by Steve Berry
John tented his chubby fingers before his mouth and rocked silently in the chair. "Father Tibor, I want your word to your pope and your God that what you just read will never be revealed."
Tibor understood the importance of that pledge. "You have my word, Holy Father."
John stared at him through rheumy eyes with a gaze that pierced his soul. A cold shiver tickled his spine. He fought the urge to shift on his feet.
The pope seemed to read his mind.
"Be assured," John said in barely a whisper, "I will do what I can to honor the Virgin's wishes."
"I never spoke to John XXIII again," Tibor said.
"And no other pope contacted you?" Katerina asked.
Tibor shook his head. "Not until today. I gave my word to John and kept it. Until three months ago."
"What did you send the pope?"
"You do not know?'
"Not the details."
"Perhaps Clement doesn't want you to know."
"He wouldn't have sent me if he didn't."
Tibor motioned to Katerina. "Would he want her to know, too?"
"I do," Michener said.
Tibor appraised him with a stern look. "I'm afraid not, Father. What I sent is between Clement and myself."
"You said John XXIII never spoke to you again. Did you try to make contact with him?" Michener asked.
Tibor shook his head. "It was only a few days later John called for the Vatican II council. I remember the announcement well. I thought that his response."
"Care to explain?"
The old man shook his head. "Not really."
Michener finished his beer and wanted another, but knew better. He studied some of the faces that surrounded him and wondered if any might be interested in what he was doing, but quickly dismissed the thought. "What about when John Paul II released the third secret?"
Tibor's face tightened. "What of it?"
The man's curtness was wearing on him. "The world now knows the Virgin's words."
"The Church has been known to refashion the truth."
"Are you suggesting the Holy Father deceived the world?" Michener asked.
Tibor did not immediately answer. "I don't know what I'm suggesting. The Virgin has appeared many times on this earth. You'd think we might finally get the message."
"What message? I've spent the past few months studying every apparition back two thousand years. Each one seems a unique experience."
"Then you haven't been studying closely," Tibor said. "I, too, spent years reading about them. In every one there is a declaration from heaven to do as the Lord says. The Virgin is heaven's messenger. She provides guidance and wisdom, and we've foolishly ignored Her. In modern times, that mistake started at La Salette."
Michener knew every detail about the apparition at La Salette, a village high in the French Alps. In 1846 two shepherd children, a boy, Maxim, and a girl, Melanie, supposedly experienced a vision. The event was similar in many ways to Fatima--a pastoral scene, a light that wound down from the sky, an image of a woman who spoke to them.
"As I recall," Michener said, "the two children were told secrets that were eventually written down, the texts presented to Pius IX. The seers then later published their own versions. Charges of embellishment were leveled. The entire apparition was tainted with scandal."
"Are you saying there's a connection between La Salette and Fatima?" Katerina asked.
A look of annoyance crept onto Tibor's face. "I'm not saying anything. Father Michener here has access to the archives. Has he ascertained any connection?"
"I studied the La Salette visions," Michener said. "Pius IX made no comment after reading each of the secrets, yet he never allowed them to be publicly revealed. And though the original texts are indexed among the papers of Pius IX, the secrets are no longer in the archives."
"I looked in 1960 for the La Salette secrets and also found nothing. But there are clues to their content."
He knew exactly what Tibor meant. "I read the witness accounts of people who watched as Melanie wrote down the messages. She asked how to spell infallibly, soiled, and anti-Christ, if I remember correctly."
Tibor nodded.
"Pius IX himself even offered a few clues. After reading Maxim's message he said, 'Here is the candor and simplicity of a child.' But after reading Melanie's he cried and said, 'I have less to fear from open impiety than from indifference. It is not without reason that the Church is called militant and you see here her captain.' "
"You have a good memory," Tibor said. "Melanie was not kind when told of the pope's reaction. 'This secret ought to give pleasure to the pope,' she said, 'a pope should love to suffer.' "
Michener recalled Church decrees issued at the time that commanded the faithful to refrain from discussing La Salette in any form on threat of sanctions. "Father Tibor, La Salette was never given the credence of Fatima."
"Because the original texts of the seers' messages are gone. All we have is speculation. There's been no discussion of the subject because the church forbade it. Right after the apparition, Maxim said that the announcement the Virgin told them would be fortunate for some, unfortunate for others. Lucia uttered those same words seventy years later at Fatima. 'Good for some. For others bad.' " The priest drained his mug. He seemed to enjoy alcohol. "Maxim and Lucia were both right. Good for some, bad for others. It is time the Madonna's words not be ignored."
"What are you saying?" Michener asked, frustrated.
"At Fatima heaven's desires were made perfectly clear. I haven't read the La Salette secret, but I can well imagine what it says."
