the Third Secret (2005) (21 page)

FORTY-ONE

VATICAN CITY, 5:00 P.M.

Valendrea was growing impatient. His concern about the straight-backed chairs was proving justified, as he’d now spent nearly two agonizing hours sitting upright in the sedate Sistine Chapel. During that time each of the cardinals had walked to the altar and sworn before Ngovi and God that they would not support any interference in the election by secular authorities and, if elected, would be
munus Petrinum
—pastor of the universal church—and defend the spiritual and temporal rights of the Holy See. He, too, had stood before Ngovi, the African’s eyes intense while the words were said and repeated.

Another half hour was needed to administer an oath of secrecy to the attendants allowed to remain within the conclave. Then Ngovi ordered everyone but the cardinals from the Sistine and the remaining doors closed. He faced the assembly and said, “Do you wish a vote at this time?”

John Paul II’s Apostolic Constitution allowed for a first vote immediately, if the conclave so desired. One of the French cardinals stood and stated that he would. Valendrea was pleased. The Frenchman was one of his.

“If there be any opposition, speak now,” Ngovi said.

The chapel stayed in repose. There was a time when, at this moment, election by acclamation could occur, supposedly the result of a direct intervention by the Holy Spirit. A name would be spontaneously proclaimed and all would agree he was to be pope. But John Paul II eliminated that as a means of election.

“Very well,” Ngovi said, “we will begin.”

The junior cardinal-deacon, a fat, swarthy man from Brazil, waddled forward and chose three names from a silver chalice. Those selected would act as scrutineers, their task to count each ballot and record the votes. If no pope was elected, they would burn the ballots in the stove. Three more names, the revisers, were pulled from the chalice. Their job would be to oversee the scrutineers. Finally, three
infirmarii
were selected to collect ballots from any cardinals who might be taken ill. Of the nine officials, only four could be regarded as solidly Valendrea’s. Particularly upsetting was the selection of the cardinal-archivist as a scrutineer. The old bastard might have his revenge after all.

Before each cardinal, beside the pad and pencil, lay a two-inch rectangular card. At the top was printed in black lettering:
ELIGO IN SUMMUM PONTIFICEM
. I elect as supreme pontiff. The space beneath was blank, ready for a name. Valendrea felt a special attachment to the ballot, as it had been designed by his beloved Paul VI.

At the altar, beneath the agony of Michelangelo’s
Last Judgment,
Ngovi emptied the silver chalice of the remaining names. They would be burned with the results of the first balloting. The African then addressed the cardinals, speaking in Latin, reiterating the voting procedures. When he finished, Ngovi left the altar and took a seat among the cardinals. His task as camerlengo was drawing to a close, and less and less would be demanded of him in the hours ahead. The process now would be controlled by the scrutineers until another ballot was required.

One of the scrutineers, a cardinal from Argentina, said, “Please print a name on the card. More than one name will void the ballot and the scrutiny. Once done, fold the ballot and approach the altar.”

Valendrea glanced to his left and right. The 113 cardinals were wedged into the chapel elbow-to-elbow. He wanted to win early and be done with the agony, but he knew that rarely had any pope won on a first scrutiny. Usually electors cast their initial ballot for someone special—a favorite cardinal, a close friend, a person from their particular part of the world, even themselves, though none would ever admit that. It was a way for the electors to conceal their true intentions and up the ante for their subsequent support, since nothing made the favorites more generous than an unpredictable future.

Valendrea printed his own name on the ballot, careful to disguise anything that might identify the script as his, then folded the paper twice and awaited his turn to approach the altar.

Depositing ballots was done by seniority. Cardinal-bishops before cardinal-priests, with cardinal-deacons last, each group ranked by date of investiture. He watched as the first senior cardinal-bishop, a silver-haired Italian from Venice, climbed four marble steps to the altar, his folded ballot held high for all to see.

At his turn Valendrea walked to the altar. He knew the other cardinals would be watching so he knelt for a moment of prayer, but said nothing to God. Instead, he waited an appropriate amount of time before rising. He then repeated out loud what every other cardinal was required to say.

“I call as my witness Christ the Lord, who will be my judge, that my vote is given to the one who before God I think should be elected.”

He laid his ballot on the paten, lifted the glistening plate, and allowed the card to slide into the chalice. The unorthodox method was a means of ensuring that only one ballot for each cardinal was cast. He gently replaced the paten, folded his hands in prayer, and retreated to this seat.

It took nearly an hour to complete the balloting. After the final vote slid into the chalice, the vessel was carried to another table. There, the contents were shaken, then each vote was counted by the three scrutineers. The revisers watched everything, their eyes never leaving the table. As each ballot was unfolded, the name written upon it was announced. Everyone kept his own tally. The total number of votes cast had to add up to 113 or the ballots would be destroyed and the scrutiny declared invalid.

