Sign of the Cross Read online

  He was on Storrow Drive when the nausea hit.

  It came on without warning in a powerful spasm. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and fought the urge to throw up. The unpleasant feeling dissipated but then returned again with a vengeance. He gagged but kept control of his stomach and waited in dread for the next wave that failed to materialize. He wondered if he’d picked up food poisoning or some damn bug and carried on toward the airport.

  Irene sat alone in her brother’s ransacked room, staring at his unmade bed and blue pajamas, the very ones she had seen in her vision. Like Cal, she had found out about Giovanni’s abduction when she called to speak with him several hours after her early-morning awakening. She had hastily arranged for her aunt to stay with her mother and had driven at speed from Francavilla to Monte Sulla, arriving as the Polizia Locale were wrapping up their inspection of the parish house and their interviews with the rectory staff. She had willingly submitted to police interrogation, but soon had become angered by some of the questions and alarmed by the scatter-shot nature of their inquiries. It seemed to her that the police were grasping at straws.

  What was Giovanni’s recent state of mind? They had asked. Had he spoken about receiving threats? Was he depressed, suicidal? We know he’s a priest, but did he have a girlfriend? A boyfriend? Was it possible he might have staged his own abduction? Had the family been contacted with ransom demands? Who does he know outside the country?

  She had reached her breaking point and had cried, ‘Why do you ask me these stupid questions? Who does he know outside Italy? Why ask me that?’

  The inspectors had replied that his passport was missing. The nuns had done an inventory of his room on their behalf; they had often seen his passport in a dresser drawer and it was no longer there.

  ‘Is anything else missing?’ she had demanded.

  All his clerical clothes are accounted for, she was told, but some ordinary clothes were nowhere to be found.

  ‘Why aren’t you looking for him?’ she had asked angrily. ‘Sisters Vera and Theresa told me they saw two men with masks dragging him into a white van. Why aren’t you looking for the van? Why waste time with me?’

  We already found the van, an inspector had said, only two kilometers from the church in a quiet lane with no security cameras nearby. It had been stolen the day before from a town close to Monte Sulla. The kidnappers, if that’s what they were, had probably switched cars. And they regretted to add that there was blood in the back of the van.

  ‘Of course there was blood!’ she had yelled at them. ‘He’s Padre Gio, if you’ve already forgotten.’

  Now, after casting her eyes around his bedroom at the fingerprint powder dusting multiple surfaces, she picked up his pajama top. It had been a recent birthday present from their mother along with a dozen pair of same-color socks so he wouldn’t have to worry about mismatched ones. What a mama’s boy he was.

  She began to cry but the tears didn’t last long.

  Suddenly she was seized by a powerful surge of nausea and vertigo that caused her to drop the pajamas onto the floor and gasp. She was hit again and again and just when she thought she would surely have to vomit, the nausea stopped and her equilibrium returned.

  Sister Theresa must have heard her crying out and came running in.

  ‘Are you all right, Irene?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I’m not all right,’ she said. ‘I want my brother back.’

  Giovanni began to breathe easier. The summer squall had passed and the ocean had become calmer.

  One of the men, the smaller of the two, had removed his hood when Giovanni began to get violently ill from seasickness. They didn’t want him to choke on his vomit. The man spoke to him in English although when they talked among themselves it was in German.

  ‘Where are we?’ Giovanni had asked, sitting up on the bunk and looking around the dark cabin.

  ‘On the water,’ the man had said. ‘Can’t you tell?’

  He’d been shackled with two pairs of handcuffs, one on his ankles, one, painfully, on his wrists.

  ‘Could you open the curtains, please?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where are you taking me?’

  ‘You don’t need to know.’ The man had bad breath; it wasn’t making Giovanni’s nausea any better.

  ‘Why did you take me? I’m only a poor priest. I have no money.’

  ‘Stop asking questions.’ Then this thin man with ropey arm muscles had gotten angry. ‘Hey, you’re getting blood all over my handcuffs.’

