The Debt Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Glenn Cooper

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Author’s Note

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Glenn Cooper

  The Cal Donovan Series

  SIGN OF THE CROSS *

  THREE MARYS *

  THE DEBT *

  The Will Piper Library Series

  LIBRARY OF THE DEAD

  BOOKS OF SOULS

  THE KEEPERS OF THE LIBRARY

  The John Camp Down Series

  PINHOLE

  PORTAL

  FLOODGATE

  * available from Severn House

  THE DEBT

  Glenn Cooper

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  This eBook edition first published in 2018 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2018 by Lascaux Media LLC.

  The right of Lascaux Media LLC to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8859-4 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-985-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0197-3 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  Rome, 1848

  His eyes were blue. Not a watery blue but vivid, the color of lapis lazuli, and she was transfixed by their unblinking focus on her face as he made love to her.

  ‘Don’t stop, Jean, please don’t stop.’

  ‘Nothing could make me stop,’ he gasped, and he didn’t until in a shudder he let his weight fall on to her.

  He was slim and sinewy, without a trace of fat. It would be at least a decade before he would be expected to succumb to family traits transforming his body into the sleek corpulence of the moneyed class. But for now he was a hungry twenty-seven. Hungry for opportunity, hungry to prove himself, hungry for this dark-haired girl with buttermilk skin.

  Ricca’s hair was a wonder to him, black as a moonless night, falling all the way to the small of her back, thick with plenty of bouncy curls to occupy his hands. Lying in her arms and playing with her tresses he caught his ring.

  She yelped but before he could apologize there was the sound of rifle fire in the distance.

  He pushed himself up and swung his feet on to the rough floorboards. Naked, he pulled back the curtain. The morning sun was bright enough to flood even these grimy windows and tinge the room yellow. The Roman Ghetto, the Jewish enclave in the Sant’ Angelo district, was notoriously crowded and dark owing to its narrow streets and tall dwellings. But their room faced east on the very top floor of an eighteenth-century addition, and though it was a squalid affair, its morning sunlight was priceless. The ghetto walls had prevented outward expansion of the quarter but the city fathers of Rome had long turned blind eyes to vertical growth. If and when a shoddily constructed building collapsed – well, only Jewish lives would be lost.

  Jean pushed the window open to figure out which direction the shots were coming from but there was a lull and all he heard was a husband and wife arguing inside the ground-level butcher shop.

  ‘I think they’re shooting near the river, but I’m not sure.’

  The girl became upset and began throwing on clothes. At first, he thought it was because the resumption of street fighting had clouded her mood but she set him straight.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’ she cried.

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought I’d done. Didn’t you like the way I did it?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean! My God, it’s late. My father will kill me.’

  ‘If he lays a hand on you he’ll have to deal with me.’

  ‘That’s not helpful, Jean.’

  She had him turn away while she used the chamber pot and when she was finished he announced a plan.

  ‘I’ll go into his shop looking for you and while I’m at it I’ll buy some bread and a few buns, you know, a complicated order to give you time to sneak up the back stairs and get to your room. When he goes to fetch you, tell him you couldn’t rise because of a fever or a bad throat or any excuse you like. Don’t worry, the plan will work a treat.’

  The way he said it didn’t quite work in Italian, his third language. She corrected him, as she often did. He was born in Paris and had lived in London for a decade before coming to Venice on a mission to expand the family business into the prosperous, merchant-friendly city. But after a promising start, a series of setbacks had sent him packing. Rather than turning tail back to England and admitting defeat to an imperious father, he had decided to try his luck in Rome. The modest office he rented was across the street from Ricca’s father’s shop. It had been all but inevitable that they would meet.

  Her father, an impoverished fifth-generation baker, salivated at the prospect of marrying off his daughter to a rich man’s son but Jean knew that his own father would be far from pleased.

  The rifle shots resumed. One volley, then another.

  ‘Republicans,’ Jean spat. ‘Revolutions are bad for business. When will it end? First France, then Germany. Hungary. Poland. Galicia. And now Italy.’

  ‘People only wish to be free,’ she said.

  ‘This so-called freedom is for the Christians,’ he said, pulling
up his trousers, ‘not us Jews. They’ll always find ways to control us.’

  She slipped on her shoes. ‘I think this new pope is a good man. The ghetto walls are coming down slowly but surely, you can’t deny it.’

