Free The Third Revelation by Ralph McInerny Page A

secret had been suppressed. Maguire had said he would put an end to that once and for all. In the greatest of secrecy, Crowe had removed the secret and brought it to his chief. And now, here it was.
    Of course he should return it to the archives. He himself felt no impulse to open the folder to see if the complainers had a case. His motives when he put the secret into his briefcase were obscure to himself, then and later. It was as if he were removing the documents from harm’s way when he took them back to his room in the Domus Sanctae Marthae. He remembered Chekovsky’s enigmatic question—Is it you, or must we wait for another?—and Traeger’s suggestion that there was a mole in the Vatican. He had feared that Traeger meant him. It was the thought of little Remi Pouvoir, flitting among the rows and rows of archived materials, that decided him. And he had another idea, a wild idea, prompted by Burke’s account of the eccentric billionaire for whom his sister worked.

IV
    â€œHe is a self-made Croesus.”
    John Burke’s rooms were on the same floor in the Domus as Brendan Crowe’s, and the two priests had formed a friendship, the younger looking to the older for counsel, Crowe fascinated by the eager zeal of the younger man. Burke had taken Crowe to the building that housed the Pontifical Academies and showed him around, and Crowe in turn had acquainted Burke with the inner sanctum of the Vatican Library and the publicly accessible parts of the archives. In their conversations, the range of Crowe’s knowledge impressed the younger priest—patristics, philosophy, the manuscripts in the Vatican Library, even an effortless authority about the art works in the museum. It was this last that prompted Father Burke to seek the older priest’s help in compiling the list Laura had asked for.
    But before he could broach the subject, Crowe had made the dreadful revelation that four recent deaths in the Vatican had been murders. After that, it was difficult to get back to the wishes of Ignatius Hannan.
    â€œThe mysteries of the rosary?” Crowe said.
    â€œThe best artistic depictions of them.”
    â€œThere is scarcely unanimity on that.”
    â€œWell, the best in your opinion, then.”
    â€œI could mention two or three for each mystery.”
    â€œI can’t thank you enough,” John said, as if Crowe had agreed.
    â€œWhat is the purpose of the list?”
    In answer, Burke told his friend more about the eccentric billionaire for whom his sister worked in New Hampshire.
    â€œI suppose he wants reproductions of them?”
    â€œHe could scarcely obtain the originals, Brendan.”
    Burke himself had been devoting months to gathering archival materials for the use of the commission looking into the canonization of Pope Pius IX, who had begun his papacy as a liberal and then, appalled by political upheaval and revolution, reversed his field. He had fled the Vatican for Gaeta, joining the list of popes who had suffered from secular forces. Burke possessed an Irish eloquence that made dramatic his account of Napoleon’s kidnapping the pope of the day and bringing him to Notre Dame to crown him emperor.
    â€œIn the event, Napoleon put the crown on his own head. Poor Pius.”
    â€œPius?”
    â€œPaul V. After the fiasco in Russia, he offered protection and asylum to members of Napoleon’s family. A truly Christian gesture. There are those who think that Napoleon’s defeat in Russia was punishment for his treatment of the pope.”
    Full of his subject, Burke had then gone on about Paul Claudel’s trilogy of plays.
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    From time to time, the two priests went out for dinner to Ambrogio’s in the Borgo Pio, absenting themselves from felicity awhile, in Brendan’s phrase—or not his phrase: his conversation was a florilegium of quotations—taking an outside table in clement weather. And that is what they did this