The Dead Man's Brother Read Online Free PDF

walls, filled with non-functional machinery and operated by a staff of two—a manager and a secretary, both illiterate. Oddly enough—or not so, depending on how you look at it—this report was referred to Father Bretagne, who killed it. Subsequent reports came in, however, and were eventually seen by others. In due course, an investigation was begun. The fact finally emerged that the company was wholly owned by a corporation controlled by an Emil Bretagne, the priest’s brother. After several pairs of eyebrows were returned to their normal positions, further information was requested. Word of this apparently reached Father Bretagne, though, and he vanished shortly after the inquiry was begun.
    I took another sip of my drink, mashed my cigarette, lit another one.
    If that had been all there had been to it, I thought. If only that had been all there had been to it I could be back in my comfortable apartment rather than aboard a flight bound for Rome. I could have my shoes off and my feet on a hassock, with some decent music swimming around the room, perhaps a fresh apple and a cognac at my right hand, a good book in my lap…Sigh.
    But this was not to be, for a number of reasons. The main one, I feel, was that the Vatican did not want another Cippico affair. I can see the headlines in various anticlerical periodicals: PRIEST EMBEZZLES $3 MILLION, SKIPS ROME. They wanted to keep it quiet to kill bad publicity, which is why the civil authorities had not been notified. But they also wanted their $3 million back, which is why they aroused CIA interest in the case.
    The Vatican’s inquiry had come up with information showing that Emil Bretagne was once friendly with several revolutionary leaders, both in São Paulo and in Rio. When they were tipped, the CIA was not especially interested in this, as they felt they had matters down there pretty much covered. But some people up the ladder— leftovers from the old OSS days, I guessed—while feeling as I did that the money was the real issue, also felt they owed the Vatican a few favors from World War II times. It apparently was decided that while, on the basis of the evidence presented, they could not get officially involved in the thing, something ought to be done.
    I daresay they found some reason for putting a few of their men in Brazil to scrutinizing things a bit more closely. A guess on my part, as is a lot of this, but an educated guess. From what they did tell me it was not too difficult to arrive at conclusions as to things omitted.
    Their unofficial involvement obviously extended to digging through files to locate a person with some sort of half-assed background in this area, and then narrowing the field till they found someone who could be blackmailed into taking this stupid piece of a job. As to the job itself, it promised to be quite routine and dull. I was not to get mixed up with revolutionaries or thugs. I was simply to poke around Rome and its environs, speaking with everyone I could who had any knowledge of or association with Father Bretagne. I was to submit a full report concerning this, drawing any conclusions I might as to his departure route and present whereabouts, and then I was to come home. I had a contact man at the embassy. Not a very hush-hush thing: he was a security officer there. I was also to visit a few museums and galleries, to make things look good. Everything completed, my temporary employer would move in his strange ways and the charges which might be made against me in New York would not be made. I did not appreciate this form of coercion any more than I did the fact that the cost of this trip was to come out of my own pocket rather than their fat, secret budget.
    I could not help but think that there might be a little more to the job than they had indicated. I cannot subscribe to the notion of sending out a half-armed trooper when he could be fully armed, but I am familiar with the need-to-know business—now observed like a religious