The Malta Exchange (Cotton Malone 14)

He carried with him the thin plastic binder Spagna had offered. He’d resisted the urge to read the pages quickly, intent on finding a quiet place for a thorough review, practicing some of that patience Spagna had so unceremoniously advised.

He avoided the cathedral’s rectory and kept walking through the walled town, savoring the waft of Mdina’s sun-warmed stone. He could hear the voices of history, all the way back to antiquity, demanding to be remembered. Occasionally he caught sight of the soft-footed cats, most tawny orange and sullen black, that still prowled every nook and cranny, as they had during his childhood.

Malta’s oldest families still lived among Mdina’s aristocratic aloofness. For centuries the locals called it the Silent City, since the only sounds within the walls were footsteps. But it was here that the revolt against the French invaders began in 1800. Napoleon had looted every church, defiled every sanctuary, cleaned out every auberge. The little general then sailed off to Egypt, leaving a garrison of a thousand regulars to maintain order. The Maltese, though at first glad the knights were gone, quickly grew to hate the French even more. The final insult came here, when the invaders held an auction to sell off the contents of Mdina’s Carmelite church. A riot erupted and the French commander was murdered. Church bells rang coast-to-coast, calling the people to arms. Within ninety days the entire garrison fled the island.

The lesson?

Never underestimate the Maltese.

He followed the labyrinth of angled streets, so narrow that you could reach out from the upper floors of one house and touch the one opposite. Wrought-iron grilles protected many of the windows, remnants from a time when those dwellings had to fend for themselves. He passed a flock of tourists, enjoying the sites, taking refuge from the sun within the cool cavern of passageways. He also caught the cross-currents o

f voices.

The Maltese were a proud lot. Always had been. They worked hard, longing mainly to get married, have children, and enjoy life. The church had once dominated everything, but not so much anymore. Malta had gone international, joining the EU, breaking further from Great Britain and its older generations. Divorce had even been legalized by a national referendum. Four hundred and fifty thousand people now lived on the island. And true, the locals could be petty toward one another, prone to jealousy, even quick to pick a fight—what was the saying? A crossed Maltese stays cross—but even with all its faults, Malta, and its people, were his home.

He found his favorite restaurant, tucked away in a quiet corner against the bastion walls. Two vaulted stone chambers from the 17th century served as the dining room, but his chosen spot was outside in an enclosed courtyard adorned with greenery and a tinkling fountain. It had been a few years since he’d last visited.

He ordered his favorite dish, rabbit stew, then laid the plastic binder on the table. There were maybe twenty typewritten pages inside. He glanced around. The courtyard was empty, no one enjoying a late lunch, or early supper, depending on your point of view. The waiter brought him a glass of red wine, Italian, as he’d never cared for Maltese grapes. He waited until the young man stepped back inside before opening the binder and reading.

Two years ago the Holy Father directed that I conduct a confidential assessment and, if possible, an audit of certain departments within the Holy See. Prior to becoming pope, while he was a cardinal, the Holy Father had served within a variety of departments and was concerned about what he termed “systematic waste, fraud, and abuse.” I was requested to conduct a thorough but wholly secret investigation, drawing no attention to my efforts. After twenty months of clandestine study I can now provide the following summary:

(1) There is little to no transparency in any of the bookkeeping maintained within the Holy See. In fact, it is common practice for departments to maintain two sets of records. One that could be shown to anyone who might request information, the other detailing the actual income, costs, and expenditures. This practice is well known to the cardinals currently overseeing those departments, as it is done under their direct supervision and many of them personally retain the more accurate, second set of books;

(2) Contracts for services by the Holy See to outside third-party providers (which total in the tens of millions of euros annually) are routinely secured without competitive bidding and without regard to cost. Corruption is rampant relative to the awarding of these contracts. Bribery and kickbacks are common. Many times as much as 200 percent over the current market value is paid by the Holy See for these goods and services, all linked to corruption;

(3) There is an ongoing and systematic theft of tax-free souvenirs from the Vatican’s retail shops. This merchandise is being stolen by the pallet load, then secretly sold to outside vendors at vastly reduced prices. The moneys generated from these thefts are currently secretly being shared by at least three cardinals;

(4) One particular outside, third-party transaction is noteworthy. It involves a deal made with an American corporation allowing that company’s cigarettes to be sold in Vatican stores, but only thanks to a secret fee paid to at least two cardinals. Part of that deal also allows several other cardinals to benefit from extreme discounts on at least two hundred packs of cigarettes, collectively, purchased by them each month, for their own use;

(5) An Italian charitable foundation for a local pediatric hospital recently (and secretly) paid €200,000 to renovate a cardinal’s Rome apartment;

(6) The Vatican pension fund currently has a nearly €800 million deficit and is teetering on bankruptcy, though current public financial records show a balance sheet far to the contrary;

(7) There is no detailed inventory of the nearly 5000 buildings owned within Rome by the Holy See. Current balance sheets list the total worth of the Holy See’s real estate holdings within France, England, Switzerland, and Italy at €400 million. The best guess of the actual worth for these properties is over €3 billion. The best explanation for this odd discrepancy downward is that the curia sees public relations advantages in downplaying the actual net worth of the church;

