The Secret Cardinal

35

In the dimly lit workroom in the catacombs, Grin dozed at his workstation, exhausted from ten days with far too little sleep. He was bathed in the glow of multiple screens, a dizzying flow of electrons containing fragments of information gleaned from computers half a world away. Some of the screens contained moving images; others were filled with scrolled panes of arcane symbols — the poetry of the machines.

A window displaying a countdown timer reached zero, and Bing Crosby launched into his rendition of the twenties’ chestnut ‘The Red Red Robin.’ Grin’s eyes fluttered as the late crooner and orange juice pitchman roused him from a dreamless sleep with his dulcet baritone and impeccable phrasing.

Wake up, wake up you sleepy head.

Get up, get up, get out of bed.

‘All right, all right. I’m awake,’ he said with a yawn.

With one hand, he keyed in the command that cut Crosby off in the middle of the second verse. Blinking away the sleep, Grin made contact with a stealthy piece of code he left embedded deep inside the main server at Chifeng Prison. Even after the system administrators at the prison had taken the drastic step of wiping the server’s hard drives clean and reloading every bit of software, his program survived.

When he tapped into the security camera feeds, he saw armed guards patrolling empty corridors and the idled brickyard — the facility completely locked down and in a state of heightened alert. Hastily erected barricades protected the two main gates. Nearby lay the scorched and twisted wreckage of the original entries along with the gutted remains of the vehicles destroyed during the breakout.

Now to see what the cops are up to, he thought.

The screens windowing the central computer that served the Ministry of Public Security in Chifeng showed a marked increase in activity. Grin culled several pages from the steady stream of data and fed them into a Chinese-to-English translation program.

‘They’re setting up roadblocks, covering the airport and train stations,’ he mused, skimming through the rough translations. ‘Rousting the usual suspects in the community of Catholic subversives.’

‘And what might that be, Mister Grinelli?’ Donoher asked as he entered the workroom.

‘Reports from Chifeng’s finest,’ Grin replied, his eyes remaining fixed on the screen.

‘Have you learned anything?’

‘That I should never again complain about the jack-booted meter readers in Ann Arbor. The words To Serve and Protect may be stenciled on cop cars in Chifeng, but the question I have to ask is, Who are they serving and protecting? See for yourself.’

Grin quickly keyed in several commands, activating windows linked to surveillance cameras throughout Chifeng. Long queues of vehicles blocked the main roads as uniformed police searched each one and interrogated the occupants.

‘The Chinese are casting a wide net,’ Donoher said.

‘Uh-huh, and check this out.’ Grin pointed at a pair of windows listing arrival and departure information. ‘They’ve diverted all incoming flights and grounded everything that’s already there. The trains are shut down as well. I hope our guys got out of town before the clamp-down, because they have pictures of Nolan and Roxanne for the wanted posters.’

‘At least this tells us they haven’t been caught yet.’

‘You one of those silver-lining types?’ Grin asked.

‘An occupational requirement.’

A window popped to the surface of the monitor in the center of the workstation, a white square containing a vibrant-hued version of Andy Warhol’s famous Rolling Stones logo.

‘Dare I ask?’ Donoher inquired.

‘Operation Rolling Stone,’ Grin answered as he keyed in a new command. The dot in the center of the window spiraled open like an iris diaphragm, revealing a three-word message.

‘Gandalf Isengard Eagle?’ Donoher read aloud, puzzled.

‘A message from Nolan,’ Grin said warmly. ‘A good one.’

‘What does it mean, beyond the literary reference to Tolkien’s literary opus?’

‘Yin is Gandalf,’ Grin explained, ‘a pretty straightforward substitution. Early in the story, Gandalf is imprisoned in the tower at Isengard by the wizard Saruman.’

‘So Isengard stands for Chifeng Prison.’

‘Exactly. The king of the eagles plucked Gandalf from the tower and flew him to freedom. They got Yin out of prison and, as of—’ Grin checked the time stamp on the message, ‘a few minutes ago when Nolan sent this, they haven’t been caught.’

