“For ten days, Father,” Foley continued slowly, “the agents of the Central Intelligence Agency kept you in confinement.”
Tunney thought of the cages still and his body began to bend and shrivel as he sat in the chair across from the young priest.
“They obviously sought to learn many things from you.”
“I suppose…” Tunney hesitated, saw his healed and gnarled hands beginning to tremble in his lap. He must control himself now, he thought. He must not remember. “I suppose they did. I don’t know what they wanted.”
“You must have told them—”
“I told them everything.”
Foley looked up from the tent of his fingers, stared across at the old priest.
“And what is everything?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. They wanted to know something beyond what I told them. I don’t know what it is. But they didn’t seem satisfied with me.”
“Then why did they let you go?” The tent of fingers began to move again, tapping one against the other. “Why did they let you come here?”
Tunney stared at him, through him. They both felt the silence of the room envelop them. “I don’t know.”
“What did they want to know?”
“I don’t know.”
Foley let his fingers drop. He wore a sports shirt today, a silken Italian weave, and dark trousers. His face, like Tunney’s, was dark with sun but Tunney looked vaguely pale despite the tan. “Father? Last night I told you that I was an emissary from the Vatican, from the Congregation for the Protection of the Faith. You didn’t answer me then. Are you aware of who we are?” Foley could not eradicate the faintly pompous tone in the last words.
Tunney kept silent. The clock on the shelf struck ten unexpectedly, ringing the notes sharply one after another, and then the silence resumed.
“Father Tunney?”
“Spies,” he said.
Foley stared at him.
“Spies for the Pope. Am I right?”
“We are sent to gather intelligence for the Pontiff, if that’s what you mean.”
Tunney smiled. “Spies. Intelligence agents. Field men. Extra men. Second men. The whole sorry nomenclature. Section chiefs. Network masters. Runners and couriers. Box men and station masters, station chiefs and station keepers. All those words.”
Foley could not keep astonishment from his face.
“Yes. I know. I’m not an idiot, Father Foley. I knew all those terms, all those names. I knew what I was. I thought I knew what I was.” The last was said softly, as though it were not intended to be heard.
“What are you?”
“A man. Like you. Perhaps a greater sinner.”
“What happened?”
“When? What do you want to know?”
Tunney smiled, a slow, sad smile, like a child’s smile when the hurt has passed.
They listened to the clock ticking, to the hum of the city beyond the window.
“Everything,” Tunney said at last. “There is so much to know, so many who want to know it. What is everything?”
“This is not a game. You were an American spy.”
“In Asia? In Laos, do you mean? Of course I was. I knew what I was.” The words came harshly now though the voice was still weak. “I know what I am now.”
“What did they want you to tell them?”
“Everything. Just as you want everything.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing. In the end, it was nothing.”
Martin Foley stared at him. He had thought it would be easy after meeting Tunney the night before. The priest was old and weak and a little addled. His movements were shaky, he seemed near collapse. Was that from the CIA interrogation? Or just his general condition? Had the CIA been able to break him down the first day or the second? What had they learned that the Vatican should know about? Ludovico had given him secret instructions at the last moment, revealed the urgency of all that had to do with Father Leo Tunney. When he had met Leo Tunney last night, Foley was sure it was too late, that Tunney had already collapsed and told everything to the Americans.
He saw now how tough the old priest had become. He had an Oriental fragility that was only a paper mask over iron.
“You must tell us everything.”
“I want to be left alone. To pray and be solitary. To say Mass and pray and not speak.” The words were bleak.
“You must tell us. We are the Church.”
“You are spies, Father Foley, no less or more than other spies.”
“Father Tunney, are you still a servant of God?”
“An appeal to faith,” Father Tunney said, perfectly still, the voice masking steel. “Yes. I would still be a servant of God if He would let me.”
“You are a priest.”
“Yes. That, too. As well. And I have been other things.”
“Why would the Americans want to keep you under observation?”
“Because I had belonged to them as well. Servant of God, servant of man.” Tunney rose slowly, his body seeming to bend under the slight weight of his thin flesh. He walked across the rich patterned carpet to the broad window and looked out at the empty side street, at the palm trees, at the little stucco homes in a row. “Do you know the dying words of Cardinal Wolsey? From Shakespeare? Servant of the King and Cardinal of the Church and abandoned by both at the end.” Tunney turned from the window: “‘Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my King, he would not in mine age have left me naked to mine enemies.’ ”
Foley let his voice fall flat in the silence. “That is poetry, Father. This is reality we are dealing with. You are a sick man and you have decided, for your own reasons, to return to the world. I am speaking not for myself but for the Pope, Father Tunney. I command you — I do not use such words lightly — I command you to submit yourself to that authority to whom you made your vows. I command you to observe a strict vow of silence; not to speak of these matters to any other authority. I have already spoken to Father McGillicuddy about this. And I command you to make a detailed report to me as the representative of the Papacy, to tell me everything. Everything. Everything you told the Americans and everything you did not tell them. From the moment in 1961 when you… disappeared.”
“I did not disappear,” Leo Tunney said quietly. “I made no choice; I did not go into the wilderness like the prophets. It was quite mundane. You know the political realities in Laos then. I was in Qua Lai village near the border with North Vietnam, and we were overrun. It was a Sunday morning and I was preparing to offer Mass. I was in my hut when they came. Twelve of them, Pathet Lao. They went from hut to hut, they shot two men and a woman. I suspect they knew those three were part of the government neutralization force. I had used one of them — Loc Dong — to take messages south for me. For my network chief. A man named Carruthers who, in turn, reported to another man, named Samuels, in Vientiane. Well, that’s nothing now.”
He paused, staring out of the room, through the oak-paneled walls at the past. “After they killed Loc Dong — they shot him, he was a traitor in their eyes — they came to me. Their intelligence was remarkably good and I wondered who it was in the village who knew about Loc Dong and me and about the reports to Carruthers.… They tied me up and took me with them. There was a place in the jungle, about twenty kilometers from the village. We were there by late afternoon. For three days they didn’t talk to me or feed me. I thought they meant to starve me. You see, they did that as well.”
The voice was so calm that Foley felt disoriented, as though the voice and words had broken apart from each other, so that he was hearing through the bleak, weak sounds of the voice a strong, unemotional narrative of ancient history.
“One of the prisoners was Di Phou Lo, they starved him to death while I was there. Never harmed him, never spoke to him. I think he was to serve as a living reminder to the rest of us what they could do to us.” He paused again and wet his lips with his tongue. “I was very frightened.” He looked with empty eyes at himself as he had been. “I was naïve then. You see, I feared death instead of pain. I have seen such deaths since, hundreds of them, the starving: their eyes growing dim day by day, the voices feeble, bellies bloated, bones protruding from beneath the skin. Such deaths do not frighten me anymore. There are more terrible ways of dying. When you starve, the spirit goes out of you in a subtle way; at first, there is only hunger, which can be endured. Then, after a time, there is nothing but a dull perception of the world around you that becomes duller each day. There is much sleep, rehearsals for death.”