The Secret Cardinal Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - CHIFENG, CHINA August 17

  Chapter 2 - ROME October 10

  Chapter 3 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5 - October 12

  Chapter 6 - October 13

  Chapter 7 - October 14

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9 - October 15

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11 - LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  Chapter 12 - CORONADO, CALIFORNIA October 16

  Chapter 13 - VATICAN CITY October 17

  Chapter 14 - October 18

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16 - SÜHBAATAR PROVINCE, MONGOLIA October 19

  Chapter 17 - VATICAN CITY October 20

  Chapter 18 - CHIFENG, CHINA October 28

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20 - VATICAN CITY October 29

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24 - BEIJING, CHINA October 29

  Chapter 25 - CHIFENG, CHINA October 29

  Chapter 26 - BEIJING, CHINA

  Chapter 27 - CHIFENG, CHINA

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 33 - XIYUAN, CHINA

  Chapter 34 - CHIFENG, CHINA

  Chapter 35 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 36 - CHIFENG, CHINA

  Chapter 37 - CHIFENG, CHINA

  Chapter 38 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40 - CHIFENG, CHINA October 30

  Chapter 41 - INNER MONGOLIA

  Chapter 42 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45 - GANSU, CHINA

  Chapter 46 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 47 - ROME

  Chapter 48 - CHIFENG, CHINA October 31

  Chapter 49 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51 - TIBET

  Chapter 52 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 53 - ROME

  Chapter 54 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 55 - TIBET November 1

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 59 - TIBET

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64 - LADAKH, INDIA

  Chapter 65 - VATICAN CITY

  Chapter 66 - BEIJING, CHINA

  Chapter 67 - ROME

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70 - BEIJING, CHINA November 2

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  Praise for The Secret Cardinal

  “Only rarely does a book make your jaw drop. Tom Grace’s The Secret Cardinal is such a novel. It is as riveting as it is shocking and revelatory. Here is a story of corruption, politics, murder . . . all tangled around a secret war waged in the most surprising place of all: behind the walls of the Vatican. A political and religious tour-de-force that should be read by everyone.”

  —James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author of The Judas Strain

  “Grace builds a suspenseful head of steam as Kilkenny and friends overcome twists and obstacles in a dangerous race against Liu’s forces.”—Publishers Weekly

  “An intelligent and intriguing thriller with characters worth rooting for and a welcome twist. . . . The Secret Cardinal is a suspense-filled work of fiction about faith, hope, sacrifice, and forgiveness, and a story that shows what precious gifts faith and freedom really are.”—Bookreporter

  “Grace’s spinning web of international intrigue makes for a gripping read. . . .”

  —Library Journal

  “This novel should have great appeal to those who enjoy intelligent, thought-provoking escapism.”—Lansing State Journal

  “A storyline straight from the headlines. . . . Like The Da Vinci Code, this story features plenty of Vatican intrigue and several gory murders. But in The Secret Cardinal those representing the Catholic Church are the good guys.”

  —US Catholic Magazine, Editor Pick

  “A deft blend of fact and fiction. . . . The Secret Cardinal exceeds its entertainment value by raising awareness of China’s persecuted underground Catholic Church, which has been illegal for more than a half century.”

  —National Catholic Register Review

  “Another multi-faceted thriller. . . . The deep sense of spirituality that runs through The Secret Cardinal serves to distinguish it from most other titles in the field. If there is such a thing as a literary thriller, Grace has cornered the market.”

  —Horror World

  “Attention Mr. Bond, James Bond, please move aside for a new special operations hero. He’s Nolan Kilkenny, an ex-Navy SEAL and the creation of bestselling author Tom Grace in The Secret Cardinal.”—Catholic Online

  “Grace has done a wonderful job weaving in and out of an all-out techno-thriller on the one hand and intricate religious intrigue on the other.”

  —CBA Retailers+Resources Magazine

  “Calling all suspense enthusiasts! Here’s a Catholic-themed yarn by a bestselling author of the same caliber as Tom Clancy!”—Faith & Family Magazine

  OTHER BOOKS BY TOM GRACE:

  Spyder Web

  Quantum

  Twisted Web

  Bird of Prey

  TO MARY J. HOPPS, WHO BELIEVES.

  1

  CHIFENG, CHINA August 17

  Do this in remembrance of me.

  Yin Daoming tilted his head back slightly as he raised the sacramental cup toward heaven. It was only a drinking glass, but he held it as reverently as a golden chalice, and on its glossy surface he glimpsed his reflection—a serious young man with a solid, clean-shaven face. Many of the young women in the village near Shanghai where he was raised thought Yin would make a fine husband, only to be disappointed when he accepted his calling to the Catholic priesthood. A humble man, Yin likened himself to the glass he held high, a simple vessel of God’s grace, an instrument for serving God by serving His people.

