John tented his chubby fingers before his mouth and rocked silently in the chair. "Father Tibor, I want your word to your pope and your God that what you just read will never be revealed."
Tibor understood the importance of that pledge. "You have my word, Holy Father."
John stared at him through rheumy eyes with a gaze that pierced his soul. A cold shiver tickled his spine. He fought the urge to shift on his feet.
The pope seemed to read his mind.
"Be assured," John said in barely a whisper, "I will do what I can to honor the Virgin's wishes."
"I never spoke to John XXIII again," Tibor said.
"And no other pope contacted you?" Katerina asked.
Tibor shook his head. "Not until today. I gave my word to John and kept it. Until three months ago."
"What did you send the pope?"
"You do not know?'
"Not the details."
"Perhaps Clement doesn't want you to know."
"He wouldn't have sent me if he didn't."
Tibor motioned to Katerina. "Would he want her to know, too?"
"I do," Michener said.
Tibor appraised him with a stern look. "I'm afraid not, Father. What I sent is between Clement and myself."
"You said John XXIII never spoke to you again. Did you try to make contact with him?" Michener asked.
Tibor shook his head. "It was only a few days later John called for the Vatican II council. I remember the announcement well. I thought that his response."
"Care to explain?"
The old man shook his head. "Not really."
Michener finished his beer and wanted another, but knew better. He studied some of the faces that surrounded him and wondered if any might be interested in what he was doing, but quickly dismissed the thought. "What about when John Paul II released the third secret?"
Tibor's face tightened. "What of it?"
The man's curtness was wearing on him. "The world now knows the Virgin's words."
"The Church has been known to refashion the truth."
"Are you suggesting the Holy Father deceived the world?" Michener asked.
Tibor did not immediately answer. "I don't know what I'm suggesting. The Virgin has appeared many times on this earth. You'd think we might finally get the message."
"What message? I've spent the past few months studying every apparition back two thousand years. Each one seems a unique experience."
"Then you haven't been studying closely," Tibor said. "I, too, spent years reading about them. In every one there is a declaration from heaven to do as the Lord says. The Virgin is heaven's messenger. She provides guidance and wisdom, and we've foolishly ignored Her. In modern times, that mistake started at La Salette."
Michener knew every detail about the apparition at La Salette, a village high in the French Alps. In 1846 two shepherd children, a boy, Maxim, and a girl, Melanie, supposedly experienced a vision. The event was similar in many ways to Fatima--a pastoral scene, a light that wound down from the sky, an image of a woman who spoke to them.
"As I recall," Michener said, "the two children were told secrets that were eventually written down, the texts presented to Pius IX. The seers then later published their own versions. Charges of embellishment were leveled. The entire apparition was tainted with scandal."
"Are you saying there's a connection between La Salette and Fatima?" Katerina asked.
A look of annoyance crept onto Tibor's face. "I'm not saying anything. Father Michener here has access to the archives. Has he ascertained any connection?"
"I studied the La Salette visions," Michener said. "Pius IX made no comment after reading each of the secrets, yet he never allowed them to be publicly revealed. And though the original texts are indexed among the papers of Pius IX, the secrets are no longer in the archives."
"I looked in 1960 for the La Salette secrets and also found nothing. But there are clues to their content."
He knew exactly what Tibor meant. "I read the witness accounts of people who watched as Melanie wrote down the messages. She asked how to spell infallibly, soiled, and anti-Christ, if I remember correctly."
Tibor nodded.
"Pius IX himself even offered a few clues. After reading Maxim's message he said, 'Here is the candor and simplicity of a child.' But after reading Melanie's he cried and said, 'I have less to fear from open impiety than from indifference. It is not without reason that the Church is called militant and you see here her captain.' "
"You have a good memory," Tibor said. "Melanie was not kind when told of the pope's reaction. 'This secret ought to give pleasure to the pope,' she said, 'a pope should love to suffer.' "
Michener recalled Church decrees issued at the time that commanded the faithful to refrain from discussing La Salette in any form on threat of sanctions. "Father Tibor, La Salette was never given the credence of Fatima."
