The Third Revelation (27 page)

Three months later, in his private chapel, Bishop Orvieto ordained Jean-Jacques Trepanier to the priesthood. Only his vicar general, Sonopazzi, knew the unusual circumstances of the ceremony. The new priest intended to fly home to say his first Mass.

“I will return in two weeks' time.” The young man's Italian was already good; he was equipping himself to serve in Sicily.

“Sicily has less need of priests, my son. I want you to function as a kind of missionary in your own country, spreading devotion to Mary.”

Orvieto had thought about this. It was not a whimsical decision. Sonopazzi's reaction, eloquent silence, suggested that he not prolong the anomaly by keeping Trepanier in Sicily. The young man was full of zeal. Let him exercise it in his native country.

Once, America had been a long, long distance away, at the end of dreams, as much myth as reality. Now, huge jets dropped onto the island day after day, bringing tourists from around the world, most of them Japanese or Americans. Satellites made all calls local calls. Television brought in the land of Trepanier in primary colors. It also brought in Trepanier.

Sonopazzi, an electronics wizard, had a television set that brought in hundreds of cable programs. One of them was Fatima Now!, Trepanier's program. The title said it all. Trepanier preached devotion to the Mother of God. Orvieto was pleased. His protégé had found his niche. He wrote to congratulate him. That letter was to be invoked over the next few years whenever Trepanier's foes questioned his clerical status. Orvieto received an inquiry from Rome, asking for clarification. Trepanier had become an enfant terrible on a global scale. His attacks on those he described dismissively as Vatican bureaucrats grew more strident. Orvieto began to doubt that his resignation would be accepted. It might seem a reward, and Trepanier had brought him under a cloud.

Only his own deep devotion to the Mother of God would sustain him in his disappointment. From the windows of his residence, he looked out over Cefalù, at the reminders of previous centuries that suggested that the inexorable passage of time had granted them a relative permanence. But beyond was the beach, its littoral crowded with hotels for tourists, the neo-paganism of the times, along with a lot of bronzed human flesh, on indecent display. He had reached the end of a decade on his rosary, and now added the prayer suggested by Our Lady at Fatima.
Jesus, forgive us, deliver us from the fires of hell. Draw all souls to you, especially those in greatest need.

Heather kept her counsel.

Heather Adams followed the news and kept her counsel. Had she been right to turn over to Vincent Traeger what Brendan Crowe had entrusted to her? She trusted Traeger, though she couldn't say why. Most of the things that truly matter elude explanation. Learning that he had been a CIA agent with Zelda's late husband seemed a vindication. His reaction after the discovery of Father Crowe's body seemed to fit that role, and when she had found him in her house and given him supper, it was clear that he saw himself as the pursuer rather than the pursued. He had left Empedocles in order to pursue the one who had killed Brendan Crowe.

And had lost him. And then apparently had been found by him and did indeed become the pursued. By the time he sought refuge with her he was pursued by the police as well. Given his role as an agent, Heather assumed that the police would soon realize their mistake and Traeger's associates would help him in tracking down the killer.

She sat at her kitchen table reading the newspaper story about Traeger. He was portrayed as a demented fanatic who had been harassing Father Crowe in Rome and had apparently followed him to New Hampshire and the Empedocles complex and killed him. His unexplained fanaticism was apparently sufficient as a motive.

Heather put down the paper. She hated newspapers. She hated what was called news. Sometimes she thought she hated the modern world. Not people, of course, but the unexamined premises of their lives.
Vanity of vanities: all is vanity.
A few lines from such a book as the
Imitation
seemed to connect her to the really real world.

Zelda came along with her husband as he settled in to his new job.

Heather said to Gabriel Faust, “You could hire her, you know.”

Zelda had reacted with delighted surprise. Her husband simply nodded and stroked his beard. “We'll see.”

The fact was that Zelda understood certain aspects of the idea behind Refuge of Sinners better than Gabriel Faust. Not the role of art, of course, he was the expert there, but the spiritual aims of the new foundation. Faust seemed to discuss them as if he were learning a new language. When Fatima came up, he paid close attention.

