The Road to Omaha [antikvár]

A number of years ago, the undersigned wrote a növel entitled The Road to Gandolfo. It was based on a staggering premise, an earthshaking concept that should have possessed the thunder of the ages . . . and you don't hardly come upon them things no more. It was to be a tale told by demons, the legions of Satan marching out of hell to commit a heinous crime that would outrage the world, a mortal blow to all men and women of faith regardless of their specific religion, for it would show how vulnerable are the great spiritual leaders of our times. Stripped to its essentials, the story dealt with the kidnapping of Rome's Pontiff, the beloved compagnuolo, a true man of God and of ordinary people everywhere, Popé Francesco the First. Are you with me? I mean it's really heavy, isn't it? It should have been, but it wasn't . . . Something happened. Poor Fool, the novelist, peeked around the edges, glimpsed the flip side of the coin, and to his eternal condemnation he began to giggle. That's no way to treat a staggering premise, a magnificent obsession! (Not too shabby a title, by the way.) Unfortunately, Poor Fool could not help himself; he began to think, which is always dangerous for a storyteller. The what-if syndrome came into play. What if the instigator of this horrible crime wasn't actually a bad fellow, but, in fiction's reality, a genuine military legend whom the politicians crippled because he vociferously objected to their hypocrisies . . . and what if the beloved Popé wasn't actually averse to being kidnapped, as long as his look-alike cousin, a none too