“God bless you, sister,” he intoned magnanimously. “I’ll come down right away.”

“Welcome to Fátima, Your Eminence.”

They said good-bye with no further words. Marius closed the door behind him and set the small suitcase he carried on top of the table next to one of the walls of the cell. Although small, it was the best room for repose in the convent. Spare in decoration, as was fitting, only a single bed, the table that could also serve as a desk sometimes, an old chair, and a small shelf with some books authorized by the Holy Mother Church.

He smiled as he examined the cubicle. How he adored being treated with deference, almost as if he were a sovereign, and certainly he was one in his own way, secretly. Of course, he wouldn’t pass into history as Marius I or II, but who knows whether in a few decades he wouldn’t be Saint Marius, protector of the good name of the Catholic Church? The image of the faithful praying to his image, leaving an offering, making a fervent petition, almost carried him away with ecstasy.

He checked the signal of his Nokia. The bars indicated maximum power. Let’s thank the Cove of Iria, whoever Iria was, where everything began ninety years ago, and Lúcia, Jacinta, and Francisco saw the Mother of Jesus reveal to the world the three most important secrets, beginning with the end of the First World War, which occurred the following year, the fall of the Soviet Union that did so much evil to Christ and the Mother, and, finally, that which remains unrevealed and so continues with Marius Ferris, the assassination of a pope, the celebrated Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I. The late Holy Father was a man of good and bad memory, the good being his smile and upright character and the bad, the night of September 29, 1978, in which he died in circumstances that Marius knew well. He was not a man to justify a bad act, but he adopted a motto the Church lives by: What’s done is done, to which he added No use crying over spilled milk. What needed to be done was to clean up the mess skillfully and correctly without letting the evidence come to light. In that Marius Ferris was a master. He lay down on the bed to rest for ten minutes. Afterward he’d pray for the soul of Clemente, ask Santiago Mayor to forgive his sin and rescue him from the flames of the Inferno into his heavenly company. Everyone deserved a second chance, if not here, then there… on the other side of life.

He closed his eyes to seek within himself an image of peace, the rose or the white dove, living beings, the color of purity of spirit and of the noble values that send goodness, serenity, and all nouns of that kind.

When the first dove shook her wings silently in the ceiling, a Gregorian chant filled the cell, eclipsing the drowsy stupor Marius Ferris had fallen into. His cell phone, left on the small table, exulted the Pater Noster in male voices that didn’t belong in the convent. Another person, probably, would feel soothed by the melody and embark on the sleep of the just, but not Marius Ferris, who knew the enterprise he’d undertaken and that the Gregorian ringtone was the prelude to a message of the utmost importance for the operation in progress.

He jumped up and grabbed the phone immediately.

“Yes,” he said into the receiver.

He spent the next few minutes listening to how the situation was unfolding in the various locations of the operation, which he called the Work of God. One of the comments exasperated him.

“How is that?”

Something was off track.

“How could that happen?”

The silence in the cubicle was interrupted by Marius Ferris’s altered breathing and frenetic pacing up and down.

“Listen to me. It’s imperative they not leave the city. I’m going to make sure you’ll have everything you need to make that happen.” His voice was harsh and cutting. The leader was putting the train back on track. “Who did this?”

He heard the name impatiently.

“Are you sure?” He gave his aide time to answer. “Then we have a serious problem. Stay alert and prepare for everything. I don’t want delays.” He disconnected the call immediately to review the list of numbers in the directory and dialed another one when he found it. He waited for the international connection, and even before the first “bip,” someone answered on the other end.

“Mr. Barnes, good evening,” he greeted him. “Good, mine has been nothing special, either. Do I need to remind you what side you’re on in this mess?” Two seconds’ pause to allow Barnes’s reply. “Perfect. I know we’re not fighting just anyone. But my money doesn’t care about sides when it comes to choosing friends. So I’m giving you this order, and I hope-” He paused momentarily to choose his words-“I know you are going to do it. So find the woman and the other accomplices and get rid of them without thinking twice. Got it?” He waited for the reaction on the other end. “Don’t worry about JC. He’s under control.” Another pause. The silences were important to manage. “Take care of it. God wants it this way.” He hung up.

It was time to pray for the salvation of Clemente’s soul.

39

Somebody explain to me how we could have had those sons of bitches in our hands and let them drive off?” Barnes was almost shouting, at the head of an enormous table in the meeting room occupied by service agents.

“Well,” Staughton began.

“You, shut up. No one asked you,” Barnes exploded, beating his fists on the table. “I have the White House and Langley after my head because you”-he pointed at them all-“are a gang of fuckups who don’t know how to do your jobs.”

“And because the president owes the bastards in the clergy some favors,” Thompson murmured, under the scrutinizing gaze of Herbert, who, with the exception of Barnes, was the only person on his feet, leaning on the wall.

“Do you want to know what your lousy work has done? Do you?”

The room was quiet, waiting in suspense for their chief.

“Littel is on his way. Yes, the Harvey Littel you’re thinking of, assistant to the subdirector. He’s coming to evaluate the quality of my agents. And you know what I’m going to tell him?” He spelled it out with his teeth clenched. “That you guys are S-H-I-T. You can’t even wipe your ass,” he added, turning around.

“What’s Littel going to do here?” Staughton whispered to Thompson, who was sitting next to him.

Thompson shrugged his shoulders as if to say he had no idea, and, at the same time, attracted undesirable attention.

“Do you have something to say, Thompson?” Barnes inquired in an ugly way. “I’m listening.”

Thompson didn’t need to be coaxed. He got up and cleared his throat.

“I understand your irritation, boss.”

Someone at the table coughed. It sounded like a cannon, but Thompson stayed firm, unaffected by the interruption.

“But I think I’m more useful to the agency alive than dead,” he continued.

Barnes swelled with impatience. He was sick of excuses, but the real reason he was upset was not Langley, not the president, not even the inconvenient call he’d received a few minutes ago from Escrivá’s disciple. His bad mood was named Jack Payne or Rafael Santini, whatever you want to call him, a traitor who sometimes served the CIA, on loan to the P2, blind to his own duplicity, a member of the Holy Alliance or whatever the secret service of the Vatican was called… if it ever existed. For Geoffrey Barnes, Jack Payne would always be the enemy, even though, God forbid, someday they might operate on the same side. He’d seen enough of this world to know the possibility always existed.

“To visualize better what happened, imagine a soccer game. A forward receives the ball, completely alone, with no hope of anyone getting to him. It’s just him and the goalkeeper; the goal is guaranteed, but suddenly the forward’s attacked by a defender who comes up out of nowhere and takes the ball away, leaving the forward on the ground with no hope of recovering it.”