Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

“Yes, it would,” Fortin said. “What I was going to say is that there is a common thread in my tentative identifications. Many of the priests and two of the bishops were Franciscans.”

“May I ask a question? Questions?” Winters asked.

“You’re supposed to,” Cronley said.

“Why was the Church involved in this?”

“You said ‘the Church,’” Fortin said. “

That suggests you’re a Roman Catholic.”

“I am.”

“Others would have said ‘the Roman Catholic Church.’”

“I suppose that’s true,” Winters said.

“What about you, Jim?”

“I’m Episcopalian. Church of England.”

“And your mother?”

“She left the Catholic Church—maybe was kicked out—when she married my father. Now she’s head of the Altar Guild at Saint Thomas’s Episcopal Church in Midland.”

The waiter returned, carrying an enormous tray with one hand.

He laid plates of Choucroute Garnie à l’Alsacienne before them. Winters saw that it was mounds of browned sauerkraut heavily laced with chunks of roasted pork. The smell made him salivate.

“My father was Roman,” Fortin said, after he’d finished his first mouthful and then washed it down with healthy swallows of the sparkling Crémant d’Alsace. “When he married my mother—an Evangalische, a Lutheran—she had to sign a document stating any children of the union would be raised as Romans. I was. My mother was in the habit of saying unkind things about the Roman Church. This invariably distressed my father, who was rather devout. Are you distressed, or outraged, Thomas, when someone questions the motives of Holy Mother Church?”

“Annoyed, usually, depending on what is said, and by whom.”

“My mother used to say that the primary responsibility of Roman Catholic Church clergy is the preservation of the Roman Catholic Church. Does that offend you, Thomas?”

Winters visibly considered the question before replying, “I’m not sure I agree with it, but it doesn’t offend me.”

“I began to be disillusioned about the Roman Church at Saint-Cyr,” Fortin said. “My fellow cadets began to say terrible things about it . . .”

“What sort of terrible things?” Winters asked.

“. . . yet seemed to get away with it. There was no lightning bolt from heaven to incinerate them where they stood.”

“What sort of terrible things?” Winters repeated.

“Well, for example, that the Pope—Popes, Pius the Eleventh, and Pius the Twelfth, who succeeded him, were, if not actually Fascists, then the next thing to Fascists.”

“Did they say why?” Winters asked softly.

“They pointed to the Vatican Concordat of 1929,” Fortin said.

“I have no idea what that is,” Cronley said.

“It was the deal struck between the Roman Church—Pius the Eleventh—and Italy—Mussolini—which made the Vatican—all forty-four hectares of it—a sovereign state.”

“A hectare is two and a half acres, right?” Winters asked.

Both Fortin and Cronley nodded, and Fortin went on.