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lamps of the TV crews, and behind all these, rising out of the shadows, the gigantic illuminated glow of St Peter’s.
    As they reached the ambulance, Lomeli tried to picture the Universal Church at that moment – some one and a quarter billion souls: the ragged crowds gathered around the television sets in the slums of Manila and São Paulo, the swarms of commuters in Tokyo and Shanghai hypnotised by their mobile phones, the sports fans in the bars of Boston and New York whose games were being interrupted . . .
    Go forth and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit . . .
    The body slid head-first into the back of the ambulance. The rear door slammed. The four cardinals stood at solemn attention as the cortège pulled away – two motorcycles, then a police car, then the ambulance, then another police car, and finally more motorcycles. It swept around the piazza for a moment and disappeared. The instant it was out of sight, the sirens were switched on.
    So much for humility, thought Lomeli. So much for the poor of the earth. It could have been the motorcade of a dictator.
    The wails of the cortège dwindled into the night.
    Behind their rope line, the reporters and photographers started calling out to the cardinals, like tourists at a zoo trying to persuade the animals to come closer: ‘Your Eminence! Your Eminence! Over here!’
    ‘One of us should say something,’ announced Tremblay, and without waiting for a response, he set off across the piazza. The lights seemed to impart to his silhouette a fiery halo. Adeyemi managed to restrain himself for a few more seconds, and then went in pursuit.
    Bellini said, under his breath and with great contempt, ‘What a circus!’
    ‘Shouldn’t you join them?’ suggested Lomeli.
    ‘God, no! I shan’t pander to the mob. I think I would prefer to go to the chapel and pray.’ He smiled sadly and rattled something in his hand, and Lomeli saw that he was holding the travelling chess set. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Join me. Let us say a Mass for our friend together.’ As they walked back into the Casa Santa Marta, he took Lomeli’s arm. ‘The Holy Father told me of your difficulties with prayer,’ he whispered. ‘Perhaps I can help. You know that he had doubts himself, by the end?’
    ‘The Pope had doubts about God?’
    ‘Not about God! Never about God!’ And then Bellini said something Lomeli would never forget. ‘What he had lost faith in was the Church.’

2
Casa Santa Marta
    THE STORY OF the Conclave began a little under three weeks later.
    The Holy Father had died on the day after the feast of St Luke the Evangelist: that is to say on the nineteenth day of October. The remainder of October and the first part of November had been taken up by his funeral and by the almost daily congregations of the College of Cardinals, who had poured into Rome from all across the world to elect his successor. These were private meetings, during which the future of the Church had been discussed. To Lomeli’s relief, although the usual split between the progressives and the traditionalists had surfaced occasionally, they had passed off without controversy.
    Now, on the feast day of St Herculanus the Martyr – Sunday 7 November – he stood on the threshold of the Sistine Chapel, flanked by the Secretary of the College of Cardinals, Monsignor Raymond O’Malley, and the Master of Papal Liturgical Celebrations, Archbishop Wilhelm Mandorff. The cardinal-electors would be locked into the Vatican that very night. The balloting would begin the following day.
    It was shortly after lunchtime and the three prelates were standing just inside the marble and wrought-iron screen that separated the main part of the Sistine Chapel from the vestibule. Together they surveyed the scene. The temporary wooden floor was almost finished. A beige carpet was being nailed down. Television lights were going up, chairs carried in, desks screwed