelous discovery.

“That is Somebody,” said Pat Lennon.

“Undoubtedly,” Joe Cox acknowledged.

“No, not him. Him. . . the guy in the simple black cassock. He just came into the chapel. I caught a glimpse of him as he entered. I thought I recognized him, but I wasn’t sure. I can’t place him, but I think he’s somebody important.”

“Want me to go ask him? ‘Excuse-a me, sir, but are you somebody important?’”

“Joe!”

“He’s probably a humble Italian parish priest, just come in to join the crowd. In a little while, we’ll know.”

“How?”

“If I’m right, he’ll take up a collection.”

The unimposing clergyman in the plain black cassock stood, hands locked behind his back, before the Rosselli panel, Moses Receives the Tables of the Law. Cardinal Giulanio Gattari visited the Sistine Chapel each Thursday morning as faithfully as possible. He knew the Sistine as a lover knows his beloved. At each visit, the Cardinal, wearing a simple black cassock for anonymity’s sake, would select an appropriate painting as a source for meditation. It was a tribute to his power of concentration as well as to his familiarity with the chapel that he was capable of meditating amid its constant turmoil and hubbub.

The painting before which he now stood was a montage of Moses receiving the Law, descending from the mountain, and breaking the tablets, as well as a depiction of the unfaithful Israelites worshiping their golden calf.

Everyone breaking the law, Gattari mused. The Israelites breaking the First Commandment. Moses breaking all ten.

Ah, Moses, he thought; what a thankless task was yours! You wanted no part of the whole thing. But you were called to confront the Pharaoh and announce God’s message to let His people go. Then you led them through the desert. Never did they have faith in you. They argued with you and questioned you at every turn. They treated their God no better. Even you were led to call them a stiff-necked people.

And what of me? Gattari continued in reverie. What if Providence does, indeed, place me in the Chair of Peter? It would be no accident. It would be a combination of a smiling fate and my own ambition. But there is no doubt: I am in the favored position. No one stands between me and the Papacy but Leo XIV. And he is an old man. No matter how carefully they guard him, he cannot live forever. He cannot live much longer. Then nothing will stand between me and my destiny but a sacred consistory.

Now, I must torture myself with the unending question: What am I to do with it once I gain it? Why do I want it? Why should anyone? Like Moses, I would gain leadership over a stiff-necked people. Some demand more progress. Others insist on a return to a day that can never be recaptured. I can anticipate no more respect, obedience, or fealty than has been accorded Leo. Why do I want it? At this point, what could I do to avoid it? Must I pray ad multos annos for Leo, that doddering old fool!

“In the Last Judgment, on the altar wall,” the guide intoned, “the central figure is Christ as Judge, right hand raised in a violent gesture of condemnation. At his right, in the shadow of his uplifted arm, is the Blessed Mother. To his left is St. Peter, holding the Keys to the Kingdom, one in each hand.”

Koesler was grateful for no longer having his attention called to the ceiling. He studied the wall. It was a terrifying vision of Judgment. As usual, going to heaven seemed relatively uninteresting compared with the terror of being dragged into hell.

“Down below,” the guide continued, “is the entrance to hell, with the boat of Charon, in accordance with Dante’s description, overflowing with the souls of the damned, and Minos, king of the nether world, whom Michelangelo—adding the ears of an ass—characterized as Monsignor Biagio Martinelli, Pope Paul II’s master of ceremonies, who had criticized Michelangelo’s work.”

Koesler was staring at what appeared to be an enormous patch of black paint. He wondered why Michelangelo would simply waste so much valuable space. Then he saw it. Just the hint of a contorted face, six white teeth in a shrieking mouth, and eyes that long for what they can never possess. It was the head of a damned soul in the cave of hell. Terrifying!

His sense of horror was amplified and intensified at that instant as a scream came from the rear of the chapel.

“Oh! No! No!” It was a scream as much of dread as of surprise.

“Joe! Joe! Look!” Pat Lennon pointed.

Cox, following her gesture, saw the black-cassocked priest they had previously noted crumble to the floor. A knife was buried in his chest. His blood was flowing freely.

A large black man bent over the writhing figure. In an instant, he straightened, turned, and ran from the chapel. Cox dashed after him. Screams and shouts filled the chapel as tourists shrank from the wounded cleric. The first to move to him were Pat Lennon and Father Koesler.

Cox pursued the younger, stronger, faster man down library corridors, through museum settings, past coin collections. Whereinhell was the Swiss Guard now that he needed them! Added to Cox’s handicaps was the fact that the assailant had a knack of running through and over people and obstacles, while Cox had to go around them. Although, truth to tell, in a straightaway race, Cox would never have been able to catch up with, let alone head the man.

At long last—although it really hadn’t been that long—Cox gave up—or rather gave out. Chest heaving, he stood in the middle of a long corridor, as a group of tourists stared wide-eyed at him.

Slowly, gasping and panting, he made his way back to the chapel. Most of the people who had been there were still there. A small group was clustered around the victim. In that group were Lennon and Koesler. Several of what seemed to be paramedics had placed the victim on a stretcher and were taking him away.

Cox noticed that the sheet covering the cleric had not been pulled over his face. Cox hoped that signified in Italy what it did in the United States, that the victim was still alive.

Cox then noted an evergrowing number of carabinieri spreading through the chapel. They were questioning everyone, searching for eyewitnesses. One was interviewing Lennon, another was questioning Koesler. Since it would inevitably become Cox’s turn, he decided to join Lennon.

“Oh, here he is,” said Lennon as Cox came to her side. “This is the man I told you about . . . the one who chased the assailant.”

The Italian officer got Cox’s full identification. “So,” he said in barely accented English, “it was very brave of you, signore. But you could not catch him?”

“No. As a matter of fact, about halfway through the chase, it occurred to me that I wouldn’t know what to do with him if I did catch him.”

“Please?”

“He was almost twice my size!”

“Doubly brave of you.”

“Who was the victim, anyway?” Cox’s question was directed to the officer, but Lennon answered.

“You know, I said I thought he was important, Joe. Well, I was right. I realized who he was when I saw him on the floor. It’s Cardinal Giulanio Gattari!”

Cox whistled softly, then caught himself. He felt as if he might be the only person ever to whistle in the Sistine Chapel. “The Secretary of State! We should have recognized him!”

“I think we were thrown off by the simple black cassock. You just don’t expect to see a Cardinal dressed so plainly.”

Koesler, who had finished his interview, was now listening in.

“The Cardinal,” commented the officer, “was in the habit of walking about Vatican City dressed without ostentation. But, tell me, Signore Cox, since you chased the assailant, can you describe him for me?” The officer’s pen was poised over his pad.

“Well, he was maybe six-foot-two or three; he wasn’t wearing a suit . . . let’s see, it was an unmatched jacket and pants and a blue shirt open at the neck; no tie. He weighed maybe 240–250. Black, very dark complexion. And there was something funny about his hair . . . it was in a natural.” He thought a minute. “No . . .no, I’ll take that back. It was done up in those—oh, you know—like long wriggly corn rows.”

“Oh—” That was as far as Koesler got before Lennon hastily led him away, as the officer looked after them quizzically.

“Father,” she said, “you got a look at that man . . . and you know what that hairstyle is called, don’t you?”

“Well, yes. It’s not corn rows. It’s dreadlocks. It’s what happens when some blacks wash their hair, if it happens to be very long, and they just let it dry out without any additional treatment.”

“Very good, Father.” Lennon sounded like an elementary school teacher. “And I suppose you also know who wears their hair that way as a matter of conviction?”

“Well, yes . . .” Koesler was beginning to feel like a pupil who was doing very well in school. “They call themselves Rastafarians.”

“Right. It’s just as I suspected. You know all this and I know all this and in a matter of an hour or so at most I will make sure the Italian authorities know all this.

“But, for the moment, Joe Cox doesn’t know all this. Now in just a few minutes, Joe and I will be filing our stories to Detroit. Joe will write—modestly—of his brave participation in the event. But he will not know of the possible connection with Rastafarians. And I will. Are you getting the picture?”

“Yes, of course. After all, I used to be actively involved in journalism. Even if it was with the weekly Detroit Catholic and not a daily. You want your scoop. But what about the police investigation?”

“Father, it’s a matter of minutes—an hour at most. Just as soon as Joe files his story—and, if his track record holds, that will be even faster than I file mine—I will go to the police and fill out the picture. It won’t impede their investigation and I’ll still have my scoop. Then, we’ll just sit back and let Joe wait till his angry editor cables him before he gets the picture.”

“I see. But I thought you were . . . uh . . . friends!”

There might have been some Detroiters who were confused over whom Henry Ford II was married to, but almost everyone knew that Cox and Lennon shared almost everything but their scoops.

“Everything, Father, is fair in love, war, and journalism.”

4.

The two men strolled along the Via di San Gregorio. They walked slowly, deliberately, only peripherally aware of the Forum ruins they were passing, so absorbed in conversation were they.

“It all happened so quickly—so unexpectedly, I should say,” Father Koesler was explaining, “that we were all pretty dumbfounded. All of us, that is, except Joe Cox, who chased after the guy.”

“Yes,” Inspector Koznicki nodded, “and from the description he gave of the man, Mr. Cox is fortunate not to have caught up with him.”

“I think he probably wanted more to interview him than apprehend him!” Koesler, smiling, shook his head at the memory, and then his face grew solemn: Cardinal Gattari had survived the immediate attack, only to die shortly thereafter enroute to the hospital.

Koznicki, hoping to hearten his companion, spoke again. “I must say, Father, your phone call to Father Ouellet in Toronto was an inspired bit of detection.”

“More a lucky coincidence. While I was talking with Pat Lennon about how the assailant wore his hair in dreadlocks, I recalled that Father Ouellet had described Cardinal Claret’s killer as a black man with his hair in a ‘natural.’ As a matter of fact, that was the word Joe Cox used to describe the man he chased. He said the man had a ‘natural,’ then corrected himself.”

“But not perfectly accurately.”

“By now he’s been enlightened. Anyway, when I phoned Father Ouellet after lunch—he was just about to go over to the cathedral for the early morning Mass—I asked him to describe the man’s hair, and, sure enough, it was dreadlocks—although Father Ouellet had never heard of that term.”

“I am sure that added information will be a help to the Toronto and Rome police who are investigating their respective homicides.”

Koesler wondered whether his friend’s statement meant that the murders of two Cardinals were the purview of the Canadian and Italian police and none of his or Koesler’s business. Koesler hoped that was not the case.

“I think there’s more to it than that, Inspector—oh, look over there!” He pointed to where, evidently just a few minutes before, two automobiles, a Fiat and a Volkswagen, had collided. There did not appear to be much damage to either vehicle. But an unwonted crowd of men had gathered at the scene. Only a small percentage could have actually witnessed the collision. Yet, here were all these men, arguing angrily. Some were even becoming physical, pushing and shoving. The only explanation for this precipitate brouhaha was that apparently one of the cars had been driven by a woman. And what a woman! Blonde, taller than any of the men, and busty enough to be fairly popping from her light dress. She paid little heed to the commotion about and because of her, but appeared to be waiting for the hubbub to die down so she could drive away.

Koznicki laughed heartily. “I have always thought that to make an Italian movie, all one had to do was walk down a street in Italy with a camera on one’s shoulder. I believe the cinéma verité was conceived with Italy in mind.

“But, Father, you were saying—?”

“Maybe I’m being an alarmist, but how many times have there been attempts on the lives of Cardinals? Oh, perhaps in the Middle Ages, but not now . . . not today. Cardinals grow old and slip away quietly in their sleep. Yet in the past few weeks, two Cardinals have been murdered, and another attacked. Are these events connected? Will there be more?”

Koznicki grew reflective. He had learned to trust his clerical friend’s deductive powers as well as his intuition. But there seemed little if any connection between these attacks. And, even if there were a link, technically, as a foreigner in this country it was none of his concern, even though he was a homicide detective.

“I really cannot find any connection here, Father,” he said, at length. “It is more than likely that the attack on Cardinal Claret was, as the Canadian police suspect, the random act of a young hoodlum out to snatch some media attention. A nobody trying to become somebody.

“That almost certainly was so in Cardinal Boyle’s case.

“And, you see, Father, that sort of act very unfortunately has a way of building upon itself. Now, this morning, the dastardly act was repeated in the case of Cardinal Gattari. The only link I see is that with Cardinals Claret and Gattari, each of their assailants had dreadlocks. And dreadlocks are not that unusual. Do you see anything beyond that, Father?”

“I guess I’d have to grant you that the attack on Cardinal Boyle was—as you describe it—a solitary act. But there is something at work here, I think.

“There is, of course, no way of predicting with any certitude who the prime candidates for the Papacy are, let alone who will actually be the next Pope. But there is gossip and talk and news—and, gradually, a consensus builds.”

“Yes?” Koznicki’s interest was piqued.

“Well, according to nearly everyone, Cardinal Gattari was, by far, the front-runner, the top favorite to be elected the next Pope. Of course, that would depend on a lot of imponderables. Pope Leo XIV, of course, would have to die. And he would have to die while Cardinal Gattari was still young enough to continue to be the favorite.”

“What does that have to do with—”

“My next point. Next in line after Gattari was Cardinal Claret.”

“A Canadian?”

“The Italian succession has been interrupted. The Papacy, at least for the foreseeable future, should be internationally attainable.

“So you see, Inspector, that is my common denominator. The favorite to be the next Pope and the next favorite in line, both murdered. Both murdered by men in dreadlocks. It is not an indisputable hypothesis, but it is worth consideration, I think.

“And there is one more very peculiar similarity in the killings of the two Cardinals. When I attended Cardinal Claret’s funeral, I was puzzled to see a black fist painted on the historical marker outside the cathedral. That same black fist was imposed on all the programs for the funeral rite.