  The captor had climbed the short run of stairs and opened the door to the deck, bathing the room in gray light. He had left for a short while before returning with a first-aid kit. Without saying anything more, he had bandaged the priests bleeding wrists with a roll of gauze before leaving him alone in the dark again.

  Now, with the sea becalmed and his nausea gone, Giovanni was able to think more clearly. He didn’t know much about boats but judging from the way it had tossed around, this one didn’t seem very large, certainly no more than fifteen meters. He didn’t know from which coast they had disembarked. When he had been thrown in the van outside his house, they had kept the hood over his head and it had remained there when he was transferred to another vehicle. After a road journey of a few hours, still hooded, he had been marched down a gravel path to a chorus of sea gulls, followed by the clopping sound of shoes on a wooden dock. It must have been a private dock because the men had made no attempt to hide him from view. Surely, the sight of a hooded man frog-marched past boaters at a marina would have triggered some alarm. So now, he had no way of telling if they were heading east into the Adriatic or west into the Mediterranean.

  Above his head, he heard the muffled voices of the men on deck and then the door slid open. Both of them came into the cabin, turned on a dome light and sat on the bunk across from him.

  The big man was wearing a skin-tight black T-shirt and khaki trousers. He had the physique of a body builder and huge pink hands that looked like cooked hams. Nothing about him seemed delicate. His coarse features and bulbous nose, his gravelly voice, his bleached hair with buzzed sides – all of them were the epitome of crudeness. He was the kind of man who had always scared Giovanni. Before he’d become a priest, if he had seen these two fellows walking toward him on a dark night, he would have crossed the street.

  ‘Are you hungry?’ Gerhardt asked him.

  Giovanni shook his head. ‘Why did you take me? Are you going to ask my church for money? We are a poor order.’

  The answer made him tremble.

  ‘We don’t want money, Giovanni,’ Gerhardt said. ‘We want information.’

  ‘What kind of information would I have to interest men like you?’

  The smaller man took offense. ‘What do you mean, men like you? You think you’re better than us?’

  Gerhardt told his companion to shut up.

  ‘We want you to tell us how you got your wounds,’ Gerhardt said.

  The priest stared at him in mute disbelief causing Gerhardt to say it again.

  ‘My stigmata?’ Giovanni finally said. ‘Is that what you’re asking about?’

  ‘Yes, very good, you’ve figured out what I am asking,’ Gerhardt said sarcastically.

  ‘But surely you must realize that I don’t know how I came to have these wounds. Christ must have had a plan for me.’

  The other man snorted, ‘I wonder if we’re part of that plan?’

  Gerhardt glowered at him and said, ‘Why don’t you go topside and make sure the autopilot is still on.’

  ‘Of course it’s on.’

  ‘Go on!’ he shouted.

  The man slunk away like a whipped dog and made a show of slamming the sliding door against its jamb.

  Giovanni’s head was cast down and Gerhardt told him to look at him. ‘I know you went to the St Athanasius church. I know you followed Brother Augustin into the crypt. I know you began to bleed the next day. What I want to know is this: what was in the cry
pt?’

  A look of abject terror twisted Giovanni’s face. ‘Who are you?’ he croaked.

  ‘Never mind who I am. What was in the crypt?’

  ‘Nothing. There was nothing.’

  ‘There was a spike, wasn’t there?’ Gerhardt said. ‘A spike, a big nail, yes?’

  The priest said nothing.

  Gerhardt had a small clutch bag he’d brought into the cabin. He unzipped it, took out an object wrapped in a cloth and made a show of slowly unwrapping it.

  Giovanni stared at the spearhead.

  ‘A bit more light,’ Gerhardt said, sliding back a curtain over his bunk. Bright sunlight caught the golden sleeve around the middle of the spearhead and bounced into the priest’s dilated pupils making him wince. ‘Do you know what this is?’

  Giovanni shook his head.

  ‘It goes by many names. The Spear of Destiny. The Lance of Longinus. The Holy Lance. It is the head of the spear that was stuck into Christ’s side when he was up on his cross.’

