Berry, Steve - the Third Secret

The men moved to their assigned seats. No one as yet had spoken a word. The choir continued to sing.

Valendrea’s gaze fell on the stove. It sat in a far corner, raised off the mosaic floor by a metal scaffolding. A chimney rose, then narrowed into a flue that escaped out one of the windows, where the celebrated smoke would signal success or failure. He hoped there would not be too many fires lit inside. The more scrutinies, the less chance of victory.

Ngovi stood at the front of the chapel, his hands folded before him beneath his cassock. Valendrea took note of the stern look on the African’s face and hoped the camerlengo enjoyed his moment.

“Extra omnes,” Ngovi said in a loud voice. All out.

The choir, servers, and television crews started leaving. Only the cardinals and thirty-two priests, nuns, and technicians would be allowed to remain.

The room fell under an uneasy quiet as two surveillance technicians made a sweep down the center aisle. They were responsible for ensuring the chapel stayed free of listening devices. At the iron grille the two men stopped and signaled an all-clear.

Valendrea nodded, and they withdrew. That ritual would be repeated before and after each day’s voting.

Ngovi left the altar and marched down the aisle between the assembled cardinals. He passed through a marble screen and stopped at the bronze doors the attendants were pulling shut. Total silence draped the room. Where before there’d been music and the shuffle of feet on the mats protecting the mosaic floor, now there was nothing. Beyond the doors, from outside, the sound of a key slipping into place and tumblers engaging echoed.

Ngovi tested the handles.

Locked.

“Extra omnes,” he called out.

No one responded. No one was supposed to. The silence was an indication that the conclave had begun. Valendrea knew lead seals were being stamped into place outside to symbolically ensure privacy. There was another way in and out of the Sistine—the route to be taken each day to and from the Domus Sanctae Marthae—but the sealing of the doors was the traditional method of beginning the electoral process.

Ngovi retraced his steps to the altar, faced the cardinals, and said what Valendrea had heard a camerlengo say at that same spot thirty-four months ago.

“May the Lord bless you all. Let us begin.”

FORTY

MEDJUGORJE, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

2:30 P.M.

Michener studied the house, a one-story built of stone, stained the color of moss. Dormant grapevines snaked across an arbor, and the only hint at gaiety sprang from swirling woodwork above the windows. A vegetable patch filled the side yard and seemed eager for the rain that was drawing closer. Mountains loomed in the distance.

They’d found the house only after asking two people for directions. Both had been reluctant to provide help until Michener revealed he was a priest and needed to speak with Jasna.

He led Katerina to the front door and knocked.

A tall woman with an almond-colored complexion and dark hair answered. She was thin as a sapling with a pleasant face and warm hazel eyes. She studied him with a measured mien that he found uncomfortable. She was perhaps thirty, with a rosary draping her neck.

“I’m due at church and really don’t have time to speak,” she said. “I would be glad to talk with you after the service.” Her words came in English.

“We’re not here for the reason you think,” he said. He told her who he was and why he was there.

She did not react, as if a Vatican envoy contacted her daily. Finally she invited them inside.

The house was sparsely furnished in a mix-and-match decor. Sunlight spilled in from half-open windows, many of the panes cracked their length. A portrait of Mary hung over the fireplace, surrounded by flickering candles. A statue of the Virgin stood in one corner. The carved Madonna wore a gray dress trimmed in light blue. A white veil draped her face and highlighted wavy locks of brown hair. Her blue eyes were expressive and warm. Our Lady of Fatima, if he recalled correctly.

“Why Fatima?” he asked, motioning to the carving.

“It was a gift from a pilgrim. I like it. She seems alive.”

He noticed a slight tremor to Jasna’s right eye, and her barren expression and bland voice were causing him concern. He wondered if she was on something.

“You don’t believe anymore, do you?” she quietly said.

The comment caught him off guard. “Why is that important?”

She shifted her gaze pointedly in Katerina’s direction. “She confuses you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Priests rarely come here in the company of women. Especially a priest without his collar.”

He had no intention of answering her inquiry. They were still standing, their host yet to offer a seat, and things were starting off badly.

Jasna turned to Katerina. “You don’t believe at all. And have not in many years. How your soul must be tormented.”

“Are these insights supposed to impress us?” If Jasna’s comment bothered Katerina, she apparently was not going to let the woman know.

“To you,” Jasna said, “what is real is only what you can touch. But there is so much more. So much you cannot possibly imagine. And though it cannot be touched, it is nonetheless real.”

“We are here on a mission for the pope,” he said.

“Clement is with the Virgin.”

“That is my hope.”

“But you do him a disservice by not believing.”

“Jasna, I’ve been sent to learn the tenth secret. Clement and the camerlengo have both provided a written directive for it to be revealed.”

She turned back. “I do not know it. And I don’t want to. The Virgin will stop coming when that happens. Her messages are important. The world depends on them.”

He was familiar with the daily messages from Medjugorje, faxed and e-mailed worldwide. Most were simple pleas for faith and world peace, fasting and prayer urged as a means to accomplish both. Yesterday he’d read some of the more recent in the Vatican library. Websites routinely charged fees for furnishing heaven’s mandate, which made him wonder about Jasna’s motives. But considering the simplicity of her home and the plain manner of her dress she wasn’t reaping any profit. “We realize you don’t know the secret, but can you tell us which one of the other seers we could talk with to learn it?”

“All were told to keep the information private, until the Virgin releases their tongues.”

“Would not authority from the Holy Father be sufficient?”

“The Holy Father is dead.”

He was tiring of her attitude. “Why must you make things so difficult?”

“Heaven has asked the same thing.”

It sounded to him an awful lot like Clement’s lamentations in the weeks before his death.

“I have prayed for the pope,” she said. “His soul needs our prayers.”

He was about to ask what she meant, but before he could say a word she crept close to the statue in the corner. Her gaze seemed suddenly distant and transfixed. She knelt on a prie-dieu, saying nothing.

“What’s she doing?” Katerina mouthed.

He shrugged.

A bell pealed three times in the distance, and he remembered that the Virgin supposedly appeared to Jasna at three P.M. each day. One of her hands found the rosary that draped her neck. She clutched at the beads and started mumbling words he could not understand. He bent close and followed her gaze upward toward the sculpture, but saw nothing except the stoic wooden face of the Virgin Mary.

He recalled from his research that witnesses at Fatima reported hearing a buzz and feeling a warmth during the apparitions, but he thought that simply part of a mass hysteria that engulfed illiterate souls who desperately wanted to believe. He wondered if he was truly witnessing a Marian apparition or just a woman’s delusion.