The Third Revelation

by Ralph McInerny

  The theory behind the Soviet backing of the assassination attempt on John Paul II was that they were mad as hell at the way he encouraged dissent on their side of the Iron Curtain. His visits to Poland had effectively brought down the Communist government. And that was only the beginning.

  “So why did they work through the Turks?” Dortmund had asked.

  “To throw us off.”

  “Maybe. Fix me another of these, would you?”

  Dortmund was drinking gin and tonic. It was April but chilly, and he seemed to think that drink would encourage spring to put in an appearance. Traeger fixed him another.

  Now, lying in the Red Roof Inn, remembering that conversation, remembering all the conversations he’d had with Dortmund, made him even more anxious to talk to his old boss.

  He had a pizza brought in for his supper, took a long nap, and at one in the morning got up. There was a pickup in the parking lot he’d had his eye on and this was a good time to borrow it. No need to check out of course. He had surprised the clerk by paying cash; all he saw anymore was credit cards.

  “Some of them valid,” he added. He had a pivot tooth that looked east when he was facing south.

  Traeger’s first stop would be his office, where he could get alternative ID and credit cards out of the safe.

  The safe was where he wanted to put the file Heather had given him.

  The door of his room exited onto a balcony that ran along the front of the building to open stairways at either end. The pickup was there in the lot below. The place was lit up, spots on the motel, the parking lot lined with arc lights. People were whooping it up in a unit Traeger went by, but for the most part the motel was asleep. All lit up but asleep.

  The pickup could have used a new muffler. Traeger felt like a mobile Fourth of July getting out of the motel lot. He hit the street and barreled off into the night. When he turned on the lights nothing happened, at first, then they connected. Jeez. He traded the pickup for a Chrysler coupe, which was quieter and faster. Unfortunately, it was nearly out of gas. Traeger looked for another motel. That turned out to be more difficult than he had imagined; he seemed to have gone past a string of them. No signs announced food and lodging ahead. There was notice of a rest area, and he pulled in. A long, swooping entry brought him to the division between roads for trucks and cars. Traeger pulled into a parking spot, cut the motor, and looked at the illumined building before him. Restrooms, free maps, coin-operated food and beverage machines. The restrooms were the draw, even at this hour of the night. Other vehicles pulled in beside him, first on one side, then on the other, and their occupants fled toward the building and relief. Cars had come and gone when one with its headlights switched to high came up the road with a roar and then braked, sending the car into a skid. The driver seemed to lose control, then regained it, but not before hitting a little raised island in the lot. There was a piercing sound as the bottom of the car scraped over the curbing. Once across the island, the car came to a stop. Then slowly it began to move, picking its way to the spot next to Traeger.

  The driver’s door opened and a man got out, slowly, with an effort. When he was standing, he gave the door a push and nearly lost his balance. The door hadn’t closed. He had left the motor running. Traeger watched him reel safely into the building, then got out of the Chrysler, rounded the hood of the Lexus, and threw his bag into the passenger seat. He checked the gas gauge first of all. Three-quarters full. He put the gear in reverse.

  “Jim?”

  A woman’s slurred voice from the backseat.

  “Jim, why’re we stopped?”

  Traeger grabbed his bag, got out of the car, and was up the walkway to the building before the woman in the backseat got into a seated position. Inside, he stood looking at a rack of pamphlets touting things to see in the area. The light in the room was a sickly pallor, and objects that in daytime might seem real enough now looked like props. There was a large map of the state under glass on a low-tilted stand. You are here. A flashing light in the lot. Traeger saw the police cruiser pull up behind the Chrysler, briefly check the license plate, then go on, slowly. It stopped and doused its lights. Two troopers got out.

  There were other doors, opposite those he had entered, facing the lot where trucks parked. Think. Think. Since the car was there in the lot, they would assume he was inside. Just then the drunk came out of the restroom, still zipping up.

  “Hi, Jim.”

  He tried a smile, tried to focus on Traeger. “I forget your name.”

