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  ‘Say the words!’

  ‘He said: “It’s happened at last. It always does in Rome. My loyal counsellor has become a Jesuit. She should do very well with the Pope.”’

  She was near to tears. The Pontiff reached across the table and imprisoned her hands in his own. With careful gentleness he told her: ‘Don’t be too hard on your man. Guilt is a bitter medicine to swallow: I’ve been sitting here trying to digest a lifetime of it … As for cruelty, I remember that when I was a small boy, my dog had his leg broken in a rabbit snare. When I tried to release him he bit my hand. My father explained to me that an animal in pain will snap at anyone. What other response is left to it? Your man must be hurting very badly.’

  ‘And what about me? Don’t you think I’m hurting too?’

  ‘I know you are; but you will always heal more quickly. You have learned to look outside yourself, to your daughter, your patients. Every time your Sergio goes into the operating theatre, he is engaged in a private duel with death. When he comes out, he finds that all the fears he has left outside the door lie in wait for him.’

  ‘What are you telling me to do?’

  ‘Kiss your man and make up. Be kind to each other. There is too little love in the world. We should not waste a drop of it … Now, could you spare the time to walk me down to the pine wood?’

  She gave him her arm and they walked slowly down the paved walk to the shelter of the pines. The guards, vigilant and edgy, fanned out to encircle them. Monsignor Malachy O’Rahilly, who had just arrived for his morning visit, was tempted to follow them. Then, watching them together, animated but relaxed, like father and daughter, he thought better of it and sat down at the stone table to await his master’s return.

  Katrina Peters’ dinner party was staged on the terrace of the Palazzo Lanfranco, with the rooftops of old Rome for backdrop and a pergola of vines for canopy. Her waiters were hand-picked from the best agency. Her cook was borrowed from Adela Sandberg, who reported Italian fashion for the glossiest of New York fashion magazines. Her guests were chosen to indulge her own taste for exotic encounters and her husband’s talent for making a commentator’s capital out of them.

  To confront Sergio Salviati and Tove Lundberg she had chosen the Soviet Ambassador and his wife. The Ambassador was reputed to be a formidable Arabist who had spent five years in Damascus. His wife was a concert pianist of high reputation. For a partner to Matt Neylan – who, according to Nicol, had more than earned his place at table – she had invited the latest arrival at the American Academy, an attractive thirty-year-old who had just produced a highly praised thesis on the status of women in the mystery religions. To these she added Adela Sandberg for colourful gossip, Menachem Avriel because his wife was away in Israel and he enjoyed Adela Sandberg. Then, for good measure, she added Pierre Labandie, who drew satirical cartoons for Le Canard Enchainé, and Lola Martinelli, who had made rich marriages and profitable divorces into a serial art-form. The fact that she was a lawyer in her own right added a certain patina to the product.

  The ceremonies opened with champagne and a pavane around the terrace to admire the view, identify the cupolas and turrets, black against the skyline. During this prelude, Katrina Peters moved lightly but warily among her guests, bridging awkward gaps in the talk, explaining one guest to another, plagued always by those banes of Roman intercourse, the limp handshake, the muttered introductions, the almost furtive confessions of identity and profession.

  This time she was lucky. Matt Neylan, trained to diplomacy, was easy and talkative. The Russian was hearty and opinionated. They took care of Tove Lundberg and the lady of the mysteries, each of whom was an agreeable and easy talker.

  Nicol Peters took the opportunity for a first quick exchange with Salviati and Menachem Avriel on the terrorist threat.

  ‘I hear you’ve got almost an armed camp out there in Castelli.’

  ‘We’re protected.’ Salviati tried to evade the discussion. We have to be in any case, threat or no threat.’

  ‘The threat is real.’ Avriel was an old hand at managing the Press. ‘The group has been identified.’

  ‘Off the record, I understand Mossad had already penetrated the group?’

  ‘No comment,’ said Avriel.

  ‘I still can’t understand the political thinking behind it. The relations between Islam and the Vatican are at least stable. What’s to gain by assassinating the Pontiff?’

  ‘A statement.’ Menachem Avriel gestured emphatically. ‘Israel is a plague carrier. Any contact or compromise means death.’

