by Berry, Steve
“And I’m sure the collection boxes in St. Peter’s have been closed since Clement died.”
“You have a smart mouth.”
“What’s wrong? The truth hurt?”
They were beyond the Vatican, on Roman streets, strolling down a via lined with a warren of trendy apartments. Her nerves throbbed, keeping her on edge. She stopped. “What do you want?”
“Colin Michener is going to Bosnia. His Eminence wants you to go with him and report what he does.”
“You didn’t even care about Romania. I haven’t heard a word from you till now.”
“That became unimportant. This is more so.”
“I’m not interested. Besides, Colin is going to Romania.”
“Not now. He’s going to Bosnia. To the shrine at Medjugorje.”
She was confused. Why would Michener feel the need to make such a pilgrimage, especially after his earlier comments?
“His Eminence urged me to make clear that a friend within the Vatican is still available to you. Not to mention the ten thousand euros already paid.”
“He said that money was mine. No questions.”
“Interesting. Apparently, you’re not a cheap whore.”
She slapped his face.
Ambrosi showed no surprise. He simply stared back at her through piercing eyes. “You shall not strike me again.” There was a bitter edge to his voice, one she did not like.
“I’ve lost interest in being your spy.”
“You are an impertinent bitch. My only hope is that His Eminence tires of you soon. Then, perhaps, I will pay you a return visit.”
She stepped back. “Why is Colin going to Bosnia?”
“To find one of the Medjugorje seers.”
“What is all this with seers and the Virgin Mary?”
“I assume, then, you are familiar with the Bosnian apparitions.”
“They’re nonsense. You don’t really believe the Virgin Mary appeared to those children every day for all those years, and is still appearing to one of them.”
“The Church has yet to validate any of the visions.”
“And that seal of approval is going to make it real?”
“Your sarcasm is tiresome.”
“So are you.”
But a stirring of interest was forming inside her. She didn’t want to do anything for Ambrosi or Valendrea, and she’d stayed in Rome only because of Michener. She’d learned that he moved from the Vatican—Kealy had reported that as part of an analysis on the aftermath of a papal death—but she hadn’t made any effort to track him down. Actually, after their encounter earlier, she’d toyed with the idea of following him to Romania. But now another possibility had opened. Bosnia.
“When does he leave?” she asked, hating herself for sounding interested.
Ambrosi’s eyes flickered in satisfaction. “I don’t know.” The priest slid a hand under his cassock and came out with a scrap of paper. “That’s the address for his apartment. It’s not far from here. You could . . . comfort him. His mentor is gone, his life in chaos. An enemy will soon be pope—”
“Valendrea is quite sure of himself.”
She ignored his question. “And the problem?”
“You think Colin’s vulnerable? That he’ll open up to me—even let me go with him?”
“That’s the idea.”
“He’s not that weak.”
Ambrosi smiled. “I’m betting that he is.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
ROME, 7:00 P.M.
Michener strolled down the Via Giotto toward the apartment. The quarter surrounding him had evolved into a gathering spot for the theater crowd, its streets lined with lively cafés that had long hosted intellectuals and political radicals. He knew that Mussolini’s rise to power had been organized nearby, and thankfully most of the buildings survived Il Duce’s architectural cleanup and continued to project a nineteenth-century feel.
He’d become a student of Mussolini, having read a couple of biographies after moving into the Apostolic Palace. Mussolini was an ambitious man who’d dreamed of Italians wearing uniforms and all of Rome’s ancient stone buildings, with their terra-cotta rooftops, replaced with gleaming marble façades and obelisks memorializing his great military victories. But Il Duce ended up with a bullet in his head, then was hung by his ankles for all to see. Nothing remained of his grandiose plan. And Michener was worried that the Church might suffer a similar fate with a Valendrea papacy.
Megalomania was a mental disease compounded by arrogance. Valendrea was a clear sufferer. The secretary of state’s opposition to Vatican II and all the later Church reforms was no secret. A swift Valendrea election could be spun into a mandate for radical reversal. The worst part was that the Tuscan could easily rule for twenty or more years. Which meant he would completely reshape the Sacred College of Cardinals, much as John Paul II had managed during his long reign. But John Paul II had been a benign ruler, a man of vision. Valendrea was a demon, and God help his enemies. Which seemed all the more reason for Michener to disappear into the Carpathian Mountains. God or no God, heaven or no heaven, those children needed him.
He found the apartment building and trudged up the stairs to the third floor. One of the bishops attached to the papal household had offered the two-bedroom, furnished apartment rent-free for a couple of weeks, and he appreciated the gesture. He’d disposed of Clement’s furniture a few days ago. The five boxes of personal belongings and Clement’s wooden chest were stacked in the apartment. Originally he’d planned on leaving Rome by the end of the week. Now he would fly to Bosnia tomorrow on a ticket Ngovi had provided. By next week he would be in Romania, starting a new life.
A part of him resented Clement for what he’d done. History was replete with popes selected simply because they would soon die, and many of them had fooled everyone by lasting a decade or more. Jakob Volkner could have been one of those pontiffs. He was truly making a difference. Yet he ended all hope with a self-induced sleep.