  “You don’t know it. A woman in the backseat of your car was calling for you. I see she brought the police.”

  He opened the door so Jim could see the police cruiser in the lot. He looked at Traeger. “And I’m stinko.”

  “I have an idea.”

  Jim liked the idea. They went arm in arm to the Lexus, Jim walking very carefully. Traeger held the passenger door open for him, then went around and got behind the wheel. The trooper who was standing behind them had watched but said nothing. Once more Traeger eased the car into reverse, and this time backed out of the spot.

  “Jim?”

  “Shut up for a minute.”

  In a moment they were on the road, up to speed. A grumbling from the backseat had given way to silence. Jim’s relief to be away was replaced gradually with curiosity.

  “Say, what about your car?”

  “It’s back at the rest stop.”

  “But . . .”

  “It’s out of gas.”

  Perhaps Jim sober would not have accepted that explanation.

  Traeger exited at the first possibility. Jim protested when Traeger drove into a motel.

  “Just let me check to see if I can stay here, okay?”

  Comprehension glowed in Jim’s eyes. “Take your time.”

  The older a car the more likely it was to be locked, it seemed. Most cars had a spare set of keys in a magnetic box attached to the chassis below the driver’s door. This time Traeger went upscale, selecting a Town Car. When he purred past the entry where he had left Jim and companion, Jim’s head was thrown back, his mouth was open, and he was dead asleep. He would be much safer asleep.

  Traeger avoided the interstate and took secondary roads to the building in which his computer consulting business was housed and where, in the daytime, Bea was on duty. There were night-lights in the building, and a silence that seemed to lift from the carpeted floors and the pastel walls. He rose in the elevator to the seventh floor and a moment later was letting himself into suite 721.

  Now that he was here, now that he had at last pulled back his desk chair, lifted the flap of carpet, and opened the safe, he hesitated. Running around as he had been with the document in his shoulder bag made him feel like a Brink’s truck. Brendan Crowe had thought it safe enough in his briefcase in the guest building at Empedocles. He had been wrong. Just as earlier the assumption that being in the Vatican Archives insured safety had been proved wrong. At the very least, his office safe was no more vulnerable than those.

  He traded the file containing the third secret of Fatima for a variety of alternate IDs and credit cards. The photograph on the passports showed a beardless face, of course. He put the items in his shoulder bag, patted the Vatican folder, and closed the safe. When he had the mat back in place, he sat in his chair. Quite a bit had happened since he took Dortmund’s call and agreed to come discuss a matter with him.

  Since leaving the Red Roof he had been heading toward Dortmund. But now he wondered about the wisdom of that. Better give it some thought. He closed his eyes and an enormous tiredness swept over him. He transferred to the couch. Just forty winks would do it.

  “Good morning.”

  He rose in a single motion and was on his feet, looking around. The voice had come from the intercom. Bea. He crossed to the desk and said hello.

  She came in, smiling, efficient, tossing her prematurely gray hair worn defiantly long. “I looked in earlier and was about to call the police. But then they’re already
on your case.”

  He nodded.

  “You’re famous.”

  She handed him the morning paper.

  “Rogue Former CIA Agent Sought in Slaying of Priest in New Hampshire.” The story gave an accurate resume of his activities in the agency. Apparently Dortmund had decided to cut him loose, feed him to the fish.

  Bea said, “I had no idea I worked for such a celebrity.”

  Loyalty is a wonderful thing. He would miss it in Dortmund.

  “I don’t like the beard.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “It’s why I nearly called the police. Then I saw that the bag was yours. They were here yesterday. I told them I hadn’t seen you in weeks.”

  She was matter-of-fact, unalarmed, if anything, a little amused. She said she’d make coffee and go out for pastry. He nodded. He moved to his desk chair. The fact that they had been here asking about him didn’t mean they wouldn’t be back. The aroma of coffee from the outer office created the impression that this was just the beginning of another day. Traeger was thinking of other agents who had been discarded over the years, expendable in the light of a higher purpose. What had happened to them? He didn’t want to remember.