“This morning, after the body was removed and things had quieted down, I went back to where Cardinal Gattari had fallen. The blood had been cleaned away. But there, where the body had lain, was the small image of a black fist.”

“A black fist! I must admit that is a most peculiar coincidence!”

They strolled on in silence.

“I would be glad to advance your hypothesis to the proper authorities for their consideration, Father. But what does it all have to do with us?”

“Just this: Not very far down that list of papal possibles is our own Cardinal Boyle.”

This observation literally stopped Koznicki in his tracks. He stood stock still. After a few moments, he moved a few steps to the low railing at the edge of the sidewalk. Koesler joined him. Silently they gazed at the ruins of the Forum.

“Each time I see the Forum, I am astonished again to think of the ideas that were born here,” mused Koznicki.

Koesler was surprised at this turn in their conversation. Seemingly, Koznicki wished to put this possible threat to Cardinal Boyle’s life on a mental back burner.

“Five hundred years before Christ,” Koznicki continued, “Rome became a republic with a system of rights for its citizens. Much of our concept of justice, our legal system, was formed here in the Forum.” He turned to Koesler. “Is it not impressive, Father?”

“Oh, yes, indeed.” He would not press the point; he would go along with his friend’s digression. “Rome is the fountainhead of our Western civilization. Even today, they still use that ancient inscription, SPQR—Senatus Populusque Romanus—The Senate and People of Rome. You look at these ruins of the Forum and the Colosseum across the street and you are impressed with how ancient traces of the twenty-seven-centuries-long history of Rome can be found all over the city. I can’t think of any other place where the past and present seem to coexist more completely and comfortably than Rome.”

There was another long silence. Koesler felt the verbal ball was definitely in Koznicki’s court,

“So, Father,” the Inspector still gazed at the Forum, “you believe there is a threat against the life of Cardinal Boyle because he is a recognized candidate for the Papacy.”

“Yes, but I don’t know why.” Of course Koznicki was concerned. Perhaps he had temporarily changed the subject in order to clear his mind—as a gourmet savors a sorbet between courses to clear his palate. He should have had more faith in the Inspector’s professionalism. “I mean, I don’t know what the motive might be. I may be wrong, but I think both Cardinals Claret and Gattari were killed because they were top contenders for the Papacy. But I don’t know who . . . or why anybody would do it.”

“How many other Cardinals, would you say, fit into the category of papal candidates?”

Koesler thought briefly. “I would guess not more than eight or nine serious candidates who would be pretty well universally acknowledged by students of this sort of thing.”

“And the names of those Cardinals would also be generally acknowledged? I, for instance, am not specifically aware of them. And I consider myself to be well read.”

“You are well read, Inspector. Your problem is that until now you were not specifically interested. For those who are interested, it is easy to work up a list. Why, a few years ago, a small publishing house in the midwest, Sheed Andrews and McMeel, published a book by Gary MacEoin on this very subject. If memory serves, it was titled, The Inner Elite.”

“I see. I would assume then, that uncompromising security for these men is called for. I shall be instrumental in informing the appropriate authorities.”

“I think you’ve hit on it, Inspector. And I think a lot of added security is vital for many of the Cardinals in question. But I believe we’ve got a major problem when we get to the man we would most like to protect, Cardinal Boyle.”

“Oh . . . and why is that?”

“Most of the Cardinals on the papal list are bureaucrats far removed from free association with common everyday people. It should not be terribly difficult to protect them. This is definitely not true of Cardinal Boyle. He leads a large and busy archdiocese. You know as well as I that he is no hothouse flower. He presides over confirmation ceremonies in parishes all over the six-county Archdiocese. Most of those parishes would present security problems. He attends open meetings. He frequently answers his own door.

“And to cap it all, most days you can find him walking down Washington Boulevard between his office and the Gabriel Richard Building, or to his automobile.

“And you know from past experience that he will not permit any major alteration in that open lifestyle. Both of us know Cardinal Boyle would never countenance walking about surrounded by a bunch of Swiss Guards.”

Koznicki was silent for a few moments. “In which case, Father, Cardinal Boyle had better pray that he is not elected Pope . . . or he’s going to be surrounded by Swiss Guards on top of Swiss Guards.

“Nonetheless, I think, Father, there are at least two ways to approach this problem: defensively or offensively. And, to use the familiar football metaphor, the best defense is a good offense.”

Koesler felt great relief that his friend finally seemed to be committing himself to an active role in the matter. “Then you agree there may be something to my hypothesis?”

“Father, in all the years I have been on the police force, especially those I have spent in the Homicide Division, I have learned one predominant lesson, and that is to keep an open mind on all possibilities.

“I could not tell you the number of times in an investigation that the least likely possible solution turned out to be the correct one. And I do not mean to denigrate your hypothesis. I only mean that to dismiss a tenable theory merely because it is not probable is to act the fool. My rule of thumb has become that memorable tune from HMS Pinafore:

Things are seldom what they seem.

Skim milk masquerades as cream;

High-laws pass as patent leathers;

Jackdaws strut in peacock’s feathers.”

“‘Very true,’” Koesler responded in kind, “‘So they do.’” He smiled. “I would have thought your theme might have been ‘A Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One.’”

Koznicki smiled back. “No; in point of fact, I have found this policeman’s lot to be distinctly happy.” He paused. “Well, Father, you are quite obviously somewhat in advance of me in thinking through all these possibilities. Before you draw me out any further, do you have anything else in mind?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I have. I had thought of presenting this to you in the guise of a defense against the threat to Cardinal Boyle. But now that you have mentioned the possibility of going on the offense, I will suggest this man as our offensive weapon.” An uncertain pause. “Ramon Toussaint.”

Koznicki stiffened. Perceptibly.

“Ramon Toussaint? Yes, I would agree that could be a decidedly offensive weapon.” He looked at Koesler fixedly. “I have by no means forgotten Ramon Toussaint, Father. The name conjures up a one-man vigilante force and a series of grotesque human heads found mounted on statues in Detroit churches. One head found stuffed inside the late Cardinal Mooney’s ceremonial red hat in the cathedral, save the mark.

“Let’s see, the victims were . . . oh, yes: the local Mafia don, Detroit’s top pimp, Detroit’s leading drug dealer, a particularly abhorrent abortionist, and then a roofer and an auto repairman who were unscrupulous and unprincipled workmen. Each of them escaped justice, as so many criminals do, until our unidentified vigilante administered his own peculiar brand of capital punishment.

“Our particular problem, as I recall—and believe me, I shall never forget it—was establishing the cause of death of those men. In the first five cases, all we were able to find were the victims’ heads.

“Do I remember Ramon Toussaint! Lieutenant Ned Harris and the rest of us who worked on that case strongly suspected that our anonymous vigilante might well have been Ramon Toussaint!”

During this outburst, Koesler seemed to be recoiling as he withdrew deeper and deeper inside himself. “Those murders are still in your unsolved file,” he said, almost in an undertone.

“That’s true,” Koznicki said, as if to himself.

“Does this mean, then,” Koesler asked at length, “that you will not work with Toussaint?”

“I have been known to state that I would take a lead from the devil himself if it would help break a case.”

“Then you will!” Koesler’s relief was evident.

“But how is this possible? When last heard of, Toussaint was working in San Francisco.”

“No, he’s here. He’s in Rome. I spoke with him earlier today. He is here to help. He is determined to help. The only question was our cooperation.”

“I, too, have a question: This man was a suspect in an extraordinarily bizarre murder case. Do we count on him as our ally, or our enemy?”

“He is in our camp, Inspector. No doubt about it. He, as we, deeply admires Cardinal Boyle. It was Cardinal Boyle who ordained Toussaint a deacon. While he was in Detroit, Toussaint and the Cardinal were comparatively close.” Koesler hesitated, then having obviously reached a decision, continued.

“I have not had an opportunity to speak with Toussaint at any length, but he does agree with my hypothesis. I don’t know how much he knows . . . or what exactly prompted him to come here . . . but he has come to Rome to try to protect the Cardinal and to stop whoever is responsible for all this. I assure you, Inspector, we will be far ahead of the game with Toussaint in our corner.”

Koznicki looked searchingly at Koesler. “Then you feel that the Reverend Toussaint’s presence in Rome and his reason for being here confirms your hypothesis?”

Koesler looked sheepish. “Yes. But I was afraid that if I led with Toussaint you might have rejected the whole idea out of hand. I felt that only if you reached the same conclusion in the same fashion I did—based on your own evaluation of the facts, possibilities, and coincidences—would you be amenable to Toussaint’s collaboration.”

“You were wrong.”

“I’m glad,” Koesler said simply.

“When can we get together?”

“Tomorrow. After the concelebrated Mass in St. Peter’s.”

“Not till then?”

“He told me he had to establish some contacts here. He said he should be able to do so by tomorrow afternoon.”

“So be it, then. Tomorrow afternoon.”

5.

Irene Casey was by no means alone in finding St. Peter’s Basilica incomprehensibly huge. This, the largest church in Christendom, is so big that it is difficult to believe that its dimensions are as colossal as they actually are.

Here, in St. Peter’s Square, where Irene now stood contemplating the view, one-third of a million people regularly gather at one time to hear the Pope speak. In the center of the square stands the red granite obelisk that Caligula took from Heliopolis and Nero later had placed in the Circus Maximus.

Then there are Bernini’s columns. The double colonnade surrounding the square consists of four rows of columns and spreads out from the Basilica, opening, as someone once said, “as in an ideal embrace from Christianity offered to the world.”

The facade of St. Peter’s alone is 374 feet long and 136 feet high. The famous central dome is 139 feet in diameter and 438 feet above ground.

Inside St. Peter’s, the central aisle is an eighth of a mile in length; a seemingly infinite number of people can be packed into the church. For the usual papal functions, some 70,000 tickets are distributed.

As she rehashed these figures, Irene studied the ticket she held. It was a pass to this Friday morning’s Mass to be concelebrated by Pope Leo XIV and the new Cardinals. A few thousand of the Cardinals’ closest friends had been invited to attend. The service would include the ceremony of bestowing on each Cardinal his strikingly simple ring of office.

Irene’s ticket did not disclose much. During this week of juggling tickets to various ceremonial events, Irene, as well as almost everyone else involved, discovered that identical information was printed on every ticket. An announcement of the event for which the ticket would gain admittance, the time, and the place of the event.

What mattered, everyone soon learned, was the color. Depending on one’s ticket color, one saw, heard, or even participated in the event. Or, one became part of the great unwashed, stuck behind barricades so that if one’s height were not well in excess of six feet, one had a magnificent view of chests, backs, and shoulders, depending on which way people were facing.

Or, one just might be stuck in Outer Darkness, where many had found themselves for the red hat ceremony, and where many had gnashed their teeth.

Irene’s ticket to this event was gold. She wondered what that augured.

“Hi!” It was Pat Lennon. “What color do you have?”

“Oh!” Irene was startled. “Oh, it’s gold. How about you?”

“Blue.” Joe Cox did not attempt to conceal his disgust. “Blue has not been kind to us this week.”

“Mine’s blue, too,” said Lennon, echoing Cox’s tone. “Say,” she continued, “I have an idea. How would it be, Irene, if Joe and I tag along with you? You show the official your gold ticket and we’ll try to follow you in.”

“It’s all right with me. But do you think it’ll work? Isn’t it risky?”

Lennon laughed. “They’re not going to throw us into the Sacred Penitentiary.”

“And besides, if you’re determined, they don’t insist on perfect compliance,” said Cox, missing Lennon’s allusion to the former Vatican office that once dispensed, among other things, indulgences.

“O.K.,” said Irene, “let’s try it.”

The three walked briskly toward the basilica.

As they walked, Irene’s thoughts turned to yesterday’s startling events. She had not been in the Sistine Chapel when Cardinal Gattari had been attacked. As far as her work for the Detroit Catholic was concerned, it didn’t matter that she hadn’t been there. Her paper was a weekly, and by the time it went to press, the world would know what had happened to the late Cardinal. She would cable color stories to her publication. But today, the Cardinal’s death was on everyone’s mind.

“Wasn’t it terrible what happened yesterday?” Irene said. “Were you there?”

“Were we there? Joe, here, chased the killer!”

“No kidding!” Irene turned to look at Cox. “What happened? Did you catch him?”

“No, I didn’t catch him. But I did learn what dreadlocks are.” Cox threw an indignantly scornful glance at Lennon.

“Oh, you mean the way a black person’s long hair hangs after it’s washed,” said Irene.

“How come everybody but me knows about dreadlocks?” Cox spread his hands wide.

“Oh, don’t feel bad, Joe,” said Irene. “We lived in a mixed neighborhood for years. So I know all about dreadlocks and do-rags and so on.”

“Look out!” Cox snapped.

Lennon was forced to literally jump to get out of the path of about fifteen nuns, swiftly advancing in close order drill, heads down and single-mindedly taking the shortest route between two points.

“Whatinhell was that?” asked Cox.

“I don’t know their religious order,” Irene smiled, “but those are Italian nuns.”

“How do you know?”

“Partly intuition. Plus there aren’t that many national groups that still have nuns dressed from head to toe in yards and yards of wool. And the Italian nuns have a habit of staying close to each other like that contingent.”

“Like an army of red ants,” Lennon commented. She was not all that happy at having been nearly run over.

The trio approached one of the officials who was scanning tickets, then sending people off in various directions. Irene flashed her gold ticket and was directed to the left. She was closely followed by Lennon and Cox, neither of whom so much as glanced at the official. No word was said, so they blithely continued on their way. Soon, following the crowd, they entered the right transept, off to one side from the main altar and to the right of the Chair of the Confession. Excellent. Pound for pound, the best seats in the house.

But the seats were going like hotcakes. With the exception of the first few rows, which were reserved for visiting dignitaries, it was first come first served. Fortunately, there were several chairs together in the third from the last row. Irene, Lennon, and Cox immediately staked their claim.

