Sign of the Cross Read online

  Otto Schneider ran to the study window and parted the curtain. A black sedan was idling at the curb.

  Lambret heard heavy footsteps beating down the hall.

  His father spat out the words, ‘Israeli swine. It’s finally happened,’ and covered the distance from the window to the desk in two strides. He opened the center drawer and grabbed a small black pistol, the same Walther model that Hitler had used on himself. Lambret saw him raise the gun to his temple.

  ‘Papa?’

  ‘Don’t look away!’ his father shouted. ‘I will not have you look away! This will make you into a man!’

  The study door flung open and an intruder yelled, ‘Don’t!’

  Lambret did as he was told and watched his father blow out his brains.

  THREE

  Abruzzo, Italy, present day

  The young priest, Giovanni Berardino, awoke from his afternoon nap damp with sweat. The shutters were closed and his room was dark and uncomfortably warm despite the whirring table fan. Even the simple act of switching on his bedside lamp had become difficult. He had already taught himself how to get out of bed without using his hands by throwing his legs down with speed and using the momentum to stand. Once upright, he hesitantly inspected his gauze-wrapped wrists. They were stained through with fresh blood. Choking back tears, he gingerly placed his palms together and bowed his head in prayer.

  The painful bleeding had begun a month earlier. So far, he had been able to hide it from his new parishioners in the medieval hill town of Monte Sulla, but he feared he would be found out and compelled to see a physician. Already the nuns and a few parishioners had noticed that the jovial disposition he’d displayed on his arrival had turned sour and tongues were wagging. Was he upset about something? Was he facing the self-doubts that plague many a young man in the early days of priesthood? Or was there something about his new brothers and sisters that displeased him?

  The priest’s house was directly across the piazza from the ancient church of Santa Croce. His small room had an en suite bathroom and there, after donning his black trousers, he slowly unwrapped the gauze. He didn’t like to look at the wounds. They were deep and bloody, the diameter of a two euro coin. He applied some ointment and rewrapped them with the last of his fresh gauze. He would have to get more at the pharmacy that afternoon. The pharmacist had made a light comment about his need for so many bandages: ‘Are you making a mummy, padre?’ He dreaded the scrutiny but what was he to do? He couldn’t ask Sister Theresa or Sister Vera to make the purchase for him.

  Despite the heat, he had been forced to eschew his short-sleeved, black clerical shirts in favor of long-sleeved ones. He slipped one over his undershirt and began the slow, difficult task of buttoning it. When he was done, he flinched as he slid the plastic Roman collar into the tab on his shirt.

  The vision began as suddenly and unexpectedly as always. Since the wounds had appeared, not a day had passed without at least one. This was his second since breakfast. He had come to welcome these interludes for so many reasons, one of which was the remission of pain that accompanied them. He closed his eyes tightly and let his arms fall to his sides, letting the vision wash over him, through him.

  His face softened and he spoke. ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes.’

  At the exact same time, Irene Berardino was shopping in the city center of Francavilla al Mare some ninety kilometers to the east of Monte Sulla on the Adriatic coast.

  Lugging a heavy, nylon shopping bag she traded the air- conditioned supermarket for the steamy humidity of Viale Nettuno. She began heading toward the apartment she shared with her mother, when she stopped dead in her tracks to stare at the man walking into a shop. At first she thought the abrupt temperature change was playing tricks on her mind, but it took little time to conclude her eyes weren’t deceiving her.

  No one else looked like her brother and this was his favorite gelato café.

  He was easy to spot being over six-feet tall, roly-poly, having short black hair with a widow’s peak and long retro sideburns. Then there were his feet, so large he used to be teased for them. ‘What are those, shoes or rowboats?’ the children used to cry. And of course, there was his clerical collar.

  ‘Giovanni?’ she shouted as the door closed behind him.

  She rushed down the street and peered through the window of the shop. The owner was behind the counter scooping chocolate chip gelato into plastic cups for a mother and her two young children. She couldn’t see Giovanni.

