Canto for a Gypsy

  Roman lit one and gave it to Pulika.

  “One morning, we found the gates open. All the guards had run away during the night and we heard that the Americans were coming. At once, everybody was in a bustle leaving the camp. We found a wagon and pulled it ourselves while the women rode, traveling over fields and avoiding the roads. We had not gone very far by the second day when we found the Magyars. There were six of them, all officers, and their car was on its side. They pointed guns at us but, believe me, they were more frightened than we were because the country was overrun with Americans and all the Germans were giving themselves up.

  “They ordered us to help them get their car back on its feet. Once we did that, naturally they became friendlier and asked where we were going.

  “ ‘Away from the dead swallow,’ I told them.

  “They laughed and said it was typical Gypsy nonsense, but it wasn’t. I was bitter about all the good Rom dead.

  “ ‘What did you do before the war?’ they asked me.

  “I was arrogant. I’m not so arrogant now that all I have to work with is iron pipes, but then I was.”

  The vat reached its hottest pitch, becoming a dull, shimmering green. The old man looked at the boy.

  “ ‘I was a goldsmith,’ I said. That was when they brought out their guns again and took me to the Holy Crown.”

  * * *

  Six men sat in a room at the Commodore and took notes at a slide lecture.

  The first slide showed the side door Killane used to enter the church from his residence. The ones following were close-ups of the lock and hinges.

  “There’s no alarm.”

  “No. Nor on any of the other doors,” Odrich commented. “The cardinal is very set on this being a house of God. The locks are very simple, as you can see, because there are ­always ushers and maintenance men on duty.”

  He pressed a button and the projector’s carousel moved a notch.

  A slide of the side door leading to the administrative building appeared. It was in most ways identical with the first series.

  “Instead of the cardinal’s private sacristy, a room for the ushers is here. No doubt, the Hungarians will take it over.”

  Next came a slide of the rusticated wall surrounding the plateau from which the cathedral rose. Set into the wall was a door.

  “From the foundation plans, this leads to the boiler room. You can see it is iron.” A succeeding slide was of the outside lock. “A regular bolt mechanism from the shape of the impression. No bar.”

  “Then it would take us only a few minutes to get in. The police standing at the church won’t be able to see that door.”

  “Fine, but you forget that Fifth Avenue has Cartier and Tiffany. There are patrols all the time. When we enter, someone will let us in or we will have a key. There is one other way in.”

  A shot of the windows directly over the altar of the Lady Chapel appeared. A second slide of one of the chapel’s side windows and a third on the outer of the side window’s three lancets followed.

  “The bottom panel opens for ventilation. Here Reggel has persuaded the cardinal to lay an electric strip between the panel and one above it.”

  “So, we cut through the glass, tape some copper wires to the contacts and then open the window, right?”

  “There’s still the problem of the glass. Not as much as in old stained windows with metal oxides all through the glass, but even having pigments burned into the surface means a difficult cut.”

  A discussion of techniques followed. Tapes were unreliable on uneven surfaces; suction cups were for movies. If metallic pigment permeated the glass, even a diamond saw could make too much noise. Would the light outside cast a shadow through the window? Madison Avenue was not the unlit thoroughfare most European churches were on. As the conversation became more intense it was carried on less and less in English and more in Italian. When he heard the same arguments twice, Odrich suggested it was time to stop for something to eat.

  A buffet of melons and ham waited on the coffee table, and they relaxed while they ate by watching the eleven o’clock news. Midway into the news show the screen was filled with a drawing of the Holy Crown. From that, the broadcaster cut to a film of St. Patrick’s and a subterranean hall, its walls lined with tables bearing vestments.

  “It will be in the sacristy,” one of the viewers announced.

  The hotel room had been rented by Odrich’s assistants with a credit card in the name of the Italian magazine Oggi. Odrich had found that clerks were less likely to remember faces when presented with an institutional identity. If the Oggi cards were stolen, that was in character. The card bearers had lost their own identities long before.

