AllFreeNovel
Share Us
82
At CERN, secretary Sylvie Baudeloque was hungry, wishing she could go home. To her dismay, Kohler had apparently survived his trip to the infirmary; he had phoned and demanded - not asked, demanded - that Sylvie stay late this evening. No explanation.
Over the years, Sylvie had programmed herself to ignore Kohler's bizarre mood swings and eccentricities - his silent treatments, his unnerving propensity to secretly film meetings with his wheelchair's porta-video. She secretly hoped one day he would shoot himself during his weekly visit to CERN's recreational pistol range, but apparently he was a pretty good shot.
Now, sitting alone at her desk, Sylvie heard her stomach growling. Kohler had not yet returned, nor had he given her any additional work for the evening. To hell with sitting here bored and starving, she decided. She left Kohler a note and headed for the staff dining commons to grab a quick bite.
She never made it.
As she passed CERN's recreational "suites de loisir" - a long hallway of lounges with televisions - she noticed the rooms were overflowing with employees who had apparently abandoned dinner to watch the news. Something big was going on. Sylvie entered the first suite. It was packed with byte-heads - wild young computer programmers. When she saw the headlines on the TV, she gasped.
Terror at the Vatican
Sylvie listened to the report, unable to believe her ears. Some ancient brotherhood killing cardinals? What did that prove? Their hatred? Their dominance? Their ignorance?
And yet, incredibly, the mood in this suite seemed anything but somber.
Two young techies ran by waving T-shirts that bore a picture of Bill Gates and the message:
And the Geek shall inherit the Earth!
"Illuminati!" one shouted. "I told you these guys were real!"
"Incredible! I thought it was just a game!"
"They killed the Pope, man! The Pope!"
"Jeez! I wonder how many points you get for that?"
They ran off laughing.
Sylvie stood in stunned amazement. As a Catholic working among scientists, she occasionally endured the antireligious whisperings, but the party these kids seemed to be having was all-out euphoria over the church's loss. How could they be so callous? Why the hatred?
For Sylvie, the church had always been an innocuous entity... a place of fellowship and introspection... sometimes just a place to sing out loud without people staring at her. The church recorded the benchmarks of her life - funerals, weddings, baptisms, holidays - and it asked for nothing in return. Even the monetary dues were voluntary. Her children emerged from Sunday School every week uplifted, filled with ideas about helping others and being kinder. What could possibly be wrong with that?
It never ceased to amaze her that so many of CERN's so-called "brilliant minds" failed to comprehend the importance of the church. Did they really believe quarks and mesons inspired the average human being? Or that equations could replace someone's need for faith in the divine?
Dazed, Sylvie moved down the hallway past the other lounges. All the TV rooms were packed. She began wondering now about the call Kohler had gotten from the Vatican earlier. Coincidence? Perhaps. The Vatican called CERN from time to time as a "courtesy" before issuing scathing statements condemning CERN's research - most recently for CERN's breakthroughs in nanotechnology, a field the church denounced because of its implications for genetic engineering. CERN never cared. Invariably, within minutes after a Vatican salvo, Kohler's phone would ring off the hook with tech-investment companies wanting to license the new discovery. "No such thing as bad press," Kohler would always say.
Sylvie wondered if she should page Kohler, wherever the hell he was, and tell him to turn on the news. Did he care? Had he heard? Of course, he'd heard. He was probably videotaping the entire report with his freaky little camcorder, smiling for the first time in a year.
As Sylvie continued down the hall, she finally found a lounge where the mood was subdued... almost melancholy. Here the scientists watching the report were some of CERN's oldest and most respected. They did not even look up as Sylvie slipped in and took a seat.
On the other side of CERN, in Leonardo Vetra's frigid apartment, Maximilian Kohler had finished reading the leather-bound journal he'd taken from Vetra's bedside table. Now he was watching the television reports. After a few minutes, he replaced Vetra's journal, turned off the television, and left the apartment.
Far away, in Vatican City, Cardinal Mortati carried another tray of ballots to the Sistine Chapel chimney. He burned them, and the smoke was black.
Two ballotings. No Pope.
83
Flashlights were no match for the voluminous blackness of St. Peter's Basilica. The void overhead pressed down like a starless night, and Vittoria felt the emptiness spread out around her like a desolate ocean. She stayed close as the Swiss Guards and the camerlegno pushed on. High above, a dove cooed and fluttered away.