“I wonder where we’d be if we’d used our blue tickets,” mused Lennon.

“Somewhere out there.” Cox indicated the nave of the basilica where sawhorses had been placed to segregate and contain the crowd.

As Cox looked into the main section of the basilica, his attention was captured by something out of the ordinary in the second section from the front. Several officials were moving the crowd aside to allow a woman carrying a baby to stand at the very edge of the middle aisle. He pointed this maneuver out to Lennon. Neither could fathom what it signified.

Lennon looked at her watch. “It’s 9:30! This thing was supposed to start at nine! And there’s no sign it’s about to start anytime in the near future.”

Irene patted her hand. “Dear, tardiness is Continental. But in Italy, it’s an art form. Maybe you’ve read in the past that there has been a good deal of rancor, insults, and even bottle-throwing on Christmas day at the Cave of the Incarnation in Bethlehem. It’s because each of the Christian sects has its appointed hour to celebrate its Christmas liturgy there. The Italians are always late starting and late finishing. Sometimes that becomes the final straw for the Armenian Christians. And then the bottles fly.”

“Sure,” Cox affirmed, “you remember, honey, the other day when we were lunching with those Italian journalists at the cafe on the Via Veneto. We had to file our regular stories. That guy, what was his name, Valentine, kept saying, ‘One more glass of wine.’ We tried to tell him we had deadlines. As a journalist he certainly should have been able to understand that. Remember what he told us? ‘If there’s any story out there that’s really big, it will find you!’”

Perhaps it was a combination of the long delay in starting this ceremony, combined with a periodic fluttering of the curtain covering the entrance through which the procession would come. But every so often, with greater frequency as time passed, the crowd would come alive. Someone would shout, “He’s coming!” and the cry would be picked up by others. Only to die away in disappointment.

Out of the corner of her eye, Lennon noticed unusual movement. Two of those small Italian nuns were inching their way down the steps toward the front row. For some reason, she could not take her eyes off them.

All these false starts were beginning to get on Cox’s nerves. He had been jumpy anyway since yesterday’s turmoil. It happened every time and any time he worked on a hot story as he was with this Gattari killing. He just couldn’t come down quickly from his high. The adrenalin just continued to pump. This—working on a breaking story or uncovering an investigative story—was mother’s milk to him. He could not believe that the death of Gattari was the end of it. There had to be more. And the sequel could come from anywhere. He had to be ready for it. And he was. His restless eyes roamed the basilica. With each false start, with each mistaken cry of anticipation, Cox’s heartbeat accelerated. If only something—anything—would happen.

“Look! Down there!”

Cox’s concentration was so intense that Lennon’s screech almost catapulted him out of his chair. Neither Cox nor Irene immediately identified what Lennon wanted them to see even though she was pointing.

“Down there! The front row!”

Cox sighted down to the front row directly before them. He saw figure after figure of uniformed or grandly attired people. Heads of state, ambassadors, royalty, and other Very Important Persons. Then, in the midst of the august assemblage, he saw it: the sore thumb. Two, actually.

“How’d they get in there?” Cox exclaimed.

“Oh, my dear!” Irene spotted the two little Italian nuns sitting composedly among the VIPs.

“I’ve been watching them inch down to the first row,” Lennon explained. “They moved in just behind the first row. Behind the very seats they’re in now. When that last false alarm was sounded, the two men sitting there stood and stepped to the railing to see if the Pope was really coming. Now, I’m not kidding, those two crazy nuns vaulted over the backs of the chairs and sat in them! When the two men turned back to their seats, they found them taken. You could see it written all over their faces: What could they do—throw two sweet little old nuns out?”

By now, Cox and Irene focused on the two very dignified, lavishly bemedaled gentlemen shrugging and making their way out of the front row and moving up the aisle toward the rear of the section.

The three onlookers had a good laugh.

Suddenly, “This is it!” Cox heard himself exclaim, though he didn’t quite know why.

In any case, there was no doubt the procession had indeed commenced. The noise began as with the previous false alarms. But instead of slowly dying out as had the earlier cheers, this one surged and swelled to a mighty roar.

Cries of “Viva il Papa!” rose from the throats of everyone, including those who did not understand Italian, as well as those who did not even know what they were yelling. As the Pope passed, borne aloft in his sedia gestatoria, flashbulbs and strobe lights exploded throughout the scene, creating the appearance of bolt after bolt of lightning crackling within the basilica.

Pope Leo XIV all the while beamed an ear-to-ear grin as his chair gracefully swayed from right to left, left to right, right hand tracing benedictions over the crowd, then alternating that gesture with a scooping motion of both hands. They were playing his song. And it went, “Viva il Papa!”

It was virtually impossible not to be caught up in the excitement. Even Joe Cox, nonpracticing unbeliever that he was, found himself on his feet applauding and popping in an occasional “Viva!”

Then without warning, the Pope’s chair stopped while the procession of functionaries and prelates moved on toward the altar without him.

“Look!” cried Cox, with a note of triumph, “the woman with the baby! The woman with the baby! The Pope is kissing the baby! It’s the Designated Baby!”

That was it. The woman whom Cox had earlier spied being moved to the edge of the middle aisle had lifted her child toward the pontiff. As if by prearrangement, the chair porters had halted before the exact spot where the woman stood. The Pope reached down and took her baby. He kissed the child and returned it to the mother.

The crowd loved it. There were mixed cries of “ooh!” and “aah!” and the good old faithful, “Viva il Papa!” by the unimaginative, and some explanation by Italians for the benefit of their foreign guests, “Da Papa, shesa lova da bambino!”

The Pope having demonstrated his love for little children, or at least for this designated baby, the procession moved on as cheers continued to ricochet through the basilica.

The sedia gestatoria was lowered when the Pope reached the main altar of St. Peter’s. Leo XIV completed two circles around the fringe area of the altar, pressing the flesh of princes and princesses, heads of state, ambassadors, and two small Italian nuns. The strobes and flashbulbs continued to pop, even from the rear of the cathedral whence their light affected only the consolation of the amateur photographers who were popping them.

Once the actual Mass began, matters not only became more solemn, they grew in beauty. Amplified voices of the Sistine Choir proved this was one of the world’s most exceptional singing groups.

But Joe Cox had a difficult time concentrating on a ceremony he neither understood nor believed in. His mind and his gaze wandered. He focused on the delegation of American Cardinals in attendance.

“Pat,” he whispered, “look at the American Cardinals over there.” He gestured in their direction. “Do you notice anything out of the ordinary?”

“No, not really. Like what?”

“You were telling me how the vestments of the Cardinals had been simplified. How, instead of long red robes and ermine capes, they now wear just the red cassock and white surplice, right? Well, with that in mind, look again.”

Lennon focused more seriously on the group. “Well, I’ll be-that so-and-so from Los Angeles is wearing a gold surplice!”

“Just in case anyone forgets that California is the Golden State!”

It was time for bestowing the ceremonial ring of office, a surprisingly simple circle of silver with no stone, only an inscription.

Since the new Cardinals were in alphabetical order, Cardinal Mark Boyle was the first to be escorted up to Pope Leo XIV. Boyle knelt before the seated pontiff, who positioned the ring while intoning, “Receive the ring from the hand of Peter and know that your love for the Church will be reinforced by love for the prince of the Apostles.”

Cox thought that a rather self-serving statement. He did not know that diocesan priests, when they are ordained, are not called upon to promise to serve the people to whom they will be sent. Rather, they promise reverence and obedience to their ordaining bishop and his successors.

Again Cox mentally wandered from the ceremony at hand.

“Hey, look over there!” He nudged Lennon.

“Where?”

“The Chicago Cardinal—what’s his name?”

“Cardinal William Hitchcock.”

“Yeah, Wild Bill Hitchcock. I think he’s sitting on two chairs.”

“Go on!” But as everyone, including Cardinal Hitchcock, stood, it was obvious he had, indeed, been sitting on two chairs. Cox snickered.

“Joe! Pay attention!” Lennon scolded.

But there was nothing further to which to pay attention. The ceremony was concluded. The ecclesial dignitaries formed in procession and began the long march out. Again the Pope was carried, surrounded by guards and accompanied by cheers and illuminated by flashbulbs and strobe lights.

As Irene, Lennon, and Cox turned to leave, they beheld a scene worthy of a De Mille epic. A sea of humanity was being funneled through what was in actuality a gigantic door space. But from their perspective it appeared to be that narrow gate Jesus spoke of through which the rich could not easily pass.

There was little choice. It was either wait at their places for an additional hour or so for the basilica to empty, or test their fate and put their lives on the line and join the exiting crowd.

“What the hell,” Cox urged, “let’s try it. You only live once.”

“Yeah,” Lennon agreed, “and this may be it!”

As they made their way down the steps they were quite literally swept up by the crowd. Cox was convinced that, were he to take both feet from the floor at once, he would be carried off by the press of the crowd. But he feared if he did he just might fall. And that would mean death by stampede.

Irene was sure she had been pinched—several times. But for now, her one thought was to escape this adventure alive. Later— if there were a later—would be time enough to check for bruises.

As he was vortexed through the doorway, Cox witnessed an almost unbelievable sight. A man was attempting to get back into the basilica. As he and Cox passed as buffeted ships in the night, the man was pulling himself from one shoulder to the next, as one literally swimming against the current. As far as Cox could tell, the man did well merely to remain in situ and not be swept backwards.

From time to time, in future years. Cox would wonder whatever had happened to that man and what he was trying to accomplish that had motivated him to such a bizarre form of suicide.

6.

The tables sagged and the shelves drooped, so heavily laden were they with foods—all of them delectable.

Trays filled with rich varieties of antipasto alternated with trays heaped with fresh figs, berries, cream puffs, salads. Pans overflowed with red tomatoes, red peppers, green peppers, clams, and melons. Cucumbers were fitted between stalks of fresh asparagus that nestled among fruit-filled platters. On the topmost shelf was an unprepared leg of calf. Peeking from behind the leg were spinach and various kinds of lettuce. The aromas mingled to whet the appetites of all who entered the restaurant.

Gallucci’s was located on a typically narrow Roman street off the Via Merulana near the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore.

It was not one of Rome’s more famous or popular restaurants. But for the few cognoscenti it was among the very best Rome had to offer. And Rome had some of the best in Europe.

One who knew of Gallucci’s and frequented it when in Rome was Inspector Walter Koznicki. He had chosen this spot to meet Father Koesler and the deacon Ramon Toussaint at 6:00 p.m. partly because he prized the place and partly because he knew they could conduct a secluded meeting there during dinner.

Koznicki arrived at Gallucci’s several minutes before six. Koesler and Toussaint arrived together promptly at six. The two had spent much of this day together renewing their friendship. In Detroit, Toussaint and his wife, Emerenciana, had been extremely close friends of Koesler’s. A friendship that had survived even the Toussaints’ embroilment in that episode wherein violent justice was brought to those who were escaping the punitive arm of the law. Shortly thereafter, the Toussaints had left to relocate in San Francisco. Koesler had not seen them since.

Koesler, in his half-Latin, half-quasi-Italian, informed the maî-tre d’ that they were with the Koznicki party. They were shown to a private booth in the rear of the restaurant, where they sat and absorbed the sight and smell of tempting, tantalizing food.

Bottle after bottle of wine lined those shelves not piled with food. Each table was topped by a white cloth over the traditional red and white checkered cloth. In sum, it resembled most other authentic Roman restaurants. But Koznicki assured them it was far from merely average.

Although Koznicki had been well aware of Toussaint, had seen photos of him, and had even seen the man at a distance, the two had never formally met.

As Koesler introduced them, the Inspector appraised the deacon.

Though in his middle years, Toussaint appeared to be an exceptionally strong and vigorous man. Koznicki also noted there seemed to be much going on behind Toussaint’s lively brown eyes. The Inspector guessed Toussaint would be a worthy chess opponent; he was not likely to come in second in any game of wits.

Long, long ago, in his early days in Detroit, Toussaint had correctly appraised Koznicki as one of the most astute and effective detectives Toussaint had ever known.

“Since I am familiar with Gallucci’s,” said Koznicki, “perhaps you will permit me to make a few suggestions?”

“Of course. Take over,” Koesler said.

Toussaint merely smiled and nodded.

Koznicki summoned the waiter. “I think a nice Chianti to begin,” he turned to his guests, “and for the antipasto, I would suggest the caponata for both of you.” He looked at the waiter, who nodded. “It is a cold salad of eggplant, celery, capers, tomatoes, olives, vinegar, and sugar,” he explained to his friends. “For a first time at Gallucci’s, it is a good, innocent way to begin. And,” he turned again to the waiter, who realized he was dealing with one who was on easy terms with the menu, “I will have the carpaccio.”

“Well, where to begin?” said Koesler, as the waiter went about bringing breadsticks and butter, followed by the requested Chianti for the Inspector’s approval. “I guess since much of this is my idea, I’d better bring you up to date, Ramon, on what we suspect is going on.”

Koesler, halting only to permit the waiter to serve the salad, then reviewed with Toussaint what was mostly his hypothesis on the possible connection between the murders of Cardinals Claret and Gattari. The fact that both killings seemed entirely unmotivated and unusual. Both murders were perpetrated by black men in dreadlocks. Both victims were prime candidates for the Papacy. And, finally, the strange appearance of a symbol of black power in the form of a black fist.

“And you are right, Bob, in connecting them, I believe,” said Toussaint, as he set down his wine glass. “I heard some talk on the part of a small segment of the black community in San Francisco after the murder of Cardinal Claret. So I went to Toronto to see for myself. My contacts there corroborated the fact that there is a conspiracy of sorts, but they were not certain where it would lead. Then, at a meeting in San Francisco, my Haitian friends told me they had learned that this conspiracy would spread to Rome. And so it has.”