  ‘But why not knock off Salviati here? He owns the place. He’s a known Zionist.’

  ‘Counterproductive. Sergio treats a lot of wealthy Arabs. He’s the first and best clinic between Karachi and London … Why lose his services? Why make enemies of the money men in Islam?’

  ‘It’s feasible; but I feel there’s something missing in the logic.’

  Menachem Avriel laughed.

  ‘Haven’t you learned yet that there’s always a term or two missing in Farsi logic? You start off with a set of clear propositions, on flat and open ground, then – hey presto! – you’re winging with the bats on Magic Mountain!’

  ‘I’m not sure I like our own logic any better,’ said Sergio Salviati.

  ‘Who cares about logic?’ Adela Sandberg swept in to take control of the small conclave. ‘Love comes in; logic goes out the window! Kiss me, Menachem! You may kiss me, too, Sergio Salviati!’

  At the far end of the terrace, the Soviet Ambassador was deep in conversation with Tove Lundberg.

  ‘You work with this Pope …what is he like? How does he react with you?’

  ‘I have to say he is, even now, a very formidable man. Sometimes I think of him as an old olive tree, gnarled and twisted, still putting out leaves and fruit … But inside the tree is a vulnerable, loving man trying to claw his way out before it is too late. With me he is very humble, very grateful for the simplest service. But,’ – she smiled and shrugged – ‘it is like playing with a drowsy lion. I have the feeling that if he woke in a bad temper he would eat me in one gulp!’

  ‘I am told there have been threats against his life.’

  ‘That’s true. The clinic is under guard day and night.’

  ‘That troubles him?’

  ‘He is troubled for the staff, for the other patients, but for himself not at all.’

  ‘You have to understand something, Excellency.’ Matt Neylan, with the lady of the mysteries on his arm, drifted into their talk. ‘This man, Leo XIV, is an archetype, a throwback. He refuses all dialogue with today’s world.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ Tove Lundberg challenged him brusquely. ‘I’m not even a believer, in spite of the fact that my father was a Lutheran pastor. But I see the man every day for post-operative counselling. I find him open, self-questioning, always preoccupied by the question of change within the Church.’

  ‘I believe you.’ Matt Neylan was bland as honey. ‘But do you have any Latin about you?’

  ‘A little,’ said Tove Lundberg.

  ‘My husband is a very good Latin scholar,’ said the pianist. ‘He is fluent in ten languages.’

  ‘Then he’ll have no difficulty with this little proverb: Lupus languebat, monachus tuncesse volebat; sed cum convaluit, lupus ut ante fuit.’

  The Ambassador laughed and rendered the proverb in heavily accented English.

  ‘When the wolf was sick he wanted to be a monk. When he recovered he was still a wolf … And you are saying, Mr Neylan, this is what will happen to your Pope?’

  ‘I ‘II lay long odds on it.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I’m sure, almost a hundred per cent sure, he’ll revert to exactly what he was.’

  ‘Five thousand lire says you’re wrong,’ said Tove Lundberg. Matt Neylan grinned.

  ‘You’ve got a bet, ma’am! And if you win I’ll throw in the best dinner in this city.’

  ‘It’s hard to find a really first-class restaurant no
wadays.’ Katrina Peters slipped quietly into the group.

  ‘It’s a damned sight harder to find a first-class man!’ said Lola Martinelli.

  ‘Don’t give up yet, Lola,’ said Katrina Peters. ‘Matt Neylan here has just come onto the market – mint-new and beautifully trained!’

  ‘I got him first,’ said the lady of the mysteries. ‘And we’re in the same business!’

  They sat, the round dozen of them, at a round table laid with Florentine linen, Venetian glass, Buccellati silver and porcelain from the house of Ginori. Nicol Peters offered a toast of welcome: ‘This house is your house. Whatever is said here tonight is spoken between friends, in trust and confidence. Salute!’