  Giovanni’s mouth was dry. His tongue seemed thick and useless. His voice didn’t seem like his own anymore. ‘Is it real?’

  ‘You tell me. Here, put your hands out and take it. You tell me if it’s real.’

  Giovanni took it in his manacled hands and inspected the heavy black and gold artifact.

  ‘Well, is it real?’

  ‘No,’ the priest said quietly. ‘It’s not real.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I just do.’

  ‘Well, you are completely correct,’ Gerhardt said, smiling for the first time, showing a row of perfectly white teeth. ‘It’s a replica. An excellent one but a fake. But you’re not a fake, are you, Giovanni? You’re genuine. Something made you bleed and it’s not something you’re putting on your skin. So I’m asking you again: what was in the crypt? Was it a nail?’

  When there was no response, Gerhardt, took the lance from him and tested its point against his palm.

  ‘It’s quite sharp,’ he said.

  Then with the quickness of a cat he grabbed Giovanni’s right hand and pulled it toward him. The handcuffs pulled his left hand along. There was a dot of blood staining the gauze on his right wrist and Gerhardt used it as his bullseye, thrusting the tip of the lance into it while keeping a tight grip on the hand.

  The only reason he stopped was that Giovanni’s screams were hurting his ears.

  It seemed like the priest was going to pass out. His eyelids fluttered. Gerhardt took a water bottle and dumped it over his head.

  When Giovanni opened his eyes again he found himself staring directly at the big man’s bulging left biceps. The bottom half of a tattoo was poking out from under the sleeve of his T-shirt and Giovanni was still staring at it when the questions were repeated and the black steel entered his raw wound again.

  The captain of the Boston to Rome Alitalia flight announced they were at cruising altitude and turned off the seatbelt signs. A business class stewardess who had been shamelessly smiling at Cal from the moment he’d boarded, came over to his aisle seat and asked if he’d like his drink refreshed.

  He smiled back and lifted the glass for her.

  ‘Vodka and ice,’ she said. ‘A double?’

  ‘You’re not trying to get me drunk, are you?’ he answered in Italian.

  ‘I would never do that, Dr Donovan. Are you a medical doctor? In case we have a sickness on board?’

  ‘I’m not that kind of a doctor. I teach religion.’

  ‘So I’ll get you if we have a religious emergency.’

  ‘I make house calls,’ he said.

  As she disappeared behind the galley curtain the pain hit him and hit him hard.

  His right wrist felt like it was going to explode.

  He gritted his teeth, clamped his eyes closed and had to use every bit of his will to keep silent.

  Then, against the backdrop of his closed eyelids, he saw something, a curious image, and a minute later, when the pain had disappeared and his breathing returned to normal, he opened his notebook and furiously drew a sketch of what he’d seen.

  The flight attendant returned with his drink and reached over his lap to place it on a napkin.

  ‘So, you’re an artist too,’ she said, looking at his notebook. ‘What is it?’

  He reached for the drink and said, ‘I have absolutely no idea.’

  EIGHTEEN

  The Boston flight touched down at noon local time and while the plane was taxiing Cal turned his phone on to check his Twitter feed.

  And there it was.

  News of the kidnapping of Padre Gio was all over the Italian and international press.

  There were photos of his church, his residence, screenshots of the white getaway van taken from a security camera across the piazza.

  The internet wailed collectively: who would do such a thing?

  Islamic terrorists? A criminal gang? Anarchists? Anticlericals? Someone from the young priest’s earlier life seeking revenge for something he had done?

  There were no reports of a ransom demand. The police had no credible leads. The priest’s family was in seclusion.

  Waiting in line at passport control, he read the response from the Vatican press office: The Holy Father is aware of the unfortunate incident involving Padre Giovanni Berardino and is praying for his safe return.

  What was it that Cardinal Lauriat had said?

  ‘With all due respect, professor, the Vatican has the internal resources to deal with this.’

  Prayer, he thought. That’s their resource?

