by Berry, Steve
“Why is this translation so important?”
“I don’t plan to explain myself. I simply want the document returned.”
“How do you know it was even there?”
“I don’t. But no one returned to the archives after that Friday night, and Clement was dead two days later.”
“Along with Father Tibor.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Whatever you want it to mean.”
“I’ll do whatever I have to do to get that document.”
A bitter edge laced to the words. “I believe you would.” He needed to leave. “Am I dismissed?”
“Get out. But I’d better hear from you in two days time or you won’t like my next messenger.”
He wondered what that meant. The police? Somebody else? Hard to say.
“Ever wonder how Ms. Lew found you in Romania?” Valendrea casually asked as he reached the door.
Did he hear right? How did he know anything about Katerina? He stopped and looked back.
“She was there because I paid her to learn what you were doing.”
He was stunned, but said nothing.
“Bosnia, too. She went to keep an eye on you. I told her to use her talents to gain your trust, as she apparently did.”
He rushed forward, but Valendrea produced a small black controller. “One press and Swiss guards charge into this room. Assaulting the pope is a serious crime.”
He halted his advance and repressed a shudder.
“You aren’t the first man to be duped by a woman. She’s clever. But I’m telling you this as a warning. Careful whom you trust, Michener. There’s much at stake. You may not realize it, but I may be the only friend you’ve got when all this is over.”
FIFTY-SIX
Michener left the library. Ambrosi was waiting outside but did not accompany him to the forward loggia, saying only that the car and driver would take him wherever he wanted to go.
Katerina sat alone on a gilded settee. He was trying to understand what had motivated her to deceive him. He’d wondered about her finding him in Bucharest, then showing up at the apartment in Rome. He wanted to believe everything that had passed between them had been sincere, but he could not help thinking that it was all an act, designed to sway his emotions and lower his defenses. He’d been worried about the household staff or listening devices. Instead the one person he trusted had become his enemy’s perfect emissary.
At Turin, Clement had warned him. You have no idea the depth of a person like Alberto Valendrea. You think you can do battle with Valendrea? No, Colin. You’re no match for him. You’re too decent. Too trusting.
His throat tightened as he came close to Katerina. Perhaps his strained expression betrayed his thoughts.
“He told you about me, didn’t he?” Her voice was sad.
“You expected that?”
“Ambrosi almost did yesterday. I figured Valendrea certainly would. I’m of no use to them anymore.”
Emotions ricocheted through him.
“I told them nothing, Colin. Absolutely nothing. I took Valendrea’s money and I went to Romania and Bosnia. That’s true. But because I wanted to go, not because they wanted me to. I used them, like they used me.”
The words sounded good, but were not enough to ease his pain. He calmly asked, “Does the truth mean anything to you?”
She bit her lip and he noticed her right arm trembling. Anger, which was her usual response to a confrontation, had not surfaced. When she did not answer him, he said, “I trusted you, Kate. I told you things I would never tell anyone else.”
“And I didn’t violate that trust.”
“How am I to believe you?” Though he wanted to.
“What did Valendrea say?”
“Enough for us to be having this conversation.”
He was rapidly numbing. His parents were gone, as was Jakob Volkner. Now Katerina had betrayed him. For the first time in his life he was alone, and suddenly the weight of being an unwanted baby, born in an institution and stripped from his mother, settled upon him. He was in many ways lost, with nowhere to turn. He’d thought with Clement gone the woman standing before him held the answer to his future. He was even willing to discard a quarter century of his life for the chance to love her and be loved back.
But how could that possibly be now?
A moment of strained silence passed between them. Awkward and embarrassing.
“Okay, Colin,” she finally said. “I get the message. I’ll go.”
She turned to leave.
The heels of her shoes tapped off the marble as she walked away. He wanted to tell her it was okay. Don’t leave. Stop. But he couldn’t bring himself to speak the words.
