Apocalypsis 1.03 Thoth Read Free Page A

never found, not the slightest trace of him. Even though it could never be proven, there is a strong suggestion that you killed your girlfriend, Mr. Adam. Probably in the course of one of your migraine attacks. Just like you killed Loretta Hooper. Which brings us back to the issue at hand.«
    Peter saw that the two Americans were getting ready again.
    »I don’t know what happened. But why would I have killed Loretta?«
    »Perhaps because she found out that you’re planning an attack on the Vatican?«

XXVI

ONE YEAR EARLIER …
    May 8, 2010, Apostolic Palace, Vatican City
    H e had never wanted to be Pope. God knew that he had never aspired to the papacy. But God had placed this burden on him and so now he had to carry it for the good of the Church that he loved and that was his home.
    His life.
    Pope John Paul III remembered how he had groaned after the tenth round of voting, as Cardinal Nguyen began to read aloud the names on the ballots and it became more and more evident with every ballot he unfolded that he would be the one to be elected. He remembered vividly the brief moment when rage washed over Cardinal Menendez’s face, as Cardinal Nguyen asked the elected candidate whether he would accept the office.
    During the past five years, Laurenz had gradually gotten used to his office and the burden and he had even found a certain satisfaction in the strength of his authority. The diplomatic skills, sangfroid and mulishness of his predecessor had turned the Vatican into a global player in world politics. The most important government leaders requested personal audiences and asked the Pope to act as mediator in delicate diplomatic missions.
    Nonetheless, John Paul III did not see himself as a politician. He was a man of faith. And, as such, his most important duty was the protection of the Church.
    And in its two-thousand-year history the Church had never been in greater danger than it was now. Nobody knew this better than John Paul III.
    As always, the Pope’s working day began at seven in the morning with a mass in the private chapel of the appartamento . His predecessor had liked to celebrate mass with invited guests. John Paul III preferred a small gathering with his two private secretaries, the four housekeepers from the movement Comunione e Liberazione , and his Camerlengo. Just as every morning, John Paul III took a few minutes for himself after breakfast to meditate, and then Alexander Duncker and Franco DiLuca presented him with the daily press releases and with certificates of Episcopal ordinations that he needed to sign. The papal routine.
    Around eleven o’clock, he and his two secretaries took the old wood-paneled elevator down to the Seconda Loggia , where the offices of the Holy See were located. Down here, the decisions of the Pope were transformed into files, handouts and memos. It was the realm of the office clerks and secretaries, of the counselors and chamberlains, and it was the realm of the Latin translators who transcribed each and every piece of correspondence into the official language of the Vatican. With a little imagination, there was not a single modern word that could not be translated into Latin. A center-forward became a campus medius and a condom a tegumentum ; vodka turned into valida potio slavica and the weekend into exiens hebdomada . It was quiet in the hallways. The Curial employees scuttled over the 500-year-old floor tiles as employees elsewhere scuttled over linoleum floors, and they communicated with each other in Latin in a curial jargon that had developed over centuries and was about as comprehensible as the NATO-English of fighter pilots. There were, for instance, dozens of ways of saying no. The meaning of reponatur was: will be put on ice for now. Non expedire meant: might work out but is not appropriate right now, and in decisis et amplius was unequivocal: the decision is final; period.
    Normally, the Pope met with bishops or heads of state in the mornings. This morning,