“More than that, to use your phrase, I’m calling in all my favors.”
“What do you want?” Frade asked.
“Have you got room for one more?”
“You want to go to Portugal?” Frade asked incredulously.
“And if you don’t have room, start deciding who really doesn’t need to be aboard,” the priest said.
“What the hell is going on?”
“I’d rather tell you privately.”
“I have no secrets from these two, as you damned well know. What’s going on?”
“I have heard from Rome . . . ,” Welner said.
“By telegraph, or a voice from a burning bush?”
“Cletus!” Dorotea snapped. “For God’s sake!”
Welner put up a hand to silence her.
“The Vatican . . . perhaps the Holy Father himself . . . has a message for the cardinal-archbishop they both don’t wish to entrust to the usual means of communication, and also wish to get to the cardinal-archbishop as soon as possible.”
“And you just happened to mention in passing to the cardinal-archbishop that you just happen to have a friend who just happens to be going to Portugal and then coming right back?”
Welner nodded.
“What’s the message, I wonder?” Clete said more than a little unpleasantly. “ ‘Hey, Archbishop, you got a spare room?’ ”
“Clete, what are you talking about?” Dorotea snapped, both in confusion and in anger.
“Maybe the Holy Father has decided it’s time to get out of Dodge,” Clete said. “The Germans are occupying Rome, except for Vatican City, and the only thing keeping them out of Vatican City are maybe one hundred—maybe a few more—Swiss Guards wearing medieval uniforms and armed with pikes.”
“I can’t imagine any circumstance under which the Holy Father would leave the Vatican at this time,” Welner said. “And what’s keeping the Nazis out of the Holy City is world opinion.”
“‘World opinion’?” Clete parroted. “Wow! Now, that should really scare Hitler.”
“I won’t beg you, Cletus,” Welner said.
Frade met the priest’s eyes for a long moment.
“Enrico, take his bag and put it, and him, on the airplane,” Frade said. “And then you stay on it.”
“Thank you,” Father Welner said.
“De nada,” Clete said sarcastically, the Spanish expression for “It is nothing.”
Capitán Roberto Lauffer, the heavy golden aiguillettes of a presidential aide-de-camp hanging from each shoulder, quickly walked up to them. He kissed Dorotea, and quickly shook hands with Father Welner and Cletus, and then announced, “Cletus, the president wants to wish you luck.”
Dorotea went to the stairway—now draped in bunting—with him.
“Behave yourself,” Clete said. “I’ll be back in a week.”
“What was all that about with Father Welner?”
This may be the last thing I’ll ever say to my wife; I’m not going to lie to her.