He headed in the opposite direction, down to ground level. He wasn’t about to use the car Ambrosi had offered. He wanted nothing more from this place except to be left alone.
He was inside the Vatican without credentials or an escort, but his face was so well known that none of the guards questioned his presence. He came to the end of a long loggia filled with planispheres and globes. Ahead, Maurice Ngovi stood in the opposite doorway.
“I heard you were here,” Ngovi said as he approached. “I also know what happened in Bosnia. You okay?”
He nodded. “I was going to call you later.”
“We need to talk.”
“Where?”
Ngovi seemed to understand and motioned for him to follow. They walked in silence to the archives. The reading rooms were once again full of scholars, historians, and journalists. Ngovi found the cardinal-archivist and the three men headed for one of the reading rooms. Once inside with the door closed, Ngovi said, “I think this place is reasonably private.”
Michener turned to the archivist. “I thought you’d be unemployed by now.”
“I’ve been ordered out by the weekend. My replacement arrives the day after tomorrow.”
He knew what the job meant to the old man. “I’m sorry. But I think you’re better off.”
“What did our pontiff want with you?” Ngovi asked.
Michener plopped down in one of the chairs. “He thinks I have a document that was supposedly in the Riserva. Something Father Tibor sent to Clement that concerns the third secret of Fatima. Some facsimile of a translation. I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
Ngovi gave the archivist a strange look.
“What is it?” Michener asked.
Ngovi told him about Valendrea’s visit yesterday to the Riserva.
“He was like a madman,” the archivist said. “He kept saying something was gone from the box. I was truly frightened of him. God help this Church.”
“Did Valendrea explain anything?” Ngovi asked him.
He told them both what the pope had said.
“That Friday night,” the cardinal-archivist said, “when Clement and Valendrea were in the Riserva together, something was burned. We found ashes on the floor.”
“Clement said nothing to you about that?” Michener asked.
The archivist shook his head. “Not a word.”
A lot of the pieces were coming together, but there was still a problem. He said, “This whole thing is bizarre. Sister Lucia herself verified in 2000 the authenticity of the third secret before it was released by John Paul.”
Ngovi nodded. “I was present. The original writing was taken, in the box, from the Riserva to Portugal, and she confirmed that the document was the same one she penned in 1944. But, Colin, the box contained only two sheets of paper. I myself was there when it was opened. There was an original writing and an Italian translation. Nothing more.”
“If the message was incomplete, would she not have said something?” Michener asked.
“She was so old and frail,” Ngovi said. “I recall how she merely glanced at the page and nodded. I was told her eyesight was poor, her hearing gone.”
“Maurice asked me to check,” the archivist said. “Valendrea and Paul VI entered the Riserva on May
18, 1978. Valendrea returned an hour later, on Paul’s express order, and stayed there, alone, for fifteen minutes.”
Ngovi nodded. “It seems whatever Father Tibor sent to Clement opened a door Valendrea thought long closed.”
“And it may have cost Tibor his life.” He considered the situation. “Valendrea called whatever is gone a facsimile translation. Translation of what?”
“Colin,” Ngovi said. “There is apparently more to the third secret of Fatima than we know.”
“And Valendrea thinks I have it.”
“Do you?” Ngovi asked.
He shook his head. “If I did, I’d give him the damn thing. I’m sick of this and just want out.”
“Any thoughts as to what Clement might have done with Tibor’s reproduction?”
He hadn’t really considered the point. “No idea. Stealing was not like Clement.” Neither was committing suicide, but he knew better than to say anything. The archivist had no knowledge of that. But he sensed from Ngovi’s expression the Kenyan was thinking the same thing.
“And what of Bosnia?” Ngovi asked.
“Stranger than Romania.”
He showed them Jasna’s message. He’d given Valendrea a copy, keeping the original.
