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Agca made that point again when he was moved from central police headquarters in Rome to the city's Rebibbia prison after eight days of interrogation. Unshaven and blinking in the sunlight, his gray worsted, double-breasted suit hanging loosely on his lean frame, Agca declared remorse—for incidentally wounding the two female American tourists. Said he: "I am well. I am sorry not for the Pope but for the foreign tourists."
What was known about Agca—especially the path of his travels from Turkey—remained remarkably fragmentary; the numerous accounts that appeared in the world's press were often contradictory. Turkish authorities were at least confident about one point: despite Agca's initial claims that he was associated with the Marxist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he was really a right-wing fanatic. Agca was a frequenter of the "idealist youth associations," which are known to be satellites of the National Action Party (N.A.P.), a neofascist group with 586 members currently facing trial for terrorist acts in Turkey. Of those indicted, 220, including N.A.P. Leader Alpaslan Turkes, could receive the death penalty. There was also no doubt that Agca had been convicted of murdering a Turkish newspaper editor, that he had escaped during psychiatric observation with the connivance of more than a dozen members of the Turkish armed forces, that he was sentenced to death in absentia and that he had also killed a man who informed on him.
Agca's trail led from Ankara to his home town of Malatya in eastern Anatolia and, in February 1980, to the town of Erzurum, 150 miles from the Iranian border. He then disappeared into Iran. Exactly where he went thereafter is a mystery. West German officials doubt that Agca visited their country, although Turkish sources claim Agca and another N.A.P. terrorist were seen near Stuttgart. Stamps in his forged passport indicate that Agca spent time in Spain. He is known to have visited Tunisia. Agca claims to have traveled to Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Britain, France, Belgium, West Germany and Denmark. But it was to Austria, which Agca did not mention, that authorities traced the 9-mm Browning pistol used at St. Peter's. The weapon apparently was stolen from a retired gunsmith near Vienna.
Could Agca have managed all this without help? He had handled the pistol like a trained marksman. A Rome police spokesman said his forged passport was "absolutely perfect. He could not have produced it alone." (Turkish police say they have arrested two men and a woman in connection with the passport forgery.) Was it possible that Agca could have financed his 16-month stay in Europe, as he claimed, through "the gifts of friends"? Authorities were by no means sure but at week's end they still believed he had probably been acting alone.
As Agca continued to puzzle the Italian police, the Pope was announcing his forgiveness for the "brother" who had shot him. The Pontiff was absent from the Vatican window where he normally delivers a Sunday blessing to pilgrims, but his tape-recorded voice was there instead ringing clear over the huge square.