  She pushed the door open and went inside.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she asked. ‘Where did the priest go?’

  ‘What priest?’ the owner asked.

  ‘The one who just came in.’

  ‘I didn’t see any priest.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Irene said, ‘I just saw him go inside.’

  The mother stared over her glasses at the young woman. ‘No one came in,’ she said.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ Irene said. ‘Is there a toilet or a back door?’

  ‘Only behind the counter,’ the owner said, becoming irritated. ‘No one came in. Now, do you want a gelato or do you want to leave?’

  FOUR

  Cambridge, Massachusetts, three months later

  His opponent was twenty-five years younger than him; a standout at the Harvard Boxing Club, where most of the members had never put on a pair of gloves before joining. The kid, a senior from Louisiana, was the exception. He’d done a couple of years of Junior Golden Gloves in high school and was the club captain.

  Cal Donovan had sparred with him before but not for a while. It had been a busy year. With his heavy course load and writing and speaking commitments, Cal’s gym time had suffered.

  Climbing into the ring, the kid called out to him, ‘Haven’t seen you around lately.’

  ‘I’ve been training in secret,’ Cal said, pounding his gloves together.

  The boxing ring had been erected under an open-air tent on the university Science Center Plaza. It was the club’s annual Fight Night and curious students wandered into the tent, grabbed seats and, as the warm evening progressed, got into the hooting and hollering required of the occasion.

  The club was an athletic oddity in that it drew its membership from both students and faculty, though in recent years Cal had been the only faculty member. The first time he’d boxed was during his brief stint in the army, before concluding that maybe college wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Over the years he’d used the sport as a way to blow off steam but not everyone, including his young corner man, thought it was a great idea.

  Joe Murphy had a fresh-off-the plane Irish accent, pure Galway.

  ‘Look at the size of him,’ he said, watching the kid dance and do a flurry of air punches. ‘He’s quick too. I think you should forfeit.’

  ‘You ought to be a motivational speaker,’ Cal said. ‘Do something useful and smear on some Vaseline.’

  ‘On where?’

  ‘My eyebrows, Joe. You ever seen a fight before?’

  ‘Not one. How’s he going to get to your eyebrows through the headgear?’

  ‘You’d be surprised.’

  Murphy performed the task, climbed out of the ring and picked up a towel.

  ‘What are you doing with that?’ Cal asked.

  ‘Getting ready to concede. A towel is the sign, is it not?’

  The announcer, a Harvard athletic department trainer who served as club coach, took to the microphone.

  ‘All right, ladies and gentlemen, this is the last fight on our card, the 178-pound heavyweight class. Wearing crimson trunks, hailing from Baton Rouge let’s hear it for club captain and senior Jason ‘Kid Bayou’ Moran!’

  There was a spirited roar from a contingent of Moran’s Adams House buddies.

  ‘And in blue trunks, most definitely our most unusual club member, hailing from Cambridge, please give it up for Calvin ‘The Reaper’ Donovan, professor of the history of religion and archaeology at the Harvard Divinity School! How about that for a mouthful?’<
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  Cal didn’t have a following. He received some polite applause but one woman seated a few rows back shouted, ‘Way to go, Cal!’

  Cal turned to her and performed a deep bow.

  She was with another woman who said to her, ‘You know him?’

  ‘Oh yeah, I know him.’

  The second woman pressed on, ‘Know him or know him?’

  ‘Both actually. We were an item a few years ago.’

  ‘Past tense. Past tense is good. He’s gorgeous. Is he unattached?’

  ‘Far as I know but things are always fluid with Cal.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘I don’t know, about forty-five.’

  ‘Most guys I know that age look like bowling pins. You could play those abs like a washboard. Will you introduce me?’

  ‘On one condition.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Promise you won’t hate me for it later.’

  After Cal and Jason were given instructions by the ref, the kid pushed his mouth guard halfway out with his tongue and said, ‘I see you’ve got a priest in your corner. Perfect.’ Then he expertly sucked the mouth guard back into place.