“But do you know who is responsible? And why?” The questions were Koznicki’s. Before Toussaint could reply, the waiter arrived to clear away the salad dishes.

Koznicki again consulted the menu. “I would recommend, again for a first visit, the Stracciatella. It is eggs, cheese, and nutmeg blended, then poured into boiling chicken broth.”

The waiter’s eyes sparkled in the presence of a bongustaio.

“Fine,” said Koesler.

“I believe I will skip the soup course, Inspector,” said Toussaint.

“As you wish,” said Koznicki. “For myself, I will have the pasta e fagioli.”

The waiter refilled their glasses with Chianti and departed.

Koznicki, eager for a reply to his questions, nodded at Toussaint.

“It is a long story that I shall try to make as short as possible without omitting any of the essential details,” said Toussaint.

“Perhaps you are aware,” he began, “of the dissatisfaction of many of the home-counties English with the people of many colors who now live in London and its environs—Indians, Africans, Pakistanis, Jamaicans, and so forth. These so-called native peoples have a difficult time making a living and conforming to English mores, particularly in so urban a setting. When the English become unnerved, the classic response from the erstwhile colonials, is ‘We are here because you were there!’ Which means, of course, that the problem is due solely to the fact that Great Britain’s empire once included all its colonies. In making India a British colony, it made the Indians British subjects. If Britain had stayed at home, as it were, so would the Indians have remained in India.

“This concept is even more relevant when one considers Africa,” Toussaint continued as Koznicki and Koesler began their soup. “Black Africans were taken prisoner and removed from their homeland and delivered to the West. To America, where, in the South, they were made slaves to King Cotton. And to island countries, like Haiti and Jamaica. But in those two countries, the Africans experienced vastly different treatment.

“In Haiti, their masters,” Toussaint winced at the word, “were the French. The French considered their slaves to be human, if inferior. Ergo, they were souls to be saved. The slaves were required to be baptized and thus become Catholic. In a sense, I owe my Catholic heritage to Haiti’s French slaveowners. Knowing what I do now, I would choose to be Catholic. But that does not blunt the fact that Catholicism was forced upon the slaves of Haiti.

“The slaves, of course, had little to say about this enforced religion. They simply mixed their new, alien religion with their own religious practice which Westerners know as ‘voodoo.’

“In time, many of the slaves of Haiti either won their freedom or escaped and emigrated to many large cities in many countries. That is why you will find the descendants of former Haitian slaves in virtually all Western urban centers. And with them you will find this amalgam of Roman Catholicism and voodoo.

“The experience of the African slaves of Jamaica was quite different simply because they belonged to the English. And the English considered their slaves not as humans but as property. There were no forced conversions, thus their development was comparatively free from Western influence. But Jamaican slaves suffered one of the highest mortality rates of any of the islands. So the black population growth derived almost entirely from repeated importation of more blacks from many parts of Africa. The form of voodoo that developed in Jamaica was called ‘pocomania,’ or ‘the little madness’ or ‘possession.’ It evolved from a mixture of differing forms of voodoo brought from different parts of Africa.

“But because of the forced mixing of these differing African cultures, there were few shared traditions or experiences. So that different beliefs and different practices evolved in a variety of different groups.”

Just then, their waiter returned, removed the empty dishes and waited with polite curiosity for Koznicki’s order for the next course.

Toussaint consulted his watch. It was growing late and he had much to do before this day was finished. He would have to hurry through this explication. But it was important—very important—that these two should understand.

“Inspector,” said Toussaint, “I will eat no more. I hope you will make allowances. There is much I have yet to do. But please; order for yourself and Bob. I will talk. You will enjoy your meal. We never know how many more meals we have to enjoy before we will eat no more.”

A strange statement, thought Koznicki.

“I will now order the pasta and the entree for the Father and myself. Our friend will have no more,” Koznicki said.

An expression of sadness passed over the waiter’s features. He could not bear to think of anyone’s being only a spectator at a Gallucci meal.

“Father will have the fettuccine.” He turned to Koesler. “It will remind you of egg noodles, Father, only so much better.” He turned again to the waiter. “And I will have your gnocchi. When we have finished, please serve the entree. Father will have the red mullet—you will like that, Father. It is prepared right at the table. And I will have the polio scarpariello. And bring us a bottle of your Orvieto.” He glanced across at Toussaint. “Are you sure you want nothing more? Something to drink, perhaps?”

“Thank you, no, Inspector.”

“Then please go on.”

“I will not burden you with the history of the slave rebellions of Jamaica, the Maroons, or a long list of freedom fighters. For our purpose, I will merely mention Marcus Garvey and his prophecy to the slaves of Jamaica—the slaves who wanted nothing more than to escape what they saw as a massive conspiracy of Western civilization to keep them in bondage and away from their homeland—Africa.

“Garvey prophesied, ‘Look to Africa, when a black king is crowned, for the day of deliverance is near.’

“The majority of Jamaican blacks believe that prophecy was fulfilled when an Ethiopian named Ras Tafari was crowned emperor in Ethiopia in 1930. Ras Tafari took the name Haile Selassie. From that moment on, Ethiopia became the longed-for homeland for a majority of Jamaican blacks; Haile Selassie became their savior, and they became, after his given name, Rastafarians.”

The pasta was served.

“Rastafarianism is not a religion or a government or a social order. It is a way of life and it is not understood in precisely the same way by all Rastafarians.

“Jah is God and he is black. The Bible, especially the Old Testament, is their textbook. But it must be appropriately interpreted. For instance, in the Book of Numbers it says,” Toussaint quoted from memory, “‘All the days of the vow of his separation, there shall be no razor come upon his head: until the days be fulfilled, in the which he separated himself unto the Lord, he shall be holy, and shall let the locks of his hair of his head grow.’ All of which justifies the style called . . .” Toussaint paused.

“Dreadlocks,” Koznicki supplied.

“Exactly. Or this from Genesis: And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth; and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind . . . and God saw that it was good.’ And this Biblical passage legitimates . . .” Toussaint paused again.

“Marijuana,” supplied Koesler.

“Which they call ganja. And which, for them, is a sacrament.

“Their music is reggae. It was made popular by the late Bob Marley. Perhaps you are familiar with it?”

Koesler slowly swallowed some fettucine and shook his head.

“I must admit I was aware of both Mr. Marley and his music,” said Koznicki, “but I have steadfastly avoided both.”

“It does not matter,” said Toussaint, “Reggae is not that germane to our present situation.

“What is of importance is to understand the Rastafarians, how they became what they are, and what their hope and aim is. Essentially, Jah is their black God; Haile Selassie—formerly Ras Tafari—is their savior . . .”

“But Selassie died years ago,” Koesler protested.

“It does not matter. Many Rastafarians refuse to believe he is dead. To others, he has merely preceded them into heaven.

“But to go on with the essential Rastafarian creed: Ethiopia is the homeland; Addis Ababa is Zion; the Western world is Babylon, an enslaving, corrupt, selfish, persecuting society from which the black man must one day escape and return whence he came.

“Ganja they have adopted probably because the weed grows abundantly in Jamaica and also because the narcotic offers some release and escape from the poverty and degradation the black man in exile feels.

“Now, when we come to the way in which each Rastafarian reacts to these beliefs that structure his or her way of life, we find great diversity.”

Toussaint’s chronicle was interrupted by the waiter’s return.

Before Koznicki, he placed a dish containing small sections of chicken which had been crisply fried, then sauced with garlic, rosemary, and white wine.

On a serving cart next to the table, the waiter prepared Koesler’s fish. The mullet lay in a large pan. With a single stroke, the waiter split the large fish and then boned it. After squeezing half a lemon over it, he poured first wine, then the fish’s own juices over its length. It appeared delicious, and it was.

“Most Rasta men,” Toussaint proceeded, and then, as if interrupting himself, “despite the popular and current feminist movement, we might just as well dismiss the Rasta women because the Rasta men have dismissed them: Rasta women are respected, protected, supported, and appreciated; but, if something important is happening, Rasta females will not be there.

“Anyway, as I was saying, most Rasta men are peaceful, at least as long as they are not provoked. There are some, however, who are comfortable with violence. You can find ample evidence of this in your daily papers.

“There were, for example, the twelve Rasta men who kidnapped a young black woman and her son in the Bronx some years back. Rastas executed four of their fellow Rastas in New York City. There have been Rastas wounded and killed in gunfìghts with police. Rastas have been known to traffic in drugs and to commit robberies. So, for a group officially espousing peace and love, some of the Rastas can be and are very violent. And it is, quite evidently, these violent Rastas with whom we must now deal.”

“All of what you have told us is both interesting and informative,” said Koznicki. “But why? Why should even a violent Rastafarian want to attack a Cardinal, a prince of the Catholic Church?”

“That is the fundamental question, is it not?” Toussaint said reflectively.

“Some years ago,” he proceeded, “there was a segment of the popular Sunday evening television program, ‘Sixty Minutes,’ that dealt with the Rastafarians. It opened with a scene of a Rasta man, dreadlocks and all, beating on a small drum and chanting, ‘Death to the Pope! Death to the Pope!’”

“I must have missed that program, although I usually watch the series,” said Koznicki.

“I remember it,” said Koesler, “but I don’t recall the scene you describe, Ramon. I must have missed the opening of that segment. Was any reference made to it later in the program?”

“No, oddly. But it was there in the beginning.”

“But again,” Koznicki touched napkin to his mouth, “why? Why ‘Death to the Pope’?”

“The Rastafarians,” Toussaint replied, “consider the Pope the most powerful and significant figure in Western civilization.”

Koesler smiled. “There are those who would accord that description to the president of the United States, or, perhaps, to the Russian premier.”

“Yes,” said Toussaint, “but neither of them has had the supreme spiritual authority over the great number of centuries that is inherent in the Papacy.

“While the Rastas will grant that, here and there, individual whites may be able to reform and break the chains of their condemnation before Jah, generally they believe that the white race—the oppressor—is in conspiracy with Satan and the Pope, both of whom they equate.”

There followed a relatively long period of silence while Koesler and Koznicki finished their entrees and carefully considered all Toussaint had said.

“All right, then,” said Koznicki at length, “suppose for the sake of argument we say that not all, but certain Rastafarians wish to kill the Pope out of vengeance for all they have had to suffer in those centuries of slavery. Why have they killed Cardinals Claret and Gattari?”

“Bob supplied the answer when he grasped that the connection between the Cardinals was their position as probable papal candidates.

“You see, since the assassination attempts on Pope Leo XIV, the security surrounding the Pope has been intense. And even before this increased security, he was by no means an accessible man. Now, he is, as much as can be said for any public figure, almost beyond physical attack, particularly at close range.

“Since they perceive they cannot successfully assault the reigning Pope, this fanatic minority among the Rastafarians has decided to cut down the prime candidates for the Papacy. That is what I feared when Cardinal Claret was murdered. That is why I went to Toronto—to check with my sources there. What they had learned from infiltrating some Rasta meetings, and what my contacts here in Rome have told me, only reinforce my fears.”

“You have contacts both in Toronto and Rome.” It was a question uttered as a statement by Inspector Koznicki.

“If you had not been in my land, I would not be in yours.” Toussaint smiled. “There are Jamaicans and Haitians all over the world whose ancestors were forcibly snatched from their homelands in Africa. So, there are networks of voodoo and pocomania and Rastafarians all over the world. Only a worldwide network could attempt a plot of this magnitude.”

There was another pause in the one-sided conversation during which their waiter cleared the table. Koznicki ordered a fruit and cheese plate, a bottle of Asti Spumante, and espresso for himself and Koesler.

“If I am to understand correctly,” Koznicki said, “the book you mentioned yesterday . . .” he mentally groped for the title.

“The Inner Elite,” Koesler prompted.

“Yes. Thank you. That is not a definitive listing of papal candidates?”

“Oh, no. There is no definitive list,” Koesler replied. “For one thing, any such list shortly becomes outdated. Cardinals grow old and die, new ones are appointed, and others are waiting in the wings. And, in any event, any listing of papabili has to be pure speculation, mixed with a few educated guesses. When the Cardinals enter the conclave in the Sistine Chapel, literally any one of them may emerge the next Pope. And frequently, the touts are wrong, hence the saying, ‘He who enters the consistory a Pope comes out a Cardinal.’ So much chemistry, even politics, is involved in the selection of a Pope.”

“Some would even claim there is the influence of the Holy Spirit,” Toussaint said with a smile.

Koesler returned the smile. “Some might so claim. And I would not deny it.

“Let me put it this way, Inspector. In 1939, the Catholic world would have been very surprised if Eugenio Pacelli had not become Pope Pius XII. And in 1963, we would have been extremely surprised if Giovanni Battista Montini had not become Paul VI. On the other hand, in, let me see, I think 1903 or 1904, the Catholic world was stunned when Giuseppe Sarto became Pius X. And, in our own time, remember how astonished everyone was when in 1959 Angelo Roncalli became the great Pope John XXIII.

“So you see, Inspector, predicting who will be the next Pope is not an exact science. But there sometimes are strong possibilities. And, right or wrong, somebody always has a list of papabili, as they’re called in Italian.”

“Yes, I see,”said Koznicki. “But what I am driving at is that not only might the most informed list of papal candidates prove incorrect, but that there must be more than one list.”

“I’m sure there is,” said Koesler. “I suppose the degree of probability would depend on the prognosticator’s credentials and, conceivably even on his track record.”

“So,” Koznicki concluded, “it is possible, even probable, that the listing found in The Inner Elite could well be different from that of the Rastafarians.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s true,” said Koesler.

“Then we are left with the indeed literally vital question of which Cardinals are on the Rastafarians’ list.”

