*
Wolf moved his arms, surprised to find that the restraints were removed. He sat up on his elbows and moved his legs to one side of the bed, gingerly moving them lower until the balls of his feet touched the floor. The notebook he had written in was on a wooden stool beside the bed.
The nun had returned. She sat in a chair at the foot of the bed, watching him.
“Am I free to leave?”
The nun went to the window, looking out. “That would be dangerous.”
“Why?”
“See for yourself.”
He stood and went to the window, feeling cold air ventilate the open-backed white linen gown. Just beyond the red-tiled rooftops of the Vatican museums stood a great wall, which he knew from photographs was the edge of Vatican City. A pair of Swiss Guards in flamboyant blue, red, orange and yellow striped uniforms stood guard at a gate. Just outside the walls, two Wehrmacht soldiers sat atop a Panzer II tank. Although they were several hundred meters in the distance, Wolf instinctively drew back from the window.
“Are they here for me?” he said.
“Not specifically,” the nun said, crossing the room to sit in an armchair covered with purple fabric. “The soldiers have been outside the walls for weeks. Every week there are a few more.”
“How did I…”
“You and your friend were brought in through the tunnels.”
Wolf wheeled around. “But when I asked the doctor about Heinz — ”
“Mr. Lang is quite safe,” the nun said.
“Can you please summon a diplomat?” Wolf said. “I want to request asylum for both of us.”
The nun returned to her chair. “I’m afraid I must deny your request.”
Wolf was incredulous. “You cannot possibly be qualified to make that decision!”
The nun continued to sit quietly, deliberately controlling her voice. “We were not properly introduced. I am Klara Kohler, the pope’s personal secretary.”
The name was familiar to him. Father Kruger had mentioned a Sister Klara who had helped arrange for him to apprentice in the Vatican Archives. But he had said that she was the housekeeper for the pope when he lived in Germany and was still known as Nuncio Pacelli.
“You are surprised,” she said.
“Yes,” he admitted. In Germany there were virtually no women in positions of power.
“I am quite accustomed to being taken for domestic help. In fact I was head of a nunnery when the pope was known as Nuncio Pacelli, and I eventually oversaw his staff. Afterwards I was in Berlin, where I served him during his ambassadorship. Now I am His Holiness’ voice on a number of diplomatic matters, including communications with the Holy See.”
Wolf could not comprehend what he was hearing.
“The Black Order took mercy on me. Why won’t you?”
The nun flew out of her chair, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “You are hardly deserving of charity. You are only alive because they thought you were blessed with the stigmata.” She paused, turning toward the window before resuming in a calmer voice. “There are those within the Vatican that may be distracted by such parlor tricks. I remain focused on the protection of the Church and the Holy Father through diplomatic means. The vultures at the gate are a reminder that the slightest change in public position will be our undoing.”
“You can’t protect the pope with talk,” Wolf said, testing the waters. “Unless Germany loses the war, your new master will be Hitler himself.”
He was not sure whether the nun heard him. She continued to pace, stopping occasionally to glare out the window at the German soldiers in the street. “His Holiness walks a fine diplomatic line,” she said finally.
“You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
“If they discover that we’ve been sheltering you, the diplomatic scandal will be the tipping point that will send tanks through our gates.”
Impressed as Wolf was by the nun’s bluster, he did not take it at face value. It stood to reason that someone with substantial influence had brought him to the Vatican. Had the Black Order intended to hand him back to Germany for the sake of diplomatic relations, it would have been far easier to leave him in Venice, or simply to kill him there in the church. But someone in their ranks had saved him and brought him to Vatican City.
He decided to test Sister Klara’s limits a bit further. “I have heard rumors,” he said. “They say that the Vatican is a safe haven for downed British pilots.”
“Mere rumors.”
“Others say there are American spies within these halls.”
“Pointless conjecture.”
“I served directly under Heinrich Himmler,” Wolf said. He was stretching the truth, but not far. His mother had been wrong about the Reich School education keeping him from harm, but she had been right in thinking that it would provide him with elite access.
The nun turned to face him. “All the more reason for us to turn you back to the Fatherland.”
“I have information the Americans can use. The locations of aircraft factories. Munitions factories. And I know the mind of Himmler. I know what he plans to do.”
“No,” she shot back. “That sort of information would only bring more bloodshed. Innocents would die. It would be immoral to knowingly cause so much death.”
“Doing nothing would be worse. Besides, things are already going badly on the eastern front. And we all know what will happen if the Russians get here before the Americans.”
The nun did not argue. Since the Soviet Union had declared Atheism its official doctrine, more than 25,000 churches had been closed. More than 100,000 priests were said to have been shot. Hundreds of thousands more had been sent to labor camps.
The nun turned toward the door. “I will pray on it.”
*
He slept very little. He was too excited by the dream of the great library and the book and the scripture. When he did sleep, he dreamed about the ossuary. Was it real, or was it just another of Himmler’s myths? He did not think it was a myth. Whatever the Black Order was, surely its soldiers would not kill Germans in Paris and in Venice to protect a false idol.
It was before sunrise when Wolf heard his door open. Dr. Enzo Marchesi was soon at his bedside. He set his lantern on the desk and took Wolf’s left hand in his, checking his wounds. “Good morning. Your hands look improved. Any cough last night?”
Wolf sat up. “No.”
“Good. You will need your strength today.”
Wolf felt suddenly uneasy. What were they going to do to him? Had the nun really decided to hand him over to Himmler? He watched as the doctor once again listened to Wolf’s heart and dropped almond oil onto his palms. It didn’t sting as much now.
“Your conversation had an interesting effect on Sister Klara,” the doctor said as he worked. “She spent most of the night praying in the Basilica.”
“I didn’t realize the pope’s secretary could be a women.”
“Sister Klara may be the first,” the doctor smiled as he poured some hyssop oil onto a spoon. “She rules the palace with an iron fist. They call her…” The doctor looked over his shoulder, checking to make sure that the door was still shut. “They call her La Popessa.”
Wolf and the doctor shared a smile. He understood immediately that the term La Popessa was something of a backhanded compliment.
The doctor pointed to a blue garment folded on the dresser — a less flamboyant, standard duty Swiss Guard uniform. Wolf immediately understood. The uniform was mean to disguise him from the spies the nun had warned him about.
“Please get dressed,” the doctor said. “With luck, I will see you tonight.”
Several minutes later, Wolf was led by two actual Swiss Guards down a staircase to the Curia’s lower floor. They passed several priests in black robes and countless nuns that appeared to be employed in domestic capacities. On every wall, and down every hallway in the enormous palace, he was met with a new artistic masterwork. He did not pay them much mind. The only treasure he wished to see was the ossuary. What exactly had the church been hiding from its believers all these centuries?