(8) Retirement packages to at least three dozen cardinals are highly exorbitant, far beyond anything considered reasonable;

(9) The granting of free or low-rent apartments to cardinals currently serving within the curia is common. Rents in prime Rome locations are at times as much as 100 percent below market value. One example: a one-hundred-square-meter apartment near St. Peter’s Basilica is currently being rented to one cardinal for €20.67 a month. If market rates were applied to all of the Holy See’s rental apartments, somewhere around €20 million would be generated in revenue each year, as opposed to the less than €6 million currently being realized. The same discrepancy is present regarding the Holy See’s commercial real estate, where many of the current leases are far below market value and could generate somewhere near €30 million more per year.

He could hardly believe his eyes.

It was incredible, made even more so since the information came from within the Vatican itself. Gathered by the Entity.

Straight from the curia.

The word curia meant “court,” but in the sense of a royal court, not a court of law. Its principal departments consisted of the Secretariat of State, nine congregations, three tribunals, five councils, and eleven offices and commissions. Together they were the administrative apparatus of the Holy See, its civil service, acting in the pope’s name, with his authority, providing a central, governing organization. Without it, the church could not function. Popes loved to both complain about, and tinker with, the curia.

But rarely had it changed.

It was presently controlled by the Apostolic Constitution Pastor bonus, issued by John Paul II in 1988, later revised by Francis I.

The waiter arrived with his rabbit stew in a thick-sided crockery bowl, leaving it, along with a basket of warm bread and another glass of wine. He took a moment and enjoyed the stew’s aroma, remembering the way his mother would make the same dish. She’d spend Friday evenings searching for the best rabbit, killing it herself, then dressing and chopping the carcass, marinating the meat with red wine. He and his brother would watch the preparations with fascination, standing on their tiptoes, peering over the counter.

And the sounds.

They’d stayed in his psyche.

The basso tick of a clock hanging on the kitchen wall. The deep bongs of distant church bells. The water boiling. The snap of bone.

Saturday morning the house would wake to the smell of garlic as the stew simmered. He knew all of her ingredients by heart. Tomato passata, olive oil, sugar, bay leaves, carrots, potatoes, peas.

A wondrous mix.

He enjoyed a spoonful of what sat before him.

Not bad.

The restaurant prepared an admirable stew, but it was nothing like what his mother had created.

He missed those weekends.

Before the orphanage. Where there’d been no stew.

No mother.

Spagna was right. He had become a thief and a liar. Why didn’t the mother superior do something? Why had she allowed it to happen? He didn’t for a moment believe God had intervened, sending him off to the seminary and a new life. Faith was not something he’d ever totally embraced. Odd for a cardinal. But he could not help it. Fate was more his style. His life had been a series of fateful events, each one sending him along a seemingly predetermined path to this moment. Had he messed up with the last pope? Absolutely. But what did he have to feel bad about? According to what he’d just read, the Holy See seemed riddled with thieves and liars, too.

He kept eating.

The Roman Catholic Church carried the distinction of being the oldest continuous human institution in the world. It could deal with just about anything except the unexpected—and a pope dying in an instant certainly fit into that category.

P

opes came in cycles of young and old.

A young Pius XII, then an old John XXIII. A vibrant Paul VI, followed by the frail John Paul I. The lion John Paul II, succeeded by the elder placeholder Benedict XVI. The pattern stretched back centuries, rarely varying. The last Vicar of Christ, now lying in the crypt beneath St. Peter’s, had been older. His reign had been intended to be short, about a decade, giving other challengers the time to amass support. The longest-serving pope remained the first. Peter. Some said thirty-four, others thirty-seven years. Nobody really knew. So if history were to be trusted, the next pope would be younger, lingering longer, potentially having a greater impact.

He liked that he would not have to disrupt the natural cycle.

He finished the stew and the waiter returned to carry away the dishes. He asked for more wine, which was poured. The young man had no idea who he was serving. He liked how he could move about the world with anonymity. Few outside of the Vatican knew or cared that he existed. And who was he anyway? Just a priest from a rock in the Mediterranean who’d risen to great stature, only to have it all stripped away. Thankfully, they could not take his red hat. Nor the friends he’d made. Men who remained in positions of power and influence and who would shortly be looking for a leader.

There’d been Greek, Syrian, African, Spanish, French, German, and Dutch popes. One Englishman, a single Pole, two laymen, and a ton of Italians. All were either nobles, former slaves, peasants, or aristocracy. Never, though, had there been a Portuguese, Irish, Scandinavian, Slovak, Slovenian, Bohemian, Hungarian, or American pope.

Nor a Maltese.

Thankfully, that blood vessel suddenly rupturing would limit the cardinals’ time for scheming. And make no mistake, cardinals schemed. The whole idea of sealing them away had been to limit the opportunities for bribery and shorten the time for deal making. The Latin root of the word conclave meant “a room that can be locked up.”

That meant few cardinals would be prepared for the coming battle. Thankfully, it appeared he would not be one of those.