The Third Revelation

by Ralph McInerny

“Haec est dies quam fecit Dominus,” he began, the text springing to his lips without forethought. But he was accustomed to finding himself inspired whenever he stepped before the camera. Thoughts, insights, connections came to him that he would never have come upon in the privacy of his own mind, so to speak. “Fides ex auditu!” That of course was the motto of the station, a reminder that he had begun with radio alone. His personal motto might have been fides ex loquendo.

  He began with a swift, sure summary of the events of Fatima, of those successive Fridays when the beautiful lady had appeared to Jacinta and Francisco and Lucia. Jacinta and Francisco were in heaven now, beatified, whereas Sister Lucia had lived a very long life, in the course of which she was favored with other visits from the Lady. It was under instruction that she had composed her long account of the apparitions as well as later confidences she had received. These had gone to her bishop, to his superior, and eventually on to Rome, for the eyes of the Holy Father only. These were warnings to the world, made not to frighten but to stave off the punishment that must come if men continued in their sinful ways. It is an old truth, we have it from Paul himself, that no word of Scripture is without its importance, to instruct, to exhort, and so forth, and the same may be said of those words spoken in private revelations. They are all spoken for a definite purpose.

  What then are we to make of those who arrogate to themselves the right to prevent the faithful from hearing the message? Who suppress news of the ultimate punishment awaiting if prayer and penance do not define our lives? But that is exactly what happened.

  Worse, an effort was made to pretend that the whole had been made public. There was a great media event in 2000, complete with downloadable copies on the Internet and an accompanying theological explanation of Fatima and private revelations generally. Trepanier did not mention now, as he once had, the role Cardinal Ratzinger had played in this. In those days, he had made much of the statements of 2000 and those in the Ratzinger Report of 1985.

  Then the secret had been called too sensational to reveal. But what was there sensational about the secret supposedly published in its entirety in 2000?

  Trepanier would make no direct criticism of the Holy Father. He would leave that to more incendiary groups, no need to mention Catena and the Confraternity of Pius IX.

  Now they knew what Our Lady had warned would come. The prayers, the fasting, and the penance that might have turned away the punishment had not been done. Our Lady of Mercy, pray for us.

  He left the studio, waving aside the usual congratulations of the crew, and went on toward his office. As he was passing through the reception hall, his eye was caught by a monitor in the corner. Had he half expected to see himself on the screen? But it was not the scheduled programming of Fatima Now! that was being shown. The monitor had been turned to a commercial station.

  Trepanier stopped, stunned at the news. The Holy Father had been removed from the Vatican by helicopter. To an undisclosed location. Not Castel Gandolfo. The Holy Father had insisted that that at least be made clear, lest that lovely town in the Alban Hills also become a target of the howling mob. The pope reportedly said something about not wanting to give the Athenians a chance to sin again against philosophy, an enigmatic remark that kept commentators and pundits occupied, diverting them from speculation about where the pope had been taken.

  In Florence, where the baptistery had come under assault by Muslim rioters who were throwing buckets of filth on the engravings on its magnificent doors, a reaction had set in: the populace was rising to protect the culture that gave the city its eminence. Pitched battles were being fought. Trepanier felt his pulse quicken at the thought of Christians in hand-to-hand combat with these raging heretics.

  VI

  “I don’t understand.”

  John Burke had taken Heather with him when he went to Cardinal Piacere to discuss the package that she had brought with her from the States.

  “What is it?” he had asked.

  She looked at him for a long time before she answered. As he listened, John felt that he was suddenly swept back into the madness of those days at Empedocles Inc. The secret of Fatima. He looked at the manila envelope she had given him. How in the name of God could that have been taken from the archives, found its way to Ignatius Hannan, and now been brought back by Heather? And even as he asked himself the question, he thought of Brendan. His horrible death had seemed at first only one of those random acts that characterize the modern world, a mindless slaying by a thief surprised at his work. Before John had left, he had of course heard the speculation that Vincent Traeger had been the assassin. And here he was, bearded but recognizable, standing beside Heather on the tarmac after they had descended from the private plane with the logo of Empedocles emblazoned on its tail fin.