  He changed the subject to something more to his liking. ‘When can I see you again?’

  ‘Let’s see if I survive this day,’ she said.

  He grabbed her for a last kiss. ‘How about tomorrow night?’

  She pulled away and said, ‘How about we get married? Then you can have me every night of the week and you won’t have to rent this drab room anymore. And I’ll be an honest woman again.’

  ‘Tomorrow night it is,’ he said brightly, dodging her entreaties. ‘Already, I can’t wait.’

  He opened the door and waited for her to follow. At first, the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs didn’t concern him. After all, a family lived in the rooms below. But when the footsteps continued up to their level he went numb. Had someone found his love nest? Ricca’s father? Her brothers?

  Before he could shut the door a man came into view, then two more. They had daggers.

  ‘Jean Sassoon! Stop there!’

  Jean slammed the door and bolted it.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Ricca cried.

  ‘I don’t know. Get under the bed, quickly.’

  After he ignored two urgent demands to open up, the men forced the door, showering the room with splinters.

  ‘Jean Sassoon,’ a burly man in civilian clothes said, his fist curled around a lethal dagger, ‘I order you to come with us.’

  ‘Where?’ Jean said, trying hard to sound brave.

  The reply ricocheted back. ‘To the Vatican.’

  Another one-word question formed in Jean’s mind. ‘Why?’

  ‘A man with a red hat wants to see you.’

  TWO

  The Vatican, present day

  Pascal Lauriat didn’t much look like a modern man. Perhaps it was his rather dainty, graying goatee and thin mustache and his insistence on always wearing all the entitled regalia of his position as cardinal secretary of state that made him look little different from all the old portraits of cardinals of past centuries that lined the Vatican walls. As soon as he returned to his office following his private meeting with Pope Celestine VI he summoned three of his colleagues for a debriefing. Cardinals Malucchi and Cassar arrived first followed several minutes later by Cardinal Leoncino, the influential Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, who entered and closed the heavy doors.

  Mario Leoncino had patches of vitiligo on his face, and flushed as he was from his brisk walk across the Vatican grounds, the pale patches seemed whiter than usual.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded. ‘How did it go?’

  ‘He was quite animated,’ Lauriat said. The other men laughed at the way the Frenchman puckered his mouth, as if he’d just sucked on a very sour lemon. It wasn’t that Lauriat disliked the pope. On the contrary, on a personal level he had always found him charming and indeed quite disarming. They had been peers, of course, not so very long ago. Cardinal Aspromonte had been at the helm of the Secretariat of State when Lauriat was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. In those roles, the two men had gotten along famously, often sharing meals and Curia gossip. Lauriat had thought that he had known the man and had, in fact, voted for Aspromonte in each of the ballots at the conclave that elevated him to the throne of St Peter. Beyond that he had lobbied for him. Aspromonte had, in turn, rewarded the French prelate with a promotion into his old job.

  ‘Worse than we feared?’ Cardinal Cassar asked. The unsmiling archbishop of Malta was fit and trim, a competent golfer who always seemed to be on the verge of locking his hands and simulating a swing.

  ‘I’d say so,’ Lauriat said. ‘He had a new report from the auditors he plans to preview with the C10 and then formally present to the economic council. He ranted and raved about it. He even waved it over his head like a banner. He has a flair for the dramatic.’

  Malucchi, the vicar-general for the Diocese of Rome, was well on the way to becoming as corpulent as the pope. He lowered himself on to one of Lauriat’s good chairs and began to grumble. ‘The auditors,’ he spat, saying the word as if it were a venereal disease. ‘They’re more pious than the priests. The Church faces unprecedented challenges and here is the pope obsessed with money. Always profit and losses, assets and liabilities, these infernal balance sheets. In every instance he imagines the worst. To him all is corrupt. What he doesn’t understand, he sees malfeasance. This obsession seems to take precedence over bedrock concerns about tradition and faith. You’d think we elected him head accountant, not Vicar of Christ.’

  ‘Where did all this come from?’ Leoncino asked in exasperation. ‘Does he really wish to turn our Church over to green-visored men at counting tables? Our friend, Aspromonte, did a marvelous job hiding his true tendencies from us all these years, even when he occupied this very office. I never would have voted for him if I’d known.’

  ‘Well I didn’t vote for him, not even on the final ballot,’ Cassar sniffed. ‘You had my votes, Pascal.’

