“Including Tom Kealy?” He regretted how the question came out.
“Jealous?”
“Should I be?”
“I seem to have a weakness for priests.”
“Careful with Tom Kealy. I get the impression he’s the kind who ran from this square when the shooting started.” He could see her jaw tighten. “Not like you.”
She smiled. “I stood in front of a tank with a hundred others.”
“That thought is upsetting. I wouldn’t want to see you hurt.”
She threw him a curious look. “Any more than I already am?”
Katerina left Michener at his room and walked down the squeaky steps. She told him they would talk in the morning, over breakfast, before he flew back to Rome. He hadn’t been surprised to learn she was staying one floor below, and she didn’t mention that she, too, would be heading back to Rome, on a later flight, instead telling him that her next destination was up in the air.
She was beginning to regret her involvement with Cardinal Alberto Valendrea. What had started off as a career move had deteriorated into the deception of a man she still loved. It troubled her lying to Michener. Her father, if he knew what she was doing, would be ashamed. And that thought, too, was bothersome, since she’d disappointed her parents enough over the past few years.
At her room, she opened the door and stepped inside.
The first thing she saw was the smiling face of Father Paolo Ambrosi. The sight momentarily startled her, but she quickly caught hold of her emotions, sensing that showing fear to this man would be a mistake. She’d actually been expecting a visit, since Valendrea had said Ambrosi would find her. She closed the door, peeled off her coat, and stepped toward the lamp beside the bed.
“Why don’t we let the light remain off,” Ambrosi said.
She noticed that Ambrosi was dressed in black trousers and a dark turtleneck. A dark overcoat hung open. None of the garb was religious. She shrugged and tossed her coat on the bed.
“What have you learned?”
She took a moment and told him an abbreviated account of the orphanage and of what Michener had told her about Clement, but she held back a few key facts. She finished by telling him about Father Tibor, again an abridged version, and recounted the old priest’s warning concerning the Madonna.
“You must learn what’s in Tibor’s response,” Ambrosi said.
“Colin wouldn’t open it.”
“Find a way.”
“How do you expect me to do that?”
“Go upstairs. Seduce him. Read it while he sleeps afterward.”
“Why don’t you? I’m sure priests interest you more than they do me.”
Ambrosi lunged, wrapping his long thin fingers around her neck and collapsing her down onto the bed. The grip was cold and waxy. He brought his knee onto her chest and pressed her firmly into the mattress folds. He was stronger than she would have thought.
“Unlike Cardinal Valendrea, I have little patience for your smart mouth. I remind you that we are in Romania, not Rome, and people disappear here all the time. I want to know what Father Tibor wrote. Find out, or I might not restrain myself the next time we meet.” Ambrosi’s knee pressed deeper into her chest. “I’ll find you tomorrow, just as I found you this evening.”
She wanted to spit in his face, but the ever-tightening fingers around her neck cautioned otherwise.
Ambrosi released his grip and headed for the door.
She clutched her neck and sucked a few breaths, then leaped from the bed.
Ambrosi spun back to face her, a gun in his hand.
She halted her advance. “You . . . fucking . . . mobster.”
He shrugged. “History teaches that there truly is an imperceptible line between good and evil. Sleep well.”
He opened the door and left.
TWENTY-ONE
VATICAN CITY, 11:40 P.M.
Valendrea crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray as a knock came on his bedchamber door. He’d been engrossed in a novel for nearly an hour. He so enjoyed American suspense thrillers. They were a welcome escape from his life of careful words and strict protocol. His retreat each night into a world of mystery and intrigue was something he looked forward to, and Ambrosi made sure he always had a new adventure to read.
“Enter,” he called out.
The face of his chamberlain appeared. “I received a call a few moments ago, Eminence. The Holy Father is in the Riserva. You wished to be informed if that occurred.”
He slipped off his reading glasses and closed the book. “That will be all.”
The chamberlain retreated.
He quickly dressed in a knit shirt and trousers, slipped on a pair of running shoes, and left his apartment, heading for the private elevator. At ground level he traversed the empty corridors of the Apostolic Palace. The silence was disturbed only by a soft whine from closed-circuit televison cameras revolving on their lofty perches and the squeak of his rubber soles on the terrazzo. No danger existed of anyone seeing him—the palace was sealed for the night.
He entered the archives and ignored the night prefect, walking through the maze of shelves straight to the iron gate for the Riserva. Clement XV stood inside the lighted space, his back to him, dressed in a white linen cassock.
The doors of the ancient safe hung open. He made no effort to mask his approach. It was time for a confrontation.
“Come in, Alberto,” the pope said, the German’s back still to him.
“How did you know it was me?”
Clement turned. “Who else would it be?”
He stepped into the light, the first time he’d been inside the Riserva since 1978. Then, only a few incandescent bulbs lit the windowless alcove. Now fluorescent fixtures cast everything in a pearly glow. The same wooden box lay in the same drawer, its lid open. Remnants of the wax seal he’d shattered and replaced adorned the outside.
“I was told about your visit here with Paul,” Clement said. The pope gestured to the box. “You were present when he opened that. Tell me, Alberto, was he shocked? Did the old fool wince when he read the Virgin’s words?”
He wasn’t going to give Clement the satisfaction of knowing the truth. “Paul was more of a pope than you ever could be.”
“He was an obstinate, unbending man. He had a chance to do something, but he let his pride and arrogance control him.” Clement lifted an unfolded sheet of paper that lay beside the box. “He read this, yet put himself before God.”
“He died only three months later. What could he have done?”
“He could have done everything the Virgin asked.”
“Do what, Jakob? What is so important? The third secret of Fatima commands nothing beyond faith and penance. What should Paul have done?”
Clement maintained his rigid pose. “You lie so well.”
A blind fury built inside him that he quickly repressed. “Are you mad?”
The pope took a step toward him. “I know about your second visit to this room.”
He said nothing.
“The archivists keep quite detailed records. They have noted for centuries every soul who has ever entered this chamber. On the night of May 19, 1978, you visited with Paul. An hour later, you returned. Alone.”
“I was on a mission for the Holy Father. He commanded that I return.”
“I’m sure he did, considering what was in the box at that time.”
“I was sent to reseal the box and the drawer.”
“But before you resealed the box, you read what was inside. And who could blame you? You were a young priest, assigned to the papal household. Your pope, whom you worshiped, had just read the words of a Marian seer and they surely upset him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“If not, then he was more of a fool than I think him to be.” Clement’s gaze sharpened. “You read the words, then you removed part of them. You see, there once were four sheets of paper in this box. Two written by Sister Lucia when she memorialized the third secret in 1944. Two composed by Father Tibor when he translated in 1960. But after Paul opened the box and you resealed it, no one again opened the box until 1981, when John Paul II read the third secret for the first time. That was done in the presence of several cardinals. Their testimony confirms that Paul’s seal was unbroken. All present that day also attested that only two sheets of paper lay inside the box, one written by Sister Lucia, the other Father Tibor’s translation. Nineteen years later, in 2000, when John Paul finally released the text of the third secret to the world, there remained only the same two sheets of paper in the box. How do you account for that, Alberto? Where are the other two pages that were there in 1978?”