  At the end of the war, children from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Poland had flowed into Italy. Outside Trieste, they lived in a refugee camp called Padriciano, and there Odrich had gone looking for the brightest, strongest and least wanted of a displaced population. He offered money, education and names, and that was more than enough.

  That was what Frederick Morton wanted and that was why he was in the room. Harlem was New York’s Padriciano.

  At first when the men approached him, Morton was suspicious. It was odd enough for whites to hang out around a Harlem swimming pool asking questions. But Harlem was a heroin land, a fantasy land. The mythical finger had pointed to him. If it was a white finger, it didn’t matter. The black boy’s sullenness dissolved into a practical assessment of a future that was impossible before. And Odrich made it easy. Morton didn’t even have to return to his half a room on 120th Street. He checked into a hotel room Odrich reserved for him, he wore the clothes Odrich brought him. He didn’t worry about labels being cut out; he wanted to cut out a whole past. The proof that he could do it were the men around him.

  A film projector was set and loaded. Frederick Morton felt the beer pressing on his bladder and asked permission to use the bathroom.

  “You don’t have to ask,” Odrich said. “You’re one of us now.”

  The bathroom was hung with damp negatives. Prints floated in the tub. When he’d relieved himself, Morton took a closer look at them. They were nothing like the slides that had been shown in the other room, no doors or windows, locks or alarms. These were of priests and altars and communion rails.

  The boy’s curiosity was aroused. He opened the linen closet. On the shelves were the Minox cameras he’d been shown how to use. In the bottom of the closet was a square leather case that Odrich had brought that afternoon. If the boy’s guess was right, the box held a silver goblet.

  The case had a combination lock. Morton touched the lid and almost jumped when it moved. He lifted it again with both hands. With the top gaping open, he stood up and stared.

  As Odrich guessed, he was a bright boy. Morton knew he was looking at the same crown he had seen on television minutes before.

  9

  The cavalcade turned up a cleared Fiftieth Street and drove along the south side of St. Patrick’s, the cars’ sirens giving the cue to the newsmen and photographers on the steps. At the barricades, Freedom Fighters who had been patient and silent began waving their signs and shouting. Isadore gave up making sense out of his walkie-talkie and handed it over with disgust. On the other hand, he couldn’t translate what the protestors were yelling, and he had that to be thankful for.

  As soon as the cars halted in front of the church, the mayor and his bodyguard emerged. The bodyguard ran up to the top of the stairs while the mayor helped the cardinal. Ambassador Nagy, the chief of the Hungarian mission, stretched his short legs in the company of the cultural representatives. With no clear plan, the diplomats, officials and squads of police formed two lines. Only then, Reggel opened a limousine in the middle of the line and directed his men out. They backed out, holding onto two brass-handled poles, two more men followed, holding the other ends of the poles, and in the middle was the meta
l coffer.

  Roman waited inside the church in the organ loft with Reggel’s second-in-command, a Lieutenant Csonka. In the galleries, the rest of Reggel’s squad stepped back into the shadows. The vestibule filled with staged tension, and as the doors opened the back pews lit up in the white glare of camera lights. The four men with the coffer entered, and the entourage followed. When enough dignitaries were inside they fanned out so that more pictures could be taken of the chest, which appeared progressively smaller in the flash of the strobes.

  The procession moved down the aisle to the communion rail. There Killane said a few words, followed by a Hungarian cleric. This ceremony attended to, most of the dignitaries were departing. A small group followed the coffer around the ambulatory to the rear of the sanctuary, where they entered and descended the sacristy steps behind the high altar.

  As he was instructed, Roman waited until Isadore had entered the church before he left the loft.

  The coffer sat on a table covered with red velvet. Once Isadore brought Roman through the sacristy gate it was rolled closed and barred. Beyond a nervous glance, no one paid attention to the two men’s entrance. Reggel hovered over the ancient chest.

