The Assassini Read online

  “Delivered with style, believability, and sharp characterizations. An extraordinary novel.”—Nelson DeMille, author of The Gold Coast

  “Packed with intrigue, action, fascinating history and equally fascinating characters.”—David Morrell, author of The Brotherhood of the Rose

  Ben Driskill: The one-time Jesuit seminarian whose life and legal practice are still mired in Church affairs. Someone has killed eight people close to the Church—including one whose death Driskill cannot leave unsolved.…

  Hugh Driskill: Patriarch of a vastly influential Catholic family whose millions are always at the service of Rome. His faith never wavers—even when his only daughter dies for her sacred mission.…

  Sister Valentine: Passionate, outspoken, unwavering in her convictions. She listened to no one under the rank of God, and delved too deep into the secrets of the Church she loved.…

  Sister Elizabeth: Val Driskill’s closest friend, a rising power in the new Church, with special access to the murky vaults of the Vatican library. Working with Ben to unravel Val’s murder, she will have her own price to pay.…

  “The Assassini is worth the 11 years Gifford spent on it.”—The Kansas City Star

  “Tough and gripping.”—Donald E. Westlake, author of the screenplay for The Grifters

  Drew Summerhays: Rich and powerful enough to influence a papal election, this former intelligence agent is one of the few laymen ever to penetrate the Vatican’s innermost sanctum. He knows more than he will tell.…

  Cardinal Giacomo D’Ambrizzi: His ambition to occupy the most powerful post in Christendom may be foiled by the mystery and violence of his past service to his faith.…

  Klaus Richter: The former Nazi reborn in prosperity in Cairo after the war, he knew not only the dark secrets of the Church during the Second World War, but the crimes that continued in peacetime. His trail would lead to the godforsaken monastery in the desert, the place known as L’inferno.

  Pope Callistus IV: Ailing, near death, and frightened for the future of his Church, he is already bypassed by the loop of Vatican intrigue. But he has the strength for one last act, to influence the choice of his successor.…

  “I raced through this story not really being able to stop … this narrator’s skill is rare in modern novelists.”—Malachi Martin, author of Hostage to the Devil and The Final Conclave

  “Gifford pulls off the feat of confirming some of the non-Catholic’s darkest suspicions about the Church while explaining why some of its most discerning members love it nonetheless.”—USA Today

  August Horstmann: Loyal, solitary, versed in the unholy arts of war. His service to his church was vital long ago, during the threatened apocalypse of World War II. Now this faithful servant may unwittingly bring ruin to his friends.…

  Brother Leo: The archivist of the desolate Irish monastery of St. Sixtus, he knowingly holds the evidence linking the bloodstained legacy of the Church’s past to the shadowy intrigue of the present.…

  Father Artie Dunn: The popular novelist and worldly priest whose jovial manner conceals a keen mind. He seems to arrive at the scene of a crime half a step ahead of the police.…

  THE ASSASSINI

  A Bantam book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Bantam hardcover edition published September 1990

  Bantam mass market edition / August 1991

  Bantam mass market reissue / May 2004

  Published by

  Bantam Dell

  A division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in Collected Poems 1909-1962 by T. S. Eliot, copyright 1936 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., copyright © 1964, 1963 by T. S. Eliot, reprinted by permission of the publisher, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane, copyright 1943 (renewed 1971) by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc., copyright 1944 (renewed 1972) by Leo Feist, Inc. All rights assigned to EMI Catalog Partnership. All rights controlled and administered by EMI Feist Catalog, Inc. International copyright secured. Made in U.S.A. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 1990 by Thomas Gifford and Boston Books, Inc.

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 90-30533

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publishers, except where permitted by law. For information address:

  Bantam Books, New York, New York.

  Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-8041-4977-8

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Part One Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Part Two Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Three Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Part Four Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Part Five Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part Six Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Rest in Peace

  Dedication

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Spending nine years researching and writing a book is a remarkably daunting task. Countless people, both from within and from outside the Church, helped and hindered the work. Each doubtless had sufficient reasons for what he or she did, whether selfless or despicable. But for each one who tried to stop my completing this book there were many more who gave of their time and energy and insight to help me. They know who they are, heroes and villains alike. But three people were utterly indispensable.

  Charles Hartman inspired every aspect of the undertaking. Without him there would have been no book. He was a source of constant encouragement; he was tireless when I was at the end of my tether; at the darkest times, when the obstacles seemed too great to overcome, he never failed me.

  Kathy Robbins negotiated her way through the impossibly dense thicket of emotions, conflicting aims and egos, and the vast accumulation of legal documents with the skill and good humor and wit of a great diplomat. For nearly nine years she slew the dragons, even when the dragons seemed to be winning.

