The Third Revelation (45 page)

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 that.”

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

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.”