  Angels supported the Hungarian coat of arms on the chest’s front. On top, three padlocks locked the lid’s bar. Over the lips of the lid was a wax seal imprinted DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY—ARCHIVES DIVISION.

  Dr. Gyulos Andos, a small man in formal afternoon attire, held a blackened key.

  “Dr. Andos was the last Hungarian scholar to see the crown before the war,” Ambassador Nagy announced. “He will open the first lock.”

  Fumbling betrayed the doctor’s eagerness. Finally, he had the key in the lock and it sprung open. The second key was given to a man called Szemely. He thrust it into his lock energetically.

  “Not too hard, please,” the doctor warned in Hungarian.

  The lock opened and Reggel picked it up with the first. The last key was offered to Killane and the mayor, but they both demurred.

  “If you insist,” the Hungarian ambassador said. Pleased and sleek as a beetle, he inserted the key and twisted it.

  Reggel took the final lock off the chest and swung the loose bars out of the way. With his first pull the wax seal broke. His second lifted the lid back to reveal the Hungarian state treasure in three velvet-lined compartments.

  The royal scepter lay on the right. In a square compartment on the left was the Holy Apple, a gold orb with a cross. In the deep middle compartment on a velvet cushion was the Crown of Saint Stephen.

  “It’s different,” the mayor blurted out. No offense was taken because it was what everyone was thinking.

  “There is nothing like it,” Andos answered with pride. “It is referred to in Vatican records as the sanctissima corona, the most holy crown. If it looks strange to you it is because it is like its people, half Western and half Eastern. Could you lift it, please, Captain?”

  Reggel brought the crown and its cushion out of the chest.

  It was slightly larger than a human head. The lower diadem was green gold and the upper hemisphere red gold. On top was a small bulbous cross bent to the right. Attached to the diadem and lying in a curl on the cushion were fine gold chains.

  “This was the gift of Pope Sylvester II to King Stephen, the first Christian king of Hungary.” Andos pointed to the rows of red gold. “The Hungarian nation began by his coronation with this crown almost one thousand years ago. Each band is decorated with enamel plaques framed by filigree mountings set with gems and pearls. The bands are cracked from great age and as a result of being buried in many hiding places during the occupation of Hungary for hundreds of years by the Turks.

  “The lower diadem was added, we believe, seventy years later. It was a gift of the Byzantine emperor Michael Ducas to our king Géza for Hungary’s help in time of war. It, too, is decorated with enamel plaques representing apostles and kings. The stones are contemporary except for the large faceted sapphire at the back, which was a seventeenth-century replacement. Above and below the headband are rows of pearls on a gold wire, and also around the top of the headband are translucent blue-green enamels with fish-scale designs in alternating arch and gable forms decreasing in size from the front. There are none of these on the back half of the diadem, but there are pearls mounted on gold pins.

  “The nine gold chains ending in semiprecious stones complete the diadem’s ‘stemma’ form. It is the most perfect example of the Greek ‘stemma’ form left in the world today. And so you see what I mean. For Hungary, the crossroads of East and West, a symbol composed of two gifts from Rome and Constantinople. And now it goes home.”

  A photographer from the Communist Party paper Nep­syabadsog stepped forward and snapped a shot, the explosion of his bulb seemingly reflected a moment longer in the gold and gems than anywhere else in the room; but when everyone’s eyes recovered, Reggel had replaced the crown in the chest.

  After a final blessing by Killane, the chest was shut and padlocked. The sacristy gate was then unlocked for the dignitaries to leave for a reception at the Hungarian mission on Seventy-fifth Street. As their voices faded, Roman was amazed. The mayor was already talking about a skiing vacation in Chile.

  Andos had recovered enough from his emotion to realize that the Gypsy was his counterpart.

  “Does the mission know about this?” he asked Reggel.

  “Mr. Grey’s credentials have been checked most carefully.”

