The Third Revelation Page 5

  “When do you have time to think, Laura?”

  “I’m not paid to think.”

  “Ha.”

  She had thought that now that she was a Catholic, they would have that in common, too, but Laura did not find it an exciting subject. Except to brighten up and say, “My brother is a priest, you know. In Rome.”

  Heather decided that what now chiefly interested her was not easy to talk about, nor was that necessary. What do you say about prayer?

  How odd it was that such a simple word, one she had known all her life, turned out to hide things of which she had never dreamt before. One Christmas vacation, she had read through all the volumes of Churchill’s account of World War II and had been particularly struck by a surprising locution in his instructions. “Pray do this, or pray do that.” The French would have said je vous en prie, the Italians, prego. The English equivalent had all but dropped from usage, which is what made Churchill so different; praying now meant asking for something, the way she had prayed she would get the job with Empedocles. Had she thought of it as an answer to a prayer?

  Now she began to read Teresa of Avila, first the autobiography. And second, too. When she finished it, she immediately read it again. The saint seemed to speak directly to her across the intervening centuries. From that point on, she was more happy than sorry that she and Laura had not again become close. Oh, it wasn’t the gossip that flew around about Laura and Ray Sinclair. There was no protection against what people might say. God knows what they thought of her. She had become reconciled to the fact that her enthusiasms were not shared by others.

  The house she had bought was isolated, on a country road, surrounded by woods that seemed to offer protection as well as seclusion. When she came home from work and turned into her driveway, she could feel her spirits lift. It was the first house she had ever owned, and it was furnished like every other house, more or less. The difference was in the lower level, which the previous owner had used as a home office. Carpeted, freshly painted, it had become her oratory. Reading about hermits and consecrated virgins as well as the Carthusians, Heather had in effect founded her own religious order. There was a prie-dieu, an altar with a portrait of Teresa of Avila flanking the crucifix. After a swift supper, she descended to her oratory and her real life.

  To pray is to put oneself in the presence of God. Since we are all already there, in His presence, that sounds easy, but the realization of it took quiet, an inner silence, waiting. She had no expectation of mystical experiences—reading Teresa had informed her of the danger of such expectations. All she wanted was to realize that simple statement. To be in the presence of God. Saying the rosary helped put her there. She had come to love the rosary, its repetitious prayer, each decade devoted to some great event in the story of salvation. It had surprised her when she came upon Mr. Hannan on his knees in the grotto behind the main building, saying the rosary.

  It seemed that some things connected all the faithful.

  Chapter TWO

  I

  The third secret of Fatima

  The Confraternity of Pius IX was formed in the late 1960s by half a dozen disenchanted priests, a sede vacantist or two, men certain the present occupant of the Chair of Peter was an imposter and the post legally empty; a variation on this, several were men convinced that Vatican II had been a heretical council, contradicting what had been Catholic teaching for centuries. They occupied a villa overlooking the Grande Raccordo Anulare where it intersects with the road to Leonardo da Vinci airport and Fiumicino, and they formed a religious community of sorts, bound together by their several discontents, dreaming of the restoration of orthodoxy and vindication of their accusations. They were under the leadership of Bishop Frederick Catena, Federigo, in the familiar democracy of the confraternity.

  Catena had been ordained for the diocese of Peoria forty-two years ago and had come to Rome for the Council as the secretary of his bishop. He had never been home since. Other members of the confraternity focused their discontent on what they considered doctrinal aberrations in the Church. At the center of Federigo’s own discontent were the apparitions at Fatima, Portugal. Some years before his attendance at sessions of the Council, as a seminarian, he had made a pilgrimage to the shrine, traveling by train to Lyon and then through Spain to Portugal. On his knees, he had traversed the great square to the spot where the Blessed Virgin had appeared to three peasant children. It had been his devotion to Mary that had carried Federigo safely through temptations against his vocation, periods of dryness and moments of gladness, too. From the time of his visit to Fatima he had said the rosary, all fifteen decades, every day. He read everything he could lay his hands on that concerned the apparitions and their significance. And he had become obsessed with the so-called secret of Fatima.

  This secret had been written out for the Holy Father by Sister Lucia, one of the seers who had survived and become a nun, and it was sent to Rome, with the understanding that it would be read and made public in 1960. But the year 1960 came and went, and no statement on the secret emanated from the Vatican. Federigo was appalled. This was direct defiance of the wishes of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

  His bishop had been trained in canon law and was rightly famous for the building program he fostered in his diocese. New parishes were created, churches built, parish schools opened. The bishop went off to Rome with the conviction that America had a thing or two to teach the universal church about renewal, the aggiornamento called for by good Pope John XXIII. They crossed the Atlantic on the Statendam, and on the journey Federigo spoke to the bishop about Fatima.

  “You must press for the revelation of the third secret, Your Excellency.”

  “What were the first two?” Bishop Spelling seemed amused.

  Father Catena told him. The bishop nodded. Prayer, the need for punishment, the threat of hell for the unrepentant. “Sound doctrine,” he observed. “Not what I would think of as a secret, Father.”