  Bea came closer. “Are you all right, Vince?”

  Vince. She almost never called him that. He looked into her concerned eyes and felt a rush of emotion he seemed to have been suppressing for years. He took her in his arms.

  “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “I know that.”

  She had come closer in his embrace. He was about to say something more, but he checked it. It seemed a temptation. He could not pursue anything with Bea until he had cleared himself, and the only way to do that was to get Anatoly. He let her go, stepping back. Again, that concerned look in her eyes.

  “When I get back.”

  She nodded and said, “Be careful.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  I

  He looked out over Cefalù.

  Monsignor Angelo Orvieto, bishop of Cefalù, just fifty kilometers from Palermo, his native city, was half a year shy of his seventy-fifth birthday and he still had not heard from Rome that his resignation, to become effective on his next birthday, had been accepted. He did not repine. Word would come, either favorable or unfavorable. He could not expect that his little diocese counted for much in the eternal city, however ancient a Christian foundation it was. Cefalù was enjoying a renascence as a target of tourism, its modern beach contrasting with the medieval city, which was of more permanent interest. To the discerning mind, history lay all around one in Sicily: not least, reminders of the coming and eventual going of Islam on the island.

  It is a salutary practice of septuagenarians to review their lives and try, while there is yet time, to repair the damage of their errors. Bishop Orvieto, like most of us, had much for which to repent, but any list he was likely to draw up would place at the top the name of Jean-Jacques Trepanier.

  The power to ordain is an awesome one, to be able to lay hands on a man’s head and pass on to him the priesthood handed down from the apostles. A bishop ordained priests to help him in his ministry, and that is what Orvieto had done over the years, with one exception: Trepanier.

  Trepanier had shown him a letter from the priest who had baptized him and had nurtured the young man’s vocation, and other letters, more equivocal, particularly those of seminary professors. But what had moved Orvieto beyond the counsels of prudence and good sense was the letter from Trepanier’s mother.

  Orvieto read it with tears in his eyes. It was written in pencil, on ruled pages torn from a tablet. It might have come from his own mother. The woman described herself as writing on her kitchen table. She recalled the vestments she had sewn for her son when he played at saying Mass as a boy. She prayed that she would live long enough to attend her son’s first Mass.

  Orvieto had met Trepanier in Connecticut, at Holy Apostles Seminary in Cromwell. Their conversation on the Blessed Virgin had impressed the bishop with the young man’s devotion. It seemed wrong that such a man should encounter difficulties in becoming a priest. So Trepanier flew to Palermo via Rome, and Orvieto met him there. He checked over the transcripts of credits, the many years passed as a seminarian. He frowned over the letter that had informed Jean-Jacques that he was too inflexible for the post-conciliar Church. Among the supposedly negative features in Trepanier was his devotion to the Blessed Virgin. If the mother’s letter had left any doubt, this would have removed it.

  Three months later, in his private chapel, Bishop Orvieto ordained Jean-Jacques Trepanier to the priesthood. Only his vicar general, Sonopazzi, knew the unusual circumstances of the ceremony. The new priest intended to fly home to say his first Mass.

  “I will return in two weeks’ time.” The young man’s Italian was already good; he was equipping himself to serve in Sicily.

  “Sicily has less need of priests, my son. I want you to function as a kind of missionary in your own country, spreading devotion to Mary.”

  Orvieto had thought about this. It was not a whimsical decision. Sonopazzi’s reaction, eloquent silence, suggested that he not prolong the anomaly by keeping Trepanier in Sicily. The young man was full of zeal. Let him exercise it in his native country.

  Once, America had been a long, long distance away, at the end of dreams, as much myth as reality. Now, huge jets dropped onto the island day after day, bringing tourists from around the world, most of them Japanese or Americans. Satellites made all calls local calls. Television brought in the land of Trepanier in primary colors. It also brought in Trepanier.

