The Monsignor's Agents

By Bill Lockwood

Alison, US Army Intelligence agent and would-be Mata Hari, agrees to help Vatican Security track a potential assassin. She flies to Malta, meets with the contact, and hires a boat and crew to smuggle her and the suspect into Italy.
Max, history buff, former rock drummer, unintentional ex-pat, and bartender in Malta, needs extra cash so he can return to the States. Hired on the boat as cook, he impresses Alison by discovering what the suspect has in his two huge suitcases…just before the man gives them the slip. This Mediterranean boat trip is no vacation cruise, and it will take quick thinking to avoid potential death while capturing the villain red-handed.

• Language: Unknown
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Apr 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781509230709

Bill Lockwood

Bill Lockwood was a social worker by day for the States of MD and VT until he retired in June of 2015. By night he was an avid amateur theater participant and writer. He wrote reviews and feature articles in a Baltimore theater newsletter, had four short stories published in obscure literary magazines in the early 1990, wrote articles on the arts, personalities, and rural downtown development in the "Bellows Falls Town Crier" in VT in the late 1990's through 2006. He also wrote articles in Vermont tourist publications. In 2006 he was Greater Falls Regional Chamber of Commerce Person of the Year in recognition of his work as Chairman of the Bellows Falls Opera House Restoration Committee. He now contributes regularly to the weekly "Shopper and Vermont journal" and to the daily "Eagle Times", both papers in his area. He now has three historical fiction novels with The Wild Rose Press, and a fourth under contract.

Book preview

Inc.

Alison finally found the bar. It was on one of Valetta’s narrowest side streets. The buildings made it feel closed in. She had walked down the busy St. Ursula Street toward Malta’s Grand Harbor thinking all the way that one missed step of her sandals would send her rolling into the blue Mediterranean. She was annoyed at herself for not wearing sneakers like a good American tourist might do. She had dressed European as cover, to blend in. The light summer dress she wore had, like the little island, a mix of European and Mediterranean cultures. The dress was thin to make her feel cool in the African heat and European in style to show she hadn’t worn a bra. Neither had she worn any jewelry except for a simple watch on her wrist. The guidebook had said that in the eighteenth century young girls in Maltese society were given simple coral necklaces believed to ward off evil. She was trusting in her training and experience to take care of that.

She found the door she was looking for. She checked the time. Then, per her training, she scanned the street and saw only an unoccupied old English Ford parked some way down the block.

Okay, here we go, she said to herself. She took a hold of the door handle, took a deep breath of the hot, humid air, tossed back her hair, and opened the door. Immediately she saw the bar was a remnant from the old days of British rule.

The Monsignor’s Agents

by

Bill Lockwood

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

The Monsignor’s Agents

COPYRIGHT © 2020 by William B. Lockwood

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Jennifer Greeff

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Vintage Rose Edition, 2020

Print ISBN 978-1-5092-3069-3

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-3070-9

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

To Jeanie, my inspiration and wife of over 40 years

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my wife, Jeanie Levesque, for her foreign (and sometimes English) language, culture, and cuisine consultations, and my niece, Michelle Januzzi, for the sailing consult she gave for my last book which carried over to the boat ride here.

History and Author’s Notes

Tradition tells us that in 610 Muhammad received a message from the Archangel Gabriel that he was God’s new prophet. History tells us that in 1017 the Turks won the Battle of Malozgrit against the Christians in Constantinople and took over the Holy Land. In 1081 Alexis Comenus seized the Byzantine throne and requested troops from Pope Urban II, who then initiated the First Crusade to recapture the Holy Land. It lasted until Geoffrey de Bouillon of France captured Jerusalem in 1099. Through the continuing times of kingdoms, castles, and knights, there were many ongoing battles and sieges between the two sides, fought not just under the banners of religion but also kingdoms and nations.