Donoher clasped his hands together and bowed his head to offer a brief prayer of thanks.

‘Cardinal?’ a young nun called from the doorway.

‘Yes, Sister?’ Donoher replied, still smiling from Kilkenny’s message.

‘I was hoping to catch you before you returned to the conclave. We’re setting up a video link with the United States. It’s Jackson Barnett, and he’d like to speak with you both.’

‘Would you please put it through in here?’

Grin cleared the largest of his displays, and a moment later Jackson Barnett appeared on the screen.

‘Your Eminence,’ Barnett said with respect for both the man and his title, ‘Mister Grinelli. I am pleased to have reached you both. I am certain you have been monitoring the situation in China.’

‘Like a cable news network on a political sex scandal,’ Grin replied.

‘We’ve noted a significant increase in activity within the Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia,’ Barnett said, ‘specifically around the city of Chifeng and along a rather large stretch of the nearby Sino-Mongolian border. I take this to mean that our mutual friends were successful in extracting Bishop Yin from the laogai.’

‘That is our sense of the situation as well,’ Donoher concurred. ‘Nolan’s subterfuge was apparently discovered by prison officials, but he and his team managed to escape with Bishop Yin despite this setback.’

‘I see.’ Barnett paused, carefully considering his next words. ‘Cardinal, may I be blunt?’

‘Please.’

‘A source within the Chinese Foreign Ministry reports that around four in the morning of October twenty-ninth, Beijing received a coded message from its embassy in Rome. The message informed Beijing of Yin’s status as an unnamed cardinal and papal candidate, and of a Vatican effort to liberate him. Cardinal, you have a leak.’

Donoher felt his body tighten, a sickening wave of nausea washing over him. He slumped into a chair like a boxer staggered by a series of body blows, trying to regain his senses.

‘Somebody ratted out Nolan and Roxanne?’ Grin asked.

‘Yes,’ Barnett replied. ‘Our source only had access to the sanitized version of the message that provided no clues as to its provenance. As soon as this information came to light, I felt it important to alert you.’

‘Thank you, Jackson,’ Donoher said solemnly. ‘I assure you we will act on this in order to bring all of our people home safely.’

‘A goal we both share. Perhaps we should talk again later today?’

‘The conclave reconvenes this afternoon, and I expect there will be a meeting afterward to discuss matters of state.’ Donoher checked his watch. ‘Will two o’clock, your time, be convenient?’

‘Fine. Good day, gentlemen.’

Barnett signed off, and the screen went blank.

‘Hellfire and damnation!’ Donoher growled. ‘A Judas Iscariot in our midst. Only those present in the Sistine Chapel heard the Pope’s message. So how in bloody blazes did the son of a — How’d he do it? How did the traitor get word to the Chinese?’

Grin scratched his goatee. ‘Let’s think about this a second. Of the hundred-odd people who now know our little secret, only you and I have access to the outside world. Everyone else is basically incommunicado, right?’

‘That is correct.’

‘What about Cardinal Gagliardi? He was at the opening session.’

Donoher shook his head. ‘The man has just suffered a massive heart attack.’

‘I’ll check his hospital phone records anyway, just to make sure. Whipping out my Occam’s razor,’ Grin continued, ‘I see that the rest of the cardinals have neither the means, motive, nor opportunity to betray us. And if they didn’t do it, and you and I didn’t do it, then either there’s a bug in the chapel, or someone else saw what was on the Pope’s DVD.’

‘The chapel has been swept for bugs, and we have devices installed at each of the windows to interfere with any laser microphones that might be trained on the building from outside.’

‘You need to sweep the chapel again, just to make sure,’ Grin advised.

‘There won’t be time before this afternoon’s session. If we’re still without a new Pope, I’ll have it done tonight. But now that I think of it, there is someone outside the conclave who may have had prior knowledge of the Pope’s message. As much as it pains me, I think we should have a chat with him.’