"Because the original texts of the seers' messages are gone. All we have is speculation. There's been no discussion of the subject because the church forbade it. Right after the apparition, Maxim said that the announcement the Virgin told them would be fortunate for some, unfortunate for others. Lucia uttered those same words seventy years later at Fatima. 'Good for some. For others bad.' " The priest drained his mug. He seemed to enjoy alcohol. "Maxim and Lucia were both right. Good for some, bad for others. It is time the Madonna's words not be ignored."
"What are you saying?" Michener asked, frustrated.
"At Fatima heaven's desires were made perfectly clear. I haven't read the La Salette secret, but I can well imagine what it says."
Michener was sick of riddles, but decided to let this old priest have his say. "I'm aware of what the Virgin said at Fatima in the second secret, about the consecration of Russia and what would happen if that wasn't done. I agree, that's a specific instruction--"
"Yet no pope," Tibor said, "ever performed the consecration until John Paul II. All the bishops of the world, in conjunction with Rome, never consecrated Russia until 1984. And look what happened from 1917 to 1984. Communism flourished. Millions died. Romania was raped and pillaged by monsters. What did the Virgin say? The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. All because popes chose their own course instead of heaven's." The anger was clear, no attempt being made to conceal it. "Yet within six years of the consecration, communism fell." Tibor massaged his brow. "Never once has Rome formally recognized a Marian apparition. The most it will ever do is deem the occurrence worthy of assent. The Church refuses to accept that visionaries have anything important to say."
"But that's only prudent," Michener said.
"How so? The Church acknowledges that the Virgin appeared, encourages the faithful to believe in the event, then discredits whatever the seers say? You don't see a contradiction?"
Michener did not answer.
"Reason it out," Tibor said. "Since 1870 and the Vatican I council, the pope has been deemed infallible when he speaks of doctrine. What do you believe would happen to that concept if the words of a simple peasant child were made more important?"
Michener had never viewed the issue that way before.
"The teaching authority of the Church would end," Tibor said. "The faithful would turn somewhere else for guidance. Rome would cease to be the center. And that could never be allowed to happen. The Curia survives, no matter what. That's always been the case."
"But, Father Tibor," Katerina said, "the secrets from Fatima are precise on places, dates, and times. They talk about Russia and popes by name. They speak of papal assassinations. Isn't the Church just being cautious? These so-called secrets are so different from the gospels that each could be deemed suspicious."
"A good point. We humans have a tendency to ignore that which we do not agree with. But maybe heaven thought more specific instruction was needed. Those details you speak about."
Michener could see the agitation on Tibor's face and the nervousness in the hands that wrappe
d the empty beer stein. A few moments of strained silence passed, then the old man slouched forward and motioned to the envelope.
"Tell the Holy Father to do as the Madonna said. Not to argue or ignore it, just do as she said." The voice was flat and emotionless. "If not, tell him that he and I will soon be in heaven, and I expect him to take all the blame."
TWENTY
10:00 P.M.
Michener and Katerina stepped off the metro train and made their way out of the subway station into a frosty night. The former Romanian royal palace, its battered stone facade awash in a sodium vapor glow, stood before them. The Pia ta Revolu tiei fanned out in all directions, the damp cobbles dotted with people bundled in heavy wool coats. Traffic crawled by on the streets beyond. The cold air stained his throat with a taste of carbon.
He watched Katerina as she studied the plaza. Her eyes settled on the old communist headquarters, a Stalinist monolith, and he saw her focus on the building's balcony.
"That was where Ceau sescu made his speech that night." She pointed off toward the north. "I stood over there. It was something. That pompous ass just stood there in the lights and proclaimed himself loved by all." The building loomed dark, apparently no longer important enough to be illuminated. "Television cameras sent the speech all over the country. He was so proud of himself until we all started chanting, 'Timi soara, Timi soara.' "
He knew about Timi soara, a town in western Romania where a lone priest had finally spoke out against Ceau sescu. When the government-controlled Reformed Orthodox Church removed him, riots broke out across the country. Six days later the square before him erupted in violence.
"You should have seen Ceau sescu's face, Colin. It was his indecision, that moment of shock, that we took as a call to act. We broke through the police lines and . . . there was no turning back." Her voice lowered. "The tanks eventually came, then the fire hoses, then bullets. I lost many friends that night."
He stood with his hands stuffed in his coat pockets and watched his breath evaporate before his eyes, letting her remember, knowing she was proud of what she'd done. He was, too.
"It's good to have you back," he said.