Free Pandora's Ark by Rick Jones

overly confident when
everyone within the Church knows you were summarily sent to the Boston as something punitive. Your camp will dissolve on that tainted issue and your bid
to seek the papal throne will end before it even begins.”
    “Is that how you
plan to politick?”
    The right corner
of the cardinal’s lip lifted into a sardonic grin. “Would I be lying if they
learned why you were truly dismissed to America to begin with? That you were
summarily dismissed from your post because of these Vatican Knights and the
Society of Seven. These clandestine organizations within the Church nobody knew
about?”
    He had just
played his trump card and the cardinal immediately picked up on it.
    “I see,” said
Vessucci. “But you forget one thing.”
    “And that would
be?”
    “These Knights
were highly beloved by every pope going back to World War Two. And no one loved
them or pressed them more into duty than Pope Pius and John Paul the Second.”
He now stood before Angullo so that he faced him directly, almost toe to toe
with his back to the railing. “Should you use this as a tactic, then you’d be besmirching
the good name of John Paul, a man who is being sent up to sainthood.”
    Angullo’s smile
widened. “Bonasero-Bonasero-Bonasero, are you listening to yourself? When you
speak you do so as a hypocrite.”
    Vessucci
appeared quizzical.
    “Did you not just
say that ‘the truth will always find its way’?”
    “I did.”
    “Yet it’s all
right to keep the truth of the Vatican Knights from the members of the entire
College of the Cardinals for fear that they may think of them in the same light
as Pope Gregory, as mercenary abominations.”
    Touché .
    Angullo turned
away and headed for the chamber door. “There’s no place in the Church for a
hypocrite,” he said over his shoulder. “I suggest you think your position over
clearly and bow out before your image is so badly tainted that you’ll end up in
a parish somewhere in East Africa.”
    “Is that a
threat?”
    Cardinal Angullo
hesitated at the chamber door, his hand on the knob, and studied Vessucci
through obsidian eyes. “My stance with the Church is clear. What I want is
clear. If you stand in my way, then I will destroy you.”
    “The same way
you destroyed Pope Gregory?” As much as he didn’t want to, he said it. 
    Cardinal Angullo
let his hand fall and took two steps back inside the chamber. He shook his
head. “Think what you will,” he told him. “But the man died by accident and
nothing more. Worse, you’re beginning to sound like a man of desperation, which
is sad since at one time you were highly esteemed.”
    “I still am,
otherwise you wouldn’t have come here to share your game plan and intimidate me
to fall out.”
    “I came here to
talk about politicking, which we did. But you also accused me of possible murder.
And that, Bonasero, is stepping over the line. Politicking is one thing, wild
accusations are another.”
    In Bonasero’s
mind he conceded. As strong a politic as he was, Angullo bested him at every
corner, at every turn, his tongue sharp and his reasoning even sharper. He had
turned Vessucci’s considerations of Pope Gregory’s death into the possible
realm of one man’s desperation, should it be spoken in certain circles.
Secondly, in his statement of seeking the truth, didn’t Angullo purposely use
the Vatican Knights as the optimum example of why Vessucci’s ‘truth’ was
hypocritical since the Knights remained a well-hidden secret from the College?
Wasn’t keeping them a secret for fear of internal dissatisfaction within the
religious hierarchy in essence a ‘lie’?
    Vessucci was
beaten down on a political level, and badly.
    Angullo reached
blindly for the knob, his eyes remaining focused on Vessucci as his hatchet-thin
face held the winning glow of achievement. “Think about it, Bonasero. Your
weakness has become my strength.”
    “I have as much
right to the position as you do,” he finally