“That is correct, Inspector,” said Toussaint, helping himself to some cheese. “And that is my current undertaking: to try to get a copy of their list. And to discover, if at all possible, how, when, and where they intend to assassinate the men on that list.”

“Ah,” Koznicki sat back in the booth. “Now, short of having no problem at all, that knowledge would put us in a perfect position—what Red Barber would call the catbird seat. When do you expect to obtain that list?”

“I hope to get it sometime tonight or tomorrow,” Toussaint replied, “I pray I will have it before the new Cardinals take possession of their Roman parishes tomorrow evening. Until then, they have no scheduled public appearances. They should be in seclusion and relatively safe. But tomorrow evening, even those Cardinals ordinarily protected by their bureaucratic remoteness will be available to anyone who wishes access to them for whatever reason.”

“We shall join you in that prayer.” said Koznicki.

“And now, if you’ll excuse me,” Toussaint eased out of the booth and stood, “I will be on my way.” He checked his watch. “I must go now to meet my first contact.”

After a hasty farewell, Toussaint left the restaurant.

Koesler sipped the effervescent Asti.

“I don’t suppose I ought, but somehow, after listening to Ramon, I feel sort of relieved. At least now we know who is responsible, as well as the motive.”

“That is,” Koznicki responded, “if all our theories are correct.”

“You doubt the conclusions Ramon reached?”

“Remember, Father, I have been in this business long enough so that I’ve learned to keep an open mind on everything. Everything! It was that open mind that led me to give ear to Toussaint in the first place. And it is that same open mind that will not close off other hypotheses that could be just as possible as the ones we have proposed.”

“Gee, I don’t know. It all sounded very logical to me.” Koznicki’s skepticism was contagious. Koesler felt his sense of confidence waver. “Whether or not he gets this list, I feel encouraged that Ramon will be with us and close to Cardinal Boyle.”

“And I will be right there beside him.”

Koesler turned to look directly at the Inspector. “You don’t trust Ramon!”

“Things are seldom what they seem.”

7.

Once a Cardinal is created the Pope plants a metaphorical ecclesial magnet in the man. A magnet that keeps drawing that Cardinal back to Rome.

At the drop of a red hat, the Pope can call a consistory, which is a solemn meeting of Cardinals convoked and presided over by the pontiff. The death of a Pope, of course, summons the Cardinals into conclave to come up with a replacement.

And the Cardinal is symbolically given a Roman parish. He becomes titular pastor of said parish. From that point on, he may do as he wishes with said parish. He may treat it with benign neglect or take a paternal interest in it.

His Eminence Mark Cardinal Boyle was about to take symbolic possession of St. John XXIII parish near Monte Mario. It was Saturday, May 3, early evening of a soft Roman spring. At 6:00, there was still plenty of daylight.

This was to be the final ceremony of the ceremony-filled week. At the conclusion of this rite, all the newly created Cardinals would be free to leave Rome. If, indeed, as was the case with most, their actual assignment was somewhere in the world beside the Eternal City.

The usual buses that had ferried the tourists from one event to another had done it again. Except that now, for the first time, all the buses of all the tourists from all over the world were not all going to the same place. For the first time this week, each Cardinal was going his separate way. And wherever each Cardinal went, his entourage was sure to go.

Many in the Detroit contingent felt exposed to be alone with each other rather than rubbing shoulders with Germans, Dutch, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and even Californians, Missourians, and New Yorkers.

St. John XXIII was a comparatively recently constructed church, just as St. John XXIII was a recently canonized saint. But somehow, everything in Rome, even recently constructed buildings, seemed old. It was almost as if Rome’s antiquity were infectious. As yet, St. John XXIII church had not fallen victim to Rome’s communicable dry rot, but there was every indication that it would.

One lesson immediately learned was that the Detroit contingent by itself did not come close to filling this church. The second lesson was that either the parish had not properly publicized this ceremony or that its parishioners were not crazy about going to church more than once a week. It was clear from all the recognizable faces that no one was present but Detroiters.

Koesler and the Koznickis were seated about midway from the front of the church. Organ music was playing softly. Koesler was gazing absently at Joan Blackford Hayes. As he had already observed, she did resemble Elizabeth Taylor so it was pleasant gazing at her.

“How are you coping with our water shortage, Father?” Koznicki asked.

Koesler emerged from his daydream. “Not very well! When I saw that sign in the lobby this noon that due to construction work outside, the water would be turned off for a few hours, it never entered my head that by the time we left this evening, it still wouldn’t have been turned back on.

“You have no idea of all the things you depend on water for until you lose it. Not only washing, showering, and drinking, and brushing your teeth—but flushing. I can’t believe we’re paying to stay there—they should be paying us! And as for our concierge, who up till now has been very helpful, once the water was turned off he caught our bus driver’s disease and forgot how to speak English.”

Koznicki, smiling, shook his head.

Funny, thought Koesler, how easy it is to get used to talking in church. In the good old days, talking in church had ranked as a very common venial or lesser sin. He could recall when, as a young boy, each of his confessions had included many disobediences and not a few talkings in church. Must be some sort of hangover from times past, he thought. It’s still rare to see people talking in church. Generally, even when nothing is going on in a Catholic church, people—even whole families—just sit there, saying nothing.

But not in Rome. St. Peter’s resembled more a noisy museum than a church. And even here, in the more typical setting of a parish church, nearly everyone was talking to someone—albeit softly. He wondered whether silence in church would be a thing of the past for these pilgrims once they returned home.

He looked at his watch. 6:20. Funny, too, how you could get used to things starting late. It had taken less than a week in Rome to be infected by that domani attitude. It must, he thought, be a variant of Murphy’s Law. Something indigenous to Latinism, perhaps. If it’s important, it will find you. If it’s important, it will still be important tomorrow. If you don’t do it, relax; neither will anyone else.

Koesler’s stream of consciousness ran low and then out.

Suddenly, he was thrust back into reality. The soft dreamy organ music faded, to be replaced by strong, full-powered chords. Everyone was brought to his or her feet. It was the processional.

“Ecce sacerdos magnus, qui in diebus suis placuit Deo,” the choir sang. “Behold the great high priest, who, in his days, pleased the Lord.” The traditional choral greeting for a bishop.

All turned to the rear of the church to view the entrance of the procession. Instead of candle-bearing and cross-carrying acolytes, an elderly priest was jumping up and down, waving his arms frantically. Obviously a false start. But the choir sang on as the congregation had a good laugh.

“You were saying. Inspector, that Rome is a walking, talking cinéma verité?” said Koesler.

They chuckled.

Shortly, the choir director, who was himself searching for the missing procession, caught sight of the leaping monsignor. The singing stopped and the organ returned to soft, soporific music.

Gradually, lulled once more by the soft meandering organ music, Koesler’s mind slipped into neutral. He had drifted even beyond the innocent contemplation of Joan Blackford Hayes into shimmering recollective montages of quiet, peaceful visits to various small churches of the past.

His head began to nod. He had almost dozed off when he was abruptly jarred wide awake. Someone had slipped into the pew and knelt next to him. It was Ramon Toussaint, in lightweight black suit and roman collar. An ordained deacon, Toussaint was as entitled to wear such clerical garb as was a priest.

At one time, not that many years before, Catholic clerics were seldom out of uniform. Many were uniformed at all times except bed, bath, beach, or golf course. With a few sensible exceptions, Koesler was of that school. Most current younger priests were seldom in uniform. Some, reportedly didn’t even own a black suit, let alone a roman collar.

There was no doubt that Toussaint was a striking figure of a man. And that was especially true when in clerical garb. The black suit seemed to streamline his tightly muscled body. The immaculate roman collar was a narrow, neat band made whiter by being sandwiched between the black suit and his dark chocolate complexion. Close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair crowned his chiseled features.

Having made his prayer, Toussaint sat back in the pew next to Koesler. The priest introduced him to Wanda Koznicki. With Koesler and the Inspector between them, there was no point in attempting anything as physical as a handshake, so Wanda and Toussaint merely smiled and nodded at each other.

After a few moments, Koznicki leaned across Koesler and asked, “Were you able to get it? The list?”

Toussaint shook his head slowly. “No. It is a matter of timing. My sources assure me they will have it before we leave Rome tomorrow. Apparently, the Rastafarians involved in this plot have only one item that is their equivalent of our ‘Top Secret,’ and that is this list of papabili.”

Koznicki sat back with a worried look. A criminal investigation, he had often thought, was somewhat comparable to a football game played in inclement weather. Coaches seemed to agree that competing on a wet or slippery field favored the offensive team over the defensive unit. Particularly on pass plays, the receivers knew which receiving routes they would run. The defenders, on the other hand, were forced to react to the receivers’ moves. The unsure footing enhanced the odds the receiver would be able to outmaneuver the defender.

In the realm of crime, particularly in a premeditated attempt at homicide, the assailant knew well in advance of the event who the target would be. The law enforcement officer usually could only react to the assailant’s action. In such a situation, ordinarily there could be comparatively little crime prevention. Only a great deal of post-factum crime investigation.

It was one thing to suspect that Cardinal Boyle was the target of a murder plot, quite another to be certain of it. The measure of security that it would be possible to impose on a strong-willed Cardinal and possible to elicit from a limited number of carabinieri would be far different depending on the degree of certainty one could establish.

Koznicki wished he knew.

Koesler was about to divert Toussaint with an account of the previous false alarm that had triggered the nonprocession of dignitaries when, once again, the soft music tapered off and all the stops were opened.

“Ecce sacerdos magnus,” the choir poured out in rich polyphony, “qui in diebus suis placuit Deo. Ideo, jurejurando fecit illum Dominus crescere in plebem suam.”

Once again, the congregation stood and swiveled toward the rear of the church. There were indications this was no dry run.

Proof positive was the presence of television. Two camera crews were grinding away on the steps outside the church’s front door.

This phenomenon quite naturally caused its concomitant phenomenon: the gathering of a crowd.

Drawn solely by the magnetic power of television, people began first to cluster on the street outside the church. If TV cameras were present, this must be an Event. Thus, as the cameras retreated into the church, covering the entering procession, so then did the crowds enter.

TV had a little crowd/Its mind was blank as snow/And everywhere that TV went/The crowd was sure to go.

There they were, the invited Detroit delegation, in full strength, such as it was. Yet it fell woefully short of filling the church.

Koesler was put in mind of the parable Jesus told of the large dinner feast that fell far short of standing room only. In that case, the master of the house sent his servant on a mission, bidding him, “Go out into the highways and along the hedgerows and force them to come in. I want my house to be full.”

If Jesus were on earth today, Koesler thought, he would not use a servant in his story. He would more probably say, “Call a press conference, make sure the local TV channels show up. Then my house will be full.”

As the bystanders filed in in a seemingly endless line, they all appeared to have the same expression: I don’t know what’s going on in here, but it must be important.

With the Rastafarian threat uppermost in their minds, Koesler, Koznicki, and Toussaint were alert to the presence of blacks in the crowd. There were, they were somewhat uneasy to note, quite a few black men in the congregation. Some were well-dressed. Some wore menial garb. Some, evidently African seminarians studying for the priesthood in Rome, wore cassocks in a variety of colors. None seemed overtly dangerous. But who could tell?

In any case, thanks to the miracle of television, a literally SRO crowd now filled all the pews, as well as the area along the back and side walls.

“Nel mone del Padre e del Figliolo e dello Spirito Santo. Cosa sia.”

What was that? Koesler wondered. Certainly not English. Nor was it Latin.

It was Italian.

Funny how insular one could become. Automatically, Koesler had equated English with the vernacular. But of course when in Rome, the vernacular was Italian. In addition, he now recalled that Boyle was fluent in Italian.

Other than enjoying the sheer beauty of the Italian language when spoken gracefully, Koesler concluded he would not derive anything significant from this liturgy. The Cardinal did in Italian speak, thought Koesler, paraphrasing Shakespeare, and those who did understand did nod their heads. But as for me, it was Italian to me.

He began to mull over the relatively brief history of the contemporary vernacular liturgy. The first document to be approved by the Second Vatican Council reinstated the use of one’s native tongue to the liturgy. It had been such a guarded step. Only a certain few parts of the Mass were to be celebrated in the vernacular. And those only after a nation’s hierarchy had officially requested such a change. And with the approval of the hierarchies of every other nation that shared that language. And finally, only after Rome had approved the request.

At the time, at least as far as the impatient liberal liturgists were concerned, implementing the decree seemed a tortuous series of red tape-bound steps. And all just so people could understand in their own language what was happening liturgically.

Little did they know the far-reaching ramifications of that simple change.

Few could have guessed at that time that this at first insignificant step into a vernacular liturgy would eventually lead to the discarding and virtual desuetude of Gregorian Chant, as well as to the disappearance of Palestrina and most of the other religious classical music that had evolved so beautifully and lovingly down through the centuries.

Koesler smiled regretfully as he considered some of the lesser and more prosaic consequences of the seemingly innocent exchange of languages.

From the time of his ordination in 1954 until the mid-sixties, he had used as a language of worship a tongue that few, if any, of his parishioners knew. Which meant that when he spoke during services, almost no one understood him.

On the one hand, that had led to a nearly universal sloppiness on the part of a great number of priests. When dispensing sacraments or sacramentals to large numbers of people, slipshod elisions became common. And few, if any, were the wiser. On the other hand, constant repetition of a formula in a foreign language frequently engendered thoughtless, absentminded mistakes. Neither of these occurrences could one get away with when speaking a language the listeners understood.

Koesler’s mind turned to Ash Wednesday. For some reason he had never fathomed, on Ash Wednesday a priest would find attending services people he would see again only on Easter, Palm Sunday, and Christmas. Easter and Christmas attendance was easy enough to understand. Perhaps the popularity of Palm Sunday and Ash Wednesday was explicable since these were the two feasts when the Church gave something away . . . even if it was only a palm frond and a thumbful of ashes.

