On the top floor, he went up a half flight of steps to the closed door to the roof. He grasped the knob and pulled it open. After the dimness of the building, the sunlight momentarily blinded him. A great ball already settling west. At the far end of the roof were three figures, a man and woman and a priest. What were they doing here? Something must have gone wrong.
He turned to go, but the priest hurried toward him. “Wait!”
The priest was Anatoly. And he held a gun.
“Come meet our witnesses. Do you have it?”
“Do you?”
Anatoly reached beneath the buttons of his soutane and produced a large envelope.
“Come.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Traeger said to Donna Quando when he got to her.
“We were forced to come here,” the man cried. “I am a member of the press. This is outrageous.”
Anatoly looked at him with contempt. Neal Admirari then identified himself as Rome correspondent for Time.
The noon Mass at the North American College was a pontifical of sorts, of the newer sort, said by a visiting bishop, but Trepanier in cassock and surplice among the seminarians and student priests in the facing choir stalls that filled the nave of the chapel in the North American College offered up the pain he felt at what had been done to the liturgy since Vatican II. The best that could be said for it was that the Mass was valid and licit—he had no sympathy for those who condemned the Novus Ordo as a breach with tradition as decisive as had been the alteration of the ordination ceremony by the Anglican Church. But finally, mercifully, it was over, and Trepanier joined the procession that filed from the chapel. The sight of Traeger pressed against the wall as they went by made his heart leap. How easily he might not have noticed the man.
Trepanier dropped out of the procession when it turned off toward the refectory, letting the files of clerics go by him while he looked intently toward the corridor from which they had turned. He saw Traeger hurry away, as if he had been freed from the procession by a kind of Crack the Whip. Trepanier scampered back the way he had come and rounded the corner just in time to see Traeger enter the elevator.
As he watched the numbers above the door light one after the other, he sent up a prayer of thanksgiving for the inspiration that had led him to seek a room here at the North American College. At the time, it had been proximity to the Vatican that commended the switch from the guest room at the Confraternity of Pius IX. He was certain that he had been sent here to witness the repossession of the third secret of Fatima! He was on a mission.
The elevator stopped at the top floor, the very floor on which Trepanier’s room was. Rather than wait for it to descend, he took the staircase. After two flights, he regretted this decision, but to alter it would have taken more time, so he pressed on.
When he emerged onto the top floor, he stopped. He listened. Nothing. He stepped forward and saw nothing but an empty corridor. Perplexed as to what to do now, he began to walk. That was when he noticed the door with “Roof” on it. With a certitude that defied all logic, he knew that that was where Traeger had gone.
He pulled the door open and went up another short flight, at the top of which was another door. His breath was coming in short, excited gasps. He could feel the proximity of Sister Lucia’s document. He opened the door only wide enough to slip through. At the sight of the people Traeger had joined, he took up his vigil behind a table on which a collapsed umbrella gave him some concealment and a good view of the proceedings now under way.
Anatoly held up the envelope. “This is the famous third secret of Fatima, missing from the Vatican Archives. I am exchanging it with Agent Traeger for the report on the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.” The words might have been rehearsed. Anatoly spoke them loudly, as if others might be listening.
“Where did you get that?” Neal Admirari asked.
“Neal,” Donna Quando said. “Please shut up.”
The ceremony proceeded with great formality. Traeger extended his envelope, Anatoly extended his. Each grasped the other’s with his free hand. It might have been a drill by a rifle squad. The two men stepped back, each in possession of what he had come for.
That was when Traeger felt the pain in his shoulder. He spun away from Anatoly, who turned toward where the shot had come from, holding his useless pistol. Then Anatoly began to run toward the doorway. Other shots were ripping into the stone floor of the roof, sending shards in all directions. The shots were following Anatoly.
Suddenly a soutaned figure sprang from behind a table, pushing it aside as he did so, and fairly flew across the roof toward the wounded Traeger. It was Trepanier, and he had eyes only for the envelope Traeger still held, the document he had longed to see for years, the object of all his hopes and fears. He picked up speed as he neared Traeger, who saw him coming. Just as Trepanier lunged for the envelope, the wounded Traeger stumbled to one side. The priest’s momentum carried him on. He had turned and was facing them when he hit the ledge bordering the roof. It caught him behind the knees. His hands flew up, a look of terror took possession of his face, and then he toppled backward into the yielding air.
The sound of his dying scream was audible despite the noise of an approaching chopper.
Anatoly got to the door and through it without being hit and found Lev waiting for him. He pulled the roof door shut and began ripping off the cassock while hanging on to the envelope he had gotten from Traeger.
“Get me out of here.”
“Follow me,” Lev said.
They clambered down the flight of stairs and ran past the elevator, down a narrow corridor to a service elevator. Lev did not get in.
“It will take you to the basement. You can leave from there.”
The doors closed on Lev, and Anatoly descended. It was all he could do not to tear open the envelope. He felt triumphant. Soon all would be clear. He would be vindicated.