  On the drive to the Vatican, Heather sat between him and Traeger on the backseat, speaking in her calm voice of what had gone on since his departure.

  “They actually thought Vincent had killed Father Crowe.” The incredulity in her voice was infectious.

  “But how did Mr. Hannan come into possession of this?”

  “He bought it.”

  “From whom?”

  “From the one who took it from Vincent’s office.”

  Traeger added to this story, making it more mystifying still. An ex-Soviet agent roaming the country?

  “He killed your friend,” Traeger said.

  “But why?”

  “For that.”

  “My God.” The package suddenly seemed heavier than before.

  The driver had been given instructions to take them to the Casa del Clero, and once Traeger was settled there, John took Heather on to the Bridgetine convent. It was the following morning that he came by for her, wanting her to accompany him on his visit to Cardinal Piacere. The thought of telling this twisted tale all by himself was not welcome; he wanted Heather there to supply answers to the questions the cardinal would surely ask and to which John himself did not have the answers.

  Meanwhile Rome had become a war zone. The main streets of the old city were crowded with men in burnooses and women in burkas. Signs in Arabic and Italian proclaiming that there is no God but Allah were everywhere. At the first outbreak of violence, John had received permission to have Heather transferred to the contemplative community founded by John Paul II, the convent within the walls of the Vatican. A Carmelite welcomed them and Heather stepped back.

  “Saint Teresa!” she said.

  The nun smiled. “No, Sister Dolores.”

  “I meant the habit.”

  “I know, I know.” She took Heather’s arm and looked at John. “She’ll be fine here.”

  When he came by for her, to take her along on the appointment with Cardinal Piacere, she was radiant.

  “What a heavenly place, Father.”

  “I have said Mass there once or twice.”

  “Two of them speak English.”

  “So does Cardinal Piacere,” John said, and they started down the road to the office of the acting secretary of state. To their right, higher still, was the observatory, and below them was the building in which John worked, which housed the various pontifical academies. After the tumult of the city, the quiet, the peacefulness was all the more striking.

  Bernagni, a priest John knew from the Domus, welcomed them in the outer office and took them right in to the cardinal, muttering about the tightness of the schedule. Piacere rose slightly from his chair, making a little bow to Heather, and asked them to pull chairs up to his.

  “So you are the assistant of the famous Ignatius Hannan?” Cardinal Piacere said to Heather.

  “Is he famous? I suppose he is. No, I am not his assistant. That is Laura, Father Burke’s sister.”

  “And you are a messenger who brings things to Rome?”

  “This is my very first visit, Your Eminence.” John had told her the correct form of address.

  “You have come in troubled times.” Piacere made a gesture and Bernagni came forward to give him the
envelope Heather had brought. “All because of this.”

  And then, as John had predicted, the cardinal wanted as complete an account of the document as Heather could give him. She made a point of the fact that people had died because of it.

  “Father Brendan Crowe,” John said.

  “And Vincent Traeger’s secretary, Beatrice.”

  Piacere repeated the name with an Italian pronunciation.

  “Ah. Be-a-tri-ce. Let us pray that she is with her namesake in Paradiso.” His eyes fell again to the envelope he held. “Yes, people have died because of this. Many more will, I am afraid. This is a forgery.”

  He drew a booklet from the envelope that had been sent to him, a school notebook, and fluttered its pages.

  “It took but a few minutes to determine that this document is at most a month old. The handwriting is remarkably similar to that of Sister Lucia, almost identical. Almost—not quite.”

  John said, “Then all the rioting and attacking of the Church and the Holy Father is based on . . .”

  “A fanciful interpolation to what is in the authentic text.”

