The Third Revelation

by Ralph McInerny

  “Do you know Italian?” Orvieto asked in Italian.

  “Posso ne legere pero parlare e otra cosa.”

  Orvieto smiled. “It will come.”

  They corresponded. At the end of Jay’s fourth year of theology, when his classmates were being ordained for various dioceses, he flew off to Sicily and was ordained by Bishop Orvieto. At the time, he was reconciled to the thought that he would live his priestly life in Italy. Orvieto shook his head.

  “No, you must return to the United States.” He had before him a thick folder containing Jay’s transcripts, student publications, letters of recommendation. “You have worked in the media. You must spread devotion to Fatima by every modern means. In order to do this, you will have to raise money . . .”

  And so it had begun. Jay founded his Fatima magazine with his own money; he appeared on EWTN and donations flowed in. He acquired a short-range television signal and branched out. Eventually, he was adopted by a cable service and his program was carried across the country. They had called him Torquemada and Savonarola in college. Now he was the scourge of the hierarchy for their failing to take seriously the warnings of Our Lady. He led pilgrimages to Fatima and gave retreats across America. He established himself outside Manchester, built a state-of-the-art television studio, a building that housed his staff and in which he had his own modest apartment, and he built a chapel. He invited the local bishop to dedicate the chapel and bless the other buildings that made up Fatima Now! The vicar general sent a stuffy letter, describing the demanding schedule of the bishop, and obliquely inquired as to Father Trepanier’s clerical status. So Jay flew in Bishop Orvieto for a two-day celebration and the local bishop found time in his busy schedule to attend.

  The first donation from Ignatius Hannan caused Mrs. Meany, Jay’s secretary, to bring it in and lay it on his desk. She stood in silent awe. Ten thousand dollars. Jay nodded. He was not impressed. Money never impressed him. He never asked for donations; they came unbidden. It was not money that Mary wanted. She wanted our souls. He reminded Mrs. Meany of this.

  “Tell it to Mr. Hannan.”

  “I will.”

  She was alarmed. “I meant thank him.”

  “Write a nice note and I’ll sign it.”

  “I am going to get him on the phone.”

  She did, although it took some time. Hannan was apologetic for the delay. “Not everyone here is acquainted with your work. I am. It helped bring me back to the faith.”

  Hannan had seen one of the programs Jay had done for Mother Angelica. If some of Hannan’s people were unacquainted with what Jay was doing, he in turn had never heard of Empedocles or Ignatius Hannan. He was surprised to find that they were scarcely twenty miles apart.

  “You must come see our new chapel,” Trepanier said.

  “And I’d like to show you the replica of the grotto at Lourdes I’ve put up here.”

  For almost a year these two invitations had both stood and neither had been answered.

  Through Orvieto, Jay had acquired contacts in Rome. He had been approached by Catena and rebuffed him. When the rumor reached him that the third secret of Fatima had been filched from the Vatican Archives, Jay’s first thought was Catena. That very afternoon, a call came from Hannan, urging Jay to come down.

  “I have the prefect of the Vatican Archives with me.”

  “But Cardinal Maguire is dead.”

  “This is his right-hand man. Father Brendan Crowe.”

  Jay said he would be delighted to come visit Empedocles, and Father Crowe.

  II

  “You remind me of Lulu van Ackeren.”

  Neal Admirari sat at a table in a trattoria in one of the narrow little streets off the Piazza Navona that would never have gotten a license in New York. He said as much to Angela di Piperno.

  “Because they allow smoking?” Angela said, exhaling smoke with her head tipped back, making the angle of her eyes as she looked at him even more seductively.

  “An observation, not a criticism.”

  The outside tables were in the street, down the middle of which was a depression through which who knew what filth flowed.

  “Tell me about First Things.”

  “The book by Hadley Arkes?”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Richard John Neuhaus stole the title for the magazine, as Hadley often reminds him.”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “I was a summer intern when I was still in college.”

  “Where?”

  “Christendom.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “All around you.” She smiled. She seemed to have several extra teeth, and large, large eyes, seemingly of the kind Lois Lane had admired in Clark Kent. X-ray eyes. Neal felt he had no secrets from her, and he loved it.

  “You remind me of Lulu van Ackeren.”

  “Who was she?”

  That “was” alone would have won his heart. No need to tell her that Lulu under her unmarried name was writing a column whose syndication had fallen below ten papers. Neal waved Lulu away dismissively.

  “And now you’re the Rome correspondent?”

  “Oh, that’s just part-time. I get paid for what they use.”

  “What are you, independently wealthy?”

  “Worse. I’m a student.”

  She was studying moral theology at Santa Croce, the pontifical university run by Opus Dei. She watched him make a silent inference.

  “No,” she said. “Not even a supernumerary. But I admire them all to pieces.”

  “I was a student once,” Neal said.

  She was supposed to ask where and when, thus establishing his age, thus perhaps convincing her that a man in his fifties was eligible. For the first time since Lulu, Neal felt the marrying urge. For the first time since Lulu, he thought he had met a woman unlike all the others: an error in Lulu’s case, but not, he was certain, in Angela’s. But she did not take the bait.