  Cal worried that if he tried the same maneuver he’d lose the mouth guard to the mat so he only smiled and grunted. Back in his corner, Father Murphy called out to him, ‘Stay away from his left and while you’re at it, stay away from his right too.’

  At the bell, the kid came out fast and waited for Cal to amble to the center of the ring. Here he was met with a flurry of left jabs, half of them connecting to his face. Cal’s headgear absorbed the blows painlessly, but the same couldn’t be said for the straight right to his jaw. He felt that one all the way down to the soles of his feet.

  He backed up but the kid followed, sticking his left in Cal’s face and measuring him for another right.

  Cal figured it was time to stop being the kid’s speed bag, so he tried a quick left-right combination, but got tangled in Jason’s size-thirteen shoes and hit the mat hip first.

  ‘It’s a slip!’ the ref shouted, pushing the kid away while Cal picked himself up.

  ‘Why the hell didn’t you stay down?’ Murphy yelled.

  It was impossible to give the priest the finger from inside a boxing glove. When the fight resumed, Cal took several more blows to the head and only managed to land one crisp uppercut as the kid was leaning in on him. It caught him in the forehead but didn’t seem to slow him down. Puffing from exertion, Cal figured he’d run out the clock on the round and try not to get hit again but Jason wasn’t going to let him off the hook. He kept on steamrolling, launching effective combinations to his face with his superior reach. Cal was starting to feel fuzzy-headed. He could either go down or try something else. The kid’s head was too far away but his belly was in range. He went for Jason’s middle and landed a solid right hook just as the bell rang.

  Murphy was waiting for him in the corner with a stool, a water bottle and a spit bucket.

  ‘To be honest, I can’t bear to watch this,’ he said, squirting water into Cal’s mouth. ‘I had no idea it would be so violent.’

  ‘You didn’t know boxing was violent?’ Cal panted.

  ‘Never thought the college variety was, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you see that?’ Cal asked, looking toward the opposite corner.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘He’s rubbing his stomach. I think I hurt him. He felt kind of soft down there. He’s probably sliding like seniors do, drinking beer and eating too much bread and pasta.’

  ‘Would you stop referring to my diet in such a derogatory way?’

  ‘I’m going to try something. If it doesn’t work I’ll need a ride over to Cambridge City Hospital.’

  Murphy’s clerical collar had gone askew, he adjusted it. ‘I had no idea how varied my duties would be as your graduate student.’

  When the bell sounded for the second round, he let the kid come to him. Cal struck a purely defensive posture: bending sharply at the waist, raising his gloves to his face and using his arms and elbows to protect his midsection. His opponent took the bait and got in close, firing a blizzard of uppercuts into Cal’s gloves, trying to part them and get to his face.

  Cal absorbed the blows on his gloves for a good thirty seconds, until he sensed the kid was losing steam. Then, as the young man dropped his right hand low to try to get more oomph on an uppercut, Cal pounced, sending his own right hand in a lightning roundhouse to the gut.

  The kid grunted and momentarily let both hands go slack. Cal followed up with a left to the same spot and a mighty right and another left. The kid grunted again and backed away with a glassy expression so Cal didn’t pursue him. Before the ref could react, out popped the kid’s mouth guard, followed by his lunch.

  The Adams House clan began hurling abuse at their boy and tossing crumpled program sheets into the ring.

  That’s when the ref jumped in and stopped the fight, raising Cal’s arm in victory. Cal went over to the kid and put his arm around his drooping shoulders.

  ‘Good fight, Jason. I’m glad you’re graduating so you won’t have a chance at a revenge match.’

  Murphy climbed into the ring and congratulated his mentor. ‘Fine job, professor. You’re a credit to this exceedingly troubling sport.’

  Cal gestured toward the mess at the center of the ring. ‘I told you the kid was eating too much pasta.’

  Cal was unwrapping his hands on a front-row seat when the two women came over.

  ‘Very impressive, Cal.’ His ex-girlfriend was an assistant professor in anthropology.