  The glass, with its mixture of water and wine, glinted in the reflected light of candles arranged on a makeshift altar. The sacramental vintage at these clandestine services was typically a few ounces of the locally brewed baijiu—an incendiary 90-proof beverage. No obvious physical change could be detected in the rose-colored liquid, but Yin knew with absolute certainty that the miracle of transubstantiation had occurred—that what he held before him was spiritually the blood of Jesus Christ.

  Yin lowered the glass to his lips and took a small sip, the heavily diluted baijiu burning his throat like liquid fire. As a seminarian, Yin had once asked his bishop if using such a potent alcohol for sacramental purposes wasn’t in some way sacrilegious. The bishop assured him that although Rome might find baijiu a bit unorthodox, it would overlook certain local adaptations, especially given the persecution of the Church in Communist China. The Roman Catholic minority in the world’s most populous nation found itself in a Darwinian struggle to survive, and it would either adapt or die.

  The shades in the room were drawn against the hostility of the outside world. The earliest Christians had existed in much this way under the pagan rule of imperial Rome. Thirty-three members of the extended family in whose home Yin celebrated this mass knelt around the low wooden table that served as the altar. The youngest, a baby girl, seemed to have forgotten the brief trauma of her baptism and suckled her mother’s breast contentedly.

  Siblings and cousins waited patiently as Yin distributed communion first to the famil
y elders. The celebration of mass was a rare event, and Yin labored to ensure that each service was memorable enough to be worth the risk of attendance. For a majority of the world’s Catholics, the only peril mass presented was to their soul if they failed to attend regularly. But the danger to Yin’s persecuted flock was more immediate. The government in Beijing viewed attendance at an illegal mass as an expression of loyalty to a foreign entity over which China’s leaders held no control. The penalties for this crime included intimidation, imprisonment, and occasionally death.

  Only the oldest of those present at this gathering could recall a time when Chinese Roman Catholics practiced their religion openly. Their children and grandchildren had learned their catechism in whispers and cloaked their faith in a mask of officially sanctioned atheism. In the countryside, people did not abandon the beliefs of their honored ancestors at the whim of rulers in distant Beijing. Nor did they behave in a way that might draw their government’s wrath. The underground Catholics of China bent like the willows in the wind, but they did not break.

  After distributing the bread of the Eucharist, Yin offered the wine, reenacting a ritual that originated with the Passover Seder Jesus shared with his closest friends on the eve of his crucifixion. The simple act brought Yin and his congregants into communion with a billion other Roman Catholics around the world and with God.

  Yin had prayed in beautiful churches, but nowhere did he feel closer to the Creator than with those clinging to their faith against immense hardship. It was in ministering to his endangered flock that Yin truly fulfilled his calling as a priest and became, in the words of Saint Francis of Assisi, a channel of Christ’s peace.

  “This is the blood of Christ,” Yin said reverently as he offered the glass to a boy just old enough to make his first communion.

  The boy bowed his head respectfully and replied, “Amen,” but barely allowed the scorching liquid to touch his lips. Yin suppressed a smile.

  As Yin took the glass from the boy, he heard a metallic sound, the bolts on a heavy door pulling open. It was a sound he knew well, but not from this place.

  “Wake up, old man,” a voice barked.

  Light flooded in and the sacramental scene faded, erased from his mind’s eye by the intrusion. In an instant, the clandestine mass withdrew into his precious trove of memories.

  Yin was sitting in the middle of a bare, two-meter-square cell surrounded on all sides by concrete. Legs crossed and hands palm down on his knees, he sat as erect and serene as Buddha. Only hints remained of the lustrous black hair of his youth, scattered threads in a mane whitened by age and hardship. Whiter still was his skin, bleached a ghostly shade by decades denied the warm light of the sun.

  A thick steel door and a small air vent were the only suggestion of a world outside the cell. In a tamper-proof fixture recessed into the ceiling, a lone dim bulb provided nearly the only illumination to reach Yin’s eyes in thirty years. He had long ago lost all sense of day and night, and of the larger passages of time—temporal disorientation being but one of the techniques employed against prisoners like Yin.

  “I said wake up!”

  The guard punctuated his command by jabbing the end of an electrified baton into Yin’s abdomen. Yin exhaled sharply at the explosion of pain and toppled backward, careful not to strike his head against the floor.

  “I am awake, my son,” Yin panted softly, regaining his breath.

  “I’d rather be the offspring of a pig farmer and his ugliest sow than any son of yours,” the guard spat back. “Get up!”

  Yin rubbed his stomach and squinted at the bright light pouring in from the corridor. His tormentor was a dark silhouette, and beyond the doorway stood several more guards.

  The Chinese court had sentenced Yin to death for his many crimes against the state—an order not yet carried out for political reasons. The authorities recognized Yin as a man of great charisma and deep personal faith—a combination that could spread his foreign religion like a plague were he placed with the prison’s general population. So unlike most prisoners in the laogai—the gulags of China—Yin was not permitted the opportunity to reform himself through the state’s generous program of hard labor and reeducation. Instead, he was subjected to lengthy periods of isolation, punctuated by beatings and interrogations.