The elevator lurched slowly down. When it reached the basement, the doors slid open. Two men were waiting. Anatoly walked into their fire as he emerged from the elevator. As he fell, one of the gunmen grabbed the envelope and the two of them hurried off, leaving the dying Anatoly on the basement floor. The last thing he saw on earth was all his hopes disappearing out a door to the parking lot.
The white chopper lifted from the Vatican heliport, flew low behind the dome of Saint Peter’s so as not to be seen by the mob in the square in front of the basilica, and within minutes reached the roof of the North American College, where it settled in a great rush of the wind it created, which sent buckets and chairs and tables and other loose objects scattering about the rooftop. Neal Admirari watched from where he lay, pressed against the ledge of the building. Some feet from him, Donna was tending to the wounded Traeger.
The great rotor continued to turn after the cab doors opened. Carlos Rodriguez hopped out and ran to Traeger.
“Did you get it?” he asked.
Traeger handed him the envelope he had received from Anatoly.
The rooftop door opened and three men burst through it, coming across the roof. Two were armed; the other was flapping his credentials at Rodriguez.
“U.S. Government,” he called.
Rodriquez glanced at the credentials while the other two converged on Traeger.
“Vincent Traeger, you’re under arrest,” one of them said.
The other said, for Rodriguez’s benefit, “We have an extradition order.”
“Where are you taking him?” Donna demanded.
“Now? To the American Embassy.”
She turned to Rodriguez. “Lodge a protest immediately.”
Neal Admirari, on his feet, approached the group, looking warily at the spinning rotor.
“Press,” he announced. “Neal Admirari of Time magazine. Could I see the extradition order?”
“Just drop by the embassy.”
Rodriguez stepped forward. “I’m taking this man to the infirmary. He’s wounded, but then I suppose you know all about th
at.”
Donna urged Traeger toward the chopper. The three men considered what to do.
“What infirmary?” one of them asked.
“In the Vatican.”
Traeger managed to get into the chopper, with Donna’s help. His arm felt useless and he was losing blood.
“Come on, Neal,” Donna called. “Get in.”
The reporter looked at the machine, at the rotor, at the cab. He shook his head.
“I’ll walk.”
EPILOGUE
Was it too late?
In the weeks that followed, a militant mood swept over the countries of Europe and a belated effort was made to control those immigrants who had swarmed onto the Continent and become intent on altering it to their imported beliefs. Concessions had been made. Craven concessions. Rulers and populace, their own faith and morals all but gone, had been intimidated by these newcomers with their fierce demands who condemned the societies into which they had come.
But the rioting and burning and pillaging and iconoclastic assault on churches and statues and images so familiar they had become invisible had at last stirred some semblance of the spirit that sent Don Juan of Austria into the Battle of Lepanto and had animated the defenders of Vienna against invading Islam.
An eager willingness to interpret the Crusades as a Christian assault on Islam was replaced by the memory of the Islamic invasions of Europe. It was now clear that the enemy was within.
As if their raison d’être was at last made clear, armed forces swept the marauders from the streets and squares of Europe. Laws were abrogated, immigrants expelled from the Continent by the boatload from Mediterranean ports.
The date of Oriana Fallaci’s death was declared a national holiday in country after country.
Our Lady of Fatima may not have predicted this ultimate conflict, but the Catholic atheist had.
The European Union was dissolved.
The euro became obsolete. Once more colorful lire, pesetas, marks, and francs were restored as currency in and between reinvigorated nations.
Sheepishly, at first women and children, but then men, too, in increasing numbers, returned to the faith of their fathers. Cynics spoke of a new puritanism when pornography was banned and abortion made illegal.
In Jerusalem, Israelis and Palestinians, representatives of two aggrieved peoples, abandoned by their erstwhile supporters, sat down, and at last brought the seemingly interminable peace process to a conclusion tolerable to both.
The governments of the Middle East protested the treatment of their returning coreligionists and introduced resolution after resolution in the General Assembly of the United Nations. Nothing came of them. The West had grown weary of being instructed in morals by governments who sponsored terrorism and jihad. When bloody civil war broke out between various Islamic factions in their countries, these delegates, accused of infidelity, one by one resigned and sought asylum in New York. They were refused and flown back to the tender mercies of their countrymen.
Was it too late? Could the spine of Europe, of the West, stiffen sufficiently to carry the counterrevolution through to the end?
The pope returned to Vatican City. As before, he could look out on the square before the Basilica of Saint Peter filled with pilgrims and penitents and peaceful tourists. When the Vicar of Christ on earth raised his hand in blessing, the blessing went forth far beyond those before him. It went out, in the phrase urbi et orbi, to the city and to the world.
Laws and armies and force were nothing without trust and belief in Almighty God and the intercession of his Blessed Mother. The struggle, as always, was with principalities and powers. The Holy Father’s learned Angelus messages, applauded when given, later studied and understood by some, provided the only fitting rationale for the legal and social reforms that were under way.
Dortmund, before returning to his cottage on Chesapeake Bay, came by the Vatican infirmary to say good-bye to Traeger.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” he said, taking a chair by Traeger’s bed.
