the Third Secret

SIXTY-FOUR

Katerina’s mind swirled with confusion. Michener had not trusted her with the fact that Clement XV took his own life. Valendrea surely must know—otherwise Ambrosi would have urged her to learn what she could about Clement’s death. What in the world was happening? Missing writings. Seers talking to Mary. A pope committing suicide after secretly loving a woman for six decades. Nobody would believe any of it.

She stepped from the inn, buttoned her coat, and decided to head back toward the Maxplatz and walk off her frustration. Bells pealed from all directions signaling noon. She swiped the quickening snow from her hair. The air was cold, parched, and sullen, like her mood.

Irma Rahn had opened her mind. Where years ago she’d forced Michener into a choice, driving him away, hurting them both in the process, Irma had ventured down a less selfish path, one that reflected love, not possession. Maybe the old woman was right. It mattered not about a physical connection. What counted was possessing the heart and mind.

She wondered if she and Michener could have enjoyed a similar relationship. Probably not. Times were different. Yet here she was, back with the same man, seemingly on the same tortuous path of love lost, then found, then tested, then—that was the question. Then, what?

She continued to walk, finding the main plaza, crossing a canal, and spotting the onion-domed twin towers of St. Gangolf’s.

Life was so damn complicated.

She could still see the man from last night standing over Michener, knife in hand. She hadn’t hesitated in attacking him. After, she’d suggested going to the authorities, but Michener had nixed the idea. Now she knew why. He couldn’t risk the exposure of a papal suicide. Jakob Volkner meant so much to him. Maybe too much. And she now understood why he’d journeyed to Bosnia—searching for answers to questions his old friend had left behind. Clearly that chapter in his life could not be closed, because its ending had yet to be written. She wondered if it ever would be.

She kept walking and found herself back at the doors to St. Gangolf’s. The warm air seeping from inside beckoned her. She entered and saw the gate for the side chapel, where Irma had been cleaning, remained open. She stepped past and stopped at another of the chapels. A statue of the Virgin Mary, cradling the Christ child in her arms, gazed down with the loving look of a proud mother. Surely a medieval representation—that of an Anglo-Saxon Caucasian—but an image the world had grown accustomed to worshiping. Mary had lived in Israel, a place where the sun burned hot and skin was tanned. Her features would have been Arabic, her hair dark, her body stout. Yet European Catholics would never have accepted that reality. So a familiar feminine vision was fashioned—one the Church had clung to ever since.

And was she a virgin? The Holy Spirit endowing her womb with the son of God? Even if that was true, the decision would have certainly been her choice. She alone would have consented to the pregnancy. Why then was the Church so opposed to abortion and birth control? When did a woman lose the option to decide if she wanted to give birth? Had not Mary established the right? What if she’d refused? Would she still have been required to carry that divine child to term?

She was tired of puzzling dilemmas. There were far too many with no answers. She turned to leave.

Three feet away stood Paolo Ambrosi.

The sight of him startled her.

He lunged forward, spinning her around and hurling her into the chapel with the Virgin. He slammed her into the stone wall, her left arm twisted behind her back. Another hand quickly compressed her neck. Her face was pressed against the prickly stone.

“I was pondering how I might separate you from Michener. But you did it for me.”

Ambrosi increased the pressure on her arm. She opened her mouth to cry out.

“Now, now. Let’s not do that. Besides, there is no one here to hear you.”

She tried to break free, using her legs.

“Stay still. My patience with you is exhausted.”

Her response was more struggling.

Ambrosi yanked her away from the wall and wrapped an arm around her neck. Instantly, her windpipe was constricted. She tried to break his hold, digging her fingernails into his skin, but the diminishing oxygen was causing everything before her to wink in and out.

She opened her mouth to scream, but there was no air to form the words.

Her eyes rolled upward.

The last thing she saw, before the world went black, was the mournful glare of the Virgin, which offered no solace for her predicament.