Private Rome

Chapter 54

“He was really uncomfortable,” Justine said to me as we left the headquarters of the Vatican Bank.

“I got that,” I agreed.

“Did you see the way he was looking at his boss?” she asked. We started along Via Sant’Anna, heading for the North Colonnade.

I shook my head. I hadn’t picked up on any interplay there.

“There’s something he doesn’t want Stadler to know. Something he’s concealing from his superior,” Justine said.

“Interesting,” I replied. “Could signify he’s involved in this in some way. And doing it behind the boss’s back.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Or it could be nothing at all. A task he hasn’t completed for work,” Justine said. “I doubt it though. It seemed like it was weighing on his mind.”

She stopped and looked around at St Peter’s, the North Colonnade and Via Sant’Anna, stretching to our west. “This is really beautiful. Can we stay a while, take a walk?”

I nodded. “Sure.”

We turned back the way we’d come and took a snaking cut through from Via Sant’Anna to Via delle Fondamenta, passing the Sistine Chapel and the Papal Residence. Soon we were behind St Peter’s, walking alongside the gardens in front of the Governor’s Palace, a large four-story structure with wings built either side of a central office block. We wandered on and ended up at Campo Santo Teutonico, unofficially known as the Garden of Secret Confession.

“Is this the place you told me about?” Justine asked.

I nodded.

“What an unbelievable tradition,” she observed, walking around the beautifully landscaped space.

“Mr. Morgan,” a voice said, and I turned to see Father Vito, the priest I’d first met here, entering the garden. “So good to run into you again.”

“Father Vito, this is my friend and colleague Justine Smith.”

He nodded to her. “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Smith.”

“My pleasure, father,” she replied.

“Were you telling Ms. Smith about the garden?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I replied. “Well, I’d already mentioned it to her.”

“I’m fascinated by the story of this place,” Justine said. “The idea that priests would have sins they would be ashamed to confess to God.”

“Human beings can be fallible,” Father Vito said. “Including some of the most devout. Well, I must attend to my duties. Lovely to see you both.”

He turned to leave.

“Father,” Justine said. “Could we trouble you for something?”

He hesitated before nodding assent. I wondered what Justine was doing but stayed quiet.

“Do you know what this symbol means?” she asked, producing her phone from her purse.

She caught me looking at her in puzzlement.

“What?” she said. “It’s a religious symbol. We should ask a man of God.”

I shrugged and she opened the photo folder on her phone, scrolling to a drawing of the Jerusalem Cross tattoo I’d found on the body of the dead assassin.

Father Vito studied the image for a while before exhaling loud and slow.

“You don’t want to know this,” he said.

“We do,” Justine assured him. “We really do.”

He looked to me for confirmation and I nodded.

There was suddenly a weariness about him. “It is the mark of Propaganda Tre, a secret society here in Rome,” he replied. “They are extremely dangerous. Do you understand? They bring the touch of death with them wherever they go.”