Michener was sick of riddles, but decided to let this old priest have his say. "I'm aware of what the Virgin said at Fatima in the second secret, about the consecration of Russia and what would happen if that wasn't done. I agree, that's a specific instruction--"
"Yet no pope," Tibor said, "ever performed the consecration until John Paul II. All the bishops of the world, in conjunction with Rome, never consecrated Russia until 1984. And look what happened from 1917 to 1984. Communism flourished. Millions died. Romania was raped and pillaged by monsters. What did the Virgin say? The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. All because popes chose their own course instead of heaven's." The anger was clear, no attempt being made to conceal it. "Yet within six years of the consecration, communism fell." Tibor massaged his brow. "Never once has Rome formally recognized a Marian apparition. The most it will ever do is deem the occurrence worthy of assent. The Church refuses to accept that visionaries have anything important to say."
"But that's only prudent," Michener said.
"How so? The Church acknowledges that the Virgin appeared, encourages the faithful to believe in the event, then discredits whatever the seers say? You don't see a contradiction?"
Michener did not answer.
"Reason it out," Tibor said. "Since 1870 and the Vatican I council, the pope has been deemed infallible when he speaks of doctrine. What do you believe would happen to that concept if the words of a simple peasant child were made more important?"
Michener had never viewed the issue that way before.
"The teaching authority of the Church would end," Tibor said. "The faithful would turn somewhere else for guidance. Rome would cease to be the center. And that could never be allowed to happen. The Curia survives, no matter what. That's always been the case."
"But, Father Tibor," Katerina said, "the secrets from Fatima are precise on places, dates, and times. They talk about Russia and popes by name. They speak of papal assassinations. Isn't the Church just being cautious? These so-called secrets are so different from the gospels that each could be deemed suspicious."
"A good point. We humans have a tendency to ignore that which we do not agree with. But maybe heaven thought more specific instruction was needed. Those details you speak about."
Michener could see the agitation on Tibor's face and the nervousness in the hands that wrappe
d the empty beer stein. A few moments of strained silence passed, then the old man slouched forward and motioned to the envelope.
"Tell the Holy Father to do as the Madonna said. Not to argue or ignore it, just do as she said." The voice was flat and emotionless. "If not, tell him that he and I will soon be in heaven, and I expect him to take all the blame."
TWENTY
10:00 P.M.
Michener and Katerina stepped off the metro train and made their way out of the subway station into a frosty night. The former Romanian royal palace, its battered stone facade awash in a sodium vapor glow, stood before them. The Pia ta Revolu tiei fanned out in all directions, the damp cobbles dotted with people bundled in heavy wool coats. Traffic crawled by on the streets beyond. The cold air stained his throat with a taste of carbon.
He watched Katerina as she studied the plaza. Her eyes settled on the old communist headquarters, a Stalinist monolith, and he saw her focus on the building's balcony.
"That was where Ceau sescu made his speech that night." She pointed off toward the north. "I stood over there. It was something. That pompous ass just stood there in the lights and proclaimed himself loved by all." The building loomed dark, apparently no longer important enough to be illuminated. "Television cameras sent the speech all over the country. He was so proud of himself until we all started chanting, 'Timi soara, Timi soara.' "
He knew about Timi soara, a town in western Romania where a lone priest had finally spoke out against Ceau sescu. When the government-controlled Reformed Orthodox Church removed him, riots broke out across the country. Six days later the square before him erupted in violence.
"You should have seen Ceau sescu's face, Colin. It was his indecision, that moment of shock, that we took as a call to act. We broke through the police lines and . . . there was no turning back." Her voice lowered. "The tanks eventually came, then the fire hoses, then bullets. I lost many friends that night."
He stood with his hands stuffed in his coat pockets and watched his breath evaporate before his eyes, letting her remember, knowing she was proud of what she'd done. He was, too.
"It's good to have you back," he said.
She turned toward him. A few other couples strolled the square arm in arm. "I've missed you, Colin."
He'd read once that in everyone's life there was somebody who touched a spot so deep, so precious, that the mind always retreated, in time of need, to that cherished place, seeking comfort within memories that never seemed to disappoint. Katerina was that for him. And why the Church, or his God, couldn't provide the same satisfaction was troubling.
She inched close. "What Father Tibor said, about doing as the Madonna said. What did he mean?"
"I wish I knew."
"You could learn."
He knew what she meant and withdrew from his pocket the envelope that contained Father Tibor's response. "I can't open it. You know that."
"Why not? We can find another envelope. Clement would never know."
He'd succumbed to enough dishonesty for one day by reading Clement's first note. "I would know." He knew how hollow that denial sounded, but he slipped the envelope back in his pocket.
"Clement created a loyal servant," Katerina said. "I'll give the old bird that."
"He's my pope. I owe him respect."
Her lips and cheeks twisted into a look he'd seen before. "Is your life to be in the service of popes? What of you, Colin Michener?"
He'd wondered the same thing many times over the past few years. What of him? Was a cardinal's hat to be the extent of his life? Doing little more than basking in the prestige of a scarlet robe? Men like Father Tibor were doing what priests were meant to do. He felt again the caress of the children from earlier, and smelled the stench of their despair.
A surge of guilt swept through him.
"I want you to know, Colin, I won't mention a word of this to anyone."
"Including Tom Kealy?" He regretted how the question came out.
"Jealous?"
"Should I be?"
"I seem to have a weakness for priests."