  Andos backed down under the force of Reggel’s glower.

  Csonka appeared at the sacristy gate to tell the captain the church was clear. Reggel and Roman fitted the carrying poles into slots on the coffer’s sides. The two men lifted it off the table and carried it through the gate and up the sacristy steps. In the bay behind the altar another flight of stairs led directly under the sanctuary floor. It was guarded by a pair of double bronze doors inscribed REQUIESCENT IN PACE. Reggel unlocked them and swung open the way to the cardinal’s crypt.

  They carried the chest down into a short marble hall lit by inset fluorescent fixtures. At the end of the hall, directly under the high altar, was a vault seven feet deep and eleven feet wide. The longer wall was divided into fifteen marble panels in three rows. All the panels of the top row bore names etched in gilt of the men lying behind them. There were also prayers in Latin and English, and four of the panels displayed representations of a cardinal’s wide-brimmed, flamboyantly tassled hat.

  Isadore followed them into the crypt with the velvet-covered table, and they set the chest down on it.

  Reggel looked around with satisfaction.

  “The sacristy would never have done. Windows. Priests coming in and out. A fire. Anything could happen. But here? No one but—” He cocked his head to the wall of panels. “No way in but the stairs and an air hole. The altar above and stone below. The perfect safe.”

  “Yeah, this should really cement my popularity,” Isadore said. “Excuse me.”

  The claustrophobia of standing in a stone grave drove him up the stairs. Once in the bay he breathed the fresh air gratefully, unconsciously searching the faraway ceiling, making out a star of ribs around a dove of peace. A warm nausea replaced his chill when he saw that under the dove was a bright drop of blood.

  “The late cardinal’s hat,” Killane said conversationally by Isadore’s side, making the policeman jump. The detective had not seen him return. Isadore looked back at the suspended dot of red.

  “You must have seen a picture of it on his vault,” the cardinal went on. “Nobody notices them because they’re so far up, but all the cardinals’ hats are up there. His is the only one that’s still red.”

  He read the question in Isadore’s mind.

  “I don’t know what they’ll do about me. The synod of Vatican II decided they were a bit too extravagant with the tassels and all, so we don’t wear them anymore. The young priests don’t even we
ar a collar. So we substitute old disguises for new ones.”

  The other two men came out of the crypt. Roman was not surprised to see Killane. The cardinal had seethed throughout the ceremony in the sacristy. Reggel casually locked the bronze doors.

  “Come with me, please,” Killane ordered them. He crossed himself, the only one to do so, and led them through the ambulatory to a side door between a chapel and a Pietà of Christ.

  He shut the door behind them.

  “This is my private sacristy. I know you’ve been eager to see it, Captain. A photo of His Holiness, of myself and my family the day I was ordained, a crucifix of Our Lord, the hymn of Saint Patrick before Tara. A few chairs, a table, a wardrobe closet.”

  The cold eyes swept over the three men and rested on Reggel.

  “Now I want you to show me something, my friend. In return for granting use of the crypt to keep the crown, you agreed that there would be no firearms on the church floor. You are wearing one right now.”

  The Hungarian was surprised but not ashamed. He spread his hands.

  “I was wearing it at the airport. I simply forgot to remove it, Your Eminence.”

  It was the first time Roman heard Reggel use the title. It sounded sibilant on his lips.

  “Your men in the sacristy, they also forgot?”

  “How did you know that?”

  They were interrupted by a knock at the door. Through it Monsignor Burns inquired whether Killane was ready to leave for the reception.

  “In a minute, Monsignor. Tell the organist he can go to the loft now and have the ushers open the doors.”

  He returned his attention to the men in the room.

  “You know, Captain, I had some doubts when I was created cardinal. The truth is that men like the monsignor are right. I do lack a certain sympathy; my faith could be less intellectual and more instinctive. But I see now some purpose in taking a cynical assistant of state and making a cardinal of him.