Michener, too, felt like he was asleep. The past couple of weeks, starting with that awful Monday morning, seemed a dream. His life, once resonant with order, now gyrated out of control.
He needed order.
But stopping on the third-floor landing he knew that only more chaos lay ahead. Sitting on the floor, outside his apartment door, was Katerina Lew.
“Why am I not surprised you found me again?” he said. “How did you do it this time?”
“More secrets everybody knows.”
She came to her feet and brushed grit from her pants. She was dressed the same as this morning and still looked lovely.
He opened the apartment door.
“Still going to Romania?” she asked.
He tossed the key on a table. “Plan on following?”
“I might.”
“I wouldn’t book a flight just yet.”
He told her about Medjugorje and what Ngovi had asked him to do, but omitted the details of Clement’s e-mail. He wasn’t looking forward to the trip and told Katerina so.
“The war’s over, Colin,” she said. “It’s been quiet there for years.”
“Thanks to American and NATO troops. It’s not what I would call a vacation destination.”
“Then why go?”
“I owe it to Clement and Ngovi,” he said.
“You don’t think your debts are paid?”
“I know what you’re going to say. But I was considering leaving the priesthood. It doesn’t really matter anymore.”
Her face registered shock. “Why?”
“I’ve had enough. It’s not about God, or a good life, or eternal happiness. It’s about politics, ambition, greed. Every time I think about where I was born, it makes me sick. How could anybody think they were doing something good there? There were better ways to help those mothers, yet nobody even tried. They just shipped us all off.” He shifted on his feet and found himself staring down at the floor. “And those kids in Romania? I think even heaven has forgotten them.”
>
“I’ve never seen you this way.”
He stepped toward the window. “Odds are Valendrea will soon be pope. There’s going to be a lot of changes. Maybe Tom Kealy had it right after all.”
“Don’t give that ass credit for anything.”
He sensed something in her tone. “All we’ve talked about is me. What have you been doing since Bucharest?”
“Like I said, writing some pieces on the funeral for a Polish magazine. I’ve also been doing background work on the conclave. The magazine hired me to do a feature.”
“Then how can you go to Romania?”
Her expression softened. “I can’t. Wishful thinking. But at least I’ll know where to find you.”
The thought was comforting. He knew that if he never saw this woman again he would be sad. He recalled the last time, all those years ago, when they’d been alone together. It was in Munich, not long before he was to graduate law school and return to Jakob Volkner’s service. She’d looked much the same, her hair a bit longer, her face a moment fresher, her smile equally appealing. Two years he’d spent loving her, knowing the day would come when he would have to choose. Now he realized the mistake he’d made. Something he’d said to her earlier in the square came to mind. Just don’t make the same mistakes twice. That’s all any of us can hope for.
Damn right.
He stepped across the room and took her into his arms.
She did not resist.
Michener opened his eyes and focused on the clock next to the bed. Ten forty-three P.M. Katerina lay beside him. They’d been asleep nearly two hours. He did not feel guilty for what had happened. He loved her, and if God had a problem with that, then so be it. He didn’t really care anymore.
“What are you doing awake?” she said through the dark.
He’d thought her sleeping. “I’m not used to waking up with somebody in my bed.”
She nuzzled her head against his chest. “Could you get used to it?”
“I was just asking myself the same thing.”
“I don’t want to leave this time, Colin.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Who said you had to?”
“I want to go with you to Bosnia?”
“What about your magazine assignment?”
“I lied. I don’t have one. I’m here, in Rome, because of you.”
His answer was never in doubt. “Then maybe a Bosnian holiday would do us both some good.”
He’d gone from the public world of the Apostolic Palace to a realm where only he existed. Clement XV was ensconced within a triple coffin beneath St. Peter’s and he was naked in bed with a woman he loved.
Where it all was going, he could not say.
All he knew was that he finally felt content.
THIRTY-EIGHT
MEDJUGORJE, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28
1:00 P.M.
Michener stared out the bus window. The rocky coast whizzed past, the Adriatic Sea choppy thanks to a howling wind. He and Katerina had flown into Split on a short flight from Rome. Tourist buses had lined the airport exits, their drivers clamoring for passengers to Medjugorje. One of the men explained this was the slow time of the year. Pilgrims arrived at the rate of three to five thousand a day in summer, but that number dwindled to several hundred from November through March.
Over the past two hours a guide had explained to the fifty or so making the bus trip that Medjugorje sat in the southern portion of Herzegovina, near the coast, and that a mountainous wall to the north isolated the region both climatically and politically. The guide explained that the name Medjugorje meant “land between the hills.” Croats dominated the population, and Catholicism flourished. In the early 1990s, when communism fell, the Croats immediately sought independence, but the Serbs—the real power brokers in the former Yugoslavia—invaded, trying to create a Greater Serbia. A bloody civil war raged for years. Two hundred thousand lost their lives until finally the international community stopped the genocide. Another war then flared between Croats and Muslims, but quickly ended when UN peacekeepers arrived.