  Lauriat tilted his head and returned something of a smile. ‘What’s done is done. We have our pope and we must do what cardinals in the Curia have always done. We must be a buffer against unhealthy tendencies. We must blunt the damage. Celestine is not infallible in matters of governance and administration. He is but a man all too liable to fumble in the dark. He has neither the time nor the aptitude to fully understand the intricacies of all our financial institutions and practices and their historical role providing ballast for the ship of state. It will take longer than his lifetime for his new councils and commissions to penetrate all the veils. Remember, we have seats on the economic council and Mario and I were able to wheedle ourselves on to the C8, his council of cronies, and turn it into the C10. Nothing happens without our knowledge. When Celestine is gone, we will turn the page. The papacy is self-righting. The pendulum will swing.’

  ‘God willing,’ Malucchi said, reaching for a pastry.

  THREE

  Cal Donovan was used to stares and sly comments whenever he strode through the reading rooms of the Vatican Secret Archives.

  Occasionally he heard some of the cranky whispers from other academics who were planted at assigned places.

  ‘That’s Donovan.’

  ‘Lucky bastard.’

  ‘He looks pretty damned smug.’

  A Vatican archivist would serve him up a knowing smile and let him pass through the private entrance doors into the areas restricted to staff. And then he would be on his own, free to wander from floor to floor, free to stop at any cabinet or shelf and peruse any item in the archive, the only exceptions being the modern documents from the past seventy-five years that remained under absolute quarantine to outsiders.

  For all other researchers, the archives were ostensibly ‘open’, although it was the definition of open that was the rub. A qualified academic had to make a written request to use the Secret Archives or the adjacent Vatican Apostolic Library. Some fifteen hundred researchers a year qualified for admittance but there was a catch. They had to make specific requests for books or documents contained within the collections and to do so, they had to rely on imperfect catalogues and indexes and deal with the very real possibility that a document had been accidentally or purposefully misplaced sometime in the past. Requested documents were delivered to them in one of the reading rooms and returned to the stacks when their work was done.

  The first time Cal ever used his golden library card, his sole purpose had been to take a very long walk through twelve centuries of history. He had started at the top floor, the frescoed Tower of the Winds, built in the sixteenth century as a solar observatory by Pope Gregory XIII. Then he had breathed in the musty air of the second level, the so-called Diplomatic Floor, commissioned in the seventeenth century by Pope Alexander VII as a central depository of the complete diplomatic correspondence of Holy See legat
es, nuncios, and other agents. All the written communication between the Vatican and the states of the ancien régime were still stored, bound or loose, in the same wooden cabinets that Alexander had constructed, an archive spanning the fifteenth century to the Napoleonic era.

  His next stop had been the thirteen kilometers of documents housed in the long gallery built in the early twentieth century to the west of the Cortile del Belvedere. Dubbed by insiders the Gallery of Metal Shelves, the documents stored there included the archival material of the Curial offices, various Vatican commissions, and papers from the papal household. Nearby was another archive, the so-called Soffittoni, built after the Second World War above the gallery of geographical maps in the Vatican Museum, containing the documentary history of the Congregation for Bishops and other Vatican congregations.

  Finally, he had descended to the basement to explore the most recently added archival space, affectionately known to insiders as the Bunker. There, under the Cortile della Pigna of the Vatican Museums, were forty-three kilometers of shelving dedicated by Pope John Paul II in 1980, a fireproof, two-story reinforced-concrete structure, carefully climate and humidity-controlled. The Bunker housed a huge array of documents ancient and modern, ranging from the archives of the most important families of the Vatican City States to various institutions of the Roman Curia and its councils, from the Congregation of the Rights to the near-modern archives of the Secretariat of State. To Cal’s delight, he had even been allowed to enter the most secure storerooms adjacent to the Bunker that contained the greatest treasures of the archives such as the letter from English noblemen to Pope Clement VII concerning the ‘Great Matter’ of Henry VIII’s divorce, the Edict of Worms with the signature of Emperor Charles, and the bull excommunicating Martin Luther. Giddy and with aching feet, Cal had emerged from his inaugural visit to the Secret Archives and had headed for the nearest café for a large celebratory drink.

  On this day he checked in at the reception desk and was pleased to see an old acquaintance, the assistant archivist, Maurizio Orlando, the number two official on the professional staff, emerge from the back office to greet him.