  Beverly Lewis joined the effort when it had reached its greatest crisis and with the clear intelligence and the determination of a Jesuit made it all come right. Her skill as an editor is exceeded only by the one quality that sets the great editors apart from the rest—her utter respect for and understanding of the author’s intention.

  Whatever may be wrong with the piece of work you are holding is my doing; whatever is right I gladly share with these three.

  Thomas Gifford

  London

  November 1989

&nb
sp; PROLOGUE

  October 1982

  New York City

  He looked like a bird of prey, all black and swooping against the silver sheen of ice. He was an elderly gentleman. He was very good on the blades. He was enjoying himself, hearing the hiss of his skates carving neat, precise patterns in the ice, feeling the crisp autumn breeze on his face. His senses were unusually acute, as they always were on such important days. The task at hand brought him to life in a unique way: on such days he was one with his destiny, one with his God. The point of his existence was clear to him on such days.

  The world was clearer, too. Everything around him lost its mystery. On such days he understood. The mist of the morning had blown away and sunshine was streaming past the high white clouds. The towers of Rockefeller Center rose above him and the music from the loudspeakers set his pace and he was able to lose himself in the grace and power of his skating, almost able to ride them back through time.

  As a boy he had learned his skating on the frozen canals of The Hague. The somber houses, the snowy parks, the leaden sky with heavy clouds lowering over the ancient city and the dikes and the windmills: they all stuck in his mind with the peculiar tenacity of childhood impressions, things you never forget. It didn’t matter that there weren’t many windmills anymore. They were still there, slowly turning, forever in his mind. The thought of the slow-moving arms of the windmills and the sibilant swishing of the blades on ice always worked to relax him. On such days as this, when he had work to do, he always prepared by relaxing. A younger generation might call it meditating, but it all came down to the same thing. You wanted to reach a level of pure, perfect concentration, so perfect that you no longer noticed that you were trying. He was almost there. The skating was taking him there. Soon time would cease to exist. He would become a single, all-seeing eye, aware of everything, missing nothing, capable of being one with his task, one with God’s purpose. Soon. Very soon.

  He wore the black suit with the clerical collar and a black raincoat which furled out behind him like a cape as he moved gracefully among the other skaters, who seemed mostly to be teenagers. It had never occurred to him that the blowing coat might give him a threatening, ominous appearance. His mind didn’t work like that. He was a priest. He was the Church. He had a remarkably reassuring, kindly smile. He was goodness, not someone to fear. Nevertheless, the other skaters tended to make a path for him, watched him almost furtively, as if he might be judging them morally. They couldn’t have been more mistaken.

  He was tall with wavy white hair combed straight back from a high, noble brow. His face was narrow with a long nose, a wide, thin-lipped mouth. It was a tolerant face, like a good country doctor who understood life and had no fear of death. His face wore an almost translucent priestly pallor, born of a lifetime spent in dim chapels, badly lit cells, confessionals. A pallor born of long hours of prayer. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles. The skating, the concentration, brought the faintest of smiles to the wide mouth. He was lean and very fit. He was seventy years old.

  As he skated he held his hands before him, palms out, as if he were dancing with an invisible partner. He wore black leather gloves that fit like skin. From the loudspeakers came a scratchy recording of a girl singing something from a movie he’d seen on the Alitalia 747 that had brought him to New York. She sang that she was going to live forever, that she was going to go out and fly …

  He weaved among the skating children, slid gracefully among the pretty girls with the tight Guess jeans and long swinging hair and strong, hard-muscled rumps about to burst the seams. Girls of a certain age had always reminded him of frisky colts. He had never seen a naked woman. He’d hardly ever thought about such a thing.

  He gently kicked one leg before him, skating on a single blade, deftly switching back and forth, arms slowly pumping the air before him, eyes narrowed as if seeing into the core of time while his body skated onward, powered by the engines of memory. He moved like a great black bird, circling the rink, eyes fixed ahead of him, ice-blue and clear, as if they had no bottom, like a lake high in the mountains. There was no hint of emotion in his eyes. They just weren’t participating.

  Some of the girls whispered, giggled as they watched the old priest glide past, austere, formal, yet there was an air of respect in their glances, respect for his skating, the strength and the style with which he moved.

  But he was busy thinking about the rest of the day and he barely noticed them. The girls doubtless thought they were going to live forever, and were going to go out and fly, which was fine, but the elderly priest knew better.

  Now, ahead of him on the ice, he saw a very pretty girl of fourteen or so fall down abruptly, sit with legs splayed out before her. Her friends were laughing, she was shaking her head, the ponytail bobbing.

