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embarrassing to explain that this great man found himself with his pants down in one of the station toilets, answering nature’s call. He had ninety minutes before the train left for Hoek van Holland, and it was always better to go here rather than take a chance on the train’s dubiously hygienic WCs.
    Solomon Keys’s calm was interrupted by someone shoving open the entrance door, followed by noises that ended in the stall next to his until . . . until the noises continued with a light banging he couldn’t figure out. It would be indelicate to describe these actions and leave the elderly man ignorant of what was actually happening. Therefore, instead of making ourselves voyeurs, let’s remain next to Solomon Keys, who was trying to decipher the sounds reaching him from the other stall, as if deciphering a code in wartime. In his eighty-seven years this might have been the first time the American had listened to someone copulating like that so close by. It’s not our place to confirm or deny the theory that Skull and Bones promoted orgies or other similar activity. If they did, it never happened in his presence.
    Filling the sounds reaching Solomon Keys’s ears and stimulating his imagination, the stifled moans of a woman allowed him to imagine the pleasure and passion of the two. The sliding of clothes and smacking of bodies suggested their unbridled enjoyment. A few minutes later, the frenzy died away, and the moans changed to sighs of pleasure, masculine as well as feminine, and the words we cannot repeat. The wall separating Solomon from the passionate couple began to tremble more intensely, as if something or someone were being pushed against it. A change of position? Good God , thought Solomon, who was not religious. He remained seated, quiet, his pants around his ankles, his heart hammering. He had never given in to the clutches of matrimony, not that he hadn’t enjoyed sex, of course. But he had never heard such dirty talk during coitus.
    While their activities continued with the promise of a quick climax, the door of the stall the couple occupied opened suddenly. Two muffled sounds changed that giddy excitement to sudden silence. Solomon Keys heard the sound of the bodies falling lifeless on the floor.
    What the hell? thought a frightened Solomon Keys. Firm, heavy steps approached the door of his stall. Excitement gave way to panic. Solomon Keys stretched out his arms against the sides of the stall and rose quickly from the toilet bowl.
    Two shots passed through the door. The first hit the tiles behind him; the second, his chest. Gripped with pain, the American felt like everything was coming to an end. Whatever he had done or deserved in the past, or the simple uncertainty of life, was over today, now. He heard nothing from the other side of the closed door. Neither steps, nor breathing. Only silence. Maybe he could still get out and look for help. With great effort he raised one hand toward the latch on the door. It seemed enormous, like the heavy lock of a huge gate. His strength rapidly abandoned him. His suffering ended quickly with a third shot that passed through the door and struck his head. The end.
    Solomon Keys saw his life end in a toilet stall in Amsterdam Centraal station, along with the young lives of the sexual adventurers.

Chapter 7
    MARCINKUS
    February 19, 2006
     
     
     
You can’t administer the Church with Ave Marias.
    — PAUL MARCINKUS to the Observer, May 25, 1986
     
     
A lot could be said about Paul Casimir Marcinkus, archbishop of the Church of Rome. Over many years, more than a decade, he was the most influential man in the Vatican. How could a man who never became a cardinal become more powerful than the pope himself? Well, that’s another story.
    What truly mattered on this day of February 19 was the solitude. The solitude of Paul Marcinkus, after sixteen years away from Rome, exiled in his own land of birth. He’d lived in Rome more than two-thirds of his life, cutting off