Feldman released his friend, scowled over his poor personal display, and reached for his wallet. “Look, it's late. We've both had a little too much to drink. Let's just call it a night.”
Hunter screwed up his face quizzically. “You're not pissed at me? I'm really sorry about shootin’ my mouth off like that. I just don't want to see you go spoil a good thing like you've got with Anke. You'll never find another one like her.”
“No, I'm not pissed off. And you're right about Anke. She's one in a billion. I don't want our relationship to end up like all my others. I've just got some soul-searching to do, I guess.” He tossed some bills on the bar and they left in separate cars.
But Feldman didn't go home. Instead, he drove out to the desert and sat alone on his stone seat at the top of the hill where he last saw Jeza. The same place he'd come alone to each night for the past several nights, sitting quietly for hours, waiting, hoping.
90
The Papal Apartments, Vatican City, Rome, Italy 3:47 A.M., Saturday, March 25, 2000
Escorted by his ever-loyal Swiss Guard, Nicholas VI returned to his palace in the early morning dark, entered his private quarters and sat wearily behind his large desk. He'd spent the last fifteen hours abstaining from food and drink, alone in St Peter's Basilica, having ordered it sealed from all intrusions so that he might meditate in absolute isolation.
He had lain prostrate before the High Altar. He had knelt for hours on the cold stone of the catacombs in front of Saint Peter's tomb, beseeching his predecessor to speak out to him as the Great Apostle had chosen to speak to Antonio di Concerci. For eight hours Nicholas had fervently prayed, petitioning the Lord long and passionately for inspiration and guidance in this desperate time.
He had read and reread all the foreboding passages di Concerci had cited from The Book of the Apocalypse. Indeed, Nicholas had located three more very telling scriptural clues of his own in the Gospel of Mark, 13:2-23; the Epistles of Paul, 2 Thessalonians, 2:3–4; and from the Old Testament, the Book of Deuteronomy, 13:2–6.
Still, before he could bring himself to make this most serious and terrible indictment, Nicholas had pleaded for a sign. Something,
Yet nothing. Not even the whisper of a ghost nor the flicker of a vision to inspire him.
So he'd returned, reluctantly, to his quarters to continue his vigil. The most important decision in the history of Christendom, and he was to be bereft of spiritual guidance. The ultimate decision, and he must render it feeling such estrangement from his God. That potentiality staggered him.
But there was at least one thing more he could do. Though he had read it a dozen times before, he must consult for the last time, the only modem source of divine revelation known to exist on the grave subject of the Last Day.
He retrieved the golden key from the chain on his cincture. He inserted it carefully into the lock on the vault of his desk. He turned the heavy tumblers and slowly, the thick wooden door clicked open. From within its large cavity, Nicholas retrieved a faded brown-leather-bound portfolio and placed it carefully on his desk. Slowly he untied the leather thongs that secured it and laid open its heavy cover. Removing its hallowed contents, he spread a series of yellowed parchments gently across his desk.
The documents were letters, written in Portuguese, in laborious longhand. The first letter was dated November 17,1929. The last, November 23 of the same year.
And each was signed
These were the original, famous Fatima Letters recording the prophecies of the Virgin Mary to three young shepherd children on a hillside in rural Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. The words had been written by the only surviving visionary, Lucia, more than a decade after the events.
In these letters, Lucia transcribed the celebrated Three Revelations-the Virgin's portentous words of foreboding and hope that were unveiled, one per letter.
The first two Revelations were well known to the world, even at the time Lucia transcribed them. She had proclaimed them orally on several occasions after the miraculous visitations. It was the third Revelation, however, the mysterious Last Secret of Faima, about which the world had anxiously speculated for all these decades.
Indeed, the Last Secret was so confounding and troubling, Lucia, a mere child of twelve at the time she first received it, was told by the Virgin not to be concerned with its meaning or recollection; that Mary would return to her again someday to reveal it once more.
This the Virgin did on the morning of November 23, 1929. True to her promise, on this, the Virgin's last and most disturbing appearance to Lucia, Mary conveyed once again the terrible Last Secret of Fatima, which Lucia transcribed verbatim.
What made these Three Revelations unique and so important was that they were unlike most biblical prophecies, which were generally couched in nebulous symbolism. These predictions, if still somewhat mystical, were far more precise in their language and written for the immediate future.
Nicholas read once more all the letters, beginning with the earliest, to determine any possible correlations in the three prophecies.
In the first document, Lucia had detailed the celebrated miracles of the Fatima visitations, such as the day of the “dancing sun,” in which the sun is said to have wobbled in the sky above the Fatima hills, moving around mysteriously and ominously. This was authenticated by over a hundred thousand attendees, including formerly dubious, anticlerical members of the press.
And then, Lucia went on to transcribe the first, well-known prophecy. She spoke of the Virgin's sadness in contemplating the universal woes of the era. The continuing devastations of the Great War. The Russian Revolution, which, in accordance with the prophecy, began that very year. As also the accurate predictions of the rise of godless communism and its long reign of terror and aggression.
The Virgin predicted the rise of Fascism and the horror of World War II. She correctly anticipated the Holocaust, famine, disease and widespread misery that lay ahead.
In the second letter, the Virgin had made a conditional promise. She had pledged the fall of communism in Russia and a period of relative peace and tranquillity in the world-
It was the last letter of the group that directly and specifically pertained to Pope Nicholas and the events of the present. The Secret Letter. The only one of the three held in strict papal confidence, its mysteries classified for more than seventy years now. Nicholas was the only living person to have read it.
Pius XI, in 1929, was the pope first presented with the letter. The response attributed to him was that he grew severely agitated, covered his face with his hands, and then cleared his office, decreeing that the letter would remain sealed for as long as he had control over it.
His successor, Pius XII, who served under Pius XI as Vatican secretary of state, was present when his predecessor was first presented the letter. Witnessing Pius XI's traumatic response, Pius XII forever refused to read its frightful contents.
Pope John XXIII'S reaction in 1958 was described by his attendants as traumatic. His ruddy face was said to have turned white, and he immediately consigned the letter to the locked privacy of his papal vault.
In 1967, Pope Paul VI, after reading the letter, made a controversial pilgrimage to Fatima. Controversial because Portugal was still a Fascist regime at the time, under the dictatorship of Antonio Salazar. The pope's visit was interpreted as endorsing the regime and, although Paul VI knew the trip would cost him much support around the world, he could not be dissuaded from undertaking the journey.
At Fatima, as Paul VI recounted later, in gazing out over a crowd of more than one million-the largest crowd he would ever experience-he had a vision of Armageddon. It was as if the masses were assembled for Judgment Day, he had said in awe. The letter remained sealed.
Pope John Paul I suffered the most devastating effect from the letter. Although the circumstances were officially denied, Nicholas knew full well the awful truth. One morning, scarcely a month after John Paul's investiture
