“Well, if it isn’t the Antichrist,” Cass said.

“I’m a god in Minneapolis!” he said. “Have you seen the papers?”

“Yeah.”

“They lapped it up!”

“Randy. They’re Lutherans. Before you go nailing any more theses to the front door of the cathedral, let’s see how this plays in small cities like, you know, Chicago, Boston, Miami, Baltimore, Los Angeles. Other little villages where they actually like the pope.”

“He’s French.”

“Randy, he’s the pope.”

“Well,” Randy sniffed, “he fired the first shot. I know how you and Terry hate it when I actually have an independent thought, but I have a strong feeling in my gut about this.”

“So do I. Like a cramp.”

“Americans don’t like being bossed about by foreigners.”

“Let’s hope for the best. Meantime, please try to avoid the subject. I really don’t want to pick up Time magazine next week and read that you called the Virgin Mary a slut.”

The phone at the papal nunciature had not stopped ringing. Every major media outlet in the country wanted to interview Monsignor Montefeltro. Even the late-night comedy shows wanted him. A New York City tabloid put him on the front page with the headline RAGING BULL!

The papal nuncio, Montefeltro’s nominal boss, was a bit put out that Rome had bypassed him and asked his number two to be Vatican point man. As for Montefeltro, he wanted to crawl under his desk. He was hoping against hope that Ivan the Terrible and the jezebels Tolstoy and Dostoevsky hadn’t watched TV yesterday or seen a newspaper. Or a magazine. Or the Internet. Or…Dio mio.…?Maybe they’d all gone back to Russia. Maybe they’d all died of venereal disease or in a gun battle over drugs. Maybe-

“Monsignor? It’s a Mr. Ivan for you. He says you know him. And a Ms. Katie Couric from the television called again, twice.”

“What do you want?”

“Everywhere you are on television. I think you will be pope someday. So, am calling for donation to orphans. Donation should be more now that you are such big important man in church. I think…one hundred thousand dollars. Orphans will be very happy. God will be very happy.”

Montefeltro wondered if the Swiss Guard had a secret assassination unit. He sighed. “I don’t have one hundred thousand dollars. Why don’t you call Mr. Pine. He is very rich.”

“We called him. He was very happy to hear watch is located. There is Mercedes SL 550 parked outside your office. Is very nice car. Why you are not donating that to orphans? Humble priest should not be driving one-hundred-thousand-dollar Mercedes-Benz. Jesus did not drive in Mercedes. He drive on donkey.”

Gideon was indeed very happy to hear that his gold watch and fob had been located, though that was not the sum of his reaction.

It is unpleasant to be blackmailed at any time, but especially inconvenient when you are launching a presidential campaign, and worse yet if your name carries the prefix Reverend. Yet for all that, Ms. Tolstoy sounded quite friendly over the phone and made no mention of money.

“You look cute on TV,” she said. “I don’t think that you kill your mother. You are too nice-looking. Why you not come to my apartment? We will have party, with Champagne. Watch sexy movies. I am wery wet for you.”

Gideon shifted in his chair. He was almost fifty years old, and no woman, ever, had purred to him this way, much less asked him to come party with her. I am wery wet for you.

“If I,” Gideon croaked, “come, you will return me my watch?”

“Oh, yes. But,” she said, “first you must find watch. I have many hiding places. Mmmm. Hurry, Gidyon. I so wery wet for you, I am having to change my panties.”

She gave him an address in Arlington.

It occurred to Gideon, poor Gideon, that it was Sunday, the Sabbath. What was it Stonewall Jackson had said after he asked the surgeons if he was dying and they told him yes? “Good. I always wanted to die on a Sunday.”

No. Mustn’t. Madness. Then he thought, The watch. He must retrieve the watch. He would retrieve the watch and leave. Maybe, just to be friendly, he’d stay for just one glass of Champagne.

Gideon slipped out of campaign headquarters unnoticed.

Chapter 35

Randy was feeling cocky, having been proved right in the matter of the bull. Polls were running overwhelmingly against the Vatican. His own tracking polls showed a gain of four points after telling Rome to butt out. Americans, it appeared, did not welcome divine intervention.

Gideon Payne was strangely silent on the matter, even absent. The media were clamoring for his comments, yet he was nowhere to be found. His press secretary said that the candidate was “down with a bad cold” and had to cancel his schedule. The truth was, Gideon had dropped off the map. He wasn’t at home. He wasn’t answering his cell. He had last been seen Sunday night, the night of the 60 Minutes broadcast. And it was now Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon.

“Where the hell is he?” Teeley demanded. No one knew. “He can’t just disappear! We’re in the middle of a goddamn presidential campaign!”

Cass, meanwhile, had conceived the idea that Randy should use the word fuck at a campaign event. The genius of this strategy was not immediately apparent to the candidate. Or, for that matter, to Terry, who usually was on the same bandwidth as Cass.

“It’s how this generation talks,” she said to them. “If you want to get their attention, you have to sound like them. They’ll get it.”

Randy stared. “Ask not what the fuck your country can do for you? Four score and seven fucking years ago? For God’s sake, Cass. The FCC would fine me. And the FEC.”

“Fuck ’em,” Cass said. “We’ll make headlines.”

“As long as we’re at it,” Terry said, “why not a wardrobe malfunction during the debates? He can go over to Peacham and rip off his shirt. Tweak his nipple.”

“I’m serious about this, guys. If you just subtly slipped it in-”

“Subtly?”

“-at precisely the right moment, it would be monster. Huge. Tectonic. I can’t even discuss it. No presidential candidate has ever said the f-word before.”

“Didn’t some vice president tell a senator to go fuck himself?”

“Not on live TV. That was just some corridor grab-ass in the Capitol.”

“No,” Randy said. “I said no. No. Fucking. Way.”

“We’ll spike five points with U30,” Cass said. “That would put you ahead.”

“Yes, and we’d lose every other voter.”

“Throw long.”

“I’ll think about it,” Randy said. “Did you have in mind any particular script for unleashing this little bon mot?”

“Yes, in fact.”

Randy went off to cast a vote.

Terry said to Cass, “I wish you hadn’t planted that idea in his head.”

“Hey,” Cass grinned. “Got to think out of the box.”

Gideon Payne was a happy man.

He had not known such happiness was possible.

He was so happy, in fact, that it was only by a superhuman exertion of will that he departed Tatiana’s (Ms. Tolstoy had a first name, it turned out) apartment, a perfume-candle-scented bower of bliss in Arlington improbably overlooking the Iwo Jima Memorial.

“Darrling Gidyon,” she purred, twirling his hair with a finger as he nuzzled her right nipple, “don’t you must be in presidential campaign? It’s two days already you are here.”

Two days, a case of Champagne, thousands of dollars in ATM withdrawals, God knew how many condoms. He’d lost track.

“Ummmph.”

“Come. I make you coffee and you go.”

“No. I’m staying. I’m never leaving. Never ever ever. Mummmmph.”

“Darrling. My boozum. It hurt. You are wery hungry boy. You come back. But for now you must go. Come on, I make you nice hot bath with bubble.”

She got him into a bubble bath. He starting singing, “Glory, glory hallelejuah…”