The Third Revelation

by Ralph McInerny

  VI

  “Didn’t Saint Peter carry a sword?”

  Joseph Ratzinger, when he first came to Rome as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, remarked that his new staff was smaller than that he had had as archbishop of Munich. Bureaucratically speaking, he had taken a demotion. It continued to be a feature of the Curia that the dicasteries were run, and run reasonably well, by a very small number of men. Compared to their secular counterparts, if such there were, they were risibly understaffed. The same thing could be said of Vatican security.

  Presidents and prime ministers had special cadres of protective police, on duty twenty-four hours a day, forever on the alert for some maniacal attempt to harm the public person they were pledged to protect. There was no greater target for such madness than the pope. Would anyone believe how minimal the protection afforded him was? How few there were to keep harm from him?

  “I have asked Father DiNoia to find me all the scriptural passages alluding to Our Lord’s bodyguard.”

  That had been the pontiff’s humorous response to the most recent suggestion that Carlos Rodriguez be allowed to bring his handful somewhat closer in number and firepower to the Secret Service that protected the American president.

  DiNoia had suggested John 8:59, when the Pharisees took up stones to throw at Jesus but he walked through them unscathed.

  “Jesus autem abscondit se et exivit de templo,” came the Bavarian murmur.

  The problem was that the Vicar of Christ on earth did not have similar power to become invisible and thus elude his enemies.

  After the slaying of the previous secretary of state and his assistant, as well as of Cardinal Maguire, Carlos Rodriguez felt that he had a heaven-sent argument for enlarging his staff. How easily on that occasion the assassin could have surprised the pope at his desk. The matter was taken under advisement—small or large bureaucracies have the same modus operandi—but in the meantime Carlos was authorized to seek help from the wider world. Hence the call to Traeger.

  Once, the civil arm could be counted on to supplement the small Vatican security contingent, but in those days the ornamental and largely symbolic Swiss Guards, always thought of as garbed in their Renaissance uniforms, seemed proportional to the danger. No matter that popes in the past had been kidnapped, chased from Rome, and, in the early centuries, martyred one after another. In a world of superpowers the little postage-stamp state of Vatican City had itself seemed an anachronism, a remnant of the papal states and papal armies and all the mix of secular and religious that had so incensed Dante. Within the walls, the attitude toward security had continued to be otherworldly.

  “Fatalistic,” Traeger had said, when he was briefed by Rodriguez.

  “Providential,” Carlos had replied.

  “Didn’t Saint Peter carry a sword?”

  “He was told to put it away.”

  Summoning Traeger to Rome had turned out to be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Carlos had favorable memories of the efficiency with which the agent had conducted his investigation into the assassination attempt on John Paul II. Of the various reports submitted to the Vatican by different investigative agencies, the American had been most circumstantial. And accusative. A Turk may have pulled the trigger and later stuck to his story that he had been acting alone, but Traeger had detected the Soviet hand manipulating the strings. The principal puppeteer had been Chekovsky, then in Moscow, now Russian ambassador to Italy. No wonder the man was concerned that the reports be turned over to him.

  “Russia must not be tarnished with the misdeeds of the Soviet Union,” Chekovsky had said unctuously during one of his efforts to have those reports in the archives released to him. Rodriguez had been told this by the late Brendan Crowe.

  Crowe, Donna Quando had reported, surprisingly had contacts with the Confraternity of Pius IX. Her listening post at the Domus had proved to be a fruitful source of information that seemed to bear on security, and her employment there kept her off Rodriguez’s modest budget. The confraternity carried on a constant attack on the Vatican, but it was rhetorical, of words, not sticks and stones. Nonetheless, the fact that Crowe, the right-hand man of Cardinal Maguire, had been seen chatting on the parapet of the Castel Sant’Angelo with Catena and the corpulent Harris gave food for thought.

  The thought was further fed when Crowe went off without fanfare to the United States where he was murdered in the residence for guests at Empedocles Inc. That episode had also sent Traeger on the run. He had been spirited out of the country on the plane that brought Heather Adams to Rome, her mission to turn over the forged message that had caused such turmoil in a world that seemed defined by the confrontation of a militant Islam and a wishy-washy Christendom. The gates of hell might never prevail against the Church, but that was no guarantee that Europe would not be colonized and turned into caliphates from the Channel to the Caucasus. The island of Vatican City had survived in a rising secularizing sea. How would it fare if surrounded by Islam?

  Rodriguez had told Traeger’s amazing story of the itinerary of the missing third secret of Fatima to Cardinal Piacere, but as yet had not committed it to writing. Imagine Crowe flying off to America with that file, being murdered when he had surprised the man come to steal it who then fled without the file, a file Heather had taken home, and then she had given shelter to the pursued Traeger, who took the file and stored it in his office safe in the mistaken hope that it would be secure there. His secretary had paid the price of his mistake on that score. All this had brought them to the point where Traeger was negotiating with the madman who had the third secret, offering to trade his report on the assassination attempt on John Paul II for the third secret of Fatima.

  “Of course,” Cardinal Piacere had said, when Rodriguez sought authorization for the exchange. “I am counting on the retrieval of that file.”

