Day Of Confession

41

The Vatican. Same time.

Marsciano listened patiently as Jean Tremblay, cardinal of Montreal, read from the thick dossier on the table before him.

'Energy, steel, shipping, engineering and construction, energy, earth-moving equipment, construction and mining, engineering equipment, transportation, heavy-duty cranes, excavators.' Tremblay turned the dossier's pages slowly, skipping over the names of corporations listed, emphasizing instead the businesses in which they were engaged. 'Heavy equipment, construction, construction, construction.' Finally he closed the document and looked up. 'The Holy See is now in the construction business.'

'In a manner of speaking, yes,' Marsciano answered Cardinal Tremblay directly, fighting the dryness in his mouth, trying not to hear the echo of his own voice inside his head as he spoke. Knowing that to show weakness would be to lose. And if he lost, Father Daniel would be lost too.

Cardinal Mazetti of Italy, Cardinal Rosales of Argentina, Cardinal Boothe of Australia – like members of a high court, each man sat with his hands folded on top of the now-closed dossiers, staring at Marsciano across from them.

Mazetti: 'Why have we gone from a balanced portfolio to this?'

Boothe: 'It's too heavily weighted and ungainly. A world recession would leave us and every one of these companies literally stuck in the mud. Factories frozen, equipment parked like so many multiton sculptures, useless, except to look at and marvel at the expense.'

Marsciano: 'True.'

Cardinal Rosales smiled and raised his elbows to lean on his chin. 'Emerging economies and politics.'

Marsciano lifted a glass of water and drank, then set the glass down. 'Correct,' he said.

Rosales: 'And the guiding hand of Palestrina.'

Marsciano: 'His Holiness believes the Church should extend, in both spirit and manner, encouragement to less fortunate countries. Help them take their place in the expanding world marketplace.'

Rosales: 'His Holiness or Palestrina?'

Marsciano: 'Both.'

Tremblay: 'We are to encourage world leaders to bring the emerging nations up to speed in the new century, while at the same time profiting from it?'

Marsciano: 'Another way to look at it, Eminence, is that we are following our own beliefs, and in doing so, attempting to enrich them.'

The meeting was running long. It was nearly one-thirty and time to break. And Marsciano did not want to report to Palestrina that a vote had not yet been taken. Moreover, he knew that if he let them go now without a positive consensus, they would talk about it among themselves at lunch. The more they talked, the more, he knew, they would begin to dislike the entire plan. Maybe even sense there was something intangibly wrong with it, maybe suspect they were being asked to approve something that had other purposes than what was apparent.

Palestrina had purposely kept himself out of it, wanting none to sense his influence over something he ostensibly had no part in. And as much as Marsciano despised him, he knew the power of his name and the respect and fear that came with it.

Pushing back from the table, Marsciano stood. 'It is time to break. In all fairness I should tell you I am meeting with Cardinal Palestrina over lunch. He will ask me about your reaction to what has been discussed here this morning. I would like to tell him that in general your response has been positive. That you like what we have done and – with a few minor changes – will approve it by the end of the day.'

The cardinals stared back in silence. Marsciano had taken them by surprise and knew it. In essence he had said, 'Give me what I want now or risk dealing with Palestrina yourselves.'

'Well-?'

Cardinal Boothe raised his hands as if in prayer and stared at the table.

'Yes,' he murmured.

Cardinal Tremblay: '-Yes.'

Cardinal Mazetti: '-Yes.'

Rosales was the last. Finally he looked up at Marsciano. 'Yes,' he said sharply, then stood and walked angrily from the room.

Marsciano looked to the others and nodded. 'Thank you,' he said. 'Thank you.'