The sister descended the stairs in a bad mood. It was the Mother Superior’s orders to open the door at any time. All the devout faithful had the right to a friendly word, meal, or refuge in case of necessity. But it wasn’t the Mother who had to get up at this hour and open the door, exposed to assault by some vagrant. No, she slept on an upper floor and said her first prayer of the day in the comfort of her room, coming down only for breakfast to give the orders of the day, which were always the same as every other day.
The sister got to the door, dressed in the pure blue robe of her order with a white head scarf she arranged to appear presentable to whoever was there. She opened a small square wicket in the door. She had to get up on a small box that once held fruit in order to reach the height of the opening, a little narrower than her head.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked in a disagreeable voice to discourage any levity on the part of whoever was there on the other side of the door.
‘Good evening,’ she heard a man say. ‘Pardon my showing up at such a late hour,’ he began to excuse himself in a gentle voice. ‘I meant to arrive sooner, but I was delayed.’
‘Who is the gentleman?’ The sister strained her eyes to make out the man who was speaking.
‘I’m Father Marius Ferris. I was planning to arrive last night to sleep under the sanctified roof of this convent.’
The sister was moved upon hearing his name and changed her attitude completely.
‘Marius Ferris? Escriva’s disciple? My God!’
The prelate didn’t see the sister jump down from the fruit box or knock it out of the way with a well-aimed kick. He did hear all the sounds that accompanied these actions as well as the key working vigorously in the solid lock to reveal the friendly sister, a foot shorter than he thought, as soon as the door opened. Not everything is as it appears, thought the white-haired man whom the fawning sister invited to enter the convent.
‘Come in, please. You are welcome.’
They both went up the stairs to the convent proper, Marius Ferris more quickly than the sister, whose age didn’t permit her unanticipated climbs, the effects of half a lifetime shut up in those four walls, praying to the Lord, preparing three meals a day, and sleeping eight hours. In Marius Ferris one saw the results of his daily walks in New York City from lower Sixth Avenue to Central Park and back.
‘Mother Superior asked me to let her know as soon as you arrived,’ the sister told him, trying to catch her breath.
‘That’s not necessary,’ Marius Ferris replied. ‘Let her rest. Show me to my room, and the sister can also rest a little more.’ His friendly voice charmed her completely.
‘Thank you. I’m fine. I’m going to ask them not to bother you until breakfast so you can rest.’
Marius Ferris smiled.
‘Don’t trouble yourself, sister. I slept during the trip. I only need to take a bath, make some calls, and go down to breakfast.’
‘Today a great number of people are expected,’ the sister informed him helpfully. It’s not every day they had a dignitary of such importance. Only the pope himself could surpass this visit. With this holy thought, they arrived at the door that opened to Marius Ferris’s temporary abode, a small brown door, similar to the others along the hallway, with a cross fixed in the center.
‘I know that well, sister,’ the prelate replied with a friendly gesture. ‘Yesterday was a procession day, if I recall.’
Oh, if only the sister were not a nun. What sweet words, or at least they sounded so in her honeyed ears.
‘Correct. It’s too bad you were delayed. The ceremony was beautiful.’
‘I imagine so. I imagine so. I saw it many years ago, more than twenty.’ His eyes expressed a nostalgia he tried to hide in vain. The past has the power of years. No one can resist it, even the boldest.
‘There will be other opportunities, surely,’ the sister answered with good humor. It would be a good day. She opened the door and invited him in with her hand. ‘You know, Your Eminence, from the twelfth to the thirteenth, between May and October. Since 1917, thanks to the Virgin Mary.’ She bent down intending to kiss the cleric’s hand for his blessing, which he didn’t decline.
‘God bless you, sister,’ he intoned magnanimously. ‘I’ll come down right away.’
‘Welcome to Fatima, Your Eminence.’
They said good-bye with no further words. Marius closed the door behind him and set the small suitcase he carried on top of the table next to one of the walls of the cell. Although small, it was the best room for repose in the convent. Spare in decoration, as was fitting, only a single bed, the table that could also serve as a desk sometimes, an old chair, and a small shelf with some books authorized by the Holy Mother Church.
He smiled as he examined the cubicle. How he adored being treated with deference, almost as if he were a sovereign, and certainly he was one in his own way, secretly. Of course, he wouldn’t pass into history as Marius I or II, but who knows whether in a few decades he wouldn’t be Saint Marius, protector of the good name of the Catholic Church? The image of the faithful praying to his image, leaving an offering, making a fervent petition, almost carried him away with ecstasy.
He checked the signal of his Nokia. The bars indicated maximum power. Let’s thank the Cove of Iria, whoever Iria was, where everything began ninety years ago, and where Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco saw the Mother of Jesus reveal to the world the three most important secrets, beginning with the end of the First World War, which occurred the following year, the fall of the Soviet Union that did so much evil to Christ and the Mother, and, finally, that which remains unrevealed and so continues with Marius Ferris, the assassination of a pope, the celebrated Albino Luciani, Pope John Paul I. The late Holy Father was a man of good and bad memory, the good being his smile and upright character and the bad, the night of September 29, 1978, in which he died in circumstances that Marius knew well. He was not a man to justify a bad act, but he adopted a motto the Church lives by: What’s done is done, to which he added No use crying over spilled milk. What needed to be done was to clean up the mess skillfully and correctly without letting the evidence come to light. In that Marius Ferris was a master. He lay down on the bed to rest for ten minutes. Afterward he’d pray for the soul of Clemente, ask Santiago Mayor to forgive his sin and rescue him from the flames of the Inferno into his heavenly company. Everyone deserved a second chance, if not here, then there… on the other side of life.
He closed his eyes to seek within himself an image of peace, the rose or the white dove, living beings, the color of purity of spirit and of the noble values that send goodness, serenity, and all nouns of that kind.
When the first dove shook her wings silently in the ceiling, a Gregorian chant filled the cell, eclipsing the drowsy stupor Marius Ferris had fallen into. His cell phone, left on the small table, exulted the Pater Noster in male voices that didn’t belong in the convent. Another person, probably, would feel soothed by the melody and embark on the sleep of the just, but not Marius Ferris, who knew the enterprise he’d undertaken and that the Gregorian ringtone was the prelude to a message of the utmost importance for the operation in progress.
He jumped up and grabbed the phone immediately.
‘Yes,’ he said into the receiver.
He spent the next few minutes listening to how the situation was unfolding in the various locations of the operation, which he called the Work of God. One of the comments exasperated him.
‘How is that?’
Something was off track.
‘How could that happen?’
The silence in the cubicle was interrupted by Marius Ferris’s altered breathing and frenetic pacing up and down.
‘Listen to me. It’s imperative they not leave the city. I’m going to make sure you’ll have everything you need to make that happen.’ His voice was harsh and cutting. The leader was putting the train back on track. ‘Who did this?’