“I've never been there,” he said.

“You should go,” Heather suggested.

He looked at her, liking the idea. Zelda liked it even more. Heather left them making plans for their trip.

Laura vetoed Mr. Hannan's suggestion that the couple go in a company plane. She shook her head. “The IRS will be all over you.”

“He works for me.”

“He is director of Refuge of Sinners.”

“I'll buy him a plane.”

“You will not.”

Laura had to enlist Ray Sinclair to squelch the idea. When he conceded, Mr. Hannan looked at Heather.

“I wish you'd work with Faust.”

Heather said nothing. She had already said no, and he had learned that she meant what she said. It wasn't that she was so enamored with her work at Empedocles. She found that she had misgivings about Gabriel Faust that would not go away. When she downloaded for him the material made public by Cardinal Ratzinger in the year 2000, he studied the handwriting of Sister Lucia with an expert eye.

“It looks genuine enough.”

“Of course it's genuine,” Zelda said.

“Is Sister Lucia at Fatima?”

Heather explained that Lucia was in a Carmelite convent in Spain. And that the Carmelites were an enclosed order.

“Too bad. What did she make of the revelation of the secret?”

Heather let Zelda tell him. Her account was more or less accurate. It did seem a good idea that Zelda should work with her husband at Refuge of Sinners. Meanwhile, Mr. Hannan had asked Duncan Stroik to fly in from South Bend so they could discuss a building site for the new foundation and architectural ideas. In the interim, Faust was temporarily housed in the Empedocles complex.

The various crews from the police department had finished their examination of the scene of the crime, and the fateful suite was ready for occupancy should it be needed. Father Burke had consulted with Father Crowe's cousins in Ireland and the decision had been made to have the burial in New Hampshire. Mr. Hannan got permission for a grave to be dug in the shadow of the grotto and it was there, after the funeral Mass at Saint Cyril's, that the remains of the slain priest were brought, prayed over, and lowered into the ground. It was a solemn moment. Father Burke's voice had been firm enough when he said a few things about his late friend in the church, but reading the prayers at graveside his voice broke, and for a moment it seemed the tears must come. Beside him, Father Krucek took the book and finished reading the prayer. Father Burke recovered and sprinkled the casket with holy water. The mourners were then asked to do the same, and the sprinkler was handed around. And then all withdrew.

Heather walked to the administration building with the two priests. Laura had arranged for a caterer to provide a breakfast for the group. It was an odd gathering. Only Father Burke had known the deceased well.

“I feel responsible for his death,” Mr. Hannan announced.

“Nonsense,” Laura said.

“He'd be alive today if I hadn't persuaded him to come over here.”

“I did that.”

“You know what I mean.”

Mr. Hannan wanted to know if he should hire detectives to look into what had happened.

“Nate, the police are already doing that.”

“And what have they learned? Nothing.”

And now the story about Vincent Traeger had appeared, depicting him as a fanatic and disenchanted former member of the CIA. Mr. Hannan seemed to think that the explanation of Brendan Crowe's death had been found.

Heather kept her counsel still. If anyone knew that Traeger had not killed Father Crowe, it was she. She had been with him when the body was found. His reaction, she realized now, had been professional, and he had prevented her from following him into the bedroom. But she had not been spared the horrible sight. Then Traeger had sent her running back to the main building.

Would the man who had killed Father Crowe—and it was a man who had driven off in Vincent Traeger's rental car—wonder why no mention had been made of the papers he had come for? Would he think he had killed in vain?

That night, when she arrived at her house, she put the car in the garage. As the door was lowering, the door that led to the house opened and Vincent Traeger said hello.

“Yes, we did.”

Montreal was both close enough and far enough away, and Anatoly relaxed, feeling that this time he had outwitted Traeger.

