The Fifth Gospel by Ian Caldwell Read Free Book Online

Alex—Something has come up. Urgent. Tried calling you, but no answer. Please contact me immediately, before word of this gets out. —Ugo
    â€œHe never said anything about this to you?” I say.
    Simon shakes his head dolefully. “But trust me,” he says, “I’ll find out what’s happening.”
    In his tone is a touch of Secretariat superiority. Stand by while we save the world.
    â€œWho would’ve known you were staying at the apartment tonight?” I ask.
    â€œEveryone at the nunciature knew I was flying back for the exhibit.” The nunciature: the Holy See embassy. “But,” he adds, “I didn’t tell them where I was staying.”
    His tone suggests that this bothers him, too. The Vatican has a smallphone book that lists the home and work numbers of most employees, including my own. But it provides no addresses.
    â€œAnd how,” I ask, “could anyone have gotten from Castel Gandolfo to here so fast?”
    Simon is a long time answering. He rolls the glass between his palms. Finally he says, “You’re probably right. They couldn’t have.”
    And yet he says it without any relief, as if he’s just trying to assuage me.
    Distant church bells toll ten PM. The change of shifts begins. We watch as guard patrols appear in their night fatigues, returning from duty, making the room repopulate like a tide pool. It becomes clear that this will be no refuge from the shocks of tonight. These men, while on duty, have heard the news trickle in from Castel Gandolfo. Simon and I are celebrities in a way we hadn’t anticipated.
    The first man to sit down beside us is my old friend Leo. We met the spring of my third year of seminary, at the funeral after the only other murder I can remember on Vatican soil. A Swiss Guard had killed his commanding officer in this barracks before turning the service weapon on himself, and Leo was the first man on the scene that night. Mona and I nursed him through more than a year of recovery, including double dates with women who saw no upside in an underpaid foreigner who was bound by oath not to discuss the memory that haunted him. When Mona left, though, it was Leo who helped Simon tend to me . At his wedding to Sofia this spring, I was scheduled to officiate until Cardinal Ratzinger honored them by volunteering. Now, after years of heartache, we will both have sons. I’m gladdened to see his face tonight. Ours is a friendship of survivors.
    Simon lifts his glass an inch, acknowledging Leo’s arrival. A handful of cadets follows their leader to our banquet table. Soon beer and wine make the rounds. Glasses clink. After hours of compulsory motionlessness, arms and mouths move with gusto. The men here usually speak in German, but they toggle to Italian so we can participate. Not realizing that we’re anything more than their leader’s friends, they begin asking each other questions that are grotesquely military.
    What caliber was the round?
    Forehead or temple?
    One shot had enough stopping power?
    But when Leo explains who the guests are, everything changes.
    â€œYou’re the one whose apartment got robbed?” one of the men says to me excitedly.
    I begin to see how these stories will spread through the Vatican village. My first instinct is that this is dangerous for Simon. Secretariat men must avoid scandal.
    â€œHave the gendarmes caught anyone?” I ask.
    There’s confusion about which event I am referring to, until Leo says, “Not for either one.”
    â€œDid any of my neighbors see anything?”
    Leo shakes his head.
    Ugo’s murder, however, is what captivates these boys.
    â€œI heard they wouldn’t let anyone see the body,” one cadet says.
    Another man adds, “I heard there was something wrong with it. Something about his hands or feet.”
    They’re mistaken. I saw Ugo’s body with my own eyes. Yet before I can speak, other men make