Papal decree

58

The Domus Sanctae Marthae was a five-story building ordered built by John Paul II in the 1990s to give some comfort to those visiting the Holy See on business or for devotion. Cardinals, bishops, or priests, some emissary from another country, it was for anyone who came under the good graces of the Holy Mother Church. It was best known for lodging the College of Cardinals in 2005. It was built on the site of the former Saint Martha Hospice, which Leo XIII constructed during a cholera epidemic, and served as a refuge for Jews and others with troubled relations with the Italian government during World War II.

It was certainly not a five-star hotel, but it provided all the necessary comfort for anyone whose only requirement was a good night’s sleep.

Hans Schmidt rested a little, not as much as his body would have liked, since he was no longer at an age when he could stay up all night and part of the following day without rest and food. He remembered he hadn’t had a decent meal since arriving the previous night. He’d had coffee, some water, eaten half a sandwich, but nothing nutritious.

He opened his eyes. The room was dark, but the afternoon was only half over. He turned on the light over the bed and looked at his watch. It was four fifteen. He’d slept only an hour. He’d give himself fifteen minutes more of rest before going to see Tarcisio and the final developments in his case.

He turned off the light and shut his eyes again. He shut off his mind, refusing to think about anything. During the hour of rest one shouldn’t think. Besides, any thought that had no practical effect was an excuse not to do what should be done when reality required it. People revived too many scenes from the past that they later embellished in the way they wished things had happened or anticipated events that had not yet come. Most people lived in expectations and illusions. Hans didn’t. He knew perfectly well that expectations grew to the extent they were imagined, and developed according to one’s own wishes. Illusion, or delusion, was also a hope, just different, since one hoped that something one didn’t really possess would bear marvelous fruit. Both attitudes were mistakes.

So when his cell phone began to ring in the room, interrupting his expected rest, it left him irritated, but he answered the phone with a smile.

‘Good afternoon.’ Even if it was dark as night.

Whatever the call was about, whoever was calling, didn’t give Schmidt a chance to reply to anything that was said, not even an interjection or expression of surprise. The flush on his face indicated that the subject was uncomfortable to him in some way. Expectations and illusions could be controlled in theory, but not in real life.

‘Okay, I’ll find a way,’ he said. Just as he was hanging up the phone, someone knocked timidly on his door. ‘Who is it?’ he called out loudly.

‘Trevor,’ he heard from the other side.

Schmidt got up from the bed, still in his clothes, and went to open the door.

‘Good afternoon, Reverend Father.’

‘Good afternoon, Trevor. Come in, please. I was just getting up to go see the secretary,’ he explained.

The secretary’s assistant came in with a certain shyness appropriate to his position.

Schmidt sat down on the edge of the bed to put on his shoes.

‘His Eminence asked that you come to see him. He has news,’ Trevor informed him.

‘Oh, yes? What news?’ he asked, tightening the laces on his shoes.

‘The parchments are in the possession of the church,’ Trevor said, uncertain if he should reveal anything, but prompted by the obvious affection between Schmidt and Tarcisio.

‘Yes, I was informed.’

Trevor looked at him in amazement. ‘May I ask by whom?’

‘By Cardinal William. He called to say the congregation was meeting to decide my future,’ Schmidt replied.

‘I see,’ Trevor replied, a little confused by the explanation. Cardinal William had been with the secretary when he was asked to go look for the Austrian priest. There was no meeting of the congregation.

One of the two was lying, either William to Schmidt or…

There was no more time to devise plausible or credible explanations. A belt tightened around his neck with suffocating intensity. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to resist, but Schmidt twisted harder from behind, applying more pressure. The fight for life under these unequal circumstances couldn’t last long, not two minutes, and Trevor’s life left him.

Schmidt removed the belt from around the corpse’s neck, and slipped it through the loops of his pants.

Finally he took the phone and dialed three numbers, sat down on the edge of the bed, and looked at Trevor’s body with a serious expression. When the call was answered, he assumed a stricken tone.

‘Tarcisio, please, come here, for the love of God. Come quickly. The murderer. The murderer is still in the Vatican.’