“Who isn’t?”
“You may be right.”
“I’m told they’re dropping the charges against me,” Traeger said.
“Who brought them?”
“Some rogue prosecutor.”
A chuckle from Dortmund was equivalent to a guffaw from anyone else.
“Come see me when you get back, Vincent.”
After Dortmund left, Traeger wished that the thought of going home was more attractive. Poor Bea was gone, brutally killed by Anatoly, one more notch on his assassin’s weapon. There would be no more victims. Rodriguez told him of the discovery of Anatoly’s body at the back entrance of the North American College.
“No clues,” he added.
“Did he still have the report I gave him?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“There’s your clue, Carlos.”
Chekovsky simply nodded distractedly when the report was brought to him.
“Just leave it. I’ll look at it when I have time.”
When his aide left, closing the door, Chekovsky snatched up the envelope and brought out the sheaf it contained. He glanced at the first page, shuffled the others, then threw them on the desk. All he had gotten was a printout of a preliminary report, not that which had been contained in the Vatican Archives. But what he had made him more determined to get what he did not have. He had to know whether the mention of Chekovsky in this preliminary report had survived into the final one.
He shredded the document before leaving the embassy, taking the resulting confetti home to his apartment, where he burnt it in his fireplace. Burning paper creates a clean smell and little smoke.
“I congratulate your Eminence on the recovery of the sacred document,” Chekovsky said to Cardinal Piacere when he met with the acting secretary of state some days later.
“An almost miraculous recovery. I understand we are indebted to you, Excellency.”
“To me?” Chekovsky said.
“The man Anatoly was working for you, was he not?”
A denial would deprive him of the cardinal’s surprising gratitude, but an affirmation could lead he knew not where.
“The Holy See can always count on the cooperation of my country.”
“Russia seems to have been spared the chaos other countries have suffered.”
“Thank God,” Chekovsky said. When in Rome . . .
“And His Blessed Mother. She seems to have a special concern for Russia.”
“She has always been held in veneration by us.”
“A converted Russia could lead to an extended era of peace.”
“Converted to Rome?”
Piacere smiled and steepled his fingers. “Union would not mean the end of Orthodoxy, that beautiful liturgy, that long tradition. Have you read Vladimir Soloviev?”
“Not as yet,” Chekovsky said carefully. “Your Eminence, I would like to renew an old request.”
“The reports on the attempted assassination of John Paul II?”
“How can you keep so many things in your mind! But yes, I mean the reports.”
“They, too, were stolen, Your Excellency.”
“Your Eminence, who on earth would want them?”
“Who indeed? But I am informed by one of our senior archivists, Remi Pouvoir, that they have been returned. Another miracle perhaps.”
“So my request has an object?” Chekovsky said, as calmly as he could.
“The Holy Father has agreed that all these reports should be turned over to you. With one proviso.” He unsteepled his hands and lay them side by side on the desk. “They must all be destroyed.”
“Of that, Your Eminence, you may be absolutely certain. I will oversee their destruction myself. When may I have them?”
“At once. When you leave, Father Ladislaw will take you to Father Pouvoir and the transfer can be made.”
Zelda Lewis Faust insisted on sponsoring a reception after the ceremony and Laura could find no charitable way of refusi
ng. Her brother John was flown in to say the nuptial Mass and witness the exchange of vows between Laura and Ray Sinclair. Nate Hannan gave away the bride, leading her down the aisle to the waiting groom. During the ceremony, Zelda wept audibly, a wife who had lost two husbands, at least one of them permanently, perhaps both. Nate Hannan had hired an investigator, a man named Wallenstein, who came with the highest of recommendations, to find Gabriel Faust. One of the objects of the quest was to restore Faust to the bosom of his wife.
From his hotel room overlooking the harbor at Pantelleria, Gabriel Faust watched a small craft fighting the current to gain entrance. After almost an hour it succeeded, slipping through the narrow opening into the calm waters within. It seemed a metaphor of his own situation.
But peace and security are cloying. After years of struggle, sailing in choppy waters, it was an equivocal blessing to be in port at last. He missed the excitement of uncertainty, he missed the pull of an unknown future. He missed Zelda.
Inactivity brought on unwelcome bouts of thinking, against which he had no defense. His new wealth, however question-ably acquired, existed in Zurich databases. The check he had gotten from Trepanier had gone swiftly into another account and now underwrote the only credit card he used. Barring the logical possibility of a general and absolute collapse of the Western economy, he had not a worry in the world.
There was little opportunity for dissolute living on Pantelleria. The women were either ugly, chaste, or married. There were no brothels. The bars closed at ten o’clock! He missed Zelda.
Without a worry in the world, he worried. Moth and rust might not consume, nor thief break in and steal, but all that money gave him only a fragile sense of security. Did it really matter that he was rich? Once, wealth would have meant mobility, at least. Now he did not dare venture from Pantelleria. No one would dream he was here. If only Zelda were with him.
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