  Then the food was offered and the talk began to circulate, more loudly and more freely as the evening went on. Nicol Peters watched and listened and picked up the scraps of dialogue that later would fit into the mosaic of his column, ‘A View From My Terrace’. This was the heart of his work. This was what they paid him for. Any fool could report the news: that the Pope washed feet on Maundy Thursday, that Cardinal Clemens had censured another German theologian. But it took a bright and free-ranging fellow like Nicol Peters to read the Richter scales and say bravely that an earthquake would happen on Friday.

  The man from Moscow was both industrious and entertaining. He was concentrating his attention on Matt Neylan who, launched auspiciously into the world of fashionable women, was dispensing lavish doses of Irish charm.

  ‘So I’d like your opinion, Mr Neylan … What role do you see for Russian Orthodoxy in the policies of the next decade?’

  ‘Outside Russia,’ said Matt Neylan judiciously, ‘in the Christian communities of the West, it has to create a role for itself, in theological, philosophical, socio-political debate. That’s not going to be easy. Its intellectual life has been in stasis since the Great Schism in the eleventh century. Politically, you people have held it captive since the revolution … In spite of that, it still remains closest to the spirit of the early Eastern fathers. It has much to offer the West. For you, it may well be the strongest buffer you have against the expansion of Islam within the Soviet Union itself … I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the statistical extent of that expansion.’

  ‘And you dealt with these matters at the Secretariat of State?’

  ‘Not personally. Not directly. The peritus in this area is Monsignor Vlasov, whom you may have met …’

  ‘I have not, but I should like to do so.’

  ‘Under other circumstances I should have offered to arrange a contact. Now, as you see, I am no longer a member of the club.’

  ‘Do you regret that?’

  ‘What’s to regret?’ The lady of the mysteries patted Neylan’s hand approvingly. ‘Don’t they say the late vintage makes the sweetest wine!’

  Over the dessert, Nicol Peters turned suddenly to Menachem Avriel and said, apropos of nothing at all: ‘I’m still worried about the logic.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘I think I’ve got the missing proposition.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Double-think, double-shuffle. What you called “winging with the bats on Magic Mountain”.’

  ‘Spell it for me slowly, Nico.’

  ‘It’s a fair assumption – though you can’t admit it – that Mossad had penetrated the Sword of Islam.’ ‘And what follows from that?’

  ‘A possible scenario. The group puts out a phoney plan. The Vatican, the Republic, Mossad, all make dispositions to deal with it. Maybe they’re even handed a phoney assassin who is arrested or killed. Then they don’t need the Pope or Salviati. They’ve got what they really want – a casus belli, a reason to stage any public coup they want, from kidnap to hijacking an airliner. It’s a thought, isn’t it?’

  ‘A damned uncomfortable one,’ said Sergio Salviati.

  Menachem Avriel shrugged off the notion. He was, after all, a diplomat skilled in social lying. Nicol Peters let the subject drop and addressed himself to the brandy. He was after all a newsman, who understood that truth lay often at the bottom of the pool and you had to stir up the mud to reach it.

  When they rose from table, he drew Sergio Salviati away from the others for a private interrogation.

  ‘I’d like to make this as simple as I can. I get the daily bulletins on the Pope’s progress. Anything you can add to them without a breach of ethics?’

  ‘Not too much. He’s making very good progress. His mental faculties are unimpaired – which I guess is what you’re driving at.’

  ‘Will he be able to function fully in office?’

  ‘If he follows the regimen, yes. He will probably function better than in the immediate past.’

  ‘Differently? I caught the tag end of the talk between Tove and Matt Neylan.’

  ‘You can’t quote me on this.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Tove is right. The man is greatly changed. I believe he will continue so.’

  ‘Could you call it a “conversion” in the religious sense?’

  ‘That’s a matter of semantics. I prefer to limit myself to a clinical vocabulary … Now could I ask you a question?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Your scenario of the phoney assassin; do you believe it?’ ‘I think it’s very feasible.’

  ‘Suppose,’ said Salviati carefully, ‘just suppose the assassin had already been identified.’

  ‘And taken out?’

  ‘Suppose that, too, if you want.’

  ‘Anything else I could suppose?’

  ‘That there had been no reaction from the Sword of Islam.’

  Nicol Peters pursed his lips and then let out a long, low whistle of surprise.

