Â鶹ӰÊÓ

"The man is a bloody eccentric," Baldi thought to himself, but would later regret the thought.

Giuseppe Baldi reluctantly walked through the gate designed by the architect Filarete in 1433, whose doors opened onto the Loggia della Benedizione, the portico of blessings, and into the most famous basilica in Christendom, headed toward the area where tourists were lining up to ascend to the dome of Saint Peter's.

After a quick glