‘Go finish that call to your mother,’ Gagliardi suggested. ‘I believe the Camerlengo and I have some matters to discuss privately.’
Donoher nodded, and Cusumano took the hint. ‘I’ll be back in the morning, Uncle, in time to meet with your doctors.’
‘He is a good boy,’ Gagliardi said, after Cusumano departed.
‘What have your doctors told you?’
‘Nothing I haven’t heard before. A lifetime of bad habits has finally caught up with me. The doctors are still running tests, but apparently three more arteries in my heart are blocked. Had the doctors not been standing by outside the chapel, I would now be dead.’
‘Then perhaps it’s not your time.’
‘That remains to be seen. The last time they opened my chest, the surgeon offered me a lifetime guarantee on his work. At this moment, I am not comforted. The message from His Holiness was quite a surprise.’
‘To us all,’ Donoher agreed.
‘Can you get Yin out of China?’
‘I believe our chances are very good.’
‘When?’
‘It could be as early as tomorrow.’
Gagliardi paused, momentarily lost in thought. ‘Do you think Yin would make a good Pope?’
‘Having never met the man, I honestly don’t know. But His Holiness found him worthy of being a cardinal, if only in his heart, so I suppose that means he’s as capable as any of us. In truth, I don’t think it’s an issue.’
‘But Yin received the second highest number of votes, almost a tie with Magni.’
‘Yet neither was even close to being elected. I don’t know how to read the votes for Yin. Were they sympathy or a sign? The real test will come in the next ballots, which, sadly, I have to return to prepare for. Before I go, do you wish to be anointed?’
‘I do,’ Gagliardi replied.
Donoher draped a stole across his shoulders, then placed a small vial and a golden pyx on the table beside Gagliardi’s bed. The vial contained the oil of the infirm from Saint Peter’s Basilica and the pyx — a thin, coin-shaped vessel — held Holy Communion.
With hands folded and head bowed, Donoher began, ‘In the name of the Father…’
24
Xiyuan, the site of the Summer Palace, was once in the countryside northwest of the imperial capital, separated from it by an expanse of farms and wilderness. Urban sprawl over the past sixty years had consumed much of that open land, erasing the separate sense of place Xiyuan once enjoyed. The sphere of the Beijing metropolitan area fully encompassed the garden campus of the Ministry of State Security, rendering Tian Yi’s ride into the central city paved and urban.
The Chinese spymaster stared absently at the lights of Beijing as his driver sped down the broad avenues toward the center of the capital. A steady stream of cars flowed along the city’s main arteries despite the late hour, and towering cranes populated the rapidly changing skyline like a flock of wading birds hovering over a river teeming with fish. Floodlights illuminated the slender structures, the glow evidence of night workers toiling to complete a century of civic construction in a few short years. In China, live cranes were a sign of good luck. Tian Yi wondered what kind of luck the giant steel cranes would bring.
The driver turned on to Xichangan Jie, heading east toward Tiananmen Square, the symbolic heart of China. Ahead on the left, Tian saw the southern portion of the massive red walls that enclosed a two-square-kilometer compound of Zhongnanhai. The compound took its name from the two small lakes contained within its walls, though most in China thought of it as the Sea Palaces. From its origin as an imperial pleasure park during the Jin dynasty, the region of rolling hills and lakes immediately west of the Forbidden City evolved from a place of leisure for residents of the imperial court, filled with pavilions and gardens, into the seat of power for the Communist ruling elite. In 1949, Zhongnanhai became China’s Kremlin.
Near the center of its length, the southern wall angled away from the road, receding to form a forecourt in front of an ornate two-story structure with a columned facade and a traditional red tile roof. The eighteenth-century Emperor Qianlong built the Precious Moon Tower — as the Xinhuamen (New China) Gate was originally known — as a gift for his homesick concubine.
As his driver turned into the guarded forecourt, Tian saw two large red signs emblazoned with white characters on the walls flanking the gate.
LONG LIVE THE GREAT COMMUNIST
PARTY OF CHINA!
LONG LIVE THE INVINCIBLE THOUGHTS
OF MAO ZEDONG!
The guards verified Tian’s appointment and permitted his driver to proceed. Inside the gate, Tian saw a third sign—
SERVE THE PEOPLE.
As the driver followed the narrow road around the southern lake, Tian thought of the slogans at the gate and recalled Yin Daoming’s exhortation to the audience in the Beijing theater. Mao famously said that all political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, yet the very real threat of death did not cow Yin or his fellow Roman Catholics.
How many communists, Tian mused, would sing the praises of the illustrious Mao while being immolated for refusing to denounce the party?
The car entered an area northwest of the southern lake called Fengzeyuan (Garden of Plenty). There, guards on night patrol directed Tian’s driver to a parking space near a small pavilion that dated to the Qing dynasty. A large contingent of armed men near the building served to alert Tian that the Premier was already inside waiting for him.
A soldier opened the car door and saluted as Tian stepped out. A man in his late fifties, Tian was of average height with a trim build and a lean face with a smooth pate of lightly freckled skin stretched taut over the uneven topography of his skull.
The pavilion doors opened for Tian as he approached them and closed once he was inside. Premier Wen Lequan sat in a high-backed chair carefully watching Tian. A thickset man in his mid-sixties, the Premier was an electrical engineer who rose through the party ranks before taking the reins of the world’s most populous nation four years earlier.
Seated beside Wen were President Chong Jiyun and Minister Fu Yushan of the Ministry of Justice. Chong, a thin bookish man, was an economist and the architect of the country’s two-system approach wedding communist politics with capitalist economics. Fu tackled the equally daunting task of modernizing the nation’s legal code and processes for administering justice. Trim and athletic, the fifty-three-year-old Fu was the youngest man in the room. His quick political rise was attributed in equal parts to his brilliant legal mind and fiery personality.
Facing three of China’s most powerful figures was an empty chair.
‘Minister Tian,’ Wen said, pronouncing the name with great formality, ‘please sit.’
Tian did as the Premier instructed, his expression betraying no emotion despite the attention now directed at him. He gazed past the three men and focused instead on the exquisite brushwork in a painting of the Qutang Gorge hanging on the far wall.
‘Throughout your many years of service to our country,’ Wen said, ‘you have cultivated a reputation as a man of reason and thoughtful, considered action. What most urgent matter has arisen that requires the immediate attention of me and my esteemed comrades?’
‘Premier Wen, President Chong, Minister Fu,’ Tian began, nodding respectfully to each man in turn, ‘I believe the sovereignty of our nation has been violated by forces of Western aggression.’
‘Please explain,’ Wen said.
‘A few hours ago, we received a message from our chief of station in Rome. The Vatican has set in motion an effort to extract a prisoner from the laogai in Chifeng and remove him from the country.’