never mentioned this before?”
“It seemed unimportant until the Holy Father showed interest in the tribunal.”
“I might have underestimated Father Michener. He appears human, after all. A man with a past. Faults, too. I actually like this side of him. Tell me more.”
“Katerina Lew has worked for a variety of European publications. She calls herself a journalist, but she’s more of a freelance writer. She’s had stints with Der Spiegel, Herald Tribune, and London Times. Doesn’t stay long. Her slant is leftist politics and radical religion. Her articles are not flattering to organized worship. She’s co-authored three books, two on the German Green party, one on the Catholic Church in France. None was a big seller. She’s highly intelligent, but undisciplined.”
Valendrea sensed what he really wanted to know. “Ambitious, too, I’d guess.”
“She was married twice, after she and Michener split. Both brief. Her connection to Father Kealy was more her idea than his. She’s been in America the past couple of years working. She appeared at his office one day and they’ve been together ever since.”
Valendrea’s interest was piqued. “Are they lovers?”
Ambrosi shrugged. “Hard to say. But she seems to like priests, so I would assume so.”
Valendrea snapped the headphones back over his ears and switched on the recorder. Clement XV’s voice filled his ears. I’ll have my letter to Father Tibor ready shortly. It will call for a written response, but if he desires to speak, listen to him, ask what you will, and tell me. He slipped off the earphones. “What is that old fool up to? Sending Michener to find an eighty-year-old priest. What could possibly be served by that?”
“He’s the only other person left alive, besides Clement, who has actually seen what is contained within the Riserva regarding the Fatima secrets. Father Tibor was given Sister Lucia’s original text by John XXIII himself.”
His stomach went hollow at the mention of Fatima. “Have you located Tibor?”
“I have an address in Romania.”
“This requires close monitoring.”
“I can see that. I’m wondering why.”
He wasn’t about to explain. Not until there was no choice. “I think some assistance in monitoring Michener could prove valuable.”
Ambrosi grinned. “You believe Katerina Lew will help?”
He rolled the question over again in his mind, gauging his response to what he knew about Colin Michener, and what he now suspected about Katerina Lew. “We shall see, Paolo.”
SEVEN
8:30 P.M.
Michener stood before the high altar in St. Peter’s Basilica. The church was closed for the day, the silence disturbed only by maintenance crews polishing the acres of mosaic floor. He leaned against a thick balustrade and watched while workmen ran mops up and down marble stairs, whisking away the day’s debris. The theological and artistic focal point of all Christendom lay just beneath him in St. Peter’s grave. He turned and cocked his head upward toward Bernini’s curlicued baldacchino, then stared skyward into Michelangelo’s dome, which sheltered the altar, as one observer had noted, like the cupped hands of God.
He thought of the Vatican II council, imagining the nave surrounding him lined with tiered benches holding three thousand cardinals, priests, bishops, and theologians from nearly every religious denomination. In 1962 he was between his first Holy Communion and confirmation, a young boy attending Catholic school on the banks of the Savannah River in southeast Georgia. What was happening three thousand miles away in Rome meant nothing to him. Over the years he’d watched films of the council’s opening session as John XXIII, hunched in the papal throne, pleaded with traditionalists and progressives to work in unison so the earthly city may be brought to the resemblance of that heavenly city where truth reigns. It had been an unprecedented move. A absolute monarch calling together subordinates to recommend how to change everything. For three years the delegates debated religious liberty, Judaism, the laity, marriage, culture, and the priesthood. In the end the Church was fundamentally altered. Some argued not enough, others thought too much.
A lot like his own life.
Though born in Ireland, he was raised in Georgia. His education started in America and finished in Europe. Despite his bicontinental upbringing, he was considered an American by the Italian-dominated Curia. Luckily, he fully understood the volatile atmosphere surrounding him. Within thirty days of arriving in the papal palace, he’d mastered the four basic rules of Vatican survival. Rule one—never contemplate an original thought. Rule two—if for some reason an idea occurs, don’t voice it. Rule three—absolutely never set a thought to paper. And rule four—under no circumstance sign anything you foolishly decided to write.
He stared back out into the church, marveling at harmonious proportions that declared a near-perfect architectural balance. A hundred and thirty popes lay buried around him, and he’d hoped tonight to find some serenity among their tombs.
Yet his concerns about Clement continued to trouble him.
He reached into his cassock and removed two folded sheets of paper. All of his research on Fatima had centered on the Virgin’s three messages, and those words seemed central to whatever was upsetting the pope. He unfolded and read Sister Lucia’s account of the first secret:
Our Lady showed us a great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged into this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze. This vision lasted but an instant.
The second secret was a direct result of the first:
You see Hell, where the souls of poor sinners go the Lady told us. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world the devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If they do what I will tell you, many souls will be saved, and there will be peace. The war is going to end. But if they do not stop offending God, another and worse one will begin in the reign of Pius XI. I come to ask for the consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart and the Communion of reparations on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded Russia will be converted and there will be peace, if not she will spread her errors throughout the world causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me and she shall be converted and a period of peace will be granted the world.
The third message was the most cryptic of all:
After the two parts which I have already explained, at the left of Our Lady and a little above, we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand, flashing. It gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire, but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand. Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!,’ and we saw in an immense light that is God. Something similar to how people appear in a mirror when they pass in front of it. A bishop dressed in white, ‘we had the impression that it was the Holy Father,’ other bishops, priests, men and women Religious going up a steep mountain, at the top of which there was a big Cross of rough-hewn trunks as of a cork-tree with the bark. Before reaching there the Holy Father passed through a big city half in ruins and half trembling with halting step, afflicted with pain and sorrow. He prayed for the souls of the corpses he met on his way. Having reached the top of the mountain, on his knees at the foot of the big Cross he was killed by a group of soldiers who fired bullets and arrows at him, and in the same way there died one after another the other bishops, priests, men and women religious, and various lay people of different ranks and positions. Beneath the two arms of the Cross there were two Angels each with a crystal aspersorium in his hand, in which they gathered up the blood of the Martyrs and with it sprinkled the souls that were making their way to God.
The sentences bore the cryptic mystery of a poem, the meanings subtle and open to interpretation. Theologians, historians, and conspiratorialists had for decades postulated their own varied analyses. So who knew
