The Third Revelation (32 page)

And of course he meant now. There would be a museum, a chapel, an administration building. For now. Gabriel Faust acted as if decisions were made in this way anywhere else in the world. A strange man. At first he had seemed moody, dim, a bauble Zelda had picked up on her travels, but he had gradually transformed himself into the temperamental expert called upon to explain to the uninitiated the arcana of his trade. The manuscript of the third secret had been a coup.

“How did you learn of it?” Nate asked when Gabriel Faust informed him of the Vatican folder. Of course Laura was present.

“A telephone call,” Faust said.

“Some nut?”

“Precisely my reaction. I hung up.”

Faust explained, in more detail than was necessary, the care and caution that had led finally to the meeting with the man. At this point, he had brought Nate into the picture. The sequel had been bizarre. Nate made out a cashier's check to the amount of four million dollars, and Gabriel Faust went off alone to keep the rendezvous. It was as elaborate as a kidnapping. Faust had been warned that his life was forfeit if anyone accompanied or followed him. An hour and a half later, he was back at Empedocles, eyes asparkle, clutching the treasure. After its authentication, the announcement was made. Poor Father Trepanier looked as if he would weep for joy.

And now what? Gabriel deferred to Ignatius Hannan on the matter.

“It is stolen property, isn't it?”

“That's a rather stark way of putting it. As I explained, museums are full of things with histories of, shall we say, unusual previous ownership.”

“Stolen?”

Faust's shoulders lifted.

“Stolen,” declared Nate Hannan. “A message from the Blessed Virgin Mary. That adds sacrilege to the crime.”

Faust was unprepared for this. During the announcement of the acquisition, the new director of Refuge of Sinners had been allowed to bask in his triumph. Now he was being faced with something like a scolding.

“Rescued, perhaps.”

Laura intervened. “Doctor, have you prepared a release on this matter? Some indication of the contents of the document?”

“I will do so immediately.”

“Of course you yourself have read the message,” Laura said.

“Of course.”

“And the expert you consulted?”

“Inagaki, yes.”

“Anyone else?”

A pause, then, “No.”

Laura said, “You hesitated.”

“I consider my wife my alter ego, not someone else.”

“Zelda has read the message?”

“Oh no. No! But we discussed it. As husbands and wives will.”

Gabriel went away to prepare the release Laura had mentioned.

“Well?”

Nate looked at her. But Laura had long since learned to discern when he really wanted her advice.

She said, “What do you intend to do?”

“Return it.”

 

 

Return it unread. Ignatius Hannan had no intention in the world of reading a message from the Blessed Virgin, through Sister Lucia, that had been meant for the eyes of the pope. He had meant it when he had added sacrilege to theft in speaking of how this document had come into his possession. After the announcement, the precious document had gone into the Empedocles safe.

Gabriel Faust brought a statement on the new acquisition. Nate thanked him and had Laura rewrite it.

He told her about Bea.

When they landed in Rome, Father John Burke met them with a Vatican car. He sat up front with the driver as they took Heather to the Bridgetines near the Campo dei Fiori where she would stay. Then they went on to the Casa del Clero next to the church of San Luigi dei Francesi, where Burke smoothed the way. He came up with him to the little boxlike room with an armoire, a desk, and a bed that looked perhaps two feet wide. Traeger dropped his bag on the bed.

“Thanks, I guess.”

“It is pretty austere, isn't it? Laura emphasized something out of the way. What could be more out of the way than a residence for priests?”

Burke assured him that none of his fellow residents would question him or probably show much interest in him at all.

“Temporaries come and go, and the permanent residents hang together. The beard was a good idea.”

Well, that cleared that up. Traeger had wondered if Father Burke knew he was sheltering a fugitive. Whatever Laura had told him seemed to have allayed any doubts he'd had. He handed Traeger his card.

“My cell phone is also listed there.”

Traeger brought it to his brow in a salute. And then he was alone.

The adjoining bath was almost as large as the room. He put his bag on the floor and lay on the bed. The room had a very high ceiling. Traeger began to compute the square footage, comparing the height of the walls with the width of the room. Turn it on its side, and it wouldn't be so bad.

He was not complaining. At Heather's he had had time to think. He needed more time. The image of Bea, taped in that chair, came and went. The poor, dear woman. During his active years, he had often worried that she might be exposed to danger, but it had never happened. Since his retirement, he had unwisely ceased to worry.

Was Dortmund, too, dead, yet to be discovered, added to the toll Anatoly was taking? But Dortmund had been part of the game, he had survived years of undeclared combat, and he had earned the peace and quiet of his place beside the sea. Now it seemed to Traeger that Dortmund had had some premonition that the two of them were moving back into the target area when he sent Traeger off to Rome.

Well, now he was back in Rome, this time to escape the baying hounds that had been after him in the States. The rogue ex-agent.

“I can't stay here,” he had said to Heather when he returned after discovering the body of Bea.

“Of course you can.”

“My safe was broken into.”

She looked at him. “Is it gone?”

“Yes.”

He told her about Bea. The existence of evil did not seem to surprise Heather.

While he was there, she slept on a couch downstairs in her oratory, giving Traeger the master bedroom. That was not the bedroom she used. Across the hall was a smaller bedroom with blue walls, chintzy curtains, pastel pictures, and a fluffy throw rug beside the bed. He assumed that must be her usual bedroom. But down the hall was another bedroom in which there was a single bed, a dresser, and venetian blinds at the windows. On the wall at the foot of the bed was a very large crucifix. On the dresser, a statue of Our Lady of Fatima. A wooden beaded rosary hung from the bedpost.