  “Making that public will quiet things down. How soon will the announcement be made?”

  “I have advised against any announcement,” Piacere said softly. “And I will tell you why. First, the claim that this document is a fake, even though accompanied by the written judgment of manuscript experts, would be regarded as a ploy.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Yes, yes, we are well into the age of suspicion. You can appreciate the paradox: the announcement that the document that has caused blood to run in the streets is a fake is accompanied by the expert judgment to that effect. Fraud and forgery are in the air and they taint the expert judgment as well. But that is not the main reason. The most decisive way to show that this”—again he fluttered the pages he held—“contains an interpolation not to be found in the original and authentic document would be simply to lay them side by side.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” John asked.

  “Such a comparison could of course be made now by anyone interested.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “All the documentation released in two thousand is still on the web. Nothing at all like this passage that has so stirred our Muslim brothers is to be found there. But, as perhaps you know, suspicion has long been trained on that documentation. There is a certain kind of mind that demands apocalyptic warnings. Doubtless that is why the Apocalypse was made the final book of the New Testament.” Piacere smiled. “A book that has been interpreted, reinterpreted, and interpreted again and whose meaning remains elusive. But I digress.”

  John still did not see the problem. Invite a number of Muslim scholars, let them put the documents side by side and make their own judgment.

  Cardinal Piacere’s expression was sad. “Because the authentic document is missing from the archives.”

  Heather sat forward. “I gave it to Vincent Traeger for safekeeping. It was when his office was broken into and Beatrice was killed that it was taken from the safe.” Heather pronounced Beatrice modo italiano this time.

  “And where did you get it, my dear?” Piacere asked.

  “From Father Brendan Crowe.”

  Piacere fell back. “Of course, of course. One of the few men who would have been able to remove the file. He took it to America?”

  “I thought I was bringing it back.”

  He brought his long-fingered hands together. “So you see we have an insoluble problem. God only knows how long this rioting and outrage will continue. It seems to grow more intense every day.”

  What had happened first in Florence had spread across the Continent, with natives opposing the trashing of churches and museums by the Muslim mobs. In Paris, when the police were called out, a battle broke out between the Muslim and Christian members of the metropolitan police. The divided force was now on different sides of the barricades formed by burning automobiles.

  Cardinal Piacere insisted that they have a glass of wine. He wanted Heather to thank Mr. Hannan for his thoughtfulness in wishing to return what he had thought was a document stolen from the archives.

  “He paid four million dollars,” Heather said.

  “Mamma mia.” He clapped his hands and Bernagni ran in from the outer office. Piacere shooed him away. “No, no, Father, I was simply being emotional.” And then to Heather, “To whom did all that money go?”

  “I think there was a middleman,” Heather said.

  Piacere sat thinking, with his eyes closed. After a minute, John feared that he might have fallen asleep from the exertion of his reaction to the news that four million dollars had been paid for a forged document. When he spoke, his eyes were still shut.

  “And how is your Vincent Traeger, my dear?”

  Heather was not bothered by the possessive pronoun. “He’s in Rome. He’s grown a beard.”

  “I should like to see him again. We have met, you know.”

  “Would you like me to bring him here, Your Eminence?”

  “I will get word to him. Thank you, Father Burke.”

  He rose, they rose, Bernagni appeared, and soon they were on their way back to Heather’s convent.

  “All this bloodshed over a forged document.”

  As he often did, John missed Brendan Crowe, but particularly now. Brendan would no doubt have had any number of historical instances of forgeries altering the course of history.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I

  “Did you tell her it was a fake?”

  “Oh my God, he’s been kidnapped,” Zelda cried when she came to Empedocles for word of her husband.

  Zelda had thought that Gabriel Faust was on a mission for Ignatius Hannan, to return the presumed Vatican Archive file to its rightful owner. Laura told her this wasn’t the case and was trying to calm her as Nate inched toward the door.