  The problem was that Rodriguez felt reduced to the role of spectator in the matter. Traeger and the madman he was dealing with would call the shots.

  But Rodriguez meant to take his role of spectator seriously.

  He stood now with Donna Quando on the roof of the Vatican Library. In the square below them, temporary shelters had been set up by the angry protestors. Banners with a strange device fluttered from the twin fountains in which children were disporting themselves. Wisps of smoke rose from the fires on which the squatters prepared their meals. But Rodriguez was checking from this site the visibility of the North American College. It was visible enough, the building, but from this vantage point the roof could not be seen.

  Donna Quando had an alternative. Father Ladislaw’s apartment was higher up the Janiculum hill.

  “He lives up there?”

  “Rather comfortably,” Donna said.

  It seemed an odd location for an assistant of the secretary of state, if only because it was outside Vatican City.

  “That is not his address in the Vatican directory,” Rodriguez said. “How did you hear of it?”

  “Remi Pouvoir mentioned it.”

  “But will he let us use it?”

  “I will make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

  Rodriguez looked shocked. Had he added a Mata Hari to his force? But it was not concupiscence that Donna had in mind.

  “I will tell him that we will ignore the fact that he has been leaking things to the press.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  I

  He read around in Marcus Aurelius.

  Neal Admirari had not thought he was being sent to a war zone when he accepted the Rome assignment. Like others of his generation, he had lived his working life with an eye to retirement. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he still had a lot of miles in him, but work had always seemed merely a means toward that future hyped by the insurance companies, a graying couple sunning themselves in Florida, sustained by their wise investments. Once, Lulu van Ackeren would have shared the yacht in which he floated about on an imaginary Gulf of Mexico. That, alas, was not to be. Meanwhile, the thought of vegetatin
g in Rome while the rest of the world burned was not without its attractions. He remembered the trattorie and ristoranti, he remembered the sun, he remembered the women and the promissory hum that seemed to pervade the eternal city. Where better to approach the evening of his career, if not his life?

  At first, there had been some semblance of that imagined existence. Several days a week, he drifted from his office in a building across the Tiber from the Palace of Justice to the Sala Di Prenza, picked up the press releases, schmoozed his new colleagues, and kept in touch with Donna Quando. She had been an invaluable source for the story he had written on the murders in Vatican City, which had been edited beyond recognition before it appeared in print. Once, his professional ego would have been wounded by that, but something like a philosophical mood seemed to be descending upon him. There was little integrity or the hunger and thirst for truth among the current representatives of the media. Neal sometimes thought of himself as a dinosaur, representative of a better time. He read around in Marcus Aurelius and went up to the Capitolio to study the old Stoic emperor on horseback, a mounted pagan in a post-Christian city. He glanced at the truncated printed version of his story and tossed the magazine into a trash can.

  Subsequent events had piqued the curiosity of his editors, however. What in God’s name was happening in Rome? With the appearance of the hitherto suppressed third secret of Fatima, the city had become a war zone. Admirari had pursued in a desultory fashion, more out of habit than passion, his acquaintance with Angela di Piperno and had been introduced to her editor, Richard John Neuhaus. The former Lutheran pastor, now a priest of the archdiocese of New York, seemed to have easy access to all the nerve points in the Vatican. Neal had not liked playing the role of tyro being instructed by the knowledgeable, wired-in cleric. He was not unhappy to learn that Neuhaus had left the city.

  “Interesting fellow,” he said to Angela.

  “He didn’t like you either.”

  “What did he say?”

  She smiled. “You wouldn’t want to hear.”

  “You’re right.”

  Her reticence seemed flirty—I know something you don’t know, so try and get it out of me—and feigned indifference seemed the best way to find out what the editor of First Things thought of him.

  “Read ‘The Public Square’ if you want to know,” Angela suggested.

  This was the extended section at the back of each issue of the magazine where the editor opined on a bewildering number of topics with the ease of someone in the know.

  “He’s a little jealous of Father Fessio,” Angela said.

  Joseph Fessio was the founder of Ignatius Press and now provost of Tom Monahan’s new university in Naples, Florida: Ave Maria. Ignatius Press had a corner on the English versions of Ratzinger’s writings. Fessio had been a student of Ratzinger’s, had kept up the acquaintance over the years, and now, according to Angela, was persona muchissima grata in the Vatican, accorded face-to-face chats with his old professor, now pope, whenever the lanky Jesuit popped into Rome.

  “Did you read it?” Angela asked. They were in his office on the bank of the Tiber. Her reference was to the “Public Square” pages in the most recent issue of First Things.

  “Not yet.” He had glanced at the section, but the opening sentence about how Luce was currently dimly represented in Rome by a veteran of the mainstream media had been enough. No doubt Neuhaus had gone on to spell out the meaning of luce.

  “I’ve met the most amazing person,” Angela said, then stopped.

  “Is that all?”

  “I thought I’d tell you over lunch.”

  “Good idea.”

  In the interest of safety, he drove them out of the city, along the Via Cassia Antica, to a rustic ristorante where their table was under a trellis crawling with vines.

