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“Sometimes I wonder if the Blessed Virgin knew what trouble she would cause by telling those things to Sister Lucia.”
    Traeger said, “But wasn’t the third secret made public?”
    â€œIt was. The hope was that that would stop all the wild speculating about its contents. Of course, withholding it for so long had inflamed curiosity. The strangest ideas became current as to what the secret said. Finally, the Holy Father—Cardinal Ratzinger as he then was—decided the time had come to put an end to all that. So the secret was published and he wrote a magnificent commentary.” The wistful smile was briefly back. “And immediately we were accused of deception. It was said that there must be more that was being withheld.”
    Traeger looked at him. “And there wasn’t?”
    â€œEverything was made public.”
    â€œWho would have stolen it?” Traeger asked.
    Piacere’s hands opened as if he were saying Mass. “It would be rash of me to speculate.”
    â€œWe have to speculate, Your Eminence,” Rodriguez said. That was when Traeger first realized that this mild little priest with the aura of holiness about him was a prince of the Church.
    â€œI will leave speculation to you,” Piacere said sweetly. “What disappointment the thief must be feeling.”
    He went on then, developing the thoughts Cardinal Ratzinger had put into the document accompanying the revelation of the third secret in 2000. The essence of Christian doctrine had been revealed in its completeness at the time of the apostles. Since then of course there had been what Cardinal Newman called the development of doctrine, drawing out the implications of that original deposit of faith. But no development could be authentic that did not conform with the original revelation.
    â€œWe learn more and more of what we cannot understand, not in this life.” Piacere twisted the ring on his right hand, as if he feared it would slip off.
    Of course there were private revelations, some of which received official Church approval, but in their case, too, the test of authenticity was their agreement with the faith that had been entrusted to the Church.
    â€œPrivate revelations have good and bad effects,” Piacere murmured. “Many useful devotions are the results of such apparitions. The bad effect is a passion to know what lies ahead, to have prophecies. There are those who seem almost to long for the end of the world. Of course, the apparitions at Fatima are a great blessing to the Church. Paul VI went there, as did John Paul II. But the heart of the Fatima message is as old as the Church itself. Prayer, repentance, fasting. The secret is that there is no secret.”
    â€œBut the assassination attempt?” Traeger said.
    â€œYes, yes. There is that.”
    By the time they left Piacere, Traeger had thought that, if he ever got religion, he would want Piacere there at his deathbed.
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    And so, that afternoon, talking with Crowe on the rooftop of the Vatican Library, Traeger had known of the missing third secret. And he could not rid himself of the thought that Crowe, too, knew of it. What he did not know, despite Rodriguez’s remark the night before, was whether those murders in the Vatican were connected with the missing third secret.
    â€œBe careful,” he said to Crowe, when they had gone downstairs and were standing outside the monsignor’s office.
    â€œI’m always careful.”
    â€œGood.”
    He would reserve for their next meeting what he had learned of Crowe’s connection with the Confraternity of Pius IX.

III
    The engine room of the bark of Peter
    Brendan Crowe waited half an hour after Traeger had left him, the door of his office open. Anyone passing by would have seen him busy at his desk, this day a day like any other. Finally, he rose, shut the door and locked it, and stood very still, taking deep breaths. He had been shaken on