Medjugorje itself had escaped the terror. Most of the fighting was waged to its north and west. Only about five hundred families actually lived in the area, but the town’s mammoth church hosted two thousand, and the guide explained that an infrastructure of hotels, guest houses, food vendors, and souvenir shops was now transforming the place into a religious mecca. Twenty million people from around the world had come. At last count, there’d been some two thousand apparitions, something unprecedented in Marian visions.
“Do you believe any of this?” Katerina whispered to him. “A little far-fetched that the Madonna comes to earth every day to speak with a woman in a Bosnian village.”
“The seer believes, and Clement did, too. Keep an open mind, okay?”
“I’m trying. But which seer do we approach?”
He’d been thinking about that. So he asked the guide more about the seers and learned that one of the women, now thirty-five, was married with a son and lived in Italy. Another woman, thirty-six, was married with three children and still lived in Medjugorje, but she was intensely private and saw few pilgrims. One of the males, in his early thirties, tried twice to become a priest but failed and still hoped to one day achieve Holy Orders. He traveled extensively, bringing the Medjugorje message to the world, and would be difficult to find. The remaining male, the youngest of the six, was married with two children and talked little to visitors. Another of the females, almost forty, was married and no longer lived in Bosnia. The remaining woman was the one who continued to experience apparitions. Her name was Jasna, thirty-two years old, and she lived alone in Medjugorje. Her daily visitations were many times witnessed by thousands at St. James Church. The guide explained that Jasna was an introverted woman of few words, but she did take the time to speak with visitors.
He glanced over at Katerina and said, “Looks like our choices are limited. We’ll start with her.”
“Jasna, though, doesn’t know all ten secrets the Madonna has passed to the others,” the guide was saying at the front of the bus, and Michener’s attention returned to what the woman was explaining.
“All five of the others know the ten secrets. It is said that when all six are told, the visions will end and a visible sign of the Virgin’s presence will be left for atheists. But the faithful must not wait for that sign before they convert. Now is the time of grace. A time for deepening faith. A time for conversion. Because, when the sign comes, it will be too late for many. Those are the Virgin’s words. A prediction for our future.”
“What do we do now?” Katrina whispered in his ear.
“I say we still go see her. If for nothing else, I’m curious. She can certainly answer the thousand questions I have.”
Outside, the guide motioned to Apparition Hill.
“This is where the first visions occurred to the original two seers in June 1981—a brilliant ball of light in which stood a beautiful woman holding a baby. The next evening, the two children returned with four of their friends and the woman appeared again, this time wearing a crown of twelve stars and a pearl-gray dress. She seemed, according to them, clothed by the sun.”
The guide pointed to a steep footpath that led from the village of Podbrdo to a site where a cross stood. Even now, pilgrims were making the climb beneath thick clouds rolling in from the sea.
Cross Mountain appeared a few moments later, rising less than a mile from Medjugorje, its rounded peak standing more than sixteen hundred feet high.
“The cross atop was erected in the 1930s by the local parish and carries no significance to the apparitions, except many pilgrims have reported seeing luminous signs in and around it. Because of that, this spot has become part of the experience. Try to make a trip to the top.”
The bus slowed and entered Medjugorje. The village was unlike the multitude of other undeveloped communities they’d passed along the way from Split. Low stone buildings in varied sha
des of pink, green, and ocher gave way to taller buildings—hotels, the guide explained, recently opened to handle an influx of pilgrims, along with duty-free shops, car rental agencies, and travel bureaus. Shiny Mercedes taxis skirted among transport trucks.
The bus stopped at the twin towered Church of St. James. A placard out front announced that Mass was said throughout the day in a variety of languages. A concrete piazza spanned the front, and the guide explained that the open expanse was a gathering spot at night for the faithful. Michener wondered about tonight, though, since thunder rumbled in the distance.
Soldiers patrolled the square.
“They are part of the Spanish peacekeeping forces assigned to the region and can be helpful,” the guide explained.
They gathered their shoulder bags and left the bus. Michener approached the guide. “Excuse me, where could we find Jasna?”
The woman pointed down one of the streets. “She lives in a house about four blocks in that direction. But she comes to the church each day at three, and sometimes in the evening for prayer. She will be here shortly.”
“And the apparitions, where do they occur?”
“Most times here in church. That’s why she comes. I must tell you, it’s unlikely she would see you unannounced.”
He got the message. Probably every pilgrim wanted an encounter with one of the seers. The guide motioned toward a visitor center across the street.
“They can arrange for a meeting. Those usually take place later in the afternoon. Talk to them about Jasna. You’ll get more of a response. They’re sensitive to your needs.”
He thanked her, then he and Katerina walked off. “We have to start somewhere, and this Jasna is the closest. I don’t particularly want to talk with a group present, and I don’t have any needs that require sensitivity. So let’s go find this woman ourselves.”
THIRTY-NINE
VATICAN CITY, 2:00 P.M.
The procession of cardinals made their way out of the Pauline Chapel, singing refrains from Veni Creator Spiritus. Their hands were clasped in prayer, their heads lowered. Valendrea kept pace behind Maurice Ngovi as the camerlengo led the group toward the Sistine Chapel.