‘I have a job for you,’ said the Cardinal.
Axl blinked and caught his own shock before it had time to reach his face. What he couldn’t do was keep the hope out of his eyes.
The Cardinal gave a sad smile. ‘The sentence of death is postponed only. You understand me?
The man stood in front of the Cardinal nodding slowly, waiting…
‘Succeed and we can talk again,’ said the old man ‘Fail me and you will be hunted down and executed. Do you also understand that?’
Yeah. He understood all right. He’d been here before, over twenty years previously. Same offer from the same man. He didn’t know if the Cardinal knew he was repeating himself. Somehow Axl suspected he did. Axl understood what the words meant too, just as he’d understood back then.
What sounded like a threat was actually a reprieve. Bizarrely enough, Axl wanted to cry.
The Cardinal smiled and shook his head. ‘You don’t change, do you?’
Axl knew it wasn’t a compliment.
‘Mother of God.’ The Cardinal stubbed out his latest cigar and grabbed another, not waiting for the silver box to open itself. ‘I don’t know how she could do it to us ...' They were talking about Pope Joan, again. Outside the sun was setting over a silver sea and the small boats had set their tiny sails for the shore. From the other side of the study door came the shuffle of feet as ushers cleared the waiting room. Axl was hungry, thirsty and tired but at least he was still alive. And he could do with losing the weight anyway.
‘What’s so funny?’
How could he explain to the Cardinal? Instead of using words, Axl gestured at the smoke filled study, the black cat still snoozing on the tiles and himself now sitting in a huge green-leather armchair opposite the Cardinal’s black glass desk.
‘This,’ he said. And the old man nodded before getting back to briefing Axl.
‘We started last year with record profits. Now we’ve got a dead Pope, a black hole where the Vatican’s assets should be and WorldBank demanding to be allowed to crawl through our accounts like maggots on a corpse. And if that isn’t bad enough, we’ve got newsfeeds springing up every hour saying the bitch should be canonised immediately…’
The old man barked with laughter but there was no amusement in it at all. ‘So you know the options. Accept your death sentence, which strikes me as the least intelligent choice. Or go to some hovel called Cocheforet and track down Father Sylvester and Kate Mercarderes. Then all you have to do is bring one of them back, so we can find out what the fuck the sainted Joan did with our money.’
It was a stupid question but Axl asked it anyway, ‘Why me?’
‘Because you’re available, you’ve got the combat skills and you’ll fit right in on Samsara. Just another traumatised ‘fugee, tortured and blinded in Joan’s service…’
Axl looked at the Cardinal. ‘But I’m not. . .’ And then as the guards came in, he stopped talking.