"Careful with Tom Kealy. I get the impression he's the kind who ran from this square when the shooting started." He could see her jaw tighten. "Not like you."
She smiled. "I stood in front of a tank with a hundred others."
"That thought is upsetting. I wouldn't want to see you hurt."
She threw him a curious look. "Any more than I already am?"
Katerina left Michener at his room and walked down the squeaky steps. She told him they would talk in the morning, over breakfast, before he flew back to Rome. He hadn't been surprised to learn she was staying one floor below, and she didn't mention that she, too, would be heading back to Rome, on a later flight, instead telling him that her next destination was up in the air.
She was beginning to regret her involvement with Cardinal Alberto Valendrea. What had started off as a career move had deteriorated into the deception of a man she still loved. It troubled her lying to Michener. Her father, if he knew what she was doing, would be ashamed. And that thought, too, was bothersome, since she'd disappointed her parents enough over the past few years.
At her room, she opened the door and stepped inside.
The first thing she saw was the smiling face of Father Paolo Ambrosi. The sight momentarily startled her, but she quickly caught hold of her emotions, sensing that showing fear to this man would be a mistake. She'd actually been expecting a visit, since Valendrea had said Ambrosi would find her. She closed the door, peeled off her coat, and stepped toward the lamp beside the bed.
"Why don't we let the light remain off," Ambrosi said.
She noticed that Ambrosi was dressed in black trousers and a dark turtleneck. A dark overcoat hung open. None of the garb was religious. She shrugged and tossed her coat on the bed.
"What have you learned?"
She took a moment and told him an abbreviated account of the orphanage and of what Michener had told her about Clement, but she held back a few key facts. She finished by telling him about Father Tibor, again an abridged version, and recounted the old priest's warning concerning the Madonna.
"You must learn what's in Tibor's response," Ambrosi said.
"Colin wouldn't open it."
"Find a way."
"How do you expect me to do that?"
"Go upstairs. Seduce him. Read it while he sleeps afterward."
"Why don't you? I'm sure priests interest you more than they do me."
Ambrosi lunged, wrapping his long thin fingers around her neck and collapsing her down onto the bed. The grip was cold and waxy. He brought his knee onto her chest and pressed her firmly into the mattress folds. He was stronger than she would have thought.
"Unlike Cardinal Valendrea, I have little patience for your smart mouth. I remind you that we are in Romania, not Rome, and people disappear here all the time. I want to know what Father Tibor wrote. Find out, or I might not restrain myself the next time we meet." Ambrosi's knee pressed deeper into her chest. "I'll find you tomorrow, just as I found you this evening."
She wanted to spit in his face, but the ever-tightening fingers around her neck cautioned otherwise.
Ambrosi released his grip and headed for the door.
She clutched her neck and sucked a few breaths, then leaped from the bed.
Ambrosi spun back to face her, a gun in his hand.
She halted her advance. "You . . . fucking . . . mobster."
He shrugged. "History teaches that there truly is an imperceptible line between good and evil. Sleep well."
He opened the door and left.
TWENTY-ONE
VATICAN CITY, 11:40 P.M.
Valendrea crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray as a knock came on his bedchamber door. He'd been engrossed in a novel for nearly an hour. He so enjoyed American suspense thrillers. They were a welcome escape from his life of careful words and strict protocol. His retreat each night into a world of mystery and intrigue was something he looked fo
rward to, and Ambrosi made sure he always had a new adventure to read.
"Enter," he called out.
The face of his chamberlain appeared. "I received a call a few moments ago, Eminence. The Holy Father is in the Riserva. You wished to be informed if that occurred."
He slipped off his reading glasses and closed the book. "That will be all."
The chamberlain retreated.
He quickly dressed in a knit shirt and trousers, slipped on a pair of running shoes, and left his apartment, heading for the private elevator. At ground level he traversed the empty corridors of the Apostolic Palace. The silence was disturbed only by a soft whine from closed-circuit televison cameras revolving on their lofty perches and the squeak of his rubber soles on the terrazzo. No danger existed of anyone seeing him--the palace was sealed for the night.
He entered the archives and ignored the night prefect, walking through the maze of shelves straight to the iron gate for the Riserva. Clement XV stood inside the lighted space, his back to him, dressed in a white linen cassock.
The doors of the ancient safe hung open. He made no effort to mask his approach. It was time for a confrontation.
"Come in, Alberto," the pope said, the German's back still to him.
"How did you know it was me?"
Clement turned. "Who else would it be?"
He stepped into the light, the first time he'd been inside the Riserva since 1978. Then, only a few incandescent bulbs lit the windowless alcove. Now fluorescent fixtures cast everything in a pearly glow. The same wooden box lay in the same drawer, its lid open. Remnants of the wax seal he'd shattered and replaced adorned the outside.
"I was told about your visit here with Paul," Clement said. The pope gestured to the box. "You were present when he opened that. Tell me, Alberto, was he shocked? Did the old fool wince when he read the Virgin's words?"
He wasn't going to give Clement the satisfaction of knowing the truth. "Paul was more of a pope than you ever could be."