Holding Out In The Eternal City

About the Book

“Holding Out in the Eternal City” is one of several still-unpublished “Dodo Dillon stories” which draw for background on the author’s lifelong knowledge of South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and East Africa. Dodo is doddering but indomitable. He is a living demonstration that older people can have adventures too.

Before leaving for Rome crusty old Dodo is warned by both his boss Emerson Ezchiel Dahlgren, ex-con President of Cherry Hill Christian College, and old Jesuit friend, F. X. Downer, to be careful of “those Italian monsignori.”

In Rome Dodo, who has his own views on birth control, meets oily Monsignor Stefano Arseni, secretary of the Commission, and wealthy fellow American delegate, “Sir” Daniel Flaherty. They try flattery, persuasion, bribery, and intimidation to get him to agree to conservative Vatican views. When Dodo refuses, Arseni’s choir boys throw him in the Tiber.

Returning to CHCC between sessions, Dodo finds that he is in trouble with “born again” Christians because of his connections with Rome. He is lobbied by strong-minded Catholics of opposite views and is thrown in the college pond by fundamentalist students. Conservative TV preacher Henry Pierce ousts both Dodo and Dahlgren from the college.

Back in Rome Dodo talks to Peter Paul O’Bryan, American Ambassador to the Vatican, and to Eva Teresa Smith, a glamorous female intelligence operative running a covert operation to unite Christians.

He encounters Jack Mulholland, a drunken American journalist who scents something wrong about the Commission and subsequently drowns in the Tiber. Dodo sees a cardinal of the Curia and the Pope. The latter is inflexible. Dodo respects but does not like him.

Dodo is kidnapped by professional thugs hired by Arseni and given a choice of going along, resigning from the Commission, or “the third alternative,” i.e., they will kill him. He escapes and finds that the Pope is in fact unaware of the Commission. It is Monsignor Arseni’s creation in order to get himself made a bishop. Dodo spends a sex-filled weekend with Eva.

The Commission is aborted. A discredited Arseni is assigned as Second Secretary at the Apostolic Nunciature in Zimbabwe. Back in the US, Dodo and Dahlgren attend F.X’s funeral. Thanks to Flahierty’s intervention they recover their jobs at CHCC.

About the Author

James W. Spain, born in Chicago in 1926 not far from the Englewood Rail Yards, grew up during the Great Depression, and was educated at the University of Chicago and Columbia University. He spent most of his life as a career diplomat, serving as U.S. Ambassador in Tanzania, the United Nations, Turkey, and Sri Lanka. He is the author of three books on the Pathans of Pakistan; American Diplomacy in Turkey; a diplomatic memoir, In Those Days ; a book of short stories, Innocents of the Latter Day; and several “Dodo Dillon” tales about the adventures of a retired American diplomat in exotic corners of the world.