Conclave Read Online Free Page B

together. Nowhere could one look and not see movement. The teeming activity of Michelangelo’s ceiling – all that semi-naked pink-grey flesh stretching and gesturing and bending and carrying – now seemed to Lomeli to have found its clumsy earthly counterpart. At the far end of the Sistine, in the gigantic fresco of Michelangelo’s
The Last Judgement,
humanity floated in an azure sky around the Throne of Heaven to an echoing accompaniment of hammering, electric drills and buzz-saws.
    ‘Well, Eminence,’ said the Secretary of the College, O’Malley, in his Irish accent. ‘I’d say this is a pretty fair vision of hell.’
    ‘Don’t be blasphemous, Ray,’ replied Lomeli. ‘Hell arrives tomorrow, when we bring in the cardinals.’
    Archbishop Mandorff laughed slightly too loudly. ‘Excellent, Eminence! That is good!’
    Lomeli turned to O’Malley. ‘He thinks I’m joking.’
    O’Malley, who carried a clipboard, was in his late forties: tall, already running to fat, with the bluff red face of a man who had spent his life outdoors – riding to hounds, perhaps – even though he had never done any such thing; it was his Kildare ancestry and a taste for whiskey that had given him his complexion. The Rhinelander Mandorff was older, at sixty, also tall, with a head as smooth and domed and hairless as an egg; he had made his reputation at the University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt with a treatise on the origins and theological foundations of clerical celibacy.
    On either side of the chapel, facing across the long aisle, twodozen plain bare wooden tables had been pushed together to form four rows. Only the table nearest the screen had so far been dressed with cloth, ready for Lomeli’s inspection. He stepped into the chapel and ran his hand over the double layers of fabric: a soft crimson felt that reached all the way to the floor, and a thicker, smoother material – beige, to match the carpet – that covered the desktop and its edge, and provided a surface firm enough to write on. It had been set with a Bible, a prayer book, a name card, pens and pencils, a small ballot paper and a long sheet listing the names of all 117 cardinals eligible to vote.
    Lomeli picked up the name card: XALXO, SAVERIO. Who was he? He felt a twinge of panic. In the days since the Pope’s funeral, he had tried to meet every cardinal and memorise a few personal details. But there were so many new faces – the late Pope had awarded more than sixty red hats, fifteen in the last year alone – that the task had proved beyond him.
    ‘How on earth does one pronounce this? Salso, is it?’
    ‘Khal-koh, Eminence,’ said Mandorff. ‘He’s Indian.’
    ‘Khal-koh. I’m obliged to you, Willi. Thank you.’
    Lomeli sat and tested the chair. He was glad to see there was a cushion. And plenty of room to stretch one’s legs. He tilted back. Yes, it was comfortable enough. Given the amount of time they were likely to spend locked up in here, it needed to be. He had read the Italian press over breakfast. It was the last time he would see a newspaper until the election was over. The Vatican-watchers were unanimous in predicting a long and divisive Conclave. He prayed it would not be so, and that the Holy Spirit would enter the Sistine early and guide them to a name. But if it failed to materialise – and certainly there had been no sign of it during any of the fourteen congregations – then they could be stuck here for days.
    He glanced along the length of the Sistine. It was strange how being seated just a metre above the mosaic floor altered the perspective of the place. In the cavity beneath their feet, the security experts had installed jamming devices to prevent electronic eavesdropping. However, a rival firm of consultants had insisted that such precautions were insufficient. They had claimed that laser beams aimed at the windows set high in the upper gallery could detect vibrations in the glass caused by any words spoken, and that these could