To Kill the Pope Read online

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  This book is for my grandson

  JOHN DAVID

  Contents

  Prologue

  Book One: Monsignor

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Book Two: Timothy

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Book Three: The Search

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Book Four: The Discovery

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Book Five: The Truth

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Afterword

  Prologue

  1981

  IT HAPPENED FASTER than the blink of an eye.

  Indeed, for a split second, the excited, adoring crowd had not comprehended that anything had happened at all.

  One moment, the white-clad figure, holding on to the iron bar at the back seat of the white Jeep with the left hand, was blessing the faithful in a slow, circular motion of the right hand as the vehicle advanced gently through the human mass filling St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican under the azure-blue sky of the May afternoon.

  The next moment, the figure in white was slumped, seemingly lifeless, in a pool of crimson blood sloshing in the rear of the Jeep. Those nearest to him thought they had heard that very instant sudden dry reports of a gun—crack!, crack!, crack! Astonished pigeons, aroused in their quiet perches in the baroque, seventeenth-century Gian Lorenzo Bernini colonnade that maternally embraces the square, fled to safety behind the basilica, their gray wings in flight a sinister loud beat.

  Then the savage, desperate cry from thousands of throats in a hundred tongues rose to the heavens: “They killed the Pope! They killed the Pope! . . .”

  * * *

  However, Gregory XVII, the greatly beloved but often irritatingly controversial French pope of the Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, the ruler of a billion souls, went on living—most happily—although one of the three bullets fired at him at close range had passed within millimeters of his aorta, exiting below the right shoulder blade. The second had perforated the abdominal cavity and had to be excised. The third bullet had missed the pope altogether.

  Yahweh, the Lord, evidently had not yet been ready to summon him. It obviously would be done in God’s good time. Gregory XVII, who was an Old Testament scholar and had both deep faith and a philosophical bent of mind, was always quietly and joyfully resigned to accept the Lord’s will.

  The instant he had regained consciousness in the hospital bed, the pope remembered that Yahweh had once attempted to kill Moses, his best friend and conversation partner, then changed his mind, but, after the forty years in wilderness, did decree his death. Gregory XVII had memorized from the Book of Deuteronomy the Lord’s words to the 120-year-old Moses: “Behold, your days approach that you must die . . . Get up into this mountain, unto mount Nebo, and behold the land of Canaan, which I gave unto the children of Israel for a possession, and die in the mount whither you go up, and be gathered unto your people . . .”—and the passage in Deuteronomy: “So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord . . . and no man knows of his sepulchre unto this day.”

  So Gregory XVII said to himself, “This time Yahweh changed his mind about me,” grimacing with satisfaction even as sharp pain shot through his body. “The Lord chose to spare me today,” he mused, “but perhaps he will not the next time. Behold His mysterious ways.”

  In his penumbral condition between anesthesized, sedated sleep and half-consciousness, the pope wondered, once more, whether Moses really ever existed. It was something of an intellectual hobby for Gregory XVII, since young priesthood, to discuss Moses with Jewish Bible scholars; it covered the whole range of Jewish scholarship and beliefs, with all the contradictions contained over thousands of years in the Torah and the Talmud, and the Rabbinical Commentators in the Talmud and the Midrash, the collections of storytelling. It included, of course, Christian scholarship, which often tended to be more rigorous faith than actual scholarship, and even Freud’s Moses and Monotheism, and his doubts about the historic Moses. That Yahweh existed was beyond question, and Gregory XVII’s inclination had always been to conclude that there had been a Moses.

  Now, immobilized in bed with intravenous lines and mouth and nose intubations and staring through narrowed eyes at the blinding ceiling light, the pope asked himself whether his lifelong secret penchant toward comparing himself to Moses was not sacrilegious, blasphemous or, at least, unspeakably arrogant? Gregory XVII had never forgotten that Christian theology always saw Jesus as “the new Moses,” and this late afternoon the martyred pope, sedated as he was, allowed his mind to wander—wondering whether God, in sparing his life, had confirmed that he was the second Moses, preparing the world from the throne of St. Peter for the coming of the Messiah.

  He was sufficiently conscious to know that he would have to rethink it all more deeply when he felt better and stronger—and in firmer command of his mind—though the image now flashed in his memory of Michelangelo’s Carrara marble statue of Moses in Rome’s Church of San Pietro in Vincoli, Gregory’s favorite art object in the whole world. He kept finding excuses to stop and pray there as often as possible: Just seeing the massive Moses, the pope felt invigorated.

  And, half dreaming, Gregory suddenly remembered an amusing fantasy he had read decades ago about the Plagues of Egypt, with the Lord casting an eleventh Plague in the form of a pharaonic pop song, Take Me to the Nile, Mamma! which had spread like wildfire across the land. The subliminal power of the song had paralyzed all activity as the entire population stopped working to hum it everywhere day and night, with Ramses having been warned that the Mamma epidemic would never cease unless he let the children of Israel go—led by Moses. In absolute desperation, Ramses caved in, Mamma instantly vanished, and Exodus was on.