  The amazing person Angela had met was Heather Adams. “They’ve stashed her in the convent inside the Vatican walls.”

  “Stashed her?” Neal said.

  “She works for Ignatius Hannan.” Angela paused. Neal nodded and went on sipping his wine, indicating that he knew the electronics tycoon.

  Angela alternated between a glass of mineral water and the pricey Barolo that Neal had ordered, as if mixing wine and water would temper her excitement. Well, it was an exciting story, if true.

  “True! Heather is the most innocent and honest person I’ve ever met.”

  This innocent and honest person had told Angela of the grisly goings-on at Empedocles Inc., the murder of Brendan Crowe (“He worked with Cardinal Maguire!”), her being entrusted with the third secret and taking it to her house where she turned it over to a CIA agent, Vincent Traeger.

  “The rogue former agent,” Neal murmured. This was the standard way of referring to the fugitive Traeger.

  The secret was then stolen from Traeger’s office safe, his secretary murdered, and the rogue former agent had flown to Rome with Heather, who had been commissioned to turn over the bogus document that had set the world aflame.

  “The authentic third secret’s still missing?” Neal asked.

  “Traeger hopes to get it from the man who stole it.”

  “And murder his secretary?”

  Angela sat back. “I know, I know. It sounds like a bad movie starring Tom Hanks. If anyone other than Heather had told me all this I would have been skeptical, too.”

  These revelations spoiled Neal’s lunch. It was one thing to be condescended to by Richard John Neuhaus, but to be scooped by a girl just out of college was worse.

  “That pretty much matches what I’ve learned,” he lied.

  “From whom?”

  He looked wise and, with one of his typing fingers, bisected his lips, ruby with Barolo.

  “Neal, would you have told me what I’ve told you if you had known it and I hadn’t?”

  “Well, it’s hardly a story for First Things.”

  It said something about his character that he managed to get back his appetite when the saltimbocca alla romana came. He ordered another bottle of Barolo, too, as if he had something to celebrate.

  “You’re going to have to drink that yourself,” Angela said.

  She had gotten a little tipsy. What a lovely thing she was. In another world, in the world he had inhabited when he was younger, Neal might have tried to benefit from her slightly impaired sobriety. In the present world, he did a fair imitation of an American journalist in Rome enjoying a sumptuous repast on his expense account, entertaining a young colleague with highlights from his past. He made the mistake of mentioning Lulu van Ackeren and Angela perked up.

  “As she then was. Her married name is Martinelli.”

  “She broke your heart.” There was soft concern in Angela’s voice.

  Who was being affected by the Barolo, this chit of a girl or Luce’s current dim light in Rome?

  “It was mutual,” he said, and let it go at that.

  In town, she asked to be dropped at a metro station. “I wouldn’t advise that, Angela. Take a cab.”

  “Maybe I will.”

  “Do.”

  He put his car in the underground garage beneath his office building and walked to the Vatican, trying to look like a neutral as he hurried through the hostile crowds. At the gate, the Swiss Guards wouldn’t let him through, but he persuaded them to call Donna Quando. Whatever she told them got him inside the Vatican.

  She was waiting for him outside the Domus Sanctae Marthae. They crossed the cobbles to a little park and sat on a bench where, when the breeze freshened, they were lightly sprinkled with spray from the gurgling fountain. Neal gave her a quick version of what he had just heard from Angela di Piperno.

  “Who told you that?” Donna asked.

  “Not you, my dear. I thought we were friends.”

  She lay her lacquer-tipped fingers on his sleeve. “It’s all true.”

  She told him of the exchange that Traeger was arranging and that she and Rodriguez would be monitoring it from a building higher up the Janiculum.

/>   “I want to be there, Donna.”

  She thought about it. “Will you behave?”

  “Only if provoked.”

  I I

  “Oh, do get us in there.”

  Nate spent the first several hours of the flight in the front cabin with Laurel and Hardy, on a little jump seat. Laura busied herself in the galley, readying a meal—all prepared, just pop things into the microwave—while Ray sat, contemplatively sipping single malt scotch and looking down at the clouds. The trip had been set up on the spur of the moment, but what trips with Nate were not? Nate was convinced that what was going on in Rome could only benefit from his presence, and his general track record made that seem less presumptuous than it might have. Laura had put through a call to her brother John from the airport before takeoff.

  “Things are a mess here, Laura.”

  “That’s why we’re coming. How is Heather?”

  “Happy as a lark.”

  Get thee to a nunnery? Who knew? Maybe that was Heather’s destiny, although Laura had been surprised when she found that Heather had been giving asylum to Vincent Traeger. Heather’s hiding him had removed any smidgeon of doubt Laura might have had about Traeger’s responsibility for what had happened to Brendan Crowe. Heather’s protective attitude had, at least momentarily, suggested something more.

  “Where will you stay?” John had wanted to know.

  “The Hilton?” Laura said.

  “Better not. That was one of the first targets of the rioters, I don’t know why. I’ll get you into the Villa Stritch.”

  “Where you used to live?”

  “A secret, Laura. The pope is there now.”

  “Oh, do get us in there.”