  ‘In that case, then I would say, fasten your seat belts. You could be in for a very bumpy ride! Let me know what really happens, won’t you?’

  ‘You’ll probably know it before I do,’ said Sergio Salviati. ‘The way my life runs, I never get time to read the morning papers!’

  After that it was playtime. As the night mist rolled in from the Tiber, they moved into the salone. Matt Neylan sat down at the piano and sang Neapolitan songs in a smooth Irish tenor. Thus encouraged, the Ambassador’s wife sat down and unleashed a whole torrent of music – Chopin, Liszt, Tchaikovsky. Even Katrina Peters, most critical of hostesses, had to agree that the evening had been a success. Nicol Peters was preoccupied. Every instinct told him that something was about to break. He could not for the life of him define what it was.

  Nine

  Omar Asnan’s villa on the Old Appian Way had cost him a mint of money. Situated on the most expensive stretch of the ancient road, between the tomb of Cecilia Metella and the crossroad to Tor Carbone, it was a hotchpotch of constructions that dated from Roman times to the twentieth century.

  A high blank wall, topped with broken glass, hid it from the road and from the open fields of the campagna behind it. The garden with its swimming-pool and tubs of flowering plants was shaded by tall cypresses and spreading pines. It was also patrolled at night by an armed watchman and a pair of Dobermanns.

  One special feature of the house was a square watch-tower, built around a chimney, from which it was possible to survey the Appia Antica in both directions, watch the shepherds grazing their herds in the campagna and look clear across the rooftops of other villas to the apartment of EUR.

  The second feature, an unexpected bonus for Omar Asnan, was the cellar, vaulted and bricked in reticulated stone, which dated back to the same period as the nearby Circus of Maxentius. There was nothing unusual about the cellar itself, but a loose slab in the floor had revealed a set of ten steps that led to a tunnel. The tunnel, dug into the friable tufa rock, ran fifty metres across the campagna and opened into a large, circular chamber lined with great earthenware pots which had once been used to store grain. The air was foul, but the place was bone dry, and it was the simplest thing in the world to install a ventilating system with intake and outlet hidden in the garden shrubbery.

  S
o, Omar Asnan – thanks to Allah, the just and the merciful! – had found himself endowed with a storeroom for special merchandise like guns, grenades and drugs, a conference room hidden from prying eyes, and a safe house to hold friends or enemies. It was here that he met with his four most trusted lieutenants to discuss the disappearance of Miriam Latif from the International Clinic.

  They sat on cushions set about a carpet, two on either side, with Omar Asnan presiding. He was a small, dark man, put together as neatly as a manikin, with eloquent hands and a ready smile. His speech was brisk and businesslike.

  ‘This is what we have been able to confirm in twenty-four hours. At three in the afternoon I myself called Miriam at the clinic to set up a meeting here. She agreed. She said she could easily arrange the time off at the end of the day. She would drive into Rome to do some shopping and see me on the way back.’

  He turned to the man on his right.

  ‘You remember all this, Khalid. You were here with me.’

  ‘I remember.’

  We arranged to have dinner here, in the villa. She never arrived.’

  ‘Clearly she was -’

  ‘Please!’ Asnan raised a warning hand. ‘Please, let us discuss what we know, not what we think we know. Miriam never arrived here. Round about ten p.m. I drove into the club to pass the word, that probably our operation was blown. You all got that message, yes?’

  There was a murmur of assent.

  ‘Now let me tell you what I have since established, through our various contacts in the police and at the airport. Miriam’s car was found in the long-term parking bay at Fiumicino. The hospital claims – and I have seen the message taken down by the switchboard operator – that Miriam called from the airport at seven p.m. to say that her mother was very ill and she was leaving immediately for Beirut on Middle East Airlines. I personally have checked with our friends in the airline office. A woman calling herself Miriam Latif did buy a ticket, did present a Lebanese passport, did check on to the aircraft. The only problem is that this woman was veiled in traditional style. Miriam Latif never wore a veil … More than that, I have confirmed with Beirut that no one presented Miriam Latif’s passport or a landing card with her name on it. Miriam herself made no contact with her parents, who are both in excellent health … So, my friends, what are we to conclude?’