  If the journey had been longer, Father Catena would have begun a novena for the enlightenment of his bishop. That night he did not go to bed but knelt on the floor of his cabin and prayed that the Blessed Virgin would stir the heart of Bishop Spelling and cause him to rise up in the Council and demand that the third secret of Fatima be revealed. He fell asleep on his knees, and it seemed a special grace, but his prayer was not answered. Bishop Spelling became impatient whenever his secretary got on the subject of Fatima. In Rome, Catena began one novena after another, certain his prayers would be answered. Then even his silence seemed to annoy the bishop. After the second session, before the bishop went back to Peoria, he had a long talk with Father Catena.

  “I want you to stay in Rome and study.”

  Catena bowed submissively.

  “Canon law would not be your cup of tea, I think. Theology?”

  “Philosophy.”

  “Good, good. I was thinking of the Dominicans. The Angelicum.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency.”

  It was difficult to think of an assignment to study in Rome as exile, but he knew his bishop wanted to get rid of him.

  With the advent of the Internet, he came into contact with even more kindred souls who were appalled and astonished by the Vatican’s refusal to dedicate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, one of the requests that had been made at Fatima. For Catena, it was the refusal to divulge the third secret that held center stage. Speculation as to what it contained was rife. A missionary in Taiwan whom Catena had met at the Council, where Father Leone had been in the entourage of the lone cardinal from China, advanced the theory that the reason the secret was kept secret was that it contained the Blessed Virgin’s negative estimate of the Council. There was also Jean-Jacques Trepanier, a firebrand in New Hampshire whose Fatima magazine enjoyed wide circulation but whose intemperate attacks on the Curia had brought him under a cloud. Catena became acquainted with various episcopi vagantes, men who had been ordained bishops illicitly but validly by other wandering bishops. When Catena decided against retu
rning home to Peoria, he severed relations with his bishop and was himself ordained a bishop by a Melchite who had fallen out of favor with other members of his rite. The elevation made him the clear choice for superior when the community was formed and took possession of the villa overlooking the Grande Raccordo Anulare, the gift of a disenchanted Argentine who spent half her year in Fatima.

  A website now disseminated the views of the confraternity worldwide, while contributions from sympathetic souls put the community on a secure financial footing. A newsletter carried the various discontents of members of the confraternity to the four corners of the world, eliciting a gratifying response. Now they seemed to be in competition with Trepanier for the allegiance of alienated Catholics. When John Paul II had been elected, hope had risen that a pope whose Marian motto was Totus tuus would be sure to divulge the third secret. The pope, like his predecessor, went to Fatima and met with Sister Lucia, but that was all. Well, not quite. The canonization process for little Francisco and Jacinta had progressed. Nonetheless, Federigo’s personal confidence that John Paul II was their man was dashed when the famous Ratzinger Report, an interview with the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith conducted by Vittorio Messori, appeared in 1985. The cardinal was asked if he himself had read the third secret. He had. And why had it not been made public in 1960? The reply, that it might have seemed sensational, convinced Federigo that a cover-up was involved. A month later, Brendan Crowe, an Irish priest who was an avid reader of the confraternity’s website, came to the villa and expressed interest in the community there.

  “You are a student, Father?”

  “Yes, Bishop.”

  “You are from Ireland?”

  “County Clare.”

  A thought formed full-blown in the mind of Federigo that could only be regarded as divine inspiration. He told Crowe that he could be a member of the confraternity, but only in petto.

  “I want you to continue your studies, and conceal your judgment of the path the Church is on. You will study history at the Gregorianum. Your goal is to be assigned to the Vatican Archives.”

  There was no need to spell out his mission to Crowe. The third secret was in the Vatican Archives. Only an insider could hope to gain access to the explosive document.

  “You must live as if the confraternity does not exist.”

  “I understand.”

  “We will communicate only by e-mail.”

  Father Crowe rose after he had knelt and kissed Federigo’s ring. Now, or at least eventually, there was hope that the truth would come out, the Blessed Virgin would be vindicated, and the post-conciliar Church would be revealed for the heterodox body it had become.

  Crowe had been a disappointment. He seemed to have taken on the Vatican reluctance to make the third secret public. But Crowe’s revelation by e-mail of what had really happened to the secretary of state and Cardinal Maguire seemed to corroborate all the confraternity’s judgments on what the Church had become in these last days.

  A den of evil.

  II

  “You could be next.”

  Traeger had Brendan Crowe take him up on the roof so he could see where Cardinal Maguire had been killed. The scene when they came through the door suggested those one sometimes saw from hotel rooms in Manhattan, the rooftops of lower buildings turned into patios and gardens. Traeger sat where Maguire had sat, thinking of the knife that had been sunk in the cardinal’s chest. Rodriguez had spoken with awe of what had happened to Maguire.

  “He could be considered a martyr, you know.”

  Traeger had said nothing.

  “Depending on the killer’s motive,” Rodriguez added with apparent reluctance.

