A Woman Involved by John Gordon Davis Page A

him, through pure, invincible Aristotelian logic, that a God existed – even if he could not, by logic, prove what kind of God He was. And Morgan had been able to believe again. It was a long way from the Holy Roman Church that he used to believe so completely, but Jack Morgan had the comfort of being able to pray again, at least in homage.
    But it was different for Anna Hapsburg. She believed completely.
    He looked at her. She lay on her stomach, one leg bent, her long hair matted across her face.
    Her beloved Roman Catholic Church? Was that what this secret, this Nazi file was all about? ‘Something that could destroy the whole Roman …’ she had said. And she had been aghast that it had slipped out.
    An important Western institution , Brink-Ford had said.
    Well, if the authority of the Catholic Church were suddenly destroyed, many governments would be in trouble. Latin America – the power of the Church there was enormous, it was the opium of the masses. If the Russians had the ability to undermine the Catholic Church, to destroy its authority, it would enormously help their policy of world-wide revolution, of ‘liberating the world from the capitalist yoke’.
    Morgan dragged his hands down his face. But all this was guess-work.
    He was too tired to think straight. Oh, to sleep. To just take her in his arms and sleep, sleep, sleep. But he could not. It had all been go go go, so much action, so much tension, that the enormity of it hadn’t fully sunk in until now. The Russians had sent a man to get her and she had killed him …  And if she hadn’t she would probably be dead herself now – the information extracted from her, her body dumped midst the ruins out there. And if the British couldn’t get the information out of her politely? He was bloody sure they’d get it somehow. And then what? Do they just turn her loose afterwards, to tell every newspaper what the terrible British had done to her, to shout her story from the rooftops? Including perhaps the very information they so desperately wanted to get their hands on. Or did even the pukka British make sure people didn’t talk?
    God, it was like a bad dream. Gone was the euphoria of finding her, of knowing she was safe for the moment.
    Something Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyons, a Nazi war criminal, knew.
    Something the Catholic Church had done during the Second World War?
    Collaborated with the Nazis? But it was common knowledge that the Catholic Church had not raised its voice to stop the Nazi extermination of the Jews, that the Pope of that time made a concordat, a live-and-let-live deal with Hitler to ensure that the Holy Roman Church was allowed to survive. But wouldthat, so long after the event, shake the Church to its foundations, destabilize the Western world?
    Something that God’s Banker had died over? … 
    He gave an exhausted sigh and looked down at the contents of her handgrip, spread on the floor.
    The notebook. Passports. The will. Some share certificates. Some newspaper and magazine articles. A wad of money. The keys.
    The passports. Three. At least one was false. It was an American passport, it bore Max’s photograph, but it was in the name of Maxwell Constantine. The next was Grenadan, the other West German, both in Max’s real name. It was not very unusual that he should have had two nationalities. But why the false American passport? It had a good number of immigration stamps in it, but mostly Max had used the German passport. Morgan had made a list of every entry and exit stamp in eyery passport, and had arranged them in date order. Max had travelled a good deal. South America, United States, Europe. Morgan could not remember the date when God’s Banker had been found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge but Max had been to England several times every year.
    The will. It left everything to ‘my darling wife, Anna Louise Hapsburg, on condition that she does not remarry nor cohabit with any man …’
    What did all that mean? Morgan