In Rome, when Traeger had confronted him after what Anatoly had considered a pretty effective job of tailing, things could have become violent. How oddly friendly they had been, the two of them, both nostalgic for the time when they had been sworn enemies. It had been tempting to tell Traeger about the years of resentment spent in retirement in the south, Odessa mainly, but with a spell in Yalta. He had visited Chekov's house, more than ever a place of pilgrimage. The writer had been taken up during the years of the USSR, a new and elegant edition of the complete works made available, along with the correspondence. Chekov's wonderful account of his visit to the penal colony at Sakhalin had been taken to make the case for the party against the czar. As if Siberia had ceased being Siberia during what was now considered the darkest pages of Russian history. What Anatoly was unable to figure out was Chekov's attitude toward the Orthodox Church.

The official line had been that he was agnostic at best, if not atheistic, but no reader of Chekov could believe that, and now there was no longer any political need to adopt that interpretation. But what was one to substitute for it? Chekov's reading, his fascination with monasteries, the late story “The Bishop”—none of that suggested the party line on Chekov. So he didn't get to church that often, so he didn't fast; the man was an invalid, dying a slow death from consumption. “Anatoly the monk,” he had described himself in those last years in Yalta. Tolstoy was another story, mad as a hatter, as the English would say. True religion was to be found in the lives of the peasants. Chekov as a doctor had enough to do with peasants to know better.

Because he had been stationed in Rome, Anatoly had read Solzhenitsyn with dread fascination when he was banned in Russia, hating the man for giving all that ammunition to his country's enemies. Well, the idiot had moved to the West and been thoroughly disillusioned. He had thought he was moving to Christendom. Now he was back in Russia, enjoying the oblivion he deserved.

But it was the internal collapse in the Kremlin, the useful idiot Gorbachev, denouncing the system to which he owed everything, that had drawn Anatoly out of retirement. Not back to the old outfit, of course. From now on he would operate as a freelance. But with lines into altered officialdom. Traeger had his Dortmund; Anatoly had Lev Pakov. And Pakov had offered to engineer the abduction of Dortmund. He had provided the dossier on Traeger's work in the CIA that had been fed to the press to neutralize his adversary. Where could Traeger surface now without finding himself up to his ears in difficulty?

Pointing the finger at Traeger as the hit man who had done away with that priest from Rome had suggested a further possibility.

Pakov listened impatiently while Anatoly spoke of the murders in the Vatican.

“We had nothing to do with that,” said Pakov.

“Yes, we did.”

If eyes are the mirror of the soul, Pakov had none. When was the last time the man had expressed an emotion? Probably the last time he had felt one. Men now shaved their heads in order to get the effect Pakov had come by naturally. It was hard to believe that hair had ever grown on that muscular globe.

“You?”

“Yes.”

Anatoly didn't expect the current equivalent of the Order of Lenin, but Pakov might have commented on the daring and success of the operation.

“What was the point?”

“To get hold of those damnable reports on the attempted assassination of John Paul II. To show we had nothing to do with that.”

“You picked an odd way to make the point. Did you get the reports?”

“You know I didn't.”

“It is Chekovsky's task to gain control of those.”

“Chekovsky!”

“So what's your point? Do you want to try again?”

It was a tempting thought, but if he were inclined to try again he would not let even Pakov know in advance. Things had gone smoothly that day. The basilica guard had been a necessity, his death of no importance. But the secretary of state with his condescending published remarks on the new Russia deserved what he had got. His assistant? Well, he was his assistant. Anatoly's informant had told him the file was with Cardinal Maguire. That was when the plan went awry. He had silenced the cardinal when he heard footsteps coming up the stairs to the rooftop. Escape was imperative. The fact that the events of that day were hushed up by the Vatican convinced Anatoly that even an aborted operation had had its effect. And then had come the crushing blow.

“The file was in his villa.”

It might have been a line of poetry. His reaction had not been aesthetic. He stared at the words that were the complete e-mail message. With what intention had they been written? To inform? To express irony? The effect on Anatoly was to enrage him. If there had ever been a time when he might have repeated the operation, it was then.