“We can’t put too much credence in this,” Ngovi said, motioning with Jasna’s words. “Medjugorje seems more a sideshow than a religious experience. This tenth secret could simply be the seer’s imagination and, quite frankly, considering its scope, I have to seriously question if that isn’t so.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Michener said. “Jasna has convinced herself it’s real and seems caught up in the experience. Yet Valendrea reacted strongly when he read the message.” He told them what had just happened.
“That’s the way he was in the Riserva,” the archivist said. “A madman.”
Michener stared hard at Ngovi. “What’s going on here, Maurice?”
“I am at a loss. Years back, as a bishop, I and others spent three months studying the third secret at John Paul’s request. That message was so different from the first two. They were precise, detailed, but the third secret was more a parable. His Holiness thought guidance from the Church, in its interpretation, was called for. And I agreed. But never did we consider the message incomplete.”
Ngovi motioned to a thick, oversized volume lying on the table. The huge manuscript was ancient, its pages so aged they appeared charred. The cover was scrawled in Latin, surrounded by colorful drawings depicting what appeared to be popes and cardinals. The words LIGNUM VITAE were barely visible in faded crimson ink.
Ngovi sat in one of the chairs and asked Michener, “What do you know of St. Malachy?”
“Enough to question whether the man was genuine.”
“I assure you, his prophecies are real. This volume here was published in Venice in 1595 by a Dominican historian, Arnold Wion, as the definitive account of what St. Malachy himself wrote of his visions.”
“Maurice, those visions occurred in the middle of the twelfth century. Four hundred years passed before Wion began writing everything down. I’ve heard all the tales. Who knows what Malachy said, if anything. His words have not survived.”
“But Malachy’s writings were here in 1595,” the archivist said. “Our indexes show that. So Wion would have had access to them.”
“If Wion’s book survived, why didn’t Malachy’s text?”
Ngovi motioned to the book. “Even if Wion’s writing is a forgery, his prophecies instead of Malachy’s, they, too, are remarkable in their accuracy. Made even more so with what’s happened over the past couple of days.”
Ngovi offered him three typed sheets. Michener scanned the pages and saw that it was a narrative summary.
Malachy was an Irishman, born in 1094. He became a priest at age twenty-five, a bishop at thirty. In 1139 he left Ireland for Rome, where he delivered an account of his diocese to Pope Innocent II. While there he experienced a strange vision of the future, a long list of men who would one day rule the Church. He committed his vision to parchment and presented Innocent with the manuscript. The pope read the offering, then sealed it in the archives where it remained until 1595, when Arnold Wion again recorded the list of pontiffs Malachy had seen, along with Malachy’s prophetical mottoes, starting with Celestine II, in 1143, and ending 111 popes later with the supposed last pontiff.
“There’s no evidence that Malachy even experienced visions,” Michener said. “As I recall, that was all added to the story in the late nineteenth century from secondhand sources.”
“Read some of the mottoes,” Ngovi calmly said.
He stared again at the pages in his hand. The eighty-first pope was prophesied to be The Lily and the Rose. Urban VIII, who served at that time, came from Florence, which used the red lily as its symbol. He was also bishop of Spoletto, which took the rose for its symbol. The ninety-fourth pope was said to be A Rose of Umbria. Clement XIII, before becoming pope, was governor of Umbria. Apostolic Wanderer was the predicted motto for the ninety-sixth pope. Pius VI would end his days a wandering prisoner of the French revolutionists. Leo XIII was the 102nd pope. A Light in the Sky was his attributed motto. The papal arms of Leo showed a comet. John XXIII was said to be Shepherd and Sailor. Apt since he defined his pontificate as that of a shepherd and the badge of Vatican II, which he called into session, displayed a cross and a ship. Also, prior to his election, John was patriarch of Venice, an ancient maritime capital.
Michener looked up. “Interesting, but what does this have to do with anything?”
“Clement was the one hundred and eleventh pope. Malachy labeled him From the Glory of the Olive. Do you recall the gospel of Matthew, chapter 24, the signs of the end of the age?”
He did. Jesus left the Temple and was walking away when his disciples complimented the beauty of the building. I tell you the truth, He said. Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down. Then later, on the Mount of Olives, the disciples beseeched Him to say when that would happen and what will be the sign of the end of the age.
“Christ foretold the second coming in that passage. But, Maurice, you can’t seriously believe that the end of the age is at hand?”
“Perhaps not something that cataclysmic, but nonetheless a clear ending and a new beginning. Clement was predicted to be the precursor to that event. And there’s more. Of Malachy’s described popes, starting in 1143, the last of his one hundred and twelve is the current pope. Malachy predicted in 1138 that he would be named Petrus Romanus.”
Peter the Roman.
“But that’s a fallacy,” Michener said. “Some say Malachy never predicted a Peter. Instead, that was added in a nineteenth-century publication of his prophecies.”
“I wish that were true,” Ngovi said as he slipped on a pair of cotton gloves and gently opened the bulky manuscript. The ancient parchment crackled from the effort. “Read this.”
He glanced down at the words, penned in Latin:
In the final persecution of the Holy Roman Church there will reign Peter the Roman who will feed his flock among many tribulations, after which in the seven hilled city the dreadful judge will judge all people.
“Valendrea,” Ngovi said, “took the name Peter on his own accord. Do you see now why I’m so concerned? Those are Wion’s words, supposedly Malachy’s as well, written centuries ago. Who are we to question? Maybe Clement was right. We inquire far too much and do what we please, not what we’re supposed to do.”
“How can you explain,” the cardinal-archivist asked, “that this volume is nearly five hundred years old and these mottoes were attributed to these popes long ago? Ten or twenty being correct is coincidence. Ninety percent is something more, and that’s what we’re talking about. Only around ten percent of the labels seem to have no bearing whatsoever. The vast majority are remarkably accurate. And the final one, Peter, comes exactly at one hundred and twelve. I shuddered when Valendrea took that name.”
A lot was coming fast. First the rev
elation about Katerina. Now the possibility that the end of the world was at hand. After which in the seven hilled city the dreadful judge will judge all people. Rome had long been labeled the seven hilled city. He looked over at Ngovi. Concern laced the older prelate’s face.
“Colin, you must find Tibor’s reproduced translation. If Valendrea thinks that document is critical, then so should we. You knew Jakob better than anybody. Locate his hiding place.” Ngovi closed the manuscript. “This may be the last day we have access to this archive. A siege mentality is taking hold. Valendrea is purging all dissenters. I wanted you to see this firsthand—to understand the gravity. What the Medjugorje seer wrote is open to debate, but what Sister Lucia penned, and what Father Tibor translated, is quite another.”
“I have no idea where that document might be. I can’t even conceive of how Jakob removed it from the Vatican.”
“I was the only person with the safe’s combination,” the cardinal-archivist said. “And I opened it only for Clement.”
An emptiness swept over him as he thought again of Katerina’s betrayal. Concentrating on something else might help, if only for a short while. “I’ll see what I can do, Maurice. But I don’t even know where to start.”
Ngovi’s face remained solemn. “Colin, I don’t want to dramatize this any more than necessary. But the fate of the Church could well be in your hands.”
FIFTY-SEVEN
3:30 P.M.
Valendrea excused himself from the crowd of well-wishers gathered in the audience hall. The group had traveled from Florence to wish him well, and before leaving he assured them all that his first trip beyond the Vatican would be to Tuscany.
Ambrosi was waiting for him on the fourth floor. His secretary had left the audience chamber half an hour ago and he was curious why.
“Holy Father,” Ambrosi said. “Michener met with Ngovi and the cardinal-archivist after he left you.”
He now understood the urgency. “What was said?”
“It was behind closed doors in one of the reading rooms. The priest I have in the archives could learn nothing except they had an ancient volume with them, one that ordinarily only the archivist may handle.”