  “Do you know Endan Farrell?”

  “I don’t even know what it is.”

  A laugh, not all the teeth this time. “It’s a name. An Irish priest.”

  “One of your professors?”

  “He’s a Dominican!”

  “No wonder.”

  Still, she didn’t explain. Were Dominicans verboten at Santa Croce?

  “He said the most amazing thing about Cardinal Maguire.”

  “Amaze me.”

  Angela leaned toward him, bringing along her scent. Her long hair fell forward as if in modest covering. “He said the rumor in Ireland is that he was killed.”

  Neal remembered his fruitless exchange with Ferdinand the Bull in the Sala di Prenza.

  “How do such rumors get started?”

  “The undertaker there opened the coffin,” Angela said. “There was a huge wound in the chest.”

  “Endan Farrell, you say?”

  “Don’t use my name.”

  “Where will I find him?”

  “Where would you expect to find a Dominican?” Angela asked.

  Endan Farrell taught philosophy at San Tomasso.

  “It used to be called the Angelicum,” he added.

  “You told them not to use your name?”

  Farrell took Neal into the courtyard and lit a cigar. Neal asked him what he taught.

  “Epistemology. The last refuge of the scoundrel.”

  “What is it exactly?”

  “Asking about knowing. Does it exist? Is it possible? Can we know? It’s like asking out loud whether you’re speaking.”

  “So why bother with it?” Neal asked Farrell.

  “Know thine enemy.”

  “I have an epistemological problem.”

  Farrell groaned.

  “I’ve been hearing odd rumors about the way Cardinal Maguire died.”

  “Stabbed in the chest while taking his siesta in his rooftop garden.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Ah. That’s your epistemological problem. I heard
the same rumor and I talked to a man who worked with Maguire. Another Irishman. Brendan Crowe.”

  “He works in the archives?”

  “He lives in the Domus Sanctae Marthae.”

  That was where he had gone to have his interview with Bishop Ascue of Fort Elbow, Ohio, in town to report solo to the pope since he had missed the ad limina of midwestern bishops. They had met upstairs, in Ascue’s suite—a sitting room, a bedroom, private john, baroque furniture—where Neal was offered mineral water. He took it.

  “Every day they leave another bottle.” Ascue smiled. “All right. Fatima.”

  Bishop Ascue said he had spoken with great confidence the other night at Hannibald’s reception.

  “A priori confidence. How could I believe the Church had lied?”

  “That’s more or less what you said.”

  “My confidence is now a posteriori. I have talked with Cardinal Piacere. He worked in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the time the secret was made public. Nothing was held back.”

  “That assurance hasn’t convinced some people.”

  “Father Trepanier? The Confraternity of Pius IX? The Right is as nutty as the Left.”

  “Which are you?”

  “In medio stat virtus.”

  “Isn’t that on the Pall Mall package?”

  Ascue laughed. “My sister smoked Pall Malls. Actually, there were two Latin mottoes on the package. Per aspera ad astra. That’s gone. Through difficulties to the stars. The one they kept is In hoc signo vinces. Can you imagine? That refers to Constantine and the conversion of the empire. In this sign you will conquer. The sign of the cross. I wonder if they export Pall Malls to the Middle East.”

  Ascue just listened when Neal told him he had heard Maguire had been murdered.

  “You haven’t heard anything like that, have you?”

  “Murdered how?”

  “Stabbed in the chest.”

  Ascue shook his head. “It would have to be in the back.”

  After the meeting, Neal went downstairs and stopped at the reception desk of the Domus.

  “Hello, Donna. Could you tell Father Brendan Crowe I’d like to see him?”

  “I could if he were here. He isn’t.”

  “At the office?”

  “In the United States.”

  III

  “I have it with me.”

  “Vincent, I’ve remarried!” Zelda cried when he got through to her on the phone.

  “Congratulations. That’s great news.”

  Was it? Traeger wasn’t sure. He was old-fashioned enough to think that widows, if they didn’t throw themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre, ought to at least live out their days in abnegation and loneliness. Unrealistic, of course, particularly in Zelda’s case. Traeger had only become aware of the amount of money she had after Chuck was dead, and at first he thought his departed colleague had made a good thing of undercover work. He wouldn’t have been the first. In a crooked world there are no straight lines. But Zelda had laughed away his suggestion.

  “Oh, it all came to me from Daddy.”

  So there she was, a good-looking woman, eligible, independently wealthy, and obviously lonely, as Traeger had often become uneasily aware whenever they got together. In a way it was a relief to have her spoken for. But why hadn’t she sent him an invitation? She gave him a breathless account of the wedding in Rome, the time on Corfu.

  “I must have been in Rome at the time.”

  “Oh, Vincent, don’t say it. Of course it was a very private ceremony, but oh, if I had only known.”

  “Did you meet him in Rome?”

  “Now, Vincent, it was sudden but not in that way. I have known this man for ages. He is the art historian who catalogued my collection.”

  “And screwed up your computer?”

  “So you do remember.”

  Zelda obviously didn’t want him to think that she had married on a sudden impulse, but at the same time he was to understand how impossibly romantic the whole thing was.

