He nodded. “The published versions of the La Salette secrets are in the Vatican archives. Maxim mentioned a vengeful Virgin who talked of famine and compared sinners to dogs.”
“The kind of thing a troubled child might say about an abusive parent. The stepmother used to starve him as punishment.”
“He eventually died young, broke and bitter,” he said. “One of the original seers here in Bosnia was the same. She lost her mother a couple of months before the first vision. And the others have had problems, too.”
“It’s all hallucinations, Colin. Disturbed kids who have become troubled adults, convinced of what they imagined. The Church doesn’t want anyone to know about the seers’ lives. It totally bursts the bubble. Causes doubt.”
Rain pounded the cafe’s roof.
“Why did Clement send you here?”
“I wish I knew. He was obsessed with the third secret, and this place had something to do with it.”
He decided to tell her about Clement’s vision, but he omitted all reference to the Virgin asking the pope to end his life. He kept his voice in a whisper.
“You’re here because the Virgin Mary told Clement to send you?” she asked.
He caught the waitress’s attention and held up two fingers for a couple more beers.
“Sounds to me like Clement was losing it.”
“Exactly why the world will never know what happened.”
“Maybe it should.”
He didn’t like the comment. “I’ve spoken with you in confidence.”
“I know that. I’m just saying, maybe the world should know about this.”
He realized there was no way that could ever happen, given how Clement had died. He stared out at the street flooded with rain. There was something he wanted to know. “What about us, Kate?”
“I know where I plan to go.”
“What would you do in Romania?”
“Help those kids. I could journal the effort. Write about it for the world. Draw attention.”
“Pretty tough life.”
“It’s my home. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”
“Ex-priests don’t make much.”
“It doesn’t take much to live there.”
He nodded and wanted to reach over and take her hand. But that wouldn’t be smart. Not here.
She seemed to sense his wish and smiled. “Save it, until we get back to the hotel.”
FORTY-THREE
VATICAN CITY, 7:00 P.M.
“I call for a third ballot,” the cardinal from the Netherlands said. He was the archbishop of Utrecht and one of Valendrea’s staunchest supporters. Valendrea had arranged with him yesterday that if no success came on the first two ballots, he was to immediately call for a third.
Valendrea was not happy. Ngovi’s twenty-four votes on the first scrutiny had been a surprise. He’d expected him to garner a dozen or so, no more. His own thirty-two were okay, but a long way from the seventy-six needed for election.
The second scrutiny, though, shocked him, and it had taken all his diplomatic reserve to keep his temper in check. Ngovi’s support increased to thirty, while his own nudged up to a weak forty-one. The remaining forty-two votes were scattered among three other candidates. Conclave wisdom proclaimed that a front-runner must gain a respectable amount of support with each succeeding scrutiny. A failure to do so was perceived as weakness, and cardinals were notorious for abandoning weak candidates. Dark horses had many times emerged after the second ballot to claim the papacy. John Paul I and II were both elected that way, as was Clement XV. Valendrea did not want a repeat.
He imagined the pundits in the piazza musing over two billows of black smoke. Irritating asses like Tom Kealy would be telling the world the cardinals must surely be divided, no one candidate emerging as front-runner. There’d be more Valendrea-bashing. Kealy had surely taken a perverse pleasure in slandering him for the past two weeks, and quite cleverly he had to admit. Never had Kealy made any personal comments. No reference to his pending excommunication. Instead, the heretic had offered the
He watched as the cardinal-archivist passed out more ballots. The old man made his way down the row in silence and threw Valendrea a quick glare of defiance as he handed him a blank card. Another problem that should have been dealt with long ago.
Pencils once again scraped across paper and the ritual of depositing ballots into the silver chalice was repeated. The scrutineers shuffled the cards and started counting. He heard his name called fifty-nine times. Ngovi’s was repeated forty-three. The remaining eleven votes remained scattered.
Those would be critical.
He needed seventeen more to achieve election. Even if he garnered every one of the eleven stragglers, he would still need six of Ngovi’s supporters, and the African was gaining strength at an alarming rate. The most frightening prospect was that each one of the eleven scattered votes he failed to sway would have to come from Ngovi’s total, and that could begin to prove impossible. Cardinals tended to dig in after the third vote.
He’d had enough. He stood. “I think, Eminences, we have challenged ourselves enough for today. I suggest we eat dinner and rest and resume in the morning.”
It wasn’t a request. Any participant possessed the right to stop the voting. His gaze strafed the chapel, settling from time to time on men he suspected to be traitors.
He hoped the message was clear.
The black smoke that would soon seep from the Sistine matched his mood.
FORTY-FOUR
MEDJUGORJE, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
11:30 P.M.
Michener awoke from a sound sleep. Katerina lay beside him. An uneasiness flowed through him that seemed unrelated to their lovemaking. He felt no guilt about once more breaching his vow of Holy Orders, but it frightened him that what he’d worked a lifetime to achieve meant so little. Maybe it was simply that the woman lying next to him meant more. He’d spent two decades serving the Church and Jakob Volkner. But his dear friend was dead and a new day was being forged in the Sistine Chapel, one that would not include him. The 268th successor to St. Peter would shortly be elected. And though he’d come close to a red hat, that was simply not to be. His destiny apparently lay elsewhere.
Another strange feeling surged through him—an odd combination of anxiety and stress. Earlier, in his dreams, he kept hearing Jasna.
He climbed from the bed.
Katerina did not stir. She’d enjoyed several beers at dinner and alcohol had always made her sleepy. Outside, the storm was still raging, rain pecking the glass, lightning strobing the room.
He crept to the window and looked out. Water pelted the terra-cotta roofs of the buildings across the street and streamed in rivers from drainpipes. Parked cars lined both sides of the quiet lane.
A lone figure stood in the center of the soaked pavement.
He focused on the face.
