The Third Revelation (12 page)

“Inagaki. Miki Inagaki.”

“I have a car. Can I take you someplace?”

He hesitated. Then he looked at the crowd waiting at the bus stop. He picked up his paint box and they went off to Faust's car.

Inagaki was staying in a little hotel near Saint Germain des Prés. Faust found a parking place and took the artist off for a drink at Les Deux Magots. They drank sweet vermouth while Faust questioned the artist.

“What do you do with the finished painting?”

“Oh, it is commissioned. I never begin without a commission.”

“Is it profitable?”

Inagaki became wary, so Faust reassured his new friend with an account of his own life, the kind of edited curriculum vitae that made all the difference between a successful and unsuccessful grant application. Inagaki would have been forgiven if he thought he was drinking with a university professor on sabbatical.

“If I could afford it, I would give you a commission myself.”

Inagaki smiled as at a polite remark.

“What are your fees?”

“That depends.”

“I'm afraid there would be a large gap between what I think your work is worth and what I could afford to pay.”

“What painting were you thinking of?”

Faust's grant was meant to enable him to study Delacroix, an effort to branch out. Would Inagaki think one of the artist's watercolor sketches of horses too undemanding? Inagaki smiled enigmatically.

Faust had not pressed the matter. Now, on his fiftieth birthday, alone and morose, he thought of Inagaki, he thought of Berenson, he smoked and drank and let the fuzzy idea form. In the morning, he had forgotten all about it, but then he had a terrible headache. The little reproductions from Versailles brought it back. Night thoughts, particularly when fueled by drink, seldom survive the scrutiny of daylight. But this idea was different.

For the rest of his stay in Paris, he had cultivated Inagaki. They became friends of a sort. Several times they went off to a brothel and this seemed to seal some unstated bargain between them. Before he left Paris, Faust had exchanged e-mail addresses with Inagaki. He was almost surprised when the Delacroix arrived. He was about to go to Massachusetts at the invitation of Zelda Lewis, one of his patrons, a woman for whom he had cataloged the paintings her dead husband had collected. He sold her the Delacroix for a large sum but far less than a putative original should bring. He sent half of that to Inagaki, and so they had become partners of a sort. Going to bed with a tipsy Zelda had been almost inadvertent, but once in bed the discrepancy of their ages was forgotten. After some years of abstinence, Zelda proved a voracious lover. Afterward she wept at such infidelity to the memory of her husband. Faust soothed her, and soon there was a second round.

“It will be our secret,” he whispered. He might have meant the Delacroix.

CHAPTER FOUR

“What are we looking for?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brendan Crowe had disappeared.

When Traeger learned that Father Crowe had not been to his office for two days, his first impulse was to check the rooftop villa to see if Crowe had met the same fate as his boss. The librarian had clearly never thought of himself as in danger until Traeger had mentioned it to him. Now he wished he hadn't. The frightened Crowe seemed to have just vanished.

Rodriguez, fortunately, had been on the job.

“He's gone to America.”

“America.”

“He and Father John Burke.”

“Where in America?”

Rodriguez could only guess. But he was sure it was connected with Father Burke's sister Laura's visit. “Have you ever heard of Empedocles?”

Traeger thought. “There are two possibilities. A pre-Socratic philosopher and a New England electronics firm.”

“Laura Burke is the administrative assistant to the founder of Empedocles.”

“Ignatius Hannan.”

“Do you know him?”

Traeger knew of him, of course, because of his consulting business. And through Zelda Lewis he had learned more of Ignatus Hannan. Bea didn't approve of Zelda.

“She's a customer.”

Bea's silence was eloquent. Well, she wasn't that far off. Zelda played the forlorn widow card masterfully, but the memory of her husband Chuck seemed all the protection Traeger needed. During the first year, he had taken his turn with Dortmund, helping Zelda through her bereavement.

“She ought to marry again,” Dortmund said, not complaining, just expressing a wish.