  This Mosaic obsession is ridiculous, Gregory thought as he slid back into deep sleep. But, unquestionably, Yahweh was testing him. But for what? And who was the human agency, the tool or instrument of the Lord’s will, who had struck at him on St. Peter’s Square? Someday the truth would come out—or will it?

  * * *

  What had saved the sixty-one-year-old pontiff apart from God’s will were his powerful athlete’s constitution and robust health, the speed with which he had been rushed in an ambulance to the Gemelli Clinic barely two miles away, and, ultimately, the extraordinary skill of the Italian surgeon, Dr. Francesco Crucitti, who happened to be on duty in the Emergency Room that lazy afternoon.

  To Gregory XVII, of course, those magnificent but profane facts were sacred—divinely ordained by Yahweh when He chose to save him—and he never tired of pointing out publicly and privately that the assassination attempt had occurred on May thirteenth, the day of Our Lady of Fátima. The pope felt a special veneration for the Fátima Virgin at whose shrine in Portugal the following year he had placed the bullet that had nearly shattered his heart. It had been recovered from t
he hand of a young American nun into which it had penetrated after traversing Gregory’s body. She had stood in the crowd ten feet on the other side of the white Jeep when the assassin, a mysterious Turk in his early twenties, had fired his gun at the pope at almost point-blank range. Our Lady of Fátima, Gregory believed, had been watching over him in fulfillment of God’s will. She had performed the miracle of protecting his life when the Turk had squeezed his three shots from a sturdy Walther automatic pistol just as the pope was completing his relaxed tour of St. Peter’s Square after holding his regular Wednesday General Audience.

  In those days, the public audiences took place in the afternoon in the open, in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, with a minimum of security. It had never occurred to anybody, even in this age of terrorism, that the pontiff could be the target of a murder plot. As was his custom, therefore, Gregory rode in his Jeep along rows of pilgrims, Roman faithful, and tourists from all over the globe, blessing them and waving smilingly in response to enraptured shouts and hand-clapping of applause: Viva il Papa ! Vive le Pape! Long Live the Pope!

  The French pope, just three years on St. Peter’s throne after his surprise election as the first “foreign”—non-Italian—pontiff in four and a half centuries, was convinced that frequent direct contact with his flock was essential to his pastoral mission. There had to be a flow of emotion and immediacy between him and the believers if the Church and religion were to have any lasting meaning as the new century and millennium approached. Besides, the gregarious Gregory, who was an extrovert as well as a mystical, introspective, but also highly pragmatic personality, thrived on rapport with people—the more the better—and lost no opportunity meeting with crowds on every conceivable occasion. It recharged and rejuvenated him.

  The Wednesday General Audiences were the most natural such occasions, and the vast square in front of St. Peter’s Basilica was always filled with thousands upon thousands who hoped for a glance from the pope from just a few feet away, perhaps a split second of eye contact with him, perhaps a chance to touch his garments as he drove by ever so slowly. It made Gregory visibly and palpably human to them, and made the crowd, to him, more than just a faceless abstraction of the faithful—not the way it had been not so long ago when the pontiff was carried on a palanquin during public appearances, looking down on his people.

  * * *

  But it also made it possible that day for the young Turk, who after his capture gave his name as Agca Circlic, to remain unnoticed within the ranks of pilgrims massed on the right side of the square, as one faced the basilica, excitedly awaiting the approach of the papal Jeep. He was the “human agency,” as Gregory would put it later, who had carried out the will of the Lord toward him—though only up to a point. There was no reason for anyone to pay attention to the Turk, unshaven and wearing an ill-pressed, food-stained baggy light suit.

  Circlic had arrived at the square two hours before the General Audience, standing patiently on the spot he had selected as the best for his purposes after observing on two previous Wednesday afternoons the pattern of the pope’s Jeep tour among the pilgrims. His heavy pistol was snugly concealed in the left inside pocket of his suit jacket. Circlic’s meticulous training in Turkey as a professional hit man—a political terrorist—had taught him how to measure precisely the distance to his target and the bullet’s velocity before producing the pistol from the pocket and firing. He was a fine shooter and he knew that it had to be accomplished in a single graceful fluid motion, based on an instinctive mathematical calculation.

  A few minutes before five o’clock, as the sun began to descend toward the western horizon, brushing with gold dust the churches, monuments, and roofs of Rome, Gregory’s Jeep had turned toward the row where Circlic stood, and the Turk began calculating the distance for the optimal moment as the vehicle approached among even louder evvivas rising to a crescendo and cascading applause. The General Audience, held on the great wide stairs of the basilica, had ended some twenty minutes past, with the pope greeting the foreign visitors in a score of languages.

  When the Jeep was exactly eleven feet away, with Gregory facing him for an instant, the pistol materialized in Circlic’s hand. At the precise moment—three minutes after five o’clock, the Turk fired three times at an upward angle. He was cool and collected, mindful of his instructions, a finely tuned human machine. It was like target shooting at the Anatolia training camp back in Turkey: Circlic’s hand was steady, his aim true, and the pope collapsed, wordlessly, in the back of the little vehicle.