When the last name was read, Valendrea studied the results. He’d received thirty-two votes. Not bad for a first scrutiny. But Ngovi had amassed twenty-four. The remaining fifty-seven votes were scattered among two dozen candidates.

He stared up at the assembly.

Clearly they were all thinking what he was.

This was going to be a two-horse race.

FORTY-TWO

MEDJUGORJE, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
6:30 P.M.

Michener found two rooms in one of the newer hotels. The rain had started just as they left Jasna’s house, and they’d barely made it to the hotel before the sky exploded into a pyrotechnic display. This was the rainy season, an attendant informed them. The deluges came quick, fed by warm air off the Adriatic mixing with frigid northern breezes.

They ate supper at a nearby café crowded with pilgrims. The conversations, mostly in English, French, and German, centered on the shrine. Someone remarked that two of the seers had been in St. James Church earlier. Jasna was supposed to appear, but had failed to show, and one of the pilgrims had noted it was not unusual for her to remain alone during the daily apparition.

“We’ll find those two seers tomorrow,” he told Katerina, as they ate. “I hope they’re easier to get along with.”

“Intense, wasn’t she?”

“She’s either an accomplished fraud or the genuine thing.”

“Why did her mention of Bamberg bother you? It’s no secret the pope was fond of his hometown. I don’t believe she didn’t know what the name signified.”

He told her what Clement had said in his final e-mail message about Bamberg.
Do with my body as you please. Pomp and ceremony do not make the pious. For me, though, I would prefer the sanctity of Bamberg, that lovely city by the river, and the cathedral I so loved. My only regret is that I did not see its beauty one last time. Perhaps, though, my legacy could still be there.
But he omitted that the message was a last statement from a pope who took his own life. Which brought to mind something else Jasna had said.
I have prayed for the pope. His soul needs our prayers.
It was crazy to think she knew the truth about Clement’s death.

“You don’t actually believe we witnessed an apparition this afternoon?” Katerina asked. “That woman was strung out.”

“I think Jasna’s visions are hers alone.”

“Is that your way of saying the Madonna wasn’t there today?”

“No more than she was at Fatima, or Lourdes, or La Salette.”

“She reminds me of Lucia,” Katerina said. “When we were with Father Tibor, in Bucharest, I didn’t say anything. But from the article I wrote a few years ago, I remember that Lucia was a troubled girl. Her father was an alcoholic. She was raised by her older sisters. Seven kids in the house and she was the youngest. Right before the apparitions started her father lost some of the family land, a couple of sisters married, and the remaining sisters took jobs outside the home. She was left alone with her brother, her mother, and a drunk father.”

“Some of that was in the Church’s report,” he said. “The bishop in charge of the inquiry dismissed most of it as common for the time. What bothered me more were the similarities between Fatima and Lourdes. The parish priest in Fatima even testified that some of the Virgin’s words were nearly identical to what was said at Lourdes. The visions at Lourdes were known in Fatima, and Lucia was aware of them.” He took a swallow of beer. “I’ve read all of the accounts from four hundred years of apparitions. There are a lot of matching details. Always shepherd children, particularly young females with little or no education. Visions in the woods. Beautiful ladies. Secrets from heaven. Lots of coincidences.”

“Not to mention,” Katerina said, “that all of the accounts that exist were written years after the apparition. It would be easy to add details to give greater authenticity. Isn’t it strange that none of the visionaries ever revealed their messages right after the appearance? Always decades pass, then little bits and pieces come to light.”

He agreed. Sister Lucia had not provided a detailed account of Fatima until 1925, then again in 1944. Many asserted that she embellished her messages with later facts, like mentioning the papacy of Pius XI, World War II, and the rise of Russia, all of which occurred long after 1917. And with Francisco and Jacinta dead, there was no one to contradict her testimony.

And one other fact kept circling through his lawyerly mind.

The Virgin at Fatima, in July 1917, as part of the second secret, talked about the consecration of Russia to her Immaculate Heart. But Russia at that time was a devoutly Christian nation. The communists did not rise to power until months later. So what was the point of any consecration?

“The La Salette seers were a total mess,” Katerina was saying. “Maxim—the boy—his mother died when he was an infant and his stepmother beat him. When he was first interviewed after the vision, he interpreted what he saw as a mother complaining about being beaten by her son, not the Virgin Mary.”

He nodded. “The published versions of the La Salette secrets are in the Vatican archives. Maxim mentioned a vengeful Virgin who talked of famine and compared sinners to dogs.”