“You never did.”

“She's still a young woman.”

Well, younger than Dortmund. About Traeger's age.

“A home computer?” Bea asked when Zelda called to ask him to come check her system. Not exactly the level on which Traeger worked, but he thought of Chuck. What the hell. Zelda had hired a man to do a catalog of her collection. Most of the paintings she had brought to the marriage with her. Chuck would have collected baseball cards if he collected anything. But it had been a happy marriage, so far as the outside observer could tell. However their tastes and interests diverged, it was pretty clear that the fundamental point of marriage was there. So Traeger had driven off to see Zelda, one more favor to a fallen colleague.

“I don't understand how I'm supposed to access the program,” Zelda complained after the teary reminiscences were over.

“What are we looking for?”

“Oh, nothing in particular. I just want to know how to get at things.”

“Who set it up for you?” Traeger asked.

“An art historian. The man who did the catalog. Gabriel Faust.”

“Didn't he break you in?”

Zelda got flustered. “Break me in?”

“Show you how to use the program.”

“I guess I didn't pay close enough attention. I hated to call him.” She looked away. “A stranger.”

It was an Empedocles program, far more than what was required for the catalogue Faust had put together. Even so, Traeger was sure Zelda's call had just been an excuse. Well, why not? She must lead a lonely life. She showed him her Delacroix and Traeger said the usual things.

“Pretty expensive?”

“I can afford it.”

It turned out that it had been her suggestion that Faust use an Empedocles program. She spoke of Ignatius Hannan with awe.

“Do you know him?”

“I own stock, Vincent. I go to the meetings.”

So Traeger had found out who Hannan was, beyond the programs and billion dollar company he had fashioned, that is.

Zelda adopted a pious expression. “And I see him at Mass.”

“What's he like?”

“Devout.” She sounded disappointed.

Devout was the word. Traeger kept checking and found out about the replica of the grotto of Lourdes. He also checked out the Delacroix. The painting Zelda had bought was in a museum in Cincinnati.

“I wonder what the original would cost,” he asked Zelda.

“Oh, that is an original.”

If Traeger had had time, he would have checked out Gabriel Faust.

 

 

It was Rodriguez who had mentioned the Confraternity of Pius IX.

“What's that?”

“A bunch of crazies. They have a kind of community under a man who calls himself a bishop.”

“Isn't he a bishop?”

Rodriguez shrugged. “China is full of bishops.”

Traeger needed an explanation of that. In China bishops were ordained for the national church, against the wishes of Rome.

“It's not that they're not genuine bishops. But their status is irregular. Only Rome can appoint bishops.”

“And Catena is an irregular bishop?” Traeger said.

The Catholic Church was becoming a very complicated place. During his years in Rome, Traeger had thought of it as a monolith. He must have been aware of the grumbling among traditional Catholics who thought the Church had taken a wrong turn. But what one usually heard about was wild theologians who made media careers out of contradicting whatever came out of Rome.

“Are you saying Crowe is connected with this confraternity?”

Rodriguez seemed to compose his answer in his mind before voicing it. “No. But he had a meeting with Catena at the Castel Sant'Angelo. Out in the open, on a parapet one afternoon. But it had the look of a clandestine meeting.”

“What holds the confraternity together?”

Rodriguez wrinkled his nose. “Fatima.”

“The secret,” Traeger guessed.

“That's right.”

No need to develop the thought. The secret was missing and now Crowe was missing, too. Traeger decided to look in at the Domus Sanctae Marthae.

Inside the building, at the desk, he said he wanted to get in touch with John Burke. The man behind the desk seemed delighted to be able to disappoint him.

“He's away.”

“When will he be back?”

Thick brows rose above thick glasses. “I'm afraid . . .”

“It's important.”

There was the unmuffled sound of high heels on the marble floor as a young woman approached the desk and joined the man with the eyebrows. She spoke to the clerk in Italian. As she answered, she looked at Traeger.

“He's gone to America,” she said. “Just a visit.”

“Is Father Crowe in?”

She beamed. “They went together.”

The man with the eyebrows disapproved of such cordiality and helpfulness and moved away down the long counter.

“You're not a priest,” she continued.

“Not yet.”

She laughed. It seemed a waste of a good woman, working in a residence filled with clerics, priests, bishops, archbishops.

“I know we've met,” he said, looking thoughtful. “It's Donna, isn't it? Donna Quando?”

She dipped her head and turned the nameplate so he couldn't read it anymore.

“Oh is that yours? I thought it was his.”

He liked her laugh.

Even apart from the hope that she could tell him things he wanted to know, he found her an attractive woman. Thirty at the most, with thick black hair that set off her olive complexion.

“Who are you?” But there was a chuckle in her voice.

“I only talk over coffee.”

She looked at him. She looked at her watch. “I just came back from coffee. I finish at four.”

At ten after four she came through the gate, earning a salute from the guard, and marched right up to Traeger.

“Where to?”

“You're the native.”

At an outdoor table, she ordered a Cinzano and Traeger asked for a scotch and water, but when that drew a blank with the waiter, he too asked for Cinzano.

“I tasted scotch once,” Donna Quando said. “It tasted like iodine.”

“I've never tasted iodine.”

Their drinks came and he took a sip. “This tastes like mouthwash.”

“All right,” she said. “Who are you and what are you after?”

“I'm Vincent Traeger.”

“I already know that.”

“I didn't give you my name.”

“Carlos did.”

“Rodriguez?”

She nodded. There are questions you just don't ask, and he was not about to ask her if she worked with Rodriguez. And there was apparently no need to explain to Donna what he was doing in Rome.

“Tell me about John Burke.”

“There's nothing to tell. He's a marvelous young priest, attached to the pontifical academies. I suppose he'll spend a few more years here and then they'll send him home as a bishop.”

“The same with Brendan Crowe?”

“He's older, you know. Older than John Burke. His career is likely to keep him right here. Of course you know what happened to Cardinal Maguire.”

“You think Crowe will succeed him?”

“It's possible. He's standing in for Maguire until an appointment is made. Not that he would be created a cardinal, at least not right away. Leonard Boyle was not even a bishop when he died.”

Leonard Boyle, who had been prefect of the Vatican Library before Maguire, was an Irish Dominican who had died in office and was buried in the crypt at San Clemente.

“Do you know where all the former prefects are buried?” he asked her.

“Only those who are dead.”

“Is being Irish part of the job description?”

“Oh no. Boyle's predecessor was a German.”

Donna thought Rodriguez was making quite a jump, linking Brendan Crowe to the Confraternity of Pius IX. “That's a pretty weird outfit, you know. There were actually people who thought Paul VI was an imposter. The real pope spirited away and another put in his place. It turned on earlobes.”

“You're kidding.”

“The real Paul VI had longer earlobes than the man who took his place.” She laughed. “Andre Gide.”

He waited.

“
The Caves of the Vatican
. A terrible novel. A terrible author.”

“The Vatican Library does seem an odd place for a weirdo.”

“Crowe is a quintessential insider. Part of the bureaucracy.”

“A mole would have to be plausible.”

Had Rodriguez told her of the missing secret of Fatima? It didn't come up.

“The man Father Burke's sister works for wanted a list of paintings of the Blessed Virgin. Crowe put it together. I assume that's the purpose of the visit.”

 

 

Traeger was trying to put together two motives for the murders in the Vatican. Chekovsky's curious insistence suggested one, the missing Fatima secret, another. The third secret of Fatima and the reports on the attempted assassination of John Paul II were connected, because the secret had predicted an attack on the pope. Even so, Traeger didn't know if there really were two problems and if so which of them was his. His experience with Anatoly the day before left the question up in the air.