Killers of a Certain Age(52)
He is in high spirits, mostly because he has nothing to do on this mission. He is window dressing, necessary because a group of nuns is unremarkable in Rome, but a group of nuns under the supervision of a priest will be completely invisible. After the success of their French mission, they have been allowed to plan and undertake this job, one requiring a good deal of ingenuity. Every step has been reviewed and approved by the Board of Directors. Their only interference has been the addition of Günther, a minor annoyance to the quartet, who hoped to complete their mission from start to finish without anyone’s help. But his smile is infectious, and he spends the short walk to Vatican City telling them about what he plans to do with the considerable bonus he is due to receive when the job is complete.
“I am taking the waters in Courtempierre-les-Bains,” he says, sketching a map of Switzerland with his hands as he walks. “I go after the Christmas holidays to give myself a complete detoxification process for the new year. And I go again after every job. I am Swiss-German, so you would think I would go to Bern, but no. I am devoted to Courtempierre-les-Bains. It has the thermal baths where you can soak away your troubles and repair your liver,” he tells them, listing the various other treatments he intends to indulge in. “Massage, sauna, therapeutic wraps. These missions are very taxing, and the body must be restored.”
He is polite enough and passably good-looking, but he has a mild case of hypochondria, and his favorite topic of conversation is the state of his digestive system.
“What kind of therapies do you enjoy, Günther?” Natalie asks, wide-eyed. “Do tell us more about the enemas.”
Helen elbows her hard in the ribs, but with Natalie’s encouragement, Günther continues to discuss his bowels until they arrive at the entrance to St. Peter’s Square. It is impressive, this open-air drawing room designed by Bernini. The long colonnaded wings sweep out and around, enclosing visitors in a way that should feel welcoming but somehow doesn’t. It is too large, too grand, intended to evoke awe. There are metal detectors at the entrance, but the guards hardly pay attention, waving them along. The little group of five moves across the vast expanse of the oval, past the obelisk, towards the wedding cake fa?ade of the basilica.
Inside the shadowy marble embrace of the church, it takes a moment for their eyes to adjust to the dimness. Dust motes swim in the shafts of sunlight spilling through the cupola windows, and a tired cleaner is standing in sock feet atop an altar, listlessly pushing a cloth mop. Beneath the marble top of the altar, a glass coffin holds the body of a pope, the face and hands gleaming green. They pause to watch as the cleaner polishes the glass, removing the fingerprints of the faithful. They move on to take a clockwise tour of the church, observed but not remembered by Vatican police and Swiss Guard. They blend seamlessly with every other group, the schoolchildren, the tourists, the miracle seekers. They are nobody within the Baroque grandeur of the basilica.
When they have completed the tour, it is eleven forty-five am. Every Tuesday at precisely twelve pm, Bishop Timothy Sullivan of the Boston archdiocese crosses in front of the Tourist Information Office on the west side of St. Peter’s Square. The four demure nuns and their priest are clustered in a little knot a short distance away, shielded from the nearest Swiss Guardsman by a rack of postcards featuring a pope smiling in Technicolor and ropes of wooden rosaries for sale.
As the clock strikes the hour, tolling twelve times, the bishop appears, his thinning hair combed over his scalp, his cassock billowing behind him as he lopes. He is tall and slender, a little hunched, and could easily be mistaken for an Ivy League academic if it weren’t for his expression. He is wearing a faint smile, his attempt to hide the anger that seethes in him at all times. But the smile never touches his eyes, and he struggles to hide his impatience when Mary Alice calls his name.
“Yes?” he asks briskly. He is teetering on the edge of unfriendliness, but even a nun can be useful sometimes, and as he moves closer, he realizes these nuns are young and remarkably pretty. Something surges in his blood and he sets a smile on his lips. He pauses and waits, his eyebrows raised in gentle inquiry.
“Bishop Sullivan! Oh, Your Excellency, please pardon the interruption. We are from the Order of the Sisters of Peace, our chapterhouse is outside Knoxville, Tennessee. Perhaps you’ve heard of us?”
He doesn’t bother to pretend that he has, but his face relaxes still further at the soft Southern drawl of her vowels. “I’m afraid I haven’t,” he says kindly.
“We are here on pilgrimage,” she tells him. “Our mother superior went to school with your sister,” she hurries on. “And she gave us strict instructions we were to find you and give you this gift.”
The bishop does not bother to ask which sister. He has six, all of them devout Catholics, scattered from Boston to Denver. Mary Alice extends the box and he takes it, his smile deepening.
“How kind,” he says.
“They are fruitcakes, Your Excellency,” Natalie puts in eagerly. “We bake them to support the order. And every one is flavored with Tennessee whiskey.”
“Fruitcakes?” His expression brightens. “Are they moist? I love a moist fruitcake and that’s one thing Italians can’t get right.”
“I promise you,” Mary Alice tells him serenely, “they are as full of flavor and moist as you could hope.”
He is almost jovial now, and he looks at Günther over the heads of the little flock of nuns. “Father, how do you come to be traveling with the sisters?”