As if sensing her discomfort, the camerlegno dropped back and lay a hand on her shoulder. A tangible strength transferred in the touch, as if the man were magically infusing her with the calm she needed to do what they were about to do.
What are we about to do? she thought. This is madness!
And yet, Vittoria knew, for all its impiety and inevitable horror, the task at hand was inescapable. The grave decisions facing the camerlegno required information... information entombed in a sarcophagus in the Vatican Grottoes. She wondered what they would find. Did the Illuminati murder the Pope? Did their power really reach so far? Am I really about to perform the first papal autopsy?
Vittoria found it ironic that she felt more apprehensive in this unlit church than she would swimming at night with barracuda. Nature was her refuge. She understood nature. But it was matters of man and spirit that left her mystified. Killer fish gathering in the dark conjured images of the press gathering outside. TV footage of branded bodies reminded her of her father's corpse... and the killer's harsh laugh. The killer was out there somewhere. Vittoria felt the anger drowning her fear.
As they circled past a pillar - thicker in girth than any redwood she could imagine - Vittoria saw an orange glow up ahead. The light seemed to emanate from beneath the floor in the center of the basilica. As they came closer, she realized what she was seeing. It was the famous sunken sanctuary beneath the main altar - the sumptuous underground chamber that held the Vatican's most sacred relics. As they drew even with the gate surrounding the hollow, Vittoria gazed down at the golden coffer surrounded by scores of glowing oil lamps.
"St. Peter's bones?" she asked, knowing full well that they were. Everyone who came to St. Peter's knew what was in the golden casket.
"Actually, no," the camerlegno said. "A common misconception. That's not a reliquary. The box holds palliums - woven sashes that the Pope gives to newly elected cardinals."
"But I thought - "
"As does everyone. The guidebooks label this as St. Peter's tomb, but his true grave is two stories beneath us, buried in the earth. The Vatican excavated it in the forties. Nobody is allowed down there."
Vittoria was shocked. As they moved away from the glowing recession into the darkness again, she thought of the stories she'd heard of pilgrims traveling thousands of miles to look at that golden box, thinking they were in the presence of St. Peter. "Shouldn't the Vatican tell people?"
"We all benefit from a sense of contact with divinity... even if it is only imagined."
Vittoria, as a scientist, could not argue the logic. She had read countless studies of the placebo effect - aspirins curing cancer in people who believed they were using a miracle drug. What was faith, after all?
"Change," the camerlegno said, "is not something we do well within Vatican City. Admitting our past faults, modernization, are things we historically eschew. His Holiness was trying to change that." He paused. "Reaching to the modern world. Searching for new paths to God."
Vittoria nodded in the dark. "Like science?"
"To be honest, science seems irrelevant."
"Irrelevant?" Vittoria could think of a lot of words to describe science, but in the modern world "irrelevant" did not seem like one of them.
"Science can heal, or science can kill. It depends on the soul of the man using the science. It is the soul that interests me."
"When did you hear your call?"
"Before I was born."
Vittoria looked at him.
"I'm sorry, that always seems like a strange question. What I mean is that I've always known I would serve God. From the moment I could first think. It wasn't until I was a young man, though, in the military, that I truly understood my purpose."
Vittoria was surprised. "You were in the military?"
"Two years. I refused to fire a weapon, so they made me fly instead. Medevac helicopters. In fact, I still fly from time to time."
Vittoria tried to picture the young priest flying a helicopter. Oddly, she could see him perfectly behind the controls. Camerlegno Ventresca possessed a grit that seemed to accentuate his conviction rather than cloud it. "Did you ever fly the Pope?"
"Heavens no. We left that precious cargo to the professionals. His Holiness let me take the helicopter to our retreat in Gandolfo sometimes." He paused, looking at her. "Ms. Vetra, thank you for your help here today. I am very sorry about your father. Truly."
"Thank you."
"I never knew my father. He died before I was born. I lost my mother when I was ten."
Vittoria looked up. "You were orphaned?" She felt a sudden kinship.
"I survived an accident. An accident that took my mother."
"Who took care of you?"
"God," the camerlegno said. "He quite literally sent me another father. A bishop from Palermo appeared at my hospital bed and took me in. At the time I was not surprised. I had sensed God's watchful hand over me even as a boy. The bishop's appearance simply confirmed what I had already suspected, that God had somehow chosen me to serve him."
"You believed God chose you?"
