The Dead Man's Brother Read Online Free PDF Page A

how.
    But I had had to tell someone , since I had promised my boss I wouldn’t.
    Good old five feet five, slightly plump, brunette, blue-eyed Eileen. I thank whatever Powers May Be for girls like you, and the fact that I have never been married to one.
    Good night, Eileen.
     
    *
     
    Airports. Enough there already. Stop. After we had broken the smog-barrier and a few windows I suppose, we came at last to be above a green glass, lens-like area that looked as if it went on forever. I can become obsessed with the ocean, just as with an enormous mountain or a vast desert; for these things are so out of proportion to myself that they seem to represent a cosmic indifference, another order of existence, or both. They make me feel as if something within me belongs to them, and then I desire to share their destinies. Too much thinking along these lines tends to make me morbid. Which is one of the reasons I prefer both nature and art in its smaller guises. So I turned my attention to the magazine I held in my lap and left the ocean to do whatever it is Byron said it does without me as an accomplice.
    Arrowing above the clouds and the water, I read till the blue went out of the sky and the night came down, pausing only to eat a surprisingly good meal and drink two Old Granddad and waters. Sipping the second one, I regarded the stars—so bright out here, up here—lit a cigarette and considered my situation.
    Collins had taken me to the Office of the Apostolic Delegate in Washington. There, a rosy-cheeked junior counselor had told me of Father Bretagne, occasionally referring to a thick file on the man. Father Bretagne had worked in the financial offices of the Vatican. He had been a thoroughly screened, highly trusted, highly qualified man. All three were standard requirements, he had explained, with special emphasis on the screening—ever since the days of Monsignor Cippico, the only priest from that office ever defrocked and busted for swindling. Father Bretagne had come out with a record the angels might envy and seemed to be doing a wonderful job for approximately five years. It was in the sixth year that they began getting a whiff of what was going on.
    There were no irregularities in the books. He had been too clever for that. In fact, everything he had done seemed perfectly legal from the face of the record. He had employed a financial maneuver developed by the late Bernardino Nogara, with a few added twists of his own. The basic difference, though, was that Nogara had used it to benefit the Church.
    In 1929 the Holy See had received $90 million as a result of the Lateran Treaty. Pope Pius XI had entrusted the administration of this money to banker Bernardino Nogara, who proceeded to invest it with enormous skill and equal success. At times, though, currency restrictions were imposed on the export of Italian capital. Nogara, however, had set up Vatican accounts with the Credit Suisse of Geneva. When the restrictions were in effect he would order the Swiss bank to deposit money in a New York bank in its own name. He would subsequently apply for a loan from the New York bank in the name of a Vatican-owned company in Italy. The Swiss bank would inform the New York bank that they were underwriting the loan, the money would be lent and, of course, repaid with interest. Thus, additional funds were released from the country despite the currency restrictions and made available for investment elsewhere.
    All legal and proper, albeit tricky, for Nogara was an honest man.
    In the case of Father Bretagne, however, the funds had flowed from Switzerland to a bank in Rio where a loan was then approved for a company Father Bretagne had had investigated and personally approved. It was only later that several missionaries and concerned laymen had gotten word back to Rome as to the condition of the company. They expressed concern over the fact that it consisted of an old warehouse hardly worth the stick it would take to poke through its moldy