Grudgingly, Traeger admired Anatoly's skill. Not the murders—any old hand could have done those—but the manipulation of the media. Was he getting help? And from whom? The disappearance of Dortmund made Traeger realize how on his own he was. Maybe it wasn't so far off to call him a rogue ex-agent. He wondered if Carlos Rodriguez would still accept him as an authorized delegate from the old agency. It was time to find out.

He made the call flat on his back, staring at the distant ceiling.

“Carlos. I'm back. Where can we meet?”

“Remember Trastevere?”

“Of course.”

“The trattoria next to Sabatini's.”

“When?”

“Two?”

“Two.”

He hung up. It was not yet noon. Did he dare to fall asleep? The flight over had begun in daytime, against the movement of the sun, gaining five hours as they came. The sun had been setting behind them when they landed in Rome. He closed his eyes.

He walked to Trastevere from the Casa, favoring narrow streets like the Via Monterone, crossed the Vittorio Emanuele, and soon was at the bridge. Central Rome, ancient Rome, is a compact place. He went past the trattoria several times. The outside tables were empty. On his third pass, he went in. Carlos was at a table. Across from him was Dortmund.

“I thought you were dead,” Traeger said, taking a seat. For a dizzy moment he had wanted to embrace the old man.

“They killed Marvin.” His golden retriever. “Carlos was good enough to offer me sanctuary. Almost literally.” Dortmund was housed in an apartment in the Vatican Observatory, within the walls, on a hill behind the basilica.

To Carlos, Traeger said, “I've been snookered.”

Carlos ran that through his mental dictionary.

“Screwed.”

“Ah.”

“Outfoxed and robbed.”

He explained the odd itinerary, the stolen Vatican Library file he had taken until it had been stolen again, from Traeger's safe.

“They got Bea,” he said to Dortmund. How easily that was said.

The old man closed his eyes.

“What's new here?” he asked Carlos.

“Aren't we going to eat?”

Both Dortmund and Traeger marveled at Carlos's appetite. How did good news affect him if bad made him so ravenous? Antipasto, minestrone, spaghetti, and then a
coteletta alla Milanese
. Wine? Carlos did away with most of the liter of
vino della casa
. Dortmund had played with his spaghetti, nibbled on bread, and sipped a glass of wine to which he had added mineral water, no crime in Rome. Traeger had what Carlos had. Ordeal by food.

“He's back in Rome,” Carlos said, having sat back and scrubbed his face with his napkin.

Traeger waited. Dortmund stopped seeing how many pieces he could reduce a slice of bread to.

“He wants to trade.”

“The assassination report?”

Carlos nodded. “Cardinal Piacere refuses. The Holy Father is acting as his own secretary of state, but he has put Piacere in the office.”

Traeger said, “I may have a solution.”

Traeger had written the agency report that had gone into the Vatican Archives. “It's still on my computer.”

Dortmund stirred with disapproval. There had been several instances in recent years of classified materials going out of the agency on the computers of people who should have known better.

“Where is your computer?”

Traeger indicated the shoulder bag he had put beside his chair, keeping one shoe pressed against it as he ate. “So we can make the exchange.”

“Are you sure he's got what you want?” Dortmund asked.

“There's only one way to find out,” Traeger said.

“First, we'll go where we can print out what's on your hard drive,” Carlos said.

Traeger thought of it. “Let's wait until you've made the arrangements.”

Carlos looked at him. “You do have it?”

“I have it.”

“Show him,” Dortmund said.

Traeger got out his computer and a minute later brought up on the screen the report he had written. He scrolled down a few pages. Carlos nodded.

“I'll set it up.”

 

 

Back in his room at the Casa, Traeger settled into serious sleep, as if he were making up for weeks of inadequate rest. The end was in sight. Dortmund was safe. Around Traeger's neck was the USB storage device on which there was a copy of his report on the assassination attempt. It was ironic that Anatoly had ended up with the third secret of Fatima and was now eager to exchange it for the report. When you know the contents of a classified document, it no longer has the allure it has for those who do not know.

As he drifted off, he wondered how Heather was doing in the Bridgetine convent. John Burke had offered to show her around Rome.

He slept through the night and when he awoke in the morning was still logy with weariness. Meals were served in the Casa, but Traeger did not avail himself of the refectory. When he went out onto the cobbled street and through a cross street to the Piazza Navona, he became aware of a flurry of excitement around a newspaper kiosk. He approached, saw the headlines, and began to pick up copies of various papers,
Il Tempo
,
Corriere della Sera
,
L'Osservatore Romano
, the
Herald Tribune
. He took the papers across the square to a bar, got an outside table, and ordered coffee. All around him people were reading the story.

Father Jean-Jacques Trepanier had made public the complete text of the third secret of Fatima. Now the portions suppressed in 2000 could be known.

The Blessed Mother had requested prayer and penance, a turning away from sin, a general change of heart in individual persons and in society. The alternative was grim. If her warnings were not heeded, Christian Europe would fall under the scourge of the Mohammedan heresy, with persecution and servitude the lot of those who had ignored her messages.

Trepanier added helpfully that of course the warning had been ignored because it had not been made public. Now the scourge predicted was descending on the continent of Europe. Trepanier wondered if it was too late for a final crusade.

CHAPTER FIVE

The pope was burned in effigy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The news that the Blessed Virgin Mary had predicted the Muslim occupation of Europe as punishment for sin flashed around the world.

Some were amused, others diverted for a time from ordinary pursuits. Most perhaps would have been unaffected. But an insistent media, countless commentaries, background pieces, and chatter filled the airways, and soon it was impossible to ignore the astonishing revelation. Those whose punishment had been predicted, in the manner of us all when we are guilty, were suffused with a sense of injustice and injured innocence. The supposed instruments of that punishment reacted explosively.