  Yin knew it had been weeks, possibly months, since his last interrogation. The same questions were asked every time, and always he provided the same answers. The brutal sessions came far less frequently now than in the early years of his incarceration, more a task on a bureaucratic checklist than any genuine attempt at reform. After years of systematic effort, the Chinese government seemed to accept the fact that the underground bishop of Shanghai would die before renouncing the pope or the Church of Rome.

  Yin rose to his feet and awaited the next command.

  “Out!” the guard barked.

  Yin followed as the guard backed through the door. Compared with the dimness of his cell, the light in the corridor burned his eyes as brightly as the noonday sun. The four guards stared at their charge with disgust.

  “Restraints,” the senior guard commanded.

  Yin assumed a familiar position with his feet spread shoulder-width apart and his arms extended from his sides. Two guards cinched a wide leather belt tightly around his thin waist. Four chains hung from the belt, each terminating in a steel manacle. Yin showed no outward sign of discomfort as the manacles dug into his wrists and ankles, knowing it would only invite a beating. The arteries in his wrists throbbed, and his hands began to tingle with numbness.

  The lead guard inspected the restraints, though he knew they were unnecessary. Yin had never reacted violently toward a guard in all his years of imprisonment. The only danger the bishop posed was to himself, and that because of his stubbornness. Satisfied that Yin was securely bound, the guard motioned the escort to proceed.

  Yin kept his head bowed and his eyes on the floor as he moved down the corridor. The simplest gesture, a nod or glance at anyone, was forbidden and would result in a severe beating, as the badly healed break in his left arm bore testament. Yin’s eyes gradually grew accustomed to the light as he shuffled along, taking two short steps for each stride by the guards.

  Just up ahead, Yin thought, counting his steps.

  The guards stopped. A buzzer sounded the release of the electronic locks securing the door to the solitary-confinement wing. The heavy steel door slid open, and the small procession continued.

  Almost there, almost there.

  Then he saw it—a glint, a tiny sliver of light on the floor. Yin turned his head a few degrees to the right and gazed upward. A small window, barred and paned with grimy wired glass, but a window nonetheless to the world outside. It was midday, and the sky was clear and blue.

  A thin plastic cane lashed across Yin’s back, causing him to drop to his knees. The return stroke caught his right shoulder, and Yin toppled to the floor.

  “Enough!” the lead guard commanded. “Get him back on his feet.”

  The guard who had struck him grabbed Yin’s arm and pulled him up so forcefully that the bony shoulder popped. Despite the blinding pain, Yin found his feet, and when the guard released his arm, the traumatized joint slipped back into place.

  The march continued through the concrete corridors of the prison, the light rustle of Yin’s sandals lost in the guards’ heavy boot steps. Yin knew the route by heart, but only one way—rarely did he emerge from an interrogation conscious.

  Yin felt a conflicting mixture of relief and dread when the guards walked him past the doorway that led to the corridor of interrogation rooms. Today’s journey from his cell was to be different.

  Lord, Yin prayed silently, whatever is your will, I remain your servant.

  The guards escorted Yin through parts of the prison he could not recall. Then a doorway opened, and Yin felt a breeze kiss his face. It was not the prison’s fetid air thick with rotting filth and human sweat, processed and recirculated by dilapidated machinery
. This breeze was a whisper from the heavens. Yin detected the faint aroma of prairie in summer and the sweetness in the air that follows a cleansing rain.

  So they have finally grown weary of me, Yin thought.

  The only reason Yin could fathom for the guards to take him outside was to put a bullet in the back of his head, so he savored each breath of fresh air as if it were his last.

  “Stop!” the lead guard barked.

  Yin kept his head bowed and focused on his silent prayers. The sound of footsteps crunching on gravel, the measured strides of a long-legged man, intruded on his meditations.

  “The prisoner, as ordered,” the lead guard announced respectfully.

  Yin heard a rustle of paper and glimpsed a file folder in the hands of a tall man who wore not a uniform but the dark gray suit and polished black leather shoes of a businessman.

  “Show me his face,” the man ordered.

  One of the guards grabbed a handful of Yin’s hair and jerked his head back. Yin’s eyes traveled up the elegantly tailored suit past a pair of broad shoulders. The man’s face was long and hard, the skin taut over bone and muscle. His jet-black mane swept back from his face, held in place like a glossy veneer so slick that the morning breeze had not dislodged a single hair. The man’s mouth was a thin line that betrayed no emotion. Yin guessed his age somewhere between late thirties and mid-forties—only a child when Yin arrived at Chifeng Prison.

  When Yin’s eyes met those of Liu Shing-Li, the old priest shuddered. Liu was appraising the prisoner with eyes so unnaturally black that it was impossible to discern between iris and pupil. Liu’s eyes seemed to absorb everything into their unfathomable darkness while betraying nothing. Yin had always viewed hell not as a sea of unquenchable fire but as a state of being totally removed from God. This was what he saw in Liu’s eyes.