The Third Revelation (7 page)

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.

“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.

“Your message was alarming,” he said softly, looking from Rodriguez to Traeger. Rodriguez slumped in his chair.

“You didn't know?” he asked.

“I didn't know.” The smile had been replaced by an expression of sadness. “Sometimes I wonder if the Blessed Virgin knew what trouble she would cause by telling those things to Sister Lucia.”

Traeger said, “But wasn't the third secret made public?”

“It was. The hope was that that would stop all the wild speculating about its contents. Of course, withholding it for so long had inflamed curiosity. The strangest ideas became current as to what the secret said. Finally, the Holy Father—Cardinal Ratzinger as he then was—decided the time had come to put an end to all that. So the secret was published and he wrote a magnificent commentary.” The wistful smile was briefly back. “And immediately we were accused of deception. It was said that there must be more that was being withheld.”

Traeger looked at him. “And there wasn't?”

“Everything was made public.”

“Who would have stolen it?” Traeger asked.

Piacere's hands opened as if he were saying Mass. “It would be rash of me to speculate.”

“We have to speculate, Your Eminence,” Rodriguez said. That was when Traeger first realized that this mild little priest with the aura of holiness about him was a prince of the Church.

“I will leave speculation to you,” Piacere said sweetly. “What disappointment the thief must be feeling.”

He went on then, developing the thoughts Cardinal Ratzinger had put into the document accompanying the revelation of the third secret in 2000. The essence of Christian doctrine had been revealed in its completeness at the time of the apostles. Since then of course there had been what Cardinal Newman called the development of doctrine, drawing out the implications of that original deposit of faith. But no development could be authentic that did not conform with the original revelation.

“We learn more and more of what we cannot understand, not in this life.” Piacere twisted the ring on his right hand, as if he feared it would slip off.

Of course there were private revelations, some of which received official Church approval, but in their case, too, the test of authenticity was their agreement with the faith that had been entrusted to the Church.

“Private revelations have good and bad effects,” Piacere murmured. “Many useful devotions are the results of such apparitions. The bad effect is a passion to know what lies ahead, to have prophecies. There are those who seem almost to long for the end of the world. Of course, the apparitions at Fatima are a great blessing to the Church. Paul VI went there, as did John Paul II. But the heart of the Fatima message is as old as the Church itself. Prayer, repentance, fasting. The secret is that there is no secret.”

“But the assassination attempt?” Traeger said.

“Yes, yes. There is that.”

By the time they left Piacere, Traeger had thought that, if he ever got religion, he would want Piacere there at his deathbed.

 

 

And so, that afternoon, talking with Crowe on the rooftop of the Vatican Library, Traeger had known of the missing third secret. And he could not rid himself of the thought that Crowe, too, knew of it. What he did not know, despite Rodriguez's remark the night before, was whether those murders in the Vatican were connected with the missing third secret.

“Be careful,” he said to Crowe, when they had gone downstairs and were standing outside the monsignor's office.

“I'm always careful.”

“Good.”

He would reserve for their next meeting what he had learned of Crowe's connection with the Confraternity of Pius IX.

The engine room of the bark of Peter

Brendan Crowe waited half an hour after Traeger had left him, the door of his office open. Anyone passing by would have seen him busy at his desk, this day a day like any other. Finally, he rose, shut the door and locked it, and stood very still, taking deep breaths. He had been shaken on that dreadful day when an assassin had roamed the Vatican; he had been deeply moved when he discovered the body of his chief on the roof above. But now, for the first time, he sensed the truth of Traeger's warning. He had seen the assassin. If the man were apprehended alive, it would be Brendan Crowe's task to say, “That is the man.” But far more than his personal safety concerned him. The double life he had been living for years now threatened to become one life.