‘You don’t have to look,’ he grinned.
The priest furiously poked the fire, then, remembering something, felt in his pocket and handed Cain a perimeter handset. His pong was atmospheric. ‘It’s on now.’ Cain nodded, switched it to ‘vibrate’ and put it in his shirt pocket.
Eve’s head around the door. ‘We eat in two minutes.’
‘I’d better open some wine,’ Stromlo said. ‘One of our little traditions.’
They went into the dining room he’d seen on the video at Beta. No objects flew and the candles stayed on the table.
Eve gave a toast. ‘To happy days and dirty nights.’
Dinner was an excellent roast. While they ate, the sisters chatted about people in the locality. Stromlo added comments like ‘Hell is other people’ and opened two more bottles of red, much of which he drank himself.
Cain brought up security. ‘Jane works in the town and Nina goes to school. You should all be wearing transponders.’
‘I don’t want to be tagged,’ Jane said. ‘It’s your job to know where we are.’
Eve said, ‘I agree. Besides,’ a twinkle in her eye, ‘I’ve told Jane you have the skills we need.’
Cain, feeling uncomfortable, glanced at the dour-faced woman who said, ‘Don’t be concerned. I’m not like my sister.’
After dessert and coffee Jane stifled a yawn and glanced at Cain. ‘Tomorrow I’ll show you the local walking tracks if you like.’
‘Could be useful.’
‘Good. Let’s leave about nine.’ She began to clear the plates.
He said, ‘We’ll wash up. Won’t we, Father?’
Stromlo stood unsteadily. ‘Right.’
Eve got up. ‘Then I’ll see if my plaster’s a disaster.’
As they entered the kitchen, Cain glanced at the clock. The hands were still as he’d last seen them. He looked at the commercial dishwasher.
Stromlo said, ‘Don’t bother. You need a pilot’s licence. Detergent under the sink.’
Cain ran hot water and the priest found a tea towel. He said, ‘Has she corrupted you yet?’
‘Mattress mambo? Si.’
‘Disgusting.’
‘For someone who checks out their arses…’ He let it slide. ‘So is this place dry-cleaned?’
‘I had it scanned two days ago. Our tennis partners aren’t the Komitet. They’re not after secrets, just phenomena.’ He swayed to a drawer with a fistful of damp forks.
A drunken, self-pitying Stromlo. It was his chance to find out about John. ‘Ron told me about your run but I found it very confusing. She said you’d fill me in.’
‘Ah, yes. Security again,’ Stromlo said. ‘A case of it being too extreme.’
‘How’s that?’
‘The Vatican is a nest of secrets and manipulations presented as piety and Church procedure. Certain curial monsignori I do not name… One was a Jesuit. You know of the Arrupe matter?’
‘No.’
The priest polished plates dry with a drunk’s slow deliberation. ‘John Paul was a practical man with an inquisitive, topical mind. He called people by their first names, waved at people from his window, talked to Swiss Guards, the gardeners. Such a gift with people.’
‘Hasn’t changed.’
‘He wished to help the oppressed, the poor, to unite the Christian churches…’ The priest slammed plates on a shelf. ‘… and so some schemers in the Curia got to loathe his guts.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the pope is infallible. But — my God! My GOD! He mustn’t do as he likes. Padre Albino was fresh air — an outsider they found uncontrollable.’
Cain started washing pots. ‘I wonder what they’d think of him now.’
‘Even back then he was beyond them. Most of them just want to preserve Church authority — see human rights and democracy as an invention of the devil. They grind obedience from people’s pain — because original sin equals power over others. And Albino’s progressive agendas undermined that autocracy.’ The priest thrust pots into a cupboard. ‘Albino wasn’t afraid of the Curia — intended to reform it. There’d never been such hope, such promise in a pope.’
‘Then you were ordered to nobble him.’
He groaned. ‘No plenary indulgence will absolve this soul.’ He dried another pot with furious despair. ‘They demanded that we switch him before the meeting with Washington. That gave Pat no time to complete the surgery on the surrogate.’
‘How’d you cope?’
‘He arrived with a partial latex mask.’
‘Shit.’ It was worse than his predicament with Zia. ‘He couldn’t fool them for long like that.’
‘He had no chance to try. The night he was installed, a faction involved with the Vatican bank, not knowing about the scheme, killed him with digitalis. Or thought they did. Too much security, you see?’
‘Killed the duplicate — thinking he was John?’
‘Then Sister Vincenza found him dead and raised the alarm.’
‘How did you slide out of that?’
‘We sent the nuns and secretaries away but the damage was done. Vincenza and Father Magee saw him before Villot could rearrange the room. Lorenzi had to be told, of course.’
Stromlo assumed that he was familiar with the pontifical household. It showed that the drama, echoing in his head for years, had been amplified into an apocalypse that blurred reality.
‘We called the undertakers quickly and paid them well. Later we had to make the partial mask more waxen so it blended with the rest of the face.’ He dabbed his brow with the tea towel although it wasn’t hot in the room, touched the bench-top to steady himself. ‘He had to be displayed on a bier in the Sala Clementina and the latex was a nightmare. It looks wrong on a dead, relaxed face.’
He paused, his pickled mind haunting the apostolic palace. ‘Later we staged an autopsy and removed all signs of disguise before burial. We couldn’t have him embalmed. Now what’s left is safe inside three coffins which I pray will never be reopened.’
‘So — without a presentable duplicate, and because of the witnesses — you had to say he’d died.’
‘Yes. Total disaster. The Conclave convened again. And Wojtyla won the ballot.’
‘And now the Church has two popes.’
‘Not for the first time in its history.’
Cain chuckled. ‘What a cock-up.’
‘You think it funny?’ Stromlo’s affronted look. ‘You think it funny that I’ve destroyed the greatest chance God’s kingdom on earth ever had — dethroned a pope… killed my best friend Wolf…?’
‘I think you did an amazing job — turned crud into apple pie. And Wolf wasn’t your fault. He did it to himself.’
‘In despair. In de-spair!’
‘And you saved John’s life. Without you, he’d be dead now.’
‘Che Dio le renda merito.’ He touched Cain’s shoulder in thanks, dabbed a sudden tear, fumbled the tea towel over the oven rail with a sot’s protracted attempt at care. ‘Do you pray?’ His sepulchral tone.
Cain said dryly, ‘I’m secretly devout.’
‘Then pray for this Judas burning in the furnace of his shame.’ Head bowed, he dragged from the room.
For some reason the performance struck Cain as hilarious. When he judged the man out of earshot he spluttered with mirth.
Eve opened the door. ‘Something funny?’
‘Stromlo,’ he laughed. ‘Funny man.’
‘He is? I must be dense.’
‘He’s dialectically defrocked. Reminds me of the French guy who said that his life had been full of tragedies — most of which never occurred.’
Her deep chuckle. ‘Spot-on for Stromlo. The frogs see life pretty sharply.’
‘It’s the precision of the language. Has a downside, of course. Takes them nine words to say “flush the toilet”.’