The Vatican, March, 2078, Saturday…

Cardinal Giovanni Prieto made the announcement without fanfare: the Pope was dead. The princes of the Church would be summoned to Rome and a new Pope would be chosen.

"You have twenty to one odds of being the next Pope," Cardinal Seamus O'Leary told him that evening over a glass of wine. "Straight from Monte Carlo. Are you able and willing?"

"If that is to be my cross, I am ready," said Giovanni with a smile. "I would not wish it on anyone, not even an old scoundrel like you."

"Your eminence is not speaking like the Holy Father," observed Seamus. "If it happens, will we still be friends?"

"Whoever becomes Pope will need you and your organization more than ever, I'm afraid. To mitigate your worries, I'm not sure we're friends even now." He raised his glass in a toast. "You were much more chummy with the old man. I'll have to confess a sin: I resented that."

"Ah, but you held the purse strings, Giovanni. I could do nothing without your approval."

"And all those items in your budget with the nebulous labels? Like 'surveillance,' for example. I never knew what that was spent on."

"You don't want to. That is my cross to bear." He looked at the wine. "2037 was a good year for the French wine industry, in spite of losing both the American President and the French Prime Minister that year. We almost stopped the latter, you know. I often wonder what the world would have been like if those two magnificent women had not been killed."

"If I recall, a certain Irish priest was the one who almost saved the French Prime Minister. Perhaps the Church needs more like him."

"Hmm." Seamus sipped his wine with relish. "Yes, I agree. And I have just such a candidate."