In days gone by, the manner of distributing ashes was that a priest would dip his thumb into a container of ashes (the residue of burning old unused palms from Palm Sunday of the previous year) and trace a sign of a cross on the recipient’s forehead while saying, “Memento homo, quia pulυis es et in pulυerem reυerteris.”

Confronted by a line of people that often extended clear out of the church, many a priest found a way to zip through that formula in record-breaking time. And no one was the wiser.

Such sloppiness could not work in the vernacular, Koesler thought sheepishly; he recalled any number of times he had caught himself tracing the forehead cross while saying distractedly, “Remember dust that thou art man . . .”

There was a stirring in the church of St. John XXIII as people sat down rather firmly. Those still standing on the periphery leaned heavily against the wall.

Koesler shook his head penitently. He had daydreamed through the Mass. Evidently, now Cardinal Boyle was about to address the congregation. He had removed his liturgical vestments and stood attired in black cassock with cardinal-red accessories: piping, buttons, combination cummerbund-sash, and zucchetto. Koesler was again made aware of what an eye-popping color cardinal red was. Its 3-D-like vividness was almost breathtaking.

The Cardinal approached the lectern, adjusted his glasses, and, without script or notes, began to speak. In Italian.

Lost again! Koesler tried to understand what the Cardinal was saying, but failed. This puzzled him somewhat. Throughout this week in Rome, Koesler had managed to communicate rather well with the locals by means of a combination Latin-English-Italian.

Suddenly, it dawned on him: He had gotten on so well only because the Italians had taken the trouble to try to understand him, while, at the same time, they had spoken very slowly, simply, and distinctly.

As he sat and listened to the Cardinal speak at a normal—and, thus, to him, incomprehensible—pace, Koesler’s appreciation of and gratitude to all these kind and considerate Italians grew.

Evidently, the Cardinal had completed his remarks, whatever they were, for he stepped back from the microphone.

The monsignor who had earlier been seen leaping near the front door as a dead giveaway that the procession was not coming, stepped forward to make an announcement.

The announcement was made first in Italian, then in English. The English version ran something like: “Anna now, Hissa Eminenza Boyla, shesa gonna give-a hissa beneditzionay to-a heverybody. You come-a hup to-a da communionay railing.”

At that, it was better than Koesler could have done in Italian.

Those standing along the walls were first to form a line that began in front of the altar dedicated to St. Joseph. In no time, a double line stretched almost completely around the interior of the church.

As far as Koesler could ascertain, no one from the Detroit contingent had joined the line. The Detroiters seemed to be remaining in their pews. After all, there was no hurry; the buses would not be returning to their hotels until after the ceremony. And they weren’t going anywhere without their buses.

But unexpectedly, there were two exceptions, both from Koesler’s pew.

First, Toussaint rose and quickly strode up the center aisle to stand beside Cardinal Boyle. The clergy surrounding Boyle would have prevented Toussaint from this approach except for two considerations. Few people ever remained in Toussaint’s path when he was going somewhere. One would have been as inclined to stand in the path of elephants enroute to their water hole. And secondly, Toussaint’s clerical garb provided him with entree.

When he reached the Cardinal, who had not known of Toussaint’s presence in Rome, Boyle greeted him warmly.

Toussaint was followed like a shadow by Koznicki, who had excused himself as he made his way around Koesler, then purposefully continued up the aisle. Koznicki, in turn, might not have been able to approach the Cardinal except that, like Toussaint, and for the same reason, people seldom deliberately attempted to block the Inspector’s trajectory. And, as he approached the Cardinal, Boyle motioned him to come closer.

So, as Cardinal Boyle turned to welcome the lines awaiting his blessing, he was flanked by Ramon Toussaint on one side and Walter Koznicki on the other. Koesler could not imagine a more dedicated brace of bodyguards.

As each person reached the head of the line, he or she knelt before the Cardinal, who gave his blessing and might or might not exchange a few words, depending on the initiative of the recipient.

The line shuffled and moved slowly, almost imperceptibly. Noise in the church was at a low decibel count. It consisted of shoes shuffling along the tile floor, people shifting in pews, soft speech, and whispers. All in all, it was mesmerizing. Koesler had all but drifted off into a light nap when . . .

. . . all hell broke loose.

It began with a startlingly loud shout. Instantly, Koesler was on his feet heading toward the front of the church. In this endeavor he had little luck because as those in the rear seemed to be trying to approach the altar, those in the front seemed to be trying to escape it. Thus, a pile of humanity gridlocked the center aisle.

Koesler’s height helped him see part of what was going on. As soon as he had heard the shout and stood, he saw Toussaint dive forward, taking someone to the floor with him. Not a second later, Koznicki followed Toussaint down.

Then, things became further jumbled. Several other people seemed to fall onto the squirming figures before the altar. Most likely they had been pushed on by those behind trying to see.

Pandemonium ensued. Women screamed, men shouted; most of the Detroiters tried to get closer to the action as most of the locals fought to get out.

Koesler noted that Joe Cox, Pat Lennon, and Irene Casey, who had been seated near the front of the church, had managed to get very close to the action. In fact, Koesler watched in bewilderment as Cox and Lennon were absorbed into the pileup. Irene undoubtedly would have suffered the same fate had not Cardinal Boyle stepped forward and assisted her up to the step next to himself.

Koesler looked every which way to find a passage to the altar. He spotted the by now familiar jumping-jack figure of the small round pastor clambering along the rear section of the center aisle headed for the narthex. Once out of the melee, the monsignor began leaping up and down again, and shouting, this time for the police.

They came soon enough, and promptly, like an icebreaker, began clearing a path to the altar. Koesler followed in their wake.

He hadn’t seen such a sight since the Super Bowl. And that had been via television, not on the spot.

Bodies were sprawled every which way. All one could see was arms and legs and heads and rumps, purses, hats, and shoes.

The police began righting people, starting at the top of the pile and moving downward. It reminded Koesler of a referee unstacking a pileup of football players to ascertain who has possession of the ball. From what he had seen, Koesler was positive that when the police got to the bottom of the pile, Toussaint would be on top of whomever was the cause of all this ruckus. And Koznicki would be on top of Toussaint. Koesler began to feel sorry for whomever was at the bottom of the pile.

The carabinieri peeled Cox off the pile. Making no move to smooth his rumpled jacket or pull his clothing together, he located his notepad and pen inside his jacket pocket and began taking notes. A reporter to the core.

Next up was the redoubtable Joan Blackford Hayes. Oddly, she seemed totally unmussed.

The police righted Lennon, who shook loose from their hands and began rearranging her clothing. “When I catch the sonofabitch who was pinching,” she addressed the still squirming pile, “I’m going to make some human pasta!”

Then the carabinieri reached Koznicki, the Inspector got to his knees as he displayed his identification. They stepped back and allowed him to assist Toussaint.

The deacon very slowly and cautiously raised himself from the man he was covering. “I would appreciate it. Inspector, if you would take the weapon.”

Koznicki painstakingly gripped the man’s wrist. His arm had been twisted behind him by Toussaint. Koznicki removed a vicious looking knife from the man’s hand. There was blood on the blade.

“Are you cut?” Koznicki asked anxiously.

“Just slightly, I think,” Toussaint replied.

Together the deacon and the Inspector lifted the man to his feet. Immediately, the Italian police handcuffed him. Koesler elbowed to his friends’ sides. “Ramon, you’re hurt!”

“It is not so much, Bob.” There were several gashes on the back of Toussaint’s right hand.

“We’ll get you to a hospital immediately.” Koznicki, using his pen and his handkerchief, tied a tourniquet around Toussaint’s arm.

Now that Toussaint had received first aid, all attention was focused on the assailant. He was a black man of moderate build, plainly dressed except for the scarf on his head. He had said nothing and appeared determined to say nothing.

“Another random attack?” Koesler’s sardonic question was addressed to Koznicki.

But it was Toussaint who answered. “I think not.” He jerked the scarf off the man’s head. Long black ringlets sprang free.

“Dreadlocks!” said Cox in awe.

“How did you know?” Koznicki asked.

“Partly intuition,” said Toussaint. “I was looking for someone. The scarf looked as if it was covering more than the ordinary amount of hair. But mostly it was his eyes.”

Koznicki looked intently into the man’s eyes, then nodded.

“His eyes are clouded,” Toussaint continued. “He has the appearance of someone under the influence of some chemical substance. Probably marijuana—ganja.”

“Wow!” was Cox’s contribution.

By this time, Lennon, too, was taking notes. Irene Casey stood nearby garnering details for her second-day story.

“Look!” said Koesler. He pointed to a small image on the floor where the scuffle had taken place.

“The black fist!” said Koznicki.

“Can someone tell me just what the hell is going on here?” As the words left Lennon’s mouth, she remembered where she was and immediately regretted the epithet. She caught a quick glimpse of Cardinal Boyle, still standing on the altar step looking concerned. She fervently hoped his preoccupation with what had just taken place precluded his being aware of her inappropriate language.

“In point of fact, yes, young lady,” said Koznicki. “I believe enough pieces have fallen into place so that we can tell you the story. But first,” he turned to the carabinieri, “someone see to this man’s wounds!”

8.

Even for Rome it was a tiny street, a cul-de-sac near the Aurelian Wall. And even though it was late Saturday night, very little was going on here. Every so often, a couple, arm-in-arm, would leave one of the flats, walk down the street, and disappear around the corner. Or a wage-earner would make his way home hurriedly. Or a wide, round wife and mother would stagger home under a load of groceries. At least the street itself was quiet.

In a basement flat in one of the buildings, a mournful and angry rite was taking place.

The windows of the flat had been boarded up and no sound escaped the room. Like everything else in Rome of any age whatsoever, the room seemed ancient. Here and there, niches that had once held small statues, busts, or urns were now empty. The room, bare except for a couple of long benches against the walls, was devoid of any decoration or appointment save for a large framed color portrait of a bushy-haired man in uniform with many medaled decorations on his chest: Haile Selassie I, late emperor of Ethiopia, Lion of Judah, and oblivious patron of the Rastafarians.

The small room was nearly filled with men, all of them black, most of them with dreadlocks, all of them smoking marijuana in one form or another—standard-sized cigarettes, gigantic spliffs, or chillum pipes.

One man was mournfully beating a single bongo-size drum at a funereal tempo.

“Hellfire and damnation!” shouted one man.

The drum continued to sound. Some of the men shuffled back and forth across the floor. Others slumped on the benches against the walls.

“We and we has failed Selassie I,” another man bellowed.

“Shame on our house!” called out another.

“Bredren!” commanded one man, evidently the leader. “Jah not be happy with us and us. He put into our hands dem condemned tings. We and we failed to make da sacrifice. Jah not pleased!”

“Dread Rasta!”

“But der be peace!” the leader called out. “Selassie I bring peace to his Rastas!”

“Praises due Selassie I!”

“Our and our condemned ting goes now to Babylon England place where other condemned ting be! Our Rasta bredren make da sacrifice. Make a sacrifice of both condemned tings!”

“Dread Rasta! Praises due Selassie I!”

“Now, bredren,” the leader continued, “it be time for our unityfication with da Rasta men in all of Babylon. First off, we and we make our sacrifice, we and we make da longing prayer to Addis Ababa and den we and we go way for tree days of grounation.”

“Praises due Selassie I!”

Each of the men unsheathed his knife. One left the room to return with a small goat that had been tethered to an iron fence outside the basement landing. He led the goat to the room’s northwest corner, the general direction in which lay England.

With a single stroke of his long knife, the leader slaughtered the goat.

The others approached the dead animal. One by one, each bathed his knife in the blood.

“Dread Rasta!” the shouts rose, “praises due Selassie I!”

9.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Kamego speaking. Welcome aboard our Trans World Airlines charter flight to London. The weather is clear all the way and we anticipate no turbulence. We will be cruising at an altitude of 25,000 feet. Our flying time is approximately two and a quarter hours. So we should be touching down at about 10:30 a.m. London time. Have a good flight.”

The flight attendants began serving a brunch, with a beer, wine, and liquor lagniappe. However, few aboard desired any alcoholic beverage.

Cardinal Boyle turned in his seat to face Inspector Koznicki. “I’m sorry your wife was unable to continue this trip with us.”

“It is all right; she understood,” said Koznicki. “This is not the first time we have had to cancel or cut short a vacation.”

“But my dear Inspector, you did not have to deprive yourselves of a well-deserved vacation on my account.”

“With all due respect, your Eminence, we did. There is an unavoidable element of danger now until we can clear this matter up. And I think it is of vital importance for you to be aware of this danger. That is why I asked to be seated with you on this flight, so we could discuss this very matter.”

“Oh, I’m afraid you may be mistaken, Inspector.”

“Oh, I am afraid not, your Eminence. Would you mind taking a look at this list.”

Koznicki handed the Cardinal a small piece of paper on which were written nine names.

Koznicki noted that while others on the plane had doffed jackets and coats to make themselves more comfortable, Boyle had retained his lightweight black suit coat and starched white linen roman collar. He never wore the voguish black shirt with the white plastic insert at the neck. Across his chest was stretched the gold chain that held his pectoral cross, now tucked into the inside pocket of his suit coat.

“Yes?” Boyle looked up, blue eyes inquisitive.

“That is the list the Reverend Toussaint acquired from his contacts in Rome. These are alleged to be the names of those who are intended victims of an extremist element of the Rastafarians.”

Koznicki correctly anticipated that Boyle would be familiar with the Rastafarian movement. But the Inspector went on to explain what was now understood to be the intent and motive of this violent segment of the group.

“And so, your Eminence,” Koznicki concluded, “I would be very much interested in your evaluation of these Cardinals.”

“Well, of course, this list includes the names of Cardinals Claret and Gattari, both unfortunately slain.”

