The Fifth Gospel Read Online Free

toward it. The earth is choppy. Clods of mud are turned up, grass roots sticking out like spider legs.
    â€œSimon!” I call toward him. “Are you okay?”
    He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t even move.
    I’m lurching toward him now, trying to keep upright in the slicks of mud. The distance between us shrinks. Yet he doesn’t speak.
    I arrive in front of him. My brother. I lay hands on him, saying, “Are you okay? Tell me you’re okay.”
    He’s soaked and pale. His wet hair is painted to his forehead like a doll’s. A black cassock clings to his ropy muscles the way a pelt clings to a racehorse. Cassocks are the old-fashioned robes that all Roman priests once wore, before black pants and black jackets came into style. In this darkness, on my brother’s looming figure, it creates an almost ghoulish impression.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” I say, because he still hasn’t answered me.
    There’s a thin, distant look in his eyes. He’s staring at something on the ground.
    A long black coat lies in the mud. The overcoat of a Roman priest. A greca, named for its resemblance to a Greek priest’s cassock. Underneath it is a hump.
    Not in any imagining of this moment have I conceived of something like this. At the end of the hump is a pair of shoes.
    â€œMy God,” I whisper. “Who is that?”
    Simon’s voice is so dry that it cracks.
    â€œI could’ve saved him,” he says.
    â€œSy, I don’t understand. Tell me what’s going on.”
    My eyes are drawn to those loafers. There’s a hole in one of the soles. A feeling nags at me, like a fingernail scraping against my thoughts.Stray papers have blown against the high fence that separates the pope’s property from the border road. Rain has pasted them to the metal links like papier-mâché.
    â€œHe called me,” Simon murmurs. “I knew he was in trouble. I came as soon as I could.”
    â€œ Who called you?”
    But the meaning of the words slowly registers. Now I know the source of that nagging feeling. The hole in those loafers is familiar.
    I step back. My stomach tightens. My hands curl up.
    â€œH-how . . . ?” I stammer.
    There are suddenly lights moving down the garden road toward us. Pairs of them, no bigger than BBs. When they come closer, they resolve into police cruisers.
    Vatican gendarmes.
    I kneel down, hands trembling. On the ground beside the body is an open briefcase. The wind continues to tug at the papers inside it.
    The gendarmes begin jogging toward us, barking orders to step away from the body. But I reach over and do what every instinct in my body requires. I need to see.
    When I pull back Simon’s greca, the dead man’s eyes are wide. The mouth is cocked. The tongue is stuffed in its cheek. On my friend’s face is a dull grimace. In his temple is a black hole leaking a pink nubbin of flesh.
    The clouds are pressing in. Simon’s hand is on me, pulling me back. Step away , he says.
    But I can’t take my eyes off it. I see suit pockets turned out. A bare patch of white skin where a wristwatch has been removed.
    â€œCome away, Father,” says a gendarme.
    Finally I turn. The gendarme has a face like a leather knuckle. From his needlepoint eyes, from his frost of white hair, I recognize him as Inspector Falcone, chief of Vatican police. The man who runs beside John Paul’s car.
    â€œWhich one of you is Father Andreou?” he says.
    Simon steps forward and says, “We both are. I’m the one who called you.”
    I stare at my brother, trying to make sense of this.
    Falcone points to one of his officers. “Go with Special Agent Bracco. Tell him everything you saw.”
    Simon obeys. He reaches into the pocket of the greca for his wallet and phone and passport but leaves his coat draped over the body. Before following the officer, he says, “This man has no next of kin. I need to