Page 37 of The Medici Return

He realized that a man like Charles Stamm would not take rejection lightly. By all accounts he’d run the Entity masterfully for nearly five decades. Other popes had bowed to his expertise. This one had rejected it. The difference? Ascolani.

“You hold a grudge?”

“I do.” Stamm sat silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “Your meeting with Eric Casaburi was monitored. So Ascolani knows that a Pledge of Christ was mentioned. He will dispatch assets to investigate. He will not be able to resist.”

“I am not going to Munich.”

“I certainly hope not. But once you do not go, you are a marked man. You have intentionally ignored a direct papal order. They will come to arrest you, and charge you with bribery. Munich was a way to get you out of sight and avoid that. Your conversation with the clerk in the archives will also alert them that you have taken an interest in the Pledge of Christ.”

A mistake on his part, for sure. But at the time, he felt it the only play.

“The good thing is that Ascolani will not assume you would come here,” Stamm said. “For a while, after I resigned, I was watched continuously. But that stopped about a year ago.”

“Is there that much paranoia?”

“A man like Sergio Ascolani has many enemies. The Entity has now become his personal information and protection force.”

Not necessarily what he wanted to hear.

“I have a confession,” Stamm said. “I was aware of the allegations made against you. The head of the Swiss Guard is an old friend. When the trial prosecutors asked for verification on the information they received, he called me and I connected them with a woman I know in the United States Justice Department, who provided him one of her retired operatives. He’s the one who took the photograph of the money in the priest hole. I worked with both of them, right before the last conclave, on a matter out of Malta. His name is Cotton Malone.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before now?”

“I could not. But I also believed that if any money was found, it had to be planted. I was hoping you would come this way and ask for help.”

He appreciated the confidence and felt better with this old warrior on his side.

“As Cardinal Ascolani is about to find out,” Stamm said, “I am not dead yet.”

CHAPTER 24

ERIC SETTLED INTO THE SMALL SETTEE INSIDE HIS SUITE AT THEST.Regis. Florence was blessed with a multitude of hotels, most modest, some fine, but a few, like the St. Regis, were exceptional. The nightly rates were not any bargain, but management offered a political rate that made the luxury affordable. His suite faced the River Arno and consisted of a bedroom, two baths, and a roomy sitting area.

Where he could think.

His expert had assured him that he’d been able to extract enough viable samples that at least one of them should yield to DNA testing. Thankfully DNA did not lie. Absolute to greater than a 99 percent accuracy. Which hopefully would reveal one more line of Medici that sprang from Anna Maria and ended with himself.

But there was something else.

Of equal importance.

Francesco della Rovere was elected pope in 1471 and took the name Sixtus IV. He was both wealthy and powerful. A man accustomed to having his way. For Girolamo Riario, who may have been Sixtus’ son, he wanted to buy Imola, a small town in Romagna, with the aim of establishing a new papal state in thatarea. Imola lay on the trade route between Florence and Venice. Lorenzo de’ Medici had arranged in May 1473 to buy the town from the Duke of Milan for one hundred thousand ducats, but the duke reneged on the deal and agreed to sell it instead to Sixtus for forty thousand ducats. The purchase was to have been financed by the Medici bank, but Lorenzo refused, not wanting a papal enemy so close to Florence. Sixtus, in retaliation, closed the church’s accounts with the Medici and transferred them to the Pazzi family bank, which financed the purchase.

By 1478 friction between the Medici and the papacy was high. So a plan was concocted to assassinate Lorenzo and his brother, Giuliano de’ Medici. Sixtus was approached for his support and in a carefully worded statement made clear that while in the terms of his holy office he was unable to sanction killing, it would be of great benefit to the papacy to have the Medici removed from their position of power in Florence. Not a ringing endorsement, but enough for the conspirators to move forward.

The attack took place on the morning of Sunday, April 26, 1478, during High Mass at the Duomo of Florence. Murder within a church was typical for the Renaissance. It offered the easiest way to get to a well-guarded family at an unguarded moment. Lorenzo was assaulted by two of Jacopo Pazzi’s men, but managed to escape to the sacristy with only a wound. Giuliano was killed by Bernardo Bandini dei Baroncelli and Francesco de’ Pazzi, stabbed sixteen times. A number of Jacopo Pazzi’s men stormed the Palazzo Vecchio and attempted to take control of the signoria, but failed. The Florentines did not rise up against the Medici as the Pazzi had hoped. Just the opposite occurred. Many of the conspirators were captured that day and hanged, including the archbishop of Pisa, who’d been part of the plot.

More than thirty all total were hanged. Jacopo de’ Pazzi, head of the plot and the Pazzi family, escaped from Florence but was caught and brought back. He was tortured, then hanged. He was buried at Santa Croce, the Pazzi family church, but the body was dug up and thrown into a ditch, then dragged through thestreets and propped up at the door of Palazzo Pazzi, where the rotting head was used as a door knocker. From there it was thrown into the River Arno. Children fished it out and hung it from a willow tree, flogged it, and then threw it back into the river.

Between April 26, the day of the attack, and October 20, 1478, eighty people were executed. Three more executions occurred on June 6, 1481. The Pazzi were banished from Florence, their lands and property confiscated. Their name and coat of arms were perpetually suppressed. All buildings and streets designated in their honor were renamed. Their family shield, with its twin dolphins, was obliterated. Anyone named Pazzi had to take a new surname. Anyone married to a Pazzi was barred from public office.

The family was all but erased.

Eric knew the stories.

The Pazzi were supposedly founded by Pazzo di Ranieri, the first man over the walls at the First Crusade during the Siege of Jerusalem in 1099. He returned to Florence with flints supposedly from the Holy Sepulcher, which the family safeguarded and used each year to rekindle the Easter fire for the city. But another tale said the Pazzis came from ancient Rome and were one of the first to settle by the River Arno and colonize Florence.

Nobody knew if either story was true.

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