“But the rest, your Eminence—would you not agree that they are—how is it you say it . . . papabili?”

Boyle smiled and waved a hand in dismissal of the idea. “Oh, no, my dear Inspector. That is an oversimplification that has been going on for centuries and, recently, has been taken over and amplified by the media.

“There is no such person as a papabile. Although, of course, I have not yet participated in one, I am sure the Cardinals enter a conclave as equals. Of course, since they bring with them different backgrounds, talents, ages, and philosophies, there is no way of predicting who will be elected Pope. That depends as much on the workings of the Cardinals as it does on the workings of the Holy Spirit.”

“I understand what you are saying, your Eminence. But even if this is no more than a game people play, you must admit there are those who believe in it. There is speculation about who might become the next Pope. Books are written about it. In all due reverence, your Eminence, there are even people who bet on it. To some people, the probability is a reality. And, you must admit, if there is such a group as the Rastafarians who, since they feel they cannot reach the Pope himself, intend to eliminate those who are next in line, it would be necessary for them to have a list of all who are in the running for the Papacy.”

“But why would they attempt such an undertaking? As long as there is one Catholic left in the world, there can be a Pope, I suppose—though I have never thought about it. In any case, with many more than a hundred Cardinals, and with the Pope’s power to name as many more Cardinals as he wishes, eliminating all possible candidates to the Papacy is a veritable impossibility.”

“I cannot presume to interpret their drug-numbed minds, your Eminence. But I would guess they feel that if they can do away with everyone on that list, there would be no appropriate candidate left.

“Or, perhaps, more probably they feel that as they eliminate one after another of the most prominent Cardinals, the others will become so frightened of becoming victims, they will abolish the office of the Papacy. Thus, having accomplished the destruction of the Papacy, the Rastafarians could then in an indirect way feel they had achieved their aim of ‘death to the Pope.’”

Boyle toyed with the ring on the third finger of his right hand, as was his habit. “I suppose there is something in what you say,” he admitted.

“Well, then, your Eminence, I would ask you once again to reflect upon the list I have given you.”

Boyle did.

“Now, your Eminence, granted the caveats and disclaimers we have already discussed, would you agree that this is at least a fairly comprehensive listing of those Cardinals who would be strong candidates for the Papacy? At least as appreciated by the students of this sort of thing?”

Boyle considered for a moment. “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

“Do you know everyone on this list?”

“I know of all of them. Some are personally known by me, yes.”

“Then, tell me, your Eminence, if you feel we are correct in our somewhat hurried evaluations. With three exceptions, the men on this list all have bureaucratic positions in Rome.”

Boyle again considered briefly. “Yes, I would agree.”

“Good. Now, those in such bureaucratic positions are generally removed from everyday contact with ordinary people, and thus can be protected rather easily. The sole exception would have been poor Cardinal Gattari. Yet, if we had known of the danger to him, we could have protected him until we got this situation under control. For one thing, we would never have let him go into the Sistine Chapel unaccompanied while this threat lasted.

“But now, we come to the other three. The three that would not be in such protected and protectable positions.”

“Yes,” said Boyle, a new note of gravity in his voice, “That would be Cardinal Claret, Cardinal Whealan, and,” he paused, “myself.”

“That is correct, your Eminence. Cardinal Claret is, unfortunately, already a victim. That leaves yourself and Cardinal Whealan, Archbishop of London. The two Cardinals most vulnerable . . . and you will both be in the same place for the next two days.”

“That is correct.” He continued to finger his ring. “But of course we did not have the slightest notion of such a bizarre plot when we made our plans to meet. We are old friends, you know.”

“Well, I do not think we should have too difficult a time providing security while both of you meet away from the public eye. Say, in Cardinal Whealan’s quarters. Is there any plan for the two of you to be together in any public place?”

“Yes, there is.” Boyle felt somehow apologetic about something over which he had neither foreknowledge nor control. “Tomorrow evening there is to be an ecumenical service involving the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Whealan, and myself.”

“And where might this service be planned?” Koznicki almost hated to ask.

“Westminster Abbey.”

Koznicki shut his eyes and tried to conjure up the Abbey from memory. He knew it was and had been for many centuries the site for coronations of British monarchs. He assumed it would be a devil of a place to make secure. Still, they must have provided a maximum type of security for the coronations.

Koznicki had been silent so long Boyle finally spoke up. “Is there something wrong, Inspector?”

“We will work it out.”

“I have one question, Inspector. You have been saying such things as, ‘until we get this situation under control’ and ‘until we can clear this matter up.’ Am I to take this to mean that you see an end to this threat at some time in the near future?”

“Oh, yes. The danger comes from one small though aggressive segment of the Rastafarians. They are a splinter group of extremists—zealots, if you will. Just as many situations breed terrorist extremists, so their background and environment has spawned this unbalanced bunch of religious fanatics. It is merely a matter of finding them and apprehending them. And this, in time, will be done. We have contacted Interpol as well as the police forces of each city where any Cardinal on that list is located. In effect, your Eminence, in fictional parlance, we know whodunit; the question remaining is, can we stop them and catch them? I think the answer is most decidedly yes.”

Satisfied, Boyle nodded.

“Oh, and one last thing, your Eminence. With all due respect: not a word about that list to anyone. The news media do not have that information and we do not wish them to have it until this case is closed. We do not want the Rastafarians to know that we know who their targets are. This is the element of surprise that will be our ace of trump in foiling their plot. Only the police, the listed Cardinals, Father Koesler, and, of course, the Reverend Toussaint, through whose good offices we have the list, know about it. No one else is to know.” Koznicki was torn between the enormous reverence he felt for a Cardinal of the Catholic Church and the necessity of stating his admonishment as forcefully as possible.

“Of course, Inspector.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Captain. If you look out the windows on the right side of the plane, you’ll get a good view of the Alps. It’s a breathtaking sight this morning with the sun glancing off the snow cover.”

“It never fails,” said Joan Blackford Hayes to Irene Casey. “When one of those announcements is made, I am always on the wrong side of the plane.”

Neither of them made a move to the other side of the cabin to take in the Alps.

“Anyway, as I was saying,” Joan continued, “I just knew I shouldn’t have been in that greeting line last night at St. John’s. I mean, I looked around and saw that I was just about the only Detroiter in line and I said to myself, you shouldn’t be here. And the next thing I knew I was on the floor in a heap of people.”

Irene Casey studied Joan Hayes. There was not a hair out of place, including the white streak that ran through her otherwise black, perfectly groomed tresses. Irene had known Joan for a considerable number of years, going back to their days at Marygrove College. She had never known Joan to be less than perfectly put together, not even, she recalled, on the basketball court. Even last night, Irene, from her perch of safety near the Cardinal, had watched Joan topple into the pile and emerge somehow unscathed.

“Checking things over back at the hotel later,” said Joan, “I found I did have a run in my stocking.”

Poor dear, thought Irene.

“But it was exciting, wasn’t it?” Joan continued. “The closest I’d ever gotten to a murder was reading about it. And there I was, as close to a real murderer—uh, I guess you call them assailants if they’re unsuccessful—as I am to you.”

“Yesterday,” Irene commented, “I didn’t even know what an eyewitness was, and today I are one.”

“Exactly!”

“Is that why you’re carrying your rosary?” Irene gestured at the rather ornate black rosary resting in Joan’s lap. “Did the experience frighten you into getting religion?”

Joan glanced down at her all-but-forgotten rosary, and chuckled. “No, this was a last-minute purchase.” She laughed again. “Actually, it was and it wasn’t.”

“Make up your mind, lady.”

“Well, it started the first day we arrived. Remember when we were driven all over the countryside for hours because our rooms weren’t ready?”

“I’ll never forget! Nor will I forget that yesterday they told us the water would be turned off for a few hours, and we never saw it again . . . including this morning!”

“Yes, it was dreadful, wasn’t it,” Joan sympathized. “I do hope you had the foresight to fill your tub with water before they turned it off.”

Ms. Perfect again, thought Irene.

“Well, anyway, no sooner did we get to the hotel than this peddler—you know, the one with a pushcart full of religious articles—came up to me and started rattling away in Italian. He saw that I admired this rosary, so he took it out of its box and showed it to me. I said—with gestures, ‘How much?’ He said— with gestures, ‘6500 lire.’ I said—with a lot of gestures, ‘Too much!’ He just shrugged and walked away. I think he knew I was going to become a captive audience.”

“Sixty-five hundred lire! Why that’s . . . that’s . . .”

“About five dollars.”

“Robbery!”

“That’s what I thought. But every day as I left or entered the hotel, there he would be. With the rosary. And every day the price would go down. And every day it was still too high.

“Well, this morning I took a short walk outside the hotel before breakfast and there he was. By now, the price was down to 2600 lire.”

“About two dollars.” Irene’s arithmetic was improving.

“So I said, ‘No, no,’ and held up a one dollar bill, but he just shrugged and walked away again.

“Then, after breakfast, we were about to get on the bus, and I guess he could tell this was the end of our negotiations. He came over to me with the rosary, and said, sort of disgustedly, ‘Hokay, una buck.’ But I told him that was my offer before breakfast. Now I had only fifty cents left. And I showed him the two quarters.

“He shook his head and muttered something.

“Well, I got on the bus and sat down. Suddenly, there was a tapping at the window. There he stood, grimacing, but nodding, with the rosary held up in one hand and the other open palm outstretched.

“So I opened the window, took the rosary, put the two quarters in his hand, and he turned and walked away and that’s the last I saw of him.”

“Bet he’ll never forget you!”

“I guess not. I really feel rather proud of myself.” Joan held up the rosary rather like a trophy. “Oh, I forgot to get it blessed.”

“I think you can probably find a clergyman not a hundred miles from here to do that.”

“How about you?” Joan asked. “Did you get any souvenirs?”

Irene nodded, and smiled sheepishly. “Yes, but unlike you, I sort of got taken.”

“Oh? How?”

“Well, I went on that bus trip—you know, Rome’s version of the Grey Line Tour. We began and ended at St. Peter’s. When we finished the tour, the guide touted us into a religious goods store right in the building. So I bought a bunch of stuff. Then I went up the stairs to the first roof of the basilica—you know, where all the tall statues are.

“And there, I discovered another religious goods shop run by a bunch of sweet little nuns. Their stuff was lots nicer than what was selling downstairs, and a fraction of the price.”

“No!”

“Well, I went right back down and demanded my money back. I’ll say this for them: they didn’t bother pulling that ‘no spika English’ routine. They just told me that there were no refunds. I could see my traveler’s check on top of a pile of others on the back counter, but I couldn’t reach it, or I would’ve just taken it.”

“How frustrating!”

“Yes. But the Irish kid doesn’t quit when the score’s one to nothing against her.

“I marched outside just as another tour bus was pulling up and the guide was giving the passengers the same pitch our guide gave us—all about this great shop where you could get all this great stuff at a great price. I’ll bet every one of those guides gets a kickback from the shop owner.

“Anyway, before all those passengers could even go in, I stood at the door and told them all about the better, less expensive place upstairs.”

“You didn’t!”

“Yes, I did! And everybody marched up to the little sisters’ shop. And you should have seen the salespeople from that ripoff shop: they weren’t happy, any of them—including the bus driver and the tour guide. Oh, I’m sure they get some sort of rakeoff for touting the store.

“And none of them got any happier when I spent the entire afternoon standing there diverting tour passengers away from their store and upstairs to the nuns’ shop.”

“They let you get away with it?”

“Oh, they said a few things in Italian, English, and Profane. But I guess they decided it wasn’t worth putting out a contract on me—although at one point they did call the police. And when I explained to the police that those people refused to give my money back, they told the police I was crazy in the head from standing in the sun all afternoon! By that time, it was late in the day, so I decided I’d made my point, and called a halt to my crusade.”

“Well, good for you! That’s showing them. I’m proud of you!”

“It was sort of a standoff. They didn’t get any more customers that afternoon . . . but I didn’t get my refund either.”

“Excuse me, Irene . . .” Joan stood and stepped into the aisle. “While I’m thinking of it, I’m going to take this rosary to Bob Koesler for a blessing.”

“Why stop with a lowly priest,” Irene called after her, “when there’s a Holy Roman Cardinal aboard?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother the Cardinal just to bless a rosary!”

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Captain. We remain on schedule. We should be touching down at Heathrow Airport at 10:25 a.m. London time. The temperature in London is fifty-eight degrees Fahrenheit and the weather is—you guessed it—rainy.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you look out the windows on the right side there you can just see Paris off in the distance. At least you should be able to make out the Eiffel Tower.”

“It never fails,” said Father Koesler to his row companion, Ramon Toussaint, “when one of those announcements is made, I am always on the wrong side of the plane.”

Neither man made a move to the other side of the cabin to see the Eiffel Tower.

“Oh, Bob,” said Joan Blackford Hayes, “could I get you to bless this rosary for me?”

“Of course, Joan. But why pick on me when you’ve got a Cardinal on board?”

“Oh, I couldn’t bother the Cardinal just to bless a rosary!”

“Well,” Koesler grinned at Toussaint, “I guess that puts me in my place!”

Holding the rosary in his left palm, Koesler traced a cross over the beads with his right hand. Then he returned the rosary to Joan.

“That’s it?” she said with a touch of incredulity.

“That’s what you get for giving your rosary to a simple parish priest,” Koesler responded. “Now, if you had tried the Cardinal, he probably would have used incense.”

“Of course he would have, Bobby. But you’re sure it’s blessed?”

“It’s blessed already.”

“Then thank you.”

Koesler watched Joan as she returned to her seat.

“Don’t you wish you could do that?” Koesler said to his companion.

Toussaint smiled. “Make a pretty lady happy by blessing her rosary? That would indeed be nice. But I am only a deacon.”

“You ought to be a priest.”

“Have you forgotten that I am married?”