  It lasted less than a second, a frozen frame, that at the same time was an eternity. The French monsignor, Gregory’s private secretary who had been sitting in a back seat, next to the pontiff, had thrown himself on top of him to shield him from any more gunfire, his black cassock turning even darker from papal blood. As it happened, the Jeep had been very close to an ambulance routinely parked on the square, and Gregory XVII could be instantly transferred to it. With the monsignor screaming to the driver, “à l’hôpital, à l’hôpital!” the ambulance veered violently to the right, dispersing the stricken crowd as it raced out of St. Peter’s toward Gemelli Clinic, oblivious of the thick traffic ahead. The ambulance driver knew where to go: Standing orders were to rush to Gemelli in the event of an accident in which the pope might have been hurt. Miraculously, cars and buses made way for him. Carabinieri and police cruisers, sirens blaring and lights flashing, roared in the wake of the ambulance.

  In the square, where pandemonium now reigned, Circlic had dropped the pistol on the spot on the pavement from where he had fired. It landed near a drying pool of blood, alongside a bouquet of white carnations that had turned bright red, one of the hundreds of bunches of flowers pilgrims had tossed toward Gregory moments earlier. Free of the gun, the Turk had turned in the direction of the shelter of the Bernini colonnade, trying to escape via that route. But, immediately, he was a captive of the enraged crowd. Men and women had rushed at him with terrible imprecations, pinning him down on the ground, barely letting him breathe.

  The sanctity of St. Peter’s Square may have saved Circlic from being literally beaten to death, his flesh torn into shreds. Instead, the crowd drew back to let the carabinieri, posted as usual along the colonnade, grab and manacle the Turk and throw him inside their cruiser. Circlic looked strangely at peace though he seemed quite surprised at being captured and taken away. He must have been assured by his patrons that somehow he would be able to get away, scot-free, and he must have trusted them. In any event, the young Turk had acknowledged at once in broken Italian that, indeed, he had attempted to kill Gregory XVII, not making the slightest effort to deny, dissemble, or protest. He gave the carabinieri his name. Then he plunged into complete silence.

  * * *

  Exactly eight minutes after the affray on the square, the telephone rang shrilly and urgently by the bedside of Cardinal Diarmuid Hume, the octogenarian Irish Dean of the College of Cardinals. In the event of a pope’s death, the daily conduct of the Vatican’s administrative affairs is directed by the college until the election of a new pontiff. Today, the responsibility was placed personally on Hume. It had therefore been necessary for an official of the Papal Household to interrupt the cardinal’s afternoon nap and notify him of the situation so that he would be ready to act at once if needed.

  Moreover Hume, who always described himself, jocularly but truthfully, as “the only nondrinking Irishman,” happened to be the wisest, most experienced, and most cynical figure in the Roman Curia. Indeed, he was a Holy See institution himself, highly respected and frequently feared in that crucible of piety and intrigue. Hume realized immediately that the Holy See and the Church might face an insoluble crisis if Gregory XVII remained alive indefinitely, but was incapacitated physically or mentally. Told of the extent of the pope’s injuries, the cardinal could not rule out incapacitation, and it was an awesome dilemma. He could not and would not wish Gregory dead—for one thing they were warm personal friends—but since Canon Law does not make any
provisions for incapacitation, and there is no such thing as “Deputy Pope,” all decision making in the Church, such as naming bishops or formulating theological or political policies, is paralyzed ad infinitum, until there is a new pope elected. And incapacitation could last indefinitely. The prospects were frightening.

  “Keep me posted every minute on the Holy Father’s condition!” Hume shouted to his assistant, who had called him from the office of the college at the Apostolic Palace. “And now let me get dressed!”

  Ten minutes later, as Hume was completing his toilette in the high-ceilinged bedroom of his palazzo, the telephone rang again with word that Gregory was fighting for his life at the clinic and that there were high hopes for his survival. The Irishman sighed with relief. “Praise the Lord,” he said to his assistant, “and I mean it . . .”

  “And, Eminence,” the assistant told him, “the gunman was captured and taken away by the carabinieri. He is a Turk . . .”

  “What ? A Turk? What kind of Turk?” Hume asked impatiently.

  “I have no idea, Eminence,” the man replied. “All we know is that he is young—and that he will not talk, except to state his name.”

  Hume turned the information over in his mind. He never took anything at face value.

  “Hmm,” he said to himself. “A Turk . . . Why would a Turk wish to kill Gregory? Because he is a fanatic Muslim, if that’s what he is? No, it makes no sense. It’s got to be more complicated. There must be more to it . . . Well, we’ll find out sooner or later . . . or not. Meanwhile, I want Gregory back on his feet, running the Church.”

  Hume was still shaking his head in puzzlement as he entered his black limousine to be driven to his office in the Vatican to stand by for further developments.

  “There’s something else to this whole business,” the cardinal muttered, thinking of urgent telephone calls he would make as soon as the emergency was over, either way, and of questions that had to be asked.