Day of Confession - Allan Folsom [195]
“Where is Palestrina?” the pope asked Farel, looking around, fully expecting his secretariat of state to be waiting to leave with him.
“He said to tell you he would join you later, Holiness,” Farel lied. He had no idea where Palestrina was. Had not communicated with him in the last half hour at all.
“No.” The Holy Father suddenly stopped at the helicopter’s open door, his eyes fixed on Farel’s.
“No,” he said again. “He will not join me. I know it, and he knows it.”
With that, Giacomo Pecci, Pope Leo XIV, turned away from Farel and let the black-suited Vigilanza help him into the helicopter. Then they and the Italian Army officers followed him onboard. The door closed, and Farel moved back, waving to the pilot.
A thundering roar was followed by an immense blast of wind, and Farel and the Swiss Guards ducked away as the machine lifted skyward. Five seconds, ten. And then it was gone.
158
MARSCIANO HAD SEEN THE TOWERING FIGure through the smoke at the same moment Hercules had thrown his crutch at the black suit. Seen him come up the hill on the far side of the Vatican Radio tower, moving steadily toward it. In that instant Marsciano knew he would not be on the train when it left. Father Daniel or not, Harry Addison and the curious, miraculous dwarf or not, there were other things here. Things that he, and he alone, had to deal with.
PALESTRINA NO LONGER wore the simple black suit with its humble clerical collar; instead, he was dressed in the vestments of a cardinal of the Church. A black cassock with red piping and red buttons, a red sash at his waist, a red zucchetto on his head. A gold pectoral cross that hung from a gold chain around his neck.
He had paused at the Fountain of the Eagle on his way there, finding it easily, even in the dense smoke. But for the first time ever, the aura of the great heraldic symbol of the Borgheses, which had always touched him so deeply and so personally, from which he had drawn strength and courage and certitude, failed him. What he gazed upon was not magic, did not feed the secret warrior-king in him, as it always had. What he gazed upon was the ancient statue of an eagle. A sculpture. An adornment atop a fountain. Nothing.
A great breath was expelled from within him, and, hand over nose and mouth against the horrid, acrid smoke, he moved on toward the only refuge he knew.
He could feel the thrust of his giant body as he moved up the hill. Feel it even more as he threw open the door and started up the steep, narrow marble stairway toward Vatican Radio’s upper floors. More still as he pushed, heart pounding, lungs bursting, to kneel finally on the black marble floor before the altar of Christ in the tiny chapel just off the empty and vacant broadcast rooms.
Empty. Vacant.
Like the eagle.
Vatican Radio was his spire. Self-chosen. The place from which to command the defenses of the kingdom. The place from which to broadcast to the world the greatness of the Holy See. A Holy See more exalted than ever—one that controlled the appointment of bishops, rules for the behavior of priests, the sacraments, including marriage, the establishment of new churches, seminaries, universities. One that over the next century would be joined, little by little—hamlet to town to city—by a new flock representing one-quarter of the world’s population, making Rome again the centerpiece of the most powerful religious denomination on earth. To say nothing of the enormous financial leverage to be garnered through control of that country’s water and power, which in turn would govern when and where and what could be built or grown, and by whom. In a very short time a once-powerful saying would become the new and lasting one—and all because Palestrina had had the keenness to foresee and create it. Roma locuta est; causa finita est. “Rome has spoken,” it translated; “the