  He swept down on her from behind, caught her under the arms and lifted her upright in a single, fluid motion. He saw the look of surprise on her face as he flickered past like a mighty raven. Then she broke into a wide grin and called a thank-you. He nodded solemnly over his shoulder.

  Soon afterward he looked at his watch. He skated off the ice, returned the rented skates, reclaimed the briefcase from the checkroom. He was breathing deeply. He felt supremely at ease and in control with a nice edge of adrenaline running.

  He climbed the stairs out of the rink. He bought a hot pretzel from a vendor, smeared a bit of mustard on the salt-studded surface, stood eating it methodically, then discarded the napkin in a trash can. He walked the length of the arcade of shops to Fifth Avenue. He crossed the street, stood looking up at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He was not a sentimental man, but the sight of great church buildings—even so recent an example—inevitably moved something in his breast. He had hoped to say a prayer, but the skating had gone on too long, and he could pray inside his head anyway.

  He’d come a long way to keep this appointment.

  It was time to go.

  Rome

  The man in the bed wasn’t watching the soccer match on the large television screen. One of his secretaries had put the cassette into the VCR and thoughtfully turned it on before withdrawing, but the man in the bed had begun, of late, to lose interest in soccer. If it crossed his mind at all, it was in the form of memory, boyhood matches he’d enjoyed in Turin many, many years before. As for the stuff on the cassette, recently arrived by courier from São Paulo, well, he just didn’t give a damn. The World Cup wasn’t a part of his plans anymore.

  The man in the bed was thinking about his own impending death with the sense of detachment that had always served him well. As a young man he’d mastered the trick of thinking of himself in the third person, as Salvatore di Mona. With part of himself standing off to one side, wearing a bemused smile, he’d observed Salvatore di Mona’s diligent, systematic climb through the ranks, had nodded appreciatively as Salvatore di Mona forged alliances with powerful and worldly men, had witnessed Salvatore di Mona reaching the final lofty peak of his profession. At which time Salvatore di Mona had, in a manner of speaking, ceased to exist: at which time he had taken the name Callistus, had become the Vicar of Christ, the Holy Father—Pope Callistus IV.

  Eight years as Chairman of the Board: he was neither a modest man, nor a particularly deep one, but he had been both very lucky and extraordinarily practical. He was not much given to the elaborate hocus-pocus that went with his job and he’d always looked upon his career as only marginally unlike that of any CEO of a major multinational corporation.

  It was quite true, of course, that only the Emperor of Japan occupied an older office on Planet Earth, but still it had never occurred to him that, for instance, God literally expressed His will through the man who had been Sal di Mona, the bright-eyed eldest son of the prosperous Fiat dealer in Turin. No, mysticism was not his cup of tea, as Monsignor Knox had once said in his charming English manner.

  No, Callistus IV was a practical man. He didn’t much care for drama and intrigue, particularly in the years since he’d managed to get himself elected
by the consistory of cardinals, a maneuver that had required a certain simple, heavy-handed intriguing of the sort that left no doubt of the outcome. Money systematically parceled out to relevant cardinals with the aid of the powerful American layman, Curtis Lockhardt, had gotten the job done. Cardinal di Mona had built on a solid core of support, headed by Cardinal D’Ambrizzi. The money-bribes, to give the parcels a name—was a tradition that had put more than one sweating papabili over the top. Since becoming pope, he’d tried to keep all the curial plotting and whispering and tinkering and slandering to a minimum. But he had to admit that in a hothouse society like the Vatican, he was fighting a losing battle. You couldn’t really alter human nature, certainly not in a place where there were at least a thousand rooms. He’d never been able to get an accurate count, but the obvious reality was simply that if you had a thousand rooms, somebody was always and inevitably up to no good in some of them. All in all, keeping a semblance of control over the curial machinations had pretty much worn him out. Still, it had been amusing as often as not. Now it just wasn’t amusing anymore.

  The bed upon which he lay, once the resting place of the Borgia pope Alexander VI, was an impressive affair that possessed a history he enjoyed imagining. Alexander VI had doubtless put it to better use than he had himself, but from the look of things he was at least going to die in it. The rest of the bedroom’s furnishings could be described only as Apostolic Palace Eclectic—some pieces of Swedish modern dating from Paul VI, a television and a videocassette recorder, huge Gothic bookcases with glass doors once filled with the immense collection of reference works Pius XII liked to keep close at hand, chairs and tables and a desk and a prie-dieu which he’d turned up in a storage room under dust a century or two thick. It was a motley collection, but for the past eight years he’d called it home. Regarding it with a dour glance, he was relieved that he didn’t have to take it where he was going.