Read from the Beginning
Read Part 10
Gilbert’s telephone voicemail message to Fr. Martin Miller remained unheard for most of the following day. He wouldn’t find it until about the time that Gilbert was waking up and checking in with his partner about the failed DNA test. Fr. Miller would hear of the accompanying e-mail message from his old friend much sooner, as it had already come to the attention of his superiors by the time he arrived at his temporary office in Boston that morning.
As Fr. Miller was making his way carefully across the snow and ice covered parking lot of the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council building in Braintree, Monsignor Copani, the head of financial affairs for the Archdiocese, and Cardinal Armando Mara, the Vatican’s director of Financial Forensics were studying Gilbert’s e-mail message. A keyword had been detected by scanning software used by the Archdiocese and caused the message to be diverted to land on the Monsignor’s desk.
The message referred to an open case his friend -- a US law enforcement officer -- was working on. Gilbert’s e-mail said he had tracked Fr. Miller down to St. Bartholomew's Catholic Church in Pawchuck, Texas, where he had been assigned until very recently. He got this e-mail address from one of the nuns working in the church there, but was unable to get a fax number that he could be sure would reach his friend. So, he had faxed some documents to the church in Texas that he hoped Fr. Miller could examine at his earliest convenience. He did not provide any details regarding the documents, but said that Sister Katie promised to forward it to Fr. Miller in his weekly package.
The two read through the brief e-mail and then sat back in their chairs. They frowned, but did not speak to each other. Cardinal Mara placed a call to the church in Texas, but it was early there and no one was in the office. He left a terse message. The Monsignor dispatched his assistant to fetch Fr. Miller as soon as he arrived.
It had been many years since Fr. Miller had heard from his college roommate and he would be very surprised to learn that he had received a message from him. In truth, he hadn’t thought of his old friend in a long time. During the two semesters they had shared a dorm they had became like brothers. Miller had enjoyed similar relationships after he left school and went to the seminary, but he had never met anyone else like Gilbert. Since then, their relationship had faded into the back of his mind, displaced by the work of running his church and ministering to his parishioners.
The two had enjoyed many long theological discussions in those days, even before Miller had confided in Gilbert his desire to leave school to join the priesthood. Gilbert was in pre-law. Miller was studying forensic accounting. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember what had attracted him to it. If asked, he would reply, “God’s will” for it was his training in that discipline that had quickly elevated him from priest of a small parish in southwest Texas to the role of important advisor to the Archbishop and, by extension, to the Vatican.
Fr. Miller had recently been flown to Boston and asked to take on a special project. Of course, being asked by an Archbishop is rather like being asked to send a check by the Internal Revenue Service. Refusal is frowned upon. In this case, Fr. Miller had been excited by the prospect. This seemed like important work and while he wasn’t sure what he could bring to the project, he was proud, despite his best efforts to be humble, that he had been called from so far away to serve in this capacity.
The Bank of the Vatican had run afoul of American bank regulators when a Catholic priest working for the bank was found carrying a large amount of cash, U.S. dollars, by train from Italy to Switzerland. The United States wanted to know that the dollars were not on their way to a country that was currently under sanction. The Vatican had stalled for as long as possible, but when it became apparent that it would have to share information with the American government, the Vatican had requested a trusted expert look over the records before they were released. Fr. Miller was called to Boston.
As he understood it, the project required him to investigate the records just like the U.S. government would and reveal to the Archbishop anything that the records would reveal to the government’s investigators. When he asked what he was supposed to find, he was simply told, “whatever is there to find.”
And so for the past three weeks, Fr. Miller had been poring through bank records involving hundreds of international transactions, originating at the Bank of the Vatican but moving through institutions around the world, involving many parties and multiple currencies. Sure enough in his faith to know that the transactions represented God’s work, he was still finding reason to feel troubled.
First, there were a great many transactions that went to third parties that were either impossible to identify or described in such general terms that it was impossible to tell what they were. Secondly, the Vatican seemed to switch currencies on a whim, sending first dollars, then British pounds, and even using Bitcoin for some transactions. Finally, and perhaps most troubling, the Church as consistently losing money on the currency swaps. A lot of money was being lost in what appeared to be highly inefficient fiscal practices. He wasn’t sure what it meant yet, but it was there for him to find and so he planned to get to the bottom of it, in service to the Archbishop and the Holy Catholic Church.
Fr. Miller entered the building and shook the snow off of the heavy coat he had been loaned and ran a hand through his short blonde hair. It came away wet and cold. His ears were burning, not because at that very moment Robert Gilbert was mentioning him to his partner over a greasy breakfast, but rather because he hadn’t been loaned a hat. Something he planned to ask for shortly. He rubbed his hands together and then clapped them over his ears. He was standing like that, exactly like the hear no evil monkey, when Farther Carlson stepped around in front of him.
Fr. Carlson was a short man. He wore the traditional garb of the Catholic priest with the addition of a clipboard. Fr. Miller had never seen him without it, nor the worried expression he always wore along with his wire-framed glasses. From the moment he’d met him, Fr. Carlson gave the impression that he was late for something, or thought you were.
In truth, it wasn’t time that worried Fr. Carlson, it was entropy. He lived in fear of nature’s tendency to march forever toward disorder. Maintaining order was his true calling, one he secretly held even higher than his mandate to preach the living Gospel. There were a great many priests who were capable of delivering a decent sermon. There were few that could keep an operation like the financial center for the archdiocese on track. Maybe one. His prayer each night was that he continue to be that one.
For now, helping Monsignor Copani keep his department orderly was his role, but he dreamed -- and prayed -- that one day he would be called to a higher purpose. Some said that the Devil was in the details. Fr. Carlson knew that was wrong. The Devil was hiding just beyond those details and waiting for the opportunity to reveal himself should they be mishandled, as they too often were.
Fr. Carlson always got a small thrill from urgent missions because he knew that crisis was the battlefield where entropy clashed swords with order. He could hear the call to battle in the Monsignor’s order to fetch Fr. Miller. He wasn’t sure the reason, but he was quite sure that disorder would follow in the wake of failure to fulfill this mission. He opened his mouth to address his charge when he was interrupted.
“Good morning, Father Carlson. Do we have any hats in the chancery?”
The shorter man was caught by surprise at the question. He sputtered for a moment and then admitted that he did not know, but would ask someone who might at a more appropriate time.
“We’ll see to that later,” Fr. Carlson said. “You are summoned by the Monsignor. He would have words with you.”
“Very good. I’ll just drop my coat in my office,” Fr. Miller began.
“Actually, we should go now,” Fr. Carlson said. His light blue eyes, made slightly larger by his glasses and his will to see order maintained, stared at the other priest and did not blink.
Fr. Miller managed a half-hearted smile. “Very good. Lead on.”
Fr. Carlson stepped out ahead of him and marched down the narrow corridor toward the Monsignor’s office. Fr. Miller shook his head and followed
Read Part 12
