Private Rome

Chapter 80

Faduma and I rode buses to return to the warehouse by the river. I wanted to be able to see if anyone was following us. Hopping on and off the crowded vehicles provided us with plenty of cover, hiding among the tourists in central Rome and then commuters as we moved toward the suburbs.

“Are you going to meet Altmer tonight?” Faduma asked as we stepped off the number 5 bus at a remote stop a short distance from the warehouse.

I could smell salt in the air blowing in on a west wind.

“What choice do I have?” I asked. “We went to the Vatican this morning in search of answers. We didn’t find any, so I have to try again. I don’t understand why he was concerned for our safety.”

“Maybe it was a ruse to give himself enough time to set a trap,” Faduma remarked as we walked along the lane leading to the riverside warehouses. “To destroy evidence or warn collaborators.”

“Well, we know he’s involved somehow, and the Dark Fates obviously play a role, and that there is a powerful conspiracy at work — let’s try and put the pieces together from what we have,” I suggested. “We should review everything again. Go back to the beginning.”

Faduma nodded and we hurried into the warehouse. We went up to the apartment and I made us some strong coffee using the supplies she had purchased earlier that morning.

Armed with the black jet fuel we sat at Mo-bot’s computer and reviewed the copious amounts of evidence we’d amassed: the surveillance footage of the Inferno Bar and the background files on Altmer and Milan Verde. We worked for over an hour without success until Faduma accessed her files on La Repubblica’s cloud server. She reviewed the dossier she’d amassed on the mysterious deaths Filippo Lombardi had begun investigating. She had started a file on Father Brambilla and was swiping through some archive photos the newspaper had of him at Vatican functions.

“Wait,” I said. “Go back.”

I’d seen a face I recognized at a fundraiser being held at the Vatican for the Orphans of Rome, a city charity. Faduma scrolled back and there in the image, standing next to Christian Altmer and Father Brambilla, was Father Vito, but he wasn’t wearing the priest’s cassock I was familiar with. He wore the deep purple of a cardinal.

“That’s Father Vito,” I said. “The priest who helped me.”

Faduma shook her head. “That’s Cardinal Vito Peralta, one of the most powerful princes of the Church.”

I thought back to our first meeting at the Garden of Secret Confession. What had he been doing there? Could he have been involved in what had happened? Had I been taken in by his simple piety?

“Why is he posing as a priest?” I asked.

“He is known as an ascetic. He believes in the purity of simplicity and thinks the ceremonial trappings and ceremony of the Church are a distraction from true worship,” Faduma replied. “He is a divisive figure, for that and other reasons.”

“Such as?”

“He is one of the directors of the Vatican Bank. He believes the Church should be more interventionist in the way it uses its assets. That it should tie investments to religious aims and political objectives.”

I realized I had misjudged the man, taking him for a junior priest because of his plain clothes and approachable manner.

“His supporters whisper his name whenever there is talk of who will become the next Pope,” Faduma revealed.

As I studied the photo of the man who had twice offered help and advice, I wondered if concern for my soul had motivated him to take an interest in me, or whether all along he had sought to manipulate and misdirect.