Berry, Steve - the Third Secret

But how could that possibly be now?

A moment of strained silence passed between them. Awkward and embarrassing.

“Okay, Colin,” she finally said. “I get the message. I’ll go.”

She turned to leave.

The heels of her shoes tapped off the marble as she walked away. He wanted to tell her it was okay. Don’t leave. Stop. But he couldn’t bring himself to speak the words.

He headed in the opposite direction, down to ground level. He wasn’t about to use the car Ambrosi had offered. He wanted nothing more from this place except to be left alone.

He was inside the Vatican without credentials or an escort, but his face was so well known that none of the guards questioned his presence. He came to the end of a long loggia filled with planispheres and globes. Ahead, Maurice Ngovi stood in the opposite doorway.

“I heard you were here,” Ngovi said as he approached. “I also know what happened in Bosnia. You okay?”

He nodded. “I was going to call you later.”

“We need to talk.”

“Where?”

Ngovi seemed to understand and motioned for him to follow. They walked in silence to the archives. The reading rooms were once again full of scholars, historians, and journalists. Ngovi found the cardinal-archivist and the three men headed for one of the reading rooms. Once inside with the door closed, Ngovi said, “I think this place is reasonably private.”

Michener turned to the archivist. “I thought you’d be unemployed by now.”

“I’ve been ordered out by the weekend. My replacement arrives the day after tomorrow.”

He knew what the job meant to the old man. “I’m sorry. But I think you’re better off.”

“What did our pontiff want with you?” Ngovi asked.

Michener plopped down in one of the chairs. “He thinks I have a document that was supposedly in the Riserva. Something Father Tibor sent to Clement that concerns the third secret of Fatima. Some facsimile of a translation. I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

Ngovi gave the archivist a strange look.

“What is it?” Michener asked.

Ngovi told him about Valendrea’s visit yesterday to the Riserva.

“He was like a madman,” the archivist said. “He kept saying something was gone from the box. I was truly frightened of him. God help this Church.”

“Did Valendrea explain anything?” Ngovi asked him.

He told them both what the pope had said.

“That Friday night,” the cardinal-archivist said, “when Clement and Valendrea were in the Riserva together, something was burned. We found ashes on the floor.”

“Clement said nothing to you about that?” Michener asked.

The archivist shook his head. “Not a word.”

A lot of the pieces were coming together, but there was still a problem. He said, “This whole thing is bizarre. Sister Lucia herself verified in 2000 the authenticity of the third secret before it was released by John Paul.”

Ngovi nodded. “I was present. The original writing was taken, in the box, from the Riserva to Portugal, and she confirmed that the document was the same one she penned in 1944. But, Colin, the box contained only two sheets of paper. I myself was there when it was opened. There was an original writing and an Italian translation. Nothing more.”

“If the message was incomplete, would she not have said something?” Michener asked.

“She was so old and frail,” Ngovi said. “I recall how she merely glanced at the page and nodded. I was told her eyesight was poor, her hearing gone.”

“Maurice asked me to check,” the archivist said. “Valendrea and Paul VI entered the Riserva on May 18, 1978. Valendrea returned an hour later, on Paul’s express order, and stayed there, alone, for fifteen minutes.”

Ngovi nodded. “It seems whatever Father Tibor sent to Clement opened a door Valendrea thought long closed.”

“And it may have cost Tibor his life.” He considered the situation. “Valendrea called whatever is gone a facsimile translation. Translation of what?”

“Colin,” Ngovi said. “There is apparently more to the third secret of Fatima than we know.”

“And Valendrea thinks I have it.”

“Do you?” Ngovi asked.

He shook his head. “If I did, I’d give him the damn thing. I’m sick of this and just want out.”

“Any thoughts as to what Clement might have done with Tibor’s reproduction?”

He hadn’t really considered the point. “No idea. Stealing was not like Clement.” Neither was committing suicide, but he knew better than to say anything. The archivist had no knowledge of that. But he sensed from Ngovi’s expression the Kenyan was thinking the same thing.

“And what of Bosnia?” Ngovi asked.

“Stranger than Romania.”

He showed them Jasna’s message. He’d given Valendrea a copy, keeping the original.

“We can’t put too much credence in this,” Ngovi said, motioning with Jasna’s words. “Medjugorje seems more a sideshow than a religious experience. This tenth secret could simply be the seer’s imagination and, quite frankly, considering its scope, I have to seriously question if that isn’t so.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Michener said. “Jasna has convinced herself it’s real and seems caught up in the experience. Yet Valendrea reacted strongly when he read the message.” He told them what had just happened.

“That’s the way he was in the Riserva,” the archivist said. “A madman.”

Michener stared hard at Ngovi. “What’s going on here, Maurice?”

“I am at a loss. Years back, as a bishop, I and others spent three months studying the third secret at John Paul’s request. That message was so different from the first two. They were precise, detailed, but the third secret was more a parable. His Holiness thought guidance from the Church, in its interpretation, was called for. And I agreed. But never did we consider the message incomplete.”

Ngovi motioned to a thick, oversized volume lying on the table. The huge manuscript was ancient, its pages so aged they appeared charred. The cover was scrawled in Latin, surrounded by colorful drawings depicting what appeared to be popes and cardinals. The words LIGNUM VITAE were barely visible in faded crimson ink.

Ngovi sat in one of the chairs and asked Michener, “What do you know of St. Malachy?”

“Enough to question whether the man was genuine.”

“I assure you, his prophecies are real. This volume here was published in Venice in 1595 by a Dominican historian, Arnold Wion, as the definitive account of what St. Malachy himself wrote of his visions.”

“Maurice, those visions occurred in the middle of the twelfth century. Four hundred years passed before Wion began writing everything down. I’ve heard all the tales. Who knows what Malachy said, if anything. His words have not survived.”

“But Malachy’s writings were here in 1595,” the archivist said. “Our indexes show that. So Wion would have had access to them.”

“If Wion’s book survived, why didn’t Malachy’s text?”

Ngovi motioned to the book. “Even if Wion’s writing is a forgery, his prophecies instead of Malachy’s, they, too, are remarkable in their accuracy. Made even more so with what’s happened over the past couple of days.”

Ngovi offered him three typed sheets. Michener scanned the pages and saw that it was a narrative summary.

Malachy was an Irishman, born in 1094. He became a priest at age twenty-five, a bishop at thirty. In 1139 he left Ireland for Rome, where he delivered an account of his diocese to Pope Innocent II. While there he experienced a strange vision of the future, a long list of men who would one day rule the Church. He committed his vision to parchment and presented Innocent with the manuscript. The pope read the offering, then sealed it in the archives where it remained until 1595, when Arnold Wion again recorded the list of pontiffs Malachy had seen, along with Malachy’s prophetical mottoes, starting with Celestine II, in 1143, and ending 111 popes later with the supposed last pontiff.