  “Gabriel Faust,” she answered when he asked her husband’s name. “Dr. Gabriel Faust. But what were you doing in Rome?”

  “Nothing so interesting as getting married. So what does Dr. Gabriel Faust do?”

  She began to whisper. “Nothing is settled yet, but there is a possibility that he will become director of a new foundation being set up by Ignatius Hannan.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “That’s all there is for now.” She was still whispering. “Nothing may come of it. Gabriel hates to be tied down.”

  It’s a small world. Smaller than Zelda knew. Faust was the one who had sold her a Delacroix that was actually hanging in a museum in Cincinnati, Traeger had learned from a man Dortmund put him onto. So he sought and found Gabriel Faust’s web page and flicked through the pages of accomplishments and claims to greatness. He went back to the opening page and studied the pensive picture of the art historian. So he had gone back to Dortmund.

  “What has art forgery got to do with those murders in the Vatican?”

  “Nothing. It’s just a little tangent.” He thought of telling Dortmund how the widow of their former colleague had been taken, but what the hell. Zelda loved the picture, and the one she had was real enough. He had continued to pursue the tangent, indirectly, calling in a few favors he had accumulated over the years. That is how he learned of Faust’s connection with Inagaki. And there the matter might have rested if Zelda hadn’t given him the surprising news of her marriage to the shady art historian. That was bad enough, but when she mentioned the possibility that Faust might be taken on by Hannan to run the new foundation, he realized he would have answered Dortmund’s question differently. Maybe art forgery was connected with those murders in the Vatican, or would be.

  Traeger flew home, drove to Empedocles, and, representing himself for what he was, a computer consultant, got past the guard, a phone call having been made. No doubt they had checked and found that he was indeed a customer. He was greeted by an affable type named Ray Sinclair who offered to show him around before Traeger went off to speak to the technical people. It was in the main building of the enterprise that they ran into Brendan Crowe.

  “Hello, Father,” Traeger said, advancing on the priest with his hand out.

  “You know one another?” Sinclair cried, delighted.

  Crowe hesitated before taking Traeger’s hand, as if he understood they were enacting a little scenario. No need to make a public fuss of the fact that Crowe had gotten out of Rome just when the third secret of Fatima showed up missing from the archives over which Crowe was now acting director.

  “We go way back,” Traeger said heartily. “We have catching up to do.”

  Sinclair seemed happy enough to be relieved of his guide duties and sailed off over the polished marble floor.

  “Where can we catch up?” Traeger said to Crowe.

  “There’s a lovely garden.”

  It was a lovely garden, filled with dozens of species of flowers whose names Traeger did not know. There was a magnolia tree that wasn’t doing well in this climate. Crowe led him to a bench and sat.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you found me.”

  “You left a pretty obvious trail.”

  “Have you solved your problem in Rome?”

  “A new one has arisen. But of course you know that. The third secret of Fatima is missing from the archives.”

  Crowe lit a cigarette, enjoyed it for a moment, and then said, “Yes, I know.”

  “Where is it?”

  Crowe turned to him. “I have it with me.”

  Traeger sat back. “Can I have one of those?”

  Crowe shook a cigarette free and Traeger took it. He had taken to drinking again in Rome, and now he was lighting his first cigarette in years. Crowe had surprised him. He surprised him more by being far more forthcoming than he had ever been before. The cigarette tasted awful, but it gave him something to do while Crowe told him of comin
g upon the famous document on a bedside table in Cardinal Maguire’s suite.

  “If that is what the assassin was after, he could have had it easily,” Crowe said.

  “But you surprised him before he got inside the villa.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Why didn’t you return it to the archives?”

  Crowe said, “I think you know why.”

  “Tell me what I know.”

  “The assassin must have had inside help. You spoke of a mole. I haven’t told you this before, but the Russian ambassador said something to me that suggested he thought the same thing. He asked if I were the one or must he wait for another. The question was put to Jesus by the disciples of John the Baptist.”

  “He thought you were the mole?” Traeger asked.

  “You did, too, didn’t you?” Crowe put out the cigarette.

  Traeger said, “Chekovsky was interested in the file on the attempted assassination of John Paul II.”

  “They’re connected.”

  “Through the third secret?”

  “Yes. Would you care for another?”

  Traeger shook his head. “I remember enjoying smoking.”

  “It’s like running. Painful at first, but it becomes pleasurable.”

  “You run and smoke, too?”

  “Not at the same time.”

  “You say you have the file with you. Where?”

  “In my briefcase,” Crowe said. “In my room.”

  “Why not on the bedside table?”

  “I’ve thought of that. Not that I was particularly worried until you showed up. I will ask Mr. Hannan to put it in a safe place. A safe.”

  “Here you are!” someone cried.

  It was Father John Burke, wearing a cassock. His smile slowly dimmed when he realized he was interrupting. Crowe stood and Traeger did, too.

  “They’re looking for you,” Father Burke said. To Crowe. “The art historian has arrived and Mr. Hannan wants your opinion of him.” He looked questioningly at Traeger.

  “I’m in the computer business,” he said, and to Crowe, “Should I come along?”

  “Of course.”