“Who could forget Emerenciana? Nevertheless, I’m convinced you’ll be the first modern married Latin rite priest.”

“And how will that come about, Bob?” Toussaint smiled again. In his soft, Haitian accent, ‘Bob’ rhymed with ‘daub.’

“I’m not sure. But somehow you’ll pull it off.”

“That is probably true, Bob.”

“Is your hand still troubling you?”

Toussaint touched the bandage exploratively. “No, not much, anymore. The cuts were not that deep.”

“I can’t get over how you were able to pick out that assailant last night. There were quite a few black men in that line.”

“Oh, it was not that much, Bob. It was just a feeling that grew stronger the closer he got. It started with the kerchief on his head. The feeling got stronger when I was able to see his eyes. They were sort of glazed. He seemed not to be focusing normally. Like someone who was at least partially under the influence of some kind of drug. And, finally, I saw the edge of the knife inside his sleeve. At that, I think I might have missed the knife if it had not been for the other indications.”

“Amazing! But how did you happen to become an expert on Rastafarians?”

“I am not an expert.” Toussaint chuckled. “I know something about them, of course. Most of the black community knows of them. But when I first suspected and then learned that some of them might be involved in this plot, I began to read everything I could put my hands on about them.

“The Rasta is a complex way of life. Bob. This could help you understand it.” He removed a softcover book from his briefcase and showed it to Koesler. It was titled, Rastafari: A Way of Life, with a text by Tracy Nicholas and photographs by Bill Sparrow. Adorning the cover was the photo of a turbaned black man with a dreadlocked beard.

“Let me first tell you,” said Toussaint, “that when the Rastafarians were first developing in 1933, their creed included hatred for the white race, which was considered by the Rastafarians to be inferior to the black race. Also among their tenets was the desire to seek revenge for what they considered the wickedness of the whites; the destruction, downfall, and abasement of the local forms of the white government of Jamaica; readying themselves for a return to Africa and, of course, affirming Haile Selassie as their divine deliverer, and the true sovereign of the black race.

“This was in 1933. Nothing has changed much in the fifty years since then,” Toussaint continued. “The Rastafarians’ current belief is still that Haile Selassie is ‘the living God’; that whites are inferior to blacks—or that blacks are superior to whites; that the Jamaican establishment is hellish and the Jamaican existence is hopeless; that Ethiopia is Eden on earth; that the immortal and invulnerable Emperor of Ethiopia is even now arranging for disenfranchised blacks to be repatriated in Ethiopia, and that eventually, blacks will reign over all the earth.

“You see, Bob, they have not much altered their principles or goals over the years.”

“But why marijuana? I mean, I know it’s a popular drug, but, as far as I can tell, the Rastafarians are alone in adopting it as a group lifestyle—a sacrament, indeed.”

“I think because it is there. It grows abundantly on the hills and in the Jamaican mountains. And, I think, because it helps blot out the harsh realities of their lives. With the possible exception of my own country, Haiti, the poor blacks of Jamaica exist in the most abysmal poverty of anyone in the Caribbean.

“The Rastafarian poet Sam Brown voiced the horror of his people’s degradation and brutalizing poverty when he wrote of families—whole communities—forced to coexist with dogs and rats amidst unspeakable stench; of the old dying of despair and the young broken on the wheel of malnutrition, disease, and ignorance.”

There followed a prolonged silence as each man sat lost in his thoughts.

“I remember one of my few surgical experiences.” Koesler finally broke the silence. “They gave me a shot of Darvon. For a while there, everything looked pretty great: God was really in His heaven and all was really right with the world. I remember thinking at the time that if this was the kind of escape that drugs provide, I could understand why people who led utterly miserable lives could conceivably grow to depend on this kind of escape from reality.

“I guess I can begin to see why ganja has become a sacrament for the Rastafarians.”

“Yes.” Toussaint thought for a moment. “What with their peculiar beliefs and the constant use of ganja, they certainly march to their own drummer. It even reflects itself in their manner of speech.”

“How’s that?”

Toussaint thumbed through the book he had shown Koesler, and found the passage he was seeking.

“For one thing, Bob,” he looked up from the open book, “there is the importance for Rastafarians of the number one, which they also identify by its other significance: the alphabet letter ‘I.’ Whether it appears as the roman numeral or the letter of the alphabet, they always pronounce it as the letter, ‘eye.’

“It is as this book states,” and Toussaint read, “‘I’ is part of His Imperial Majesty’s title—Haile Selassie I. It is the last letter in Rastafari. ‘I’ is so important that a Rasta will never say ‘I went home,’ but would say instead, ‘I and I went home,’ to include the presence and divinity of the Almighty with himself every time he speaks. ‘I and I’ also includes bredren who also say, ‘I and I.’ In this simple way, through language, Rastafari is a community of people all the time.”

“That’s beautiful,” Koesler commented. “It’s similar to the Christian ideal of identity with God and each other through Christ.”

“Exactly,” said Toussaint, and smiled. “And they certainly did not get any help forming this belief from the example of their ‘Christian’ masters.

“But see, the book goes on to explain how the Rastafarian importance of ‘I’ can influence their entire speech pattern,” and again Toussaint read: “‘I’ is also used in combination with other words, to glorify them: by substituting ‘I’ for a syllable, the Rastas create their own meanings. The word ‘power’ becomes ‘I-ower,’ ‘thunder’ ‘I-under,’ ‘total’ ‘I-tal,’ and so on. The word ‘irie’ (pronounced eye-ree), is an ultimate positive. ‘All is irie’ means nothing could be better; the ‘irie heights’ or ‘ites,’ in Rasta talk, are tantamount to heaven or a strongly uplifting spiritual feeling.”

“Remarkable.”

“Yes. Bob, I think you should read this book. It will give you a good basic grasp of what the Rastafarians are all about.”

“I intend to. This afternoon after we check into our hotel. But you didn’t mention: Does this book have anything to say about the black fist symbol that we’ve found at the scenes of these attacks?”

Toussaint frowned. “No; as far as I could see there was no mention of that. Of course, this book is about the basic Rastafarian movement in general. I do know that at least some, if not most, of the Rastafarians are of the opinion that the Pope is the Satan of Babylon. But there is no mention in this work—or any others I have read—of any segment of Rastas who would want to kill the Pope, let alone any Cardinals.

“This smaller, almost isolated, group of Rastas are blazing a new trail, as it were. So, they are not in a position to rely on their own traditions as much as setting new courses. Very probably, they have borrowed the symbol of the fist from the Black Power movement in the States. There is every reason they should do so. Theirs is definitely, if peculiarly, a movement to establish Black Power over the white religious figure they perceive as the centuries-old oppressor of blacks all over the world.”

“But,” Koesler’s brow furrowed in confusion, “from what you’ve read and explained about the Rastafarians, I don’t understand how they could produce such violent members. Their whole creed would seem to lead toward and engender the formation of a peace-loving holy people!”

Toussaint smiled wryly. “Is that not the way of it, Bob? The Rastas—the Haitians, for that matter—might say the same about white Christians. Jesus taught only love. It was His one commandment. It was His teaching to turn the other cheek, to pray for one’s persecutors, to identify with those most in need.

“If the white Christians had lived up to their faith; if they had been true products of the creed they profess, Africa would still be home for the forcibly transplanted black men and women. How could one enslave the very people one has been instructed to love and serve?

“Here and there, there are Christians who live up to the faith. Just as there are Rastas who live up to theirs. In a sense, the Rastas we are now involved with are, at worst, not the run-of-the-mill selfish sinner. As evil as is their purpose, they are only trying to wipe out their principal enemy . . . or those whom their confused minds perceive as their principal enemy.

“Which,” Toussaint smiled again, “does not mean we must not prevent them from achieving their goal.”

Koesler shook his head. “I’m going to have to mull this over.” He wondered briefly if Toussaint was aware that he, the deacon, had just delivered a sermon on basic Christianity to a priest.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Captain. We are still right on schedule and will shortly be making our descent preparatory to landing at Heathrow. Just off to the right side of the plane, you may be able to make out the Cliffs of Dover as we complete our crossing of the English Channel.”

“It never fails,” said Joe Cox to his everything companion Pat Lennon, “when one of those announcements is made, I am always on the wrong side of the plane.”

Neither reporter made a move to try to behold the White Cliffs of Dover or the bluebirds that might be over them.

“Look at it this way, love,” said Cox, “if that murder and attempted murder hadn’t happened in Rome, you’d be winging your way back to Detroit with the rest of them.”

“Joe!” Lennon turned toward him, “that’s grotesque!”

“It’s also true. Even with that attack on Boyle last night, poor old Nelson Kane had to roust Larry David and a slew of the other brass before he got an OK for my continuing on this story.”

“No kidding! What possible argument could anyone make against your staying with this?”

“That the Boyle assault was a fluke. That it won’t be repeated. That now that they’ve caught one of the assailants, the rest—if there are any more—will give up their plan. That they can save a lot of money if I get my tail back to Detroit.”

“That’s what you get for loyalty! You should have come over to the News when they invited you.”

“What! And leave Nellie Kane? For the glory of the Freep, I’ll live with my fate and be the only one aboard this plane who can’t afford the trip.”

“You’re forgetting Irene Casey.”

“What?” Cox craned to establish that Irene was aboard. “What do you mean Irene can’t afford the trip? She works for the Archdiocese, doesn’t she?”

“I know.” Lennon was laughing quietly. “That’s what I thought, too, till I talked with her about it this morning. The Detroit Catholic is financially independent of the Archdiocese.”

“No kidding! That little paper has to pay for this trip? I thought the Detroit Catholic was owned by the Archdiocese.”

“In a way yes and in a way no. Technically, the Archbishop is president of the Detroit Catholic Company and publisher of the Detroit Catholic newspaper. But that’s only a legal fiction. The paper stands—or falls—on its own.”

“I never thought—”

“We’re not the only ones who thought the paper was under the financial wing of the Archdiocese.” Lennon smiled. “Irene told me everytime they enter negotiations with the Newspaper Guild—”

“They’ve got the union? That little paper?”

“I was surprised too. Anyway, she says the Guild always takes it for granted that, in a pinch, the Church will sell the Sistine ceiling to cover its demands.”

“Well, as they used to say on ‘Saturday Night Live’: that’s different; never mind.” He shook his head. “I’ll have to lay this on Nellie next time I see him: The little Detroit Catholic pays the freight for its editor to cover this story while the mighty and friendly Free Press equivocates.

“And, speaking of this story, where do you think it’s going?”

“I’m not sure. I have a feeling there’ll be another attempt on Cardinal Boyle’s life.”

Ordinarily, competing reporters would not discuss any story they were each developing, unless it were to subvert the other’s coverage. But the relationship of Cox and Lennon was, in many ways, unusual if not unique. Each was at or near the top of their common field of print journalism. Each had the self-confidence such a position ought to engender. Beyond that, each was reasonably confident that neither would take undue advantage of the other. And, with most infrequent exception, neither did.

“Do you buy the motive?” Cox asked. “That this group of Rastafarians is after top-ranking Cardinals because they can’t get at the Pope?”

“Makes as much sense as anything else, I suppose.”

“How about if it’s just a group that wants to gain publicity by knocking off some pretty important people?”

“I don’t think so, Joe. This would be the first time in my memory that a world conspiracy of murder or terrorism was initiated solely to gain attention. Sure you’ll get your Middle East group, for instance, claiming responsibility for some act of violence so they can call attention to themselves. But there’s always some additional motive: They are nationalists seeking independence for their colonized country, or they are revolutionaries seeking to establish a new form of government in their country . . . something along those lines.

“Individuals might resort to violence to gain attention. But not groups. Groups always have an ulterior motive. Besides, no individual or group—no one, in fact—has publicly claimed responsibility for these acts of violence. Far from seeking the spotlight, they’re lying low.”

“I suppose you’re right. At least they’ve got the guy who tried to kill Boyle last night. They’re probably trying to sweat information out of him right now.” Cox closed his mouth, pinched his nostrils together, and blew to clear his ears. “We must be descending.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now in our descent pattern. The Captain has asked that your seat belts be fastened and that you extinguish all smoking materials. Please remain in your seats until we have arrived at the gate and the plane has come to a complete stop.”

“You’re a prophet, Joe.”

“On the other hand,” Cox resumed his line of thought, “if they don’t get the inside story from this guy, and if this theory is correct, then we’re playing in a pretty big ballpark. I mean, there are a lot of Cardinals. Who’s to say which one might be next?”

“That’s right,” Lennon agreed. “As far as which Cardinals might be favorites to win the next papal election, it all depends on whose lineup you’re looking at.”

Cox nodded, then his eyes narrowed as if struck by a new thought. “Pat . . . suppose—there’s a list.”

“A list?”

“Yeah. Look at it this way: These Rastafarians must know who they’re going after. They must have some sort of list. Sort of a rotten parody of Gilbert & Sullivan—you know: They have a little list; they’ll all of them be missed.” He turned to her. “What do you think?”

Lennon slowly nodded. “I think you’re right; they’d have to have a list.”

“Okay; assuming there is one, do you think the cops know about it?”

Lennon shrugged. “Beats me. But,” she tilted her head, “if we were smart enough to figure it out, the cops must have come to the same conclusion. The big question is: Do they know who’s on such a list?”

It was Cox’s turn to nod. “I think their best shot is that guy they apprehended in Rome. He could open a lot of doors is my guess.” He pondered for a minute. “Boyle is making only one public appearance in London, isn’t he?”

“Right: Westminster Abbey, tomorrow evening.”

“What say we check it out, file our stories, and then get down to some serious investigation?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Your place or mine?”

“Mine, silly. You know the News provides better accommodations for its reporters than the Freep.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to London. We hope you have an enjoyable time.”

Cox squeezed Lennon’s hand. “We intend to.”