A year after the Siege of Vienna in 1529, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V garrisoned the Knights of St. John on the islands of Malta, where they held firm against a Turkish fleet through the Siege of Malta in 1565. The struggle continues even today. During the cold war of the 1950s and again in the 1980s the fighting was not done by great armies but instead by propagandists and secret agents both attached to the governments of the day and some not attached but equally dangerous. Malta was ruled by the Knights of St. John until the islands were taken over by Napoleon in 1798. Two years later the French forces capitulated to the British, who took Malta over as a protectorate. It was not until 1974 that Malta became an independent republic within the British Commonwealth.

In 1929, Vatican City became unique as diplomatically its own nation-state and at the same time the headquarters of a religion, with both state and church ruled over by the Pope. On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and critically wounded, as he entered Vatican Square, by Mehmet Ali Agca, identified as a member of a militant fascist group, the Grey Wolves. On May 12, 1982, a second attempt, by a bayonet-wielding traditionalist Catholic, was thwarted at Fatima in Portugal. Just as the traditional red-coated British military guards at Buckingham Palace and the Tower of London carry state-of-the-art assault rifles from the times when the terrorist Irish IRA was setting off bombs, the Vatican security service has had to become more than the traditional pike-carrying Swiss Guard in Vatican Square that date from 1527. The Vatican is notoriously secretive about many things. But they must have had secret agents in the 1980s, they must have…

A reference is made to Mata Hari, the stage name for Margaretha Zelle (1876-1917), a Dutch-born exotic dancer, courtesan, and double agent during WWI. She was executed by the French, having been accused of passing information, learned from affairs with French officers, to the Germans, who it was alleged she also slept with. Also, a reference is made to the fact that Richard III (English King 1483-1485) had no gravesite. This story is set in the 1980s. In 2012 his grave was discovered during an archaeological dig in the parking lot of a social services office in Leicester, England, and he has since been re-buried in a tomb more befitting a king. Having worked in a social services office in the US for many years, I find the location of the discovery extremely ironic.

The Knights [of St. John] neglected to live, but were prepared to die, in the service of Christ.

~Edward Gibbon

~~~

Who am I to judge?

~Pope Francis

~~~

Washington did not outfight the British, he simply out spied us.

~Major George Beckworth, British Intelligence Officer 1782-1783

Chapter 1

Alison flipped on the TV while she waited for her morning coffee to brew. May 1, 1983, the announcer gave the date in Italian at the start of the local newscast for Rome. She had been in Italy for almost two years, and her Italian had gotten good. She understood everything that was being said. She looked out her apartment window to the street in the Trastevere section of the Eternal City. It was a section full of students and the young, full of interesting restaurants and cafés. Alison was twenty-seven, and she fit right in. The date made her feel good. It meant she was ending her current tour and enlistment in the US Army, and, despite the charm and romance of her present duty station, she would be going home. She worked for Army Intelligence and had been spending many of her recent hours sitting in cafés and walking the streets, keeping track of those thought to be enemies and who had been assigned to her.

The announcer went on about how May twelfth and thirteenth would be the first and second anniversary of the two assassination attempts on Pope John Paul II. There was fear of a third attempt being planned for one or the other of those days again.

Oh, great, she said out loud. I’m sure we’ll get involved in that. It was hardly seconds before her phone began to ring.

Alison flipped up her long dark hair and shook her head as she hoisted herself from the sofa that dominated her small living room, and she crossed to the phone.

It was her commanding officer. After the briefest pleasantries he got right to the point. We’re taking you off watching the local commies and such, and we’re lending you to a special security unit in the Vatican.

The Vatican? She had gone there as a tourist, but she had a solid Midwestern Protestant background. The current faith and religious tradition of the Italians all around her was not her thing.

We got a special request from a Monsignor DiPasquali, her commander continued. They specifically requested a woman for this job. I suppose they’ll ask you to do things their nuns won’t do.

Their nuns?

Well, I’m not a Catholic, but I doubt their training is anything like what we gave you.

No, I suppose not, Alison agreed. Growing up, when I lived with my parents, we went to a Midwestern Protestant church… What kind of job is it?