  Sonopazzi, an electronics wizard, had a television set that brought in hundreds of cable programs. One of them was Fatima Now!, Trepanier’s program. The title said it all. Trepanier preached devotion to the Mother of God. Orvieto was pleased. His protégé had found his niche. He wrote to congratulate him. That letter was to be invoked over the next few years whenever Trepanier’s foes questioned his clerical status. Orvieto received an inquiry from Rome, asking for clarification. Trepanier had become an enfant terrible on a global scale. His attacks on those he described dismissively as Vatican bureaucrats grew more strident. Orvieto began to doubt that his resignation would be accepted. It might seem a reward, and Trepanier had brought him under a cloud.

  Only his own deep devotion to the Mother of God would sustain him in his disappointment. From the windows of his residence, he looked out over Cefalù, at the reminders of previous centuries that suggested that the inexorable passage of time had granted them a relative permanence. But beyond was the beach, its littoral crowded with hotels for tourists, the neo-paganism of the times, along with a lot of bronzed human flesh, on indecent display. He had reached the end of a decade on his rosary, and now added the prayer suggested by Our Lady at Fatima. Jesus, forgive us, deliver us from the fires of hell. Draw all souls to you, especially those in greatest need.

  II

  Heather kept her counsel.

  Heather Adams followed the news and kept her counsel. Had she been right to turn over to Vincent Traeger what Brendan Crowe had entrusted to her? She trusted Traeger, though she couldn’t say why. Most of the things that truly matter elude explanation. Learning that he had been a CIA agent with Zelda’s late husband seemed a vindication. His reaction after the discovery of Father Crowe’s body seemed to fit that role, and when she had found him in her house and given him supper, it was clear that he saw himself as the pursuer rather than the pursued. He had left Empedocles in order to pursue the one who had killed Brendan Crowe.

  And had lost him. And then apparently had been found by him and did indeed become the pursued. By the time he sought refuge with her he was pursued by the police as well. Given his role as an agent, Heather assumed that the police would soon realize their mistake and Traeger’s associates would help him in tracking down the killer.

  She sat at her kitchen table reading the newspaper story about Traeger. He was portrayed as a demented fanatic who had been harassing Father Crowe i
n Rome and had apparently followed him to New Hampshire and the Empedocles complex and killed him. His unexplained fanaticism was apparently sufficient as a motive.

  Heather put down the paper. She hated newspapers. She hated what was called news. Sometimes she thought she hated the modern world. Not people, of course, but the unexamined premises of their lives. Vanity of vanities: all is vanity. A few lines from such a book as the Imitation seemed to connect her to the really real world.

  Zelda came along with her husband as he settled in to his new job.

  Heather said to Gabriel Faust, “You could hire her, you know.”

  Zelda had reacted with delighted surprise. Her husband simply nodded and stroked his beard. “We’ll see.”

  The fact was that Zelda understood certain aspects of the idea behind Refuge of Sinners better than Gabriel Faust. Not the role of art, of course, he was the expert there, but the spiritual aims of the new foundation. Faust seemed to discuss them as if he were learning a new language. When Fatima came up, he paid close attention.

  “I’ve never been there,” he said.

  “You should go,” Heather suggested.

  He looked at her, liking the idea. Zelda liked it even more. Heather left them making plans for their trip.

  Laura vetoed Mr. Hannan’s suggestion that the couple go in a company plane. She shook her head. “The IRS will be all over you.”

  “He works for me.”

  “He is director of Refuge of Sinners.”

  “I’ll buy him a plane.”

  “You will not.”

  Laura had to enlist Ray Sinclair to squelch the idea. When he conceded, Mr. Hannan looked at Heather.

  “I wish you’d work with Faust.”

  Heather said nothing. She had already said no, and he had learned that she meant what she said. It wasn’t that she was so enamored with her work at Empedocles. She found that she had misgivings about Gabriel Faust that would not go away. When she downloaded for him the material made public by Cardinal Ratzinger in the year 2000, he studied the handwriting of Sister Lucia with an expert eye.