  That had brought it back to ground familiar to Traeger.

  “You won’t need me,” Crowe said now, turning to go.

  “Wait. Please sit down.”

  Crowe was cagey, and Traeger hadn’t understood why before. In the meantime, he had discovered the priest’s apparent connection with the Confraternity of Pius IX. Crowe sat down, reluctantly.

  “There’s nothing more I can tell you that I haven’t told you a dozen times.”

  “Oh, there’s always more, Monsignor.”

  No reaction.

  “I’ve been told that Cardinal Maguire should be considered a martyr.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Do you think so?”

  “That’s the point of cardinal red, you know. Expressing a willingness to shed one’s blood for the faith.”

  “You could be next.”

  Crowe was startled. “What do you mean?”

  “Think about it. You saw the killer. And he saw you.”

  Crowe thought about it, and apparently his vulnerability had never occurred to him before. “The Russian ambassador saw him, too.”

  “He has people to look after him. And what the killer was after is here, not at the Russian embassy.”

  “The report on the attempted assassination of John Paul II?”

  “That has been the assumption.”

  “It was Chekovsky who wanted it.”

  “Maybe he decided to get it the old-fashioned way, just take it.”

  “Well, he failed,” Crowe said with a trace of pride.

  “Maybe our assumption is wrong. What else could he have been after?”

  Traeger watched Crowe shift in his chair. “The archives are filled with valuable things.”

  “Valuable enough to kill for?”

  “Apparently.”

  “Like the third secret of Fatima?”

  “That’s already been made public.”

  “I’d like to see it.”

  Crowe shook his head. “I can’t show you that.”

  “Are you sure it’s still down there?”

  “Of course it’s still there.”

  Traeger steepled his hands, his fingertips touching. He brought them under his chin. “It’s missing.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “Call it a guess.”

  Traeger was sure Crowe knew the third secret was missing.

  The night before, Carlos Rodriguez had taken Traeger through the empty Vatican Library to the archives where a spidery little priest named Remi Pouvoir awaited them. Carlos showed the priest the authorization from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Pouvoir read slowly as if he were memorizing it. Finally he nodded, turned, and led them downstairs. They came into a vast temperature-controlled area with aisle after aisle of shelving on which archival boxes stretched into the distance. Pouvoir led them through the maze, seeming to know in advance exactly where the desired file was located. He stopped. A sunken light over his head seemed to illumine him. The priest’s thin hand went up, his finger sought and found a looping ring on the bottom of the archival box, and he pulled it out. Then, hugging it, he led them to a table, placed the box on it, and stepped back.

  Rodriguez was looking at the gray cardboard box with awe. Here was the secret written out by Sister Lucia, meant for the eyes of the pope alone. The three of them had stood there as if they expected the box to open itself. Traeger stepped forward and lifted the top of the box.

  It was empty.

  “Empty!” Rodriguez was beside Traeger, and his voice betrayed the shock and more that he felt. Where was the message from the Blessed Virgin?

  Pouvoir remained in the attitude he had struck after placing the box on the table and stepping back. His eyes were cast down. It occurred to Traeger that the priest must have known the box was empty when he put it on the table. He had lifted it from the shelf, hugged it to him, brought it to the table. Surely he would have known the difference between an empty box and a full one?

  Rodriguez, over his first shock, demanded to see the record of those who had examined the contents of the box. Pouvoir nodded, approving of the demand. He closed the box, returned it to the shelf, and then led them back the way they had come. He produced a ledger in which were entered by dates the requests for archival items.
He found what he was looking for. Under 2000. The name beside the entry was Cardinal Maguire.

  They didn’t speak until later, after they had left the strangely unperturbed Pouvoir, exited the building, and gone across the vast, now empty piazza to a bar on the Via della Conciliazione. Rodriguez had walked in silence, still shaken by what they had found—or hadn’t found. He ordered brandy and drank half of it. Then he began to talk.

  “The third secret was revealed in the year two thousand, when Ratzinger was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t return it.”

  “That’s what we’re going to find out.”

  “Just drop in on Pope Benedict and put the question to him?”

  But Rodriguez was in no mood for levity. What he meant was that first thing in the morning they would go to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Most of those who had worked for Ratzinger were still in place there: Di Noia, Brown, others.

  “Meanwhile, we get drunk,” Traeger suggested.

  He didn’t mean that, of course. In his present mood, Rodriguez could have drunk a quart of brandy without much effect. But they did have several drinks while Rodriguez talked, just talked—he had to talk. After a time, he subsided, and then, out of the silence, he said, “So the murders weren’t in vain. That’s what he was after.”

  Traeger didn’t realize at first that Eugenio Piacere was a cardinal. Like Joseph Ratzinger before him, he eschewed the cardinalatial robes while in the office, arriving in a simple black cassock with a beret pulled low on his head. When he took it off, he might have been displaying his high-domed bald head. He received them with a small smile, bowing them into his office, closing the door, and indicating where they could sit. He himself went to a brocade armchair that seemed too large for him.