Don’t know. In her mind, she could see her commanding officer shrug. This DiPasquali, or one of his men, is going to contact you. Your pay and everything else will be from us. It will all be the same, but for as long as this job takes, you’ll report to them instead of to me.

Right, Alison agreed, but she was struggling to put it all together in her mind. Do I need to report somewhere like at the Vatican today? She was thinking she’d better wear one of her business-person dresses for the Vatican.

No. Her commander laughed. I don’t think this special section of theirs has an office in the Vatican with its name on the door. They will contact you first. I gave them your phone number, and I told them where you live.

Okay, Alison said slowly. She knew she was getting orders. She didn’t have the option to decline. But she did ask, Do they know I’ve only got two months left here?

They do, was her answer. I told them you are our best, and we are going to miss you while you’re gone. Maybe you’ll be back with us in no time at all.

Good, she said.

Then her commander wished her luck, and he was gone.

Alison had enough time to fix herself a good strong coffee before there was a knock at her door. She was had dressed in a T-shirt and cut-off jeans. She deemed that decent enough to meet a stranger, and she opened the door just a crack with her foot positioned to quickly push it shut, as her training had taught her. There was a young man dressed in black clerical garb, with an inquisitive look on his face, standing in the hallway.

I’m Brother Brendan, he said in perfect English, though he had a hint of a British accent. Are you Alison?

I am, she agreed, and she opened the door.

May I come in?

She hesitated a second, then nodded. He was a head or so taller than she, but there was definitely a peaceful aura about him. Alison sensed she was safe.

Brother Brendan stepped in just enough to let her close the door. I work with the Vatican. I trust your people have told you about us?

You guys work fast, she said. Are you here to take me to the Vatican? I should dress in better clothes for that, I’m sure.

"I’m here to take you to meet Monsignor DiPasquali. We are part of Vatican security, but we don’t work there. Our meeting will be in a church office in the Esquilino district near the train station."

The big train station, I know. She nodded. But the Esquilino district I don’t know very well. She knew it was an area where Rome’s immigrant and foreign population had settled over the years. She had been there on occasion, keeping track of the people her superiors had assigned to her, people that US Intelligence wanted to watch. It was an area full of ethnic shops and restaurants of all kinds. Alison, a foreigner herself here, had chosen to live where she was instead. Her neighborhood was full of young singles, students, and those pretending to be students, like her, and the young at heart as well. She added, The Esquilino is way on the other side of the river from the Vatican.

Brother Brendan shrugged. Our work does not depend on where we are in Rome.

Okay, she agreed. Let me dress up a bit. I think even modern-day liberal Italians still frown on wearing shorts in church. I suppose, if I’m meeting a monsignor, I should dress the same. She gestured to her couch. Have a seat. I’ll just be a minute.

Brother Brendan sat on her sofa facing the TV, and Alison went into her bedroom and shut the door. She emerged soon after in a simple dark blue dress and dressy, but sensible, shoes.

Brother Brendan was watching the continuing newscast on her TV. It was obvious that he, like her, knew Italian well enough to understand all that was being said.

There was a simple black Fiat parked at the curb in front of Alison’s apartment building. Brother Brendan drove, and she sat in the front next to him. The car was immaculately clean. It was as if he had just checked it out of the Vatican car pool. She wondered if cleaning the cars was one of the duties of the young priests and nuns in training. She knew doing penance was a very Catholic thing. She wondered if cleaning the company cars was one of the tasks they did to make up for doing wrong. Her full attention returned to the street ahead as Brother Brendan swerved around a slow-moving van, eliciting a rude horn blast from behind.

Instead of cursing like most of her soldier colleagues would do, Brother Brendan quietly said, This Rome traffic is awful.

Alison nodded. I’ve done my best not to drive in town. After a moment she asked, What kind of office are we going to?

It’s just a group of rooms we use as an office in a priest house that’s attached to a church.

Which church?

Brother Brendan named a church that