  Before collecting his rental car he searched his contacts for the number he wanted. The phone rang through to voicemail but he persisted, calling the number three times in rapid fire and on the fourth try a woman picked up.

  He identified himself and politely asked whether Irene Berardino was available.

  ‘This is Irene. Why are you calling, professor?’

  ‘I’m concerned about your brother. I wanted to know if there was anything I can do to help.’

  Her frostiness was more than obvious. ‘You’ve done enough, I think. We’re fine.’

  ‘I’m in Rome, actually. I was wondering if I could come see you.’

  ‘We are not taking visitors, thank you.’

  He didn’t want to play the card but he felt he had no choice. ‘I saw something.’

  The pause lasted several beats; he wondered if she’d hung up. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

  He let the words tumble out. ‘I can’t explain it. I had just arrived back to the States. I hadn’t been asleep long and I suddenly woke up. That’s when it happened. I saw Giovanni in my room. It wasn’t a dream. I swear he was there. He looked right at me and said something that I couldn’t hear, but I’m pretty sure it was, ‘Help me.’’

  She didn’t end the conversation, she didn’t tell him he was crazy, she didn’t laugh.

  She asked a question. ‘What was he wearing?’

  ‘Blue pajamas.’

  ‘Come at once, professor. I will be waiting for you.’

  About three hours later, Cal arrived at the Francavilla flat Irene shared with her mother. Irene let him in and in the sitting room he saw a red-eyed Domenica Berardino slumped in the same chair she’d occupied since the abduction a day earlier. She started to get up to greet him but her sister told her to sit. Carla Taglianetti was quite a bit younger than Domenica, a handsome woman who worked as a tax assessor for the city. Her son, Federico, a six-year-old boy was also there, playing on the carpet with a set of toy cars he’d retrieved from Giovanni’s old room.

  Cal introduced himself and asked if there had been any news.

  ‘Nothing, nothing!’ Carla said.

  Cal was about to say something soothing but Domenica asked plaintively, ‘Tell me, why did they take my boy?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. What have the police told you?’

  Carla said contemptuously, ‘They know nothing or they tell us nothing. Either way we’re in the dark. Ire
ne tells me you were sent by the Vatican to investigate Giovanni’s stigmata. What did you conclude?’

  ‘Can we offer the man a drink first?’ Irene said.

  ‘I’m fine, thanks,’ he said.

  Carla sharply asked again, ‘So what did you conclude?’

  He apologized. ‘The Vatican had me sign a confidentiality agreement. I don’t have permission to talk about it.’

  That got her boiling mad. ‘You came into my sister’s house and grilled them with questions and now you don’t have the courtesy to tell us what you thought about Giovanni?’

  ‘The Vatican doesn’t like him,’ Domenica shouted. ‘They think he’s a faker. Our Giovanni is stealing the spotlight from all the powerful men with their red hats and smug faces. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re behind this.’

  It came out involuntarily. He shouldn’t have said it but after he did he wasn’t sorry. ‘I don’t think he’s a faker,’ he said.

  Domenica began to cry. The boy looked up from his game and Irene rushed over and knelt by her mother.

  ‘Mama.’

  ‘It’s what I’ve always said,’ Domenica sobbed. ‘He’s been touched by holiness. The Lord will look after him in his time of need.’

  Irene patted her hand, stood and asked Cal if they might talk in her brother’s room.

  When the door was shut she said, ‘Thank you for saying that. Was it the truth?’

  ‘I don’t know if one can ever know the truth in cases like this, but it’s what I believe.’

  She wearily sat on Giovanni’s bed and he pulled out the desk chair so he wouldn’t be looming over her.

  ‘I saw him too,’ she said.

  She told him what she had seen in her bedroom across the hall. It matched his sighting to the letter except for her ability to hear his cry for help.

  Cal asked her if something similar had ever happened before. Although she previously denied having visions involving Giovanni, now she opened up and told him everything: the episode of bilocation she’d witnessed, her mother’s claim to have seen the face of Christ when her son hugged her.