  He smiled up at her. ‘Hey, Cary. I got lucky.’

  ‘That’s you. One lucky guy. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine. Deborah has just joined the faculty in the chemistry department.’

  ‘Hi!’ Deborah said with a bouncy enthusiasm.

  ‘Well, my job here is done,’ Cary said, waving off. ‘I’ll leave you two alone.’

  ‘Is this some kind of a setup?’ Cal asked, continuing to remove his competition wraps.

  ‘Something like that. I’m new in town. Got to be a little aggressive to meet interesting people.’

  She was a bit too all-American and wholesome for his tastes but he liked her spunk. ‘Well, I don’t know much about the chemistry department but I can definitely give you some generic academic survival tips. Lunch tomorrow, faculty club?’

  ‘Where’s the faculty club?’

  ‘You are a newbie, aren’t you? I’ll pick you up in front of the Mallinckrodt Labs at noon.’

  The luncheon at the faculty club, a light-filled room of understated elegance, was buffet. When Cal and Deborah filled their plates, they returned to their table for two by a window.

  The waiter offered a wine selection but she told him she didn’t drink.

  ‘I do,’ Cal said, ordering a white.

  ‘Cary told me you like to knock them back.’

  ‘What else did she tell you?’

  ‘That she broke off with you, not vice versa.’

  ‘So far she’s an accurate witness to history.’

  ‘I didn’t ask her too many questions,’ she said. ‘I prefer figuring out people for myself.’

  ‘Admirable.’

  ‘I did look you up, though. Just factual stuff.’

  ‘No criminal background check?’

  ‘You need a social security number for that.’

  ‘And what did you unearth?’

  ‘Nothing that would surprise you. One of the youngest tenured professors in the history of Harvard …’

  ‘Fifteenth youngest, but who’s counting? If I hadn’t wasted two years in the army I might have been eleventh.’

  ‘Your history of religion course is one of the most popular at the university.’

  ‘I’m an easy grader.’

  ‘You’ve got over twenty books and three hundred papers published.’

  ‘An idle brain is the devil’s workshop.’

  ‘You’re quick with the comeback.’<
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  ‘Was that on my Wikipedia page?’

  ‘No, personal observation. Why the army, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  ‘The rebellious act of an eighteen-year old. I had, shall we say, an interesting upbringing. My parents had an open marriage and, lest you think it was bohemian and sophisticated, for me it was a mess with all sorts of weirdos weaving in and out of our lives, interfering with domestic tranquility. My father was Walter Donovan, eighth youngest full professor at Harvard, mainline Boston Irish Catholic. My mother was Jewish, hailing from the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He got dibs on my last name. She got to pick my middle name, Abraham. In a rare act of compromise they chose an arch-Protestant first name, Calvin.’

  ‘Cary told me that your initials, CAD, said it all.’

  ‘That’s not an original observation.’

  ‘How’d you get out of the army after only two years?’

  ‘Long story but I punched my sergeant. Should have been a dishonorable discharge but my father got our senator to do his magic. Harvard took me anyway, again, because of my father. Anyway, enough about me. Do you hang out at a lot of boxing matches?’

  ‘It was my first one. Cary thought it would be interesting.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘I’d say so.’

  She was a newly-minted assistant professor who’d done most of her training at Penn. The end of the academic year was approaching and she was planning to use the summer to set up her lab and work on the syllabus for the first course she’d be teaching in the fall. She was a tenure-track hire with a million questions about the university tenure process. She skipped dessert; he had a heaping portion of bread pudding. When they finished their coffees he told her he had to get back to the office.

  ‘This was fun,’ she said.

  He agreed.

  ‘Are you going to be around this summer?’

  ‘For some of it. I usually do field work but I’ve got a book deadline. I’ll do my usual month in Rome at a minimum.’

  ‘Sounds wonderful.’ She took out a business card from her purse and wrote her number on the back. ‘If you’re around and want to get a drink sometime,’ she said.