Free The Secret Cardinal by Tom Grace Page A

worldwide by the following morning. Kilkenny and Grin learned of the pope’s death the previous evening while dining out late. The matriarch of the family that ran the tiny ristorante had burst loudly into tears when the cardinal vicar appeared on the small television she watched at her corner table. The woman had been inconsolable, and like millions of Catholics, she deeply felt the loss of the charismatic man who had led the Church for so long. The pall cast by the pope’s death blanketed Rome like fog, subduing the normally vibrant Eternal City.
    Kilkenny sat hunched forward against the imaging table, his arms folded along the edge as a support for his chin. He stared at a hologram of the corridor of rooms in the solitary wing where Yin was imprisoned. Through the nearly transparent holographic walls, he could follow the layout of pipes and ducts that serviced the cells, but his ability to focus on the details eluded him. Hwong’s murder and the deaths of the Chinese Roman Catholics still angered him, and the untimely deaths of his wife and son never strayed far from his conscious thoughts. And now, a man whom he had prayed for every Sunday as far back as he could remember, someone he’d met only twice but whose strength of spirit had affected him profoundly, was dead.
    To reach the Petriano Entrance that morning, Kilkenny and Grin had to wend their way slowly through the throng that had spilled beyond the confines of Saint Peter’s Square and into the streets around the Vatican. It didn’t matter that there was nothing to see—just being there at this moment seemed important to people.
    The somber mood of the crowd reminded Kilkenny of a few bitter
losses at Michigan Stadium, when tens of thousands of emotionally drained football fans straggled away from the wreckage of a season derailed. He knew the analogy was weak, but the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. predated him, and he simply had no better frame of reference for grief on such a massive scale. Even in the deep seclusion of the catacombs, the aura of mourning was inescapable.
    The magnetic lock buzzed as it released the door. Both Kilkenny and Grin turned, then stood as Donoher entered the room. He looked as if he had been up all night and didn’t expect to sleep anytime soon.
    â€œHere,” Kilkenny said, offering his chair. “I can’t imagine what your night must have been like.”
    Donoher nodded his thanks and sat down with a sigh. “I have been the head of the Roman Catholic Church for mere hours, and already I’m planning to announce in my opening remarks at the conclave that I have no desire to be pope, and to promise the most serious consequences to any cardinal who dares vote for me.”
    â€œThat bad?” Kilkenny asked.
    â€œI won’t trouble you with the details, but never have I borne such a heavy cross. And despite everything that I am now required to do, the two of you have never been far from my thoughts. How soon do you think you can implement your plan?”
    â€œTraining is the biggest issue—the people who do this will have to work very well together,” Kilkenny said as he considered the question. “Six weeks, maybe a month if we really push it.”
    â€œI’m afraid we don’t have that kind of time,” Donoher said flatly. “The pope’s death has set a clock in motion.”
    â€œWhat kind of clock?” Grin asked.
    â€œIn fifteen days,” Donoher explained, “the eligible cardinals will gather in conclave to elect the next pope.”
    â€œHow does that affect us?” Grin asked, unclear of the connection.
    â€œPope Leo directed me to pursue this course of action,” Donoher explained, “and as long as he was alive, we had his blessing. With his death, responsibility for all of the Church’s temporal matters devolved to me as camerlengo. As I am of the same mind as the late pope