  “Nate, you stay here,” she said. She was not going to be left alone with a hysterical woman. Hannan was watching Zelda warily as Laura got her into a chair. Ray brought a cup of coffee, which she held in both hands, looking from one face to the other. Written all over her well-preserved, still handsome face was the unasked question: have I lost another husband?

  “He bought a fake,” Nate said, sitting down himself, but then he had the desk between himself and Zelda. “For four million dollars.”

  Zelda gasped.

  “No one has tried to cash the check yet.”

  “So far as we know,” Ray said, always the life of the party.

  “Where is Gabriel?” Zelda wailed.

  It was a question everyone in the room wanted answered, for different reasons.

  “Have you told the police yet?”

  Laura and Ray exchanged glances. Nate had lost millions before, in a sense he did so every day, but not like this. “Find him,” he had ordered Ray. “No police. We know how good they are.”

  Laura took Zelda off to the ladies’ room, where there was a cot on which Zelda could lie. Not the best place to play her big scene, the twice-widowed woman, but it got her away from Nate. Zelda had been thinking.

  “Vincent Traeger,” she said, her voice now under control. “It must be Vincent.”

  Laura did not ask why, but she got the reason anyway.

  “He was jealous of Gabriel. I don’t know if you noticed his reaction when Gabriel and I showed up here as man and wife.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “He’s the one. We must find him.” Zelda sat up. “I know who to call.”

  Laura eased her back onto the cot. She had brought Zelda’s cup of coffee along, but it was no longer hot. Zelda waved it away. “How can I eat or drink?”

  She began to weep. She told Laura of their first argument.

  “Not argument exactly. We just didn’t agree. I suggested he give a painting he had obtained for me to the new foundation. Hang it in his office.”

  “And he disagreed,” Laura said, feeling that she was taking part in a Beckett drama.

  A smile
drove away the tears. “He said he thought of it as our first real link.”

  Laura brought her a tissue and Zelda dabbed away the tears. Fifteen minutes later, Laura brought the now calm Zelda back to Nate’s office.

  “I intend to hire a detective,” she announced.

  “Work that out with Ray,” Nate suggested. It was an order, and Ray now took Zelda off to his office.

  “Did you tell her it was a fake?” Hannan asked.

  “You mentioned that. She may not have understood.”

  The cable from John Burke had arrived half an hour before Zelda. The document Heather had brought to the Vatican had been examined. It was a fake. The message that was filling the streets and plazas of the world with rampaging, enraged Muslims was an interpolation.

  “Faust said it was authentic,” Hannan said.

  “He said an expert assured him it was authentic,” Laura corrected.

  “Inagaki.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “I want to talk to him,” Hannan said grimly.

  Ray was already on that. The notion of hiring a private detective to locate Gabriel Faust had already occurred to him. It was pretty clear that Faust had disappeared, and neither Laura nor Nate could seek consolation in the theory that he had been kidnapped. Only a wife could believe that in the circumstances.

  After the cable came, Laura talked with John on the phone and got an account of their meeting with Cardinal Piacere.

  “They’re sure it’s a fake?”

  “Laura, he said the experts needed only minutes to determine that.”

  “How were we to know?” Laura might have been addressing that question to Nate. The truth was that she felt she had let Nate down. And she felt irrationally responsible for the whole sad sequence of events. She had invited John and Brendan Crowe to Empedocles. A thought occurred.

  “Father Crowe checked Gabriel Faust’s dossier and okayed him.”

  “So?” John said.

  “Gabriel Faust is missing.”

  Later she would wonder aloud to Ray of a possible previous connection between Brendan Crowe and Faust. How convenient to have a man from the Vatican there to assure Nate Hannan that Gabriel Faust was the kind of expert he needed to run Refuge of Sinners. Where was Faust when Crowe was killed? Had Father Crowe brought the phony document with him? Ray followed this with a wry smile. “Don’t ever write a novel,” he advised.