“The kind of thing a troubled child might say about an abusive parent. The stepmother used to starve him as punishment.”

“He eventually died young, broke and bitter,” he said. “One of the original seers here in Bosnia was the same. She lost her mother a couple of months before the first vision. And the others have had problems, too.”

“It’s all hallucinations, Colin. Disturbed kids who have become troubled adults, convinced of what they imagined. The Church doesn’t want anyone to know about the seers’ lives. It totally bursts the bubble. Causes doubt.”

Rain pounded the café’s roof.

“Why did Clement send you here?”

“I wish I knew. He was obsessed with the third secret, and this place had something to do with it.”

He decided to tell her about Clement’s vision, but he omitted all reference to the Virgin asking the pope to end his life. He kept his voice in a whisper.

“You’re here because the Virgin Mary told Clement to send you?” she asked.

He caught the waitress’s attention and held up two fingers for a couple more beers.

“Sounds to me like Clement was losing it.”

“Exactly why the world will never know what happened.”

“Maybe it should.”

He didn’t like the comment. “I’ve spoken with you in confidence.”

“I know that. I’m just saying, maybe the world should know about this.”

He realized there was no way that could ever happen, given how Clement had died. He stared out at the street flooded with rain. There was something he wanted to know. “What about us, Kate?”

“I know where I plan to go.”

“What would you do in Romania?”

“Help those kids. I could journal the effort. Write about it for the world. Draw attention.”

“Pretty tough life.”

“It’s my home. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

“Ex-priests don’t make much.”

“It doesn’t take much to live there.”

He nodded and wanted to reach over and take her hand. But that wouldn’t be smart. Not here.

She seemed to sense his wish and smiled. “Save it, until we get back to the hotel.”

FORTY-THREE

VATICAN CITY, 7:00 P.M.

“I call for a third ballot,” the cardinal from the Netherlands said. He was the archbishop of Utrecht and one of Valendrea’s staunchest supporters. Valendrea had arranged with him yesterday that if no success came on the first two ballots, he was to immediately call for a third.

Valendrea was not happy. Ngovi’s twenty-four votes on the first scrutiny had been a surprise. He’d expected him to garner a dozen or so, no more. His own thirty-two were okay, but a long way from the seventy-six needed for election.

The second scrutiny, though, shocked him, and it had taken all his diplomatic reserve to keep his temper in check. Ngovi’s support increased to thirty, while his own nudged up to a weak forty-one. The remaining forty-two votes were scattered among three other candidates. Conclave wisdom proclaimed that a front-runner must gain a respectable amount of support with each succeeding scrutiny. A failure to do so was perceived as weakness, and cardinals were notorious for abandoning weak candidates. Dark horses had many times emerged after the second ballot to claim the papacy. John Paul I and II were both elected that way, as was Clement XV. Valendrea did not want a repeat.

He imagined the pundits in the piazza musing over two billows of black smoke. Irritating asses like Tom Kealy would be telling the world the cardinals must surely be divided, no one candidate emerging as front-runner. There’d be more Valendrea-bashing. Kealy had surely taken a perverse pleasure in slandering him for the past two weeks, and quite cleverly he had to admit. Never had Kealy made any personal comments. No reference to his pending excommunication. Instead, the heretic had offered the
Italians-versus-the-world
argument, which apparently played well. He should have pushed the tribunal to defrock Kealy weeks ago. At least then he’d be an ex-priest with suspect credibility. As it stood, the fool was perceived as a maverick challenging the established guard, a David versus Goliath, and no ever rooted for the giant.

He watched as the cardinal-archivist passed out more ballots. The old man made his way down the row in silence and threw Valendrea a quick glare of defiance as he handed him a blank card. Another problem that should have been dealt with long ago.

Pencils once again scraped across paper and the ritual of depositing ballots into the silver chalice was repeated. The scrutineers shuffled the cards and started counting. He heard his name called fifty-nine times. Ngovi’s was repeated forty-three. The remaining eleven votes remained scattered.

Those would be critical.

He needed seventeen more to achieve election. Even if he garnered every one of the eleven stragglers, he would still need six of Ngovi’s supporters, and the African was gaining strength at an alarming rate. The most frightening prospect was that each one of the eleven scattered votes he failed to sway would have to come from Ngovi’s total, and that could begin to prove impossible. Cardinals tended to dig in after the third vote.

He’d had enough. He stood. “I think, Eminences, we have challenged ourselves enough for today. I suggest we eat dinner and rest and resume in the morning.”

It wasn’t a request. Any participant possessed the right to stop the voting. His gaze strafed the chapel, settling from time to time on men he suspected to be traitors.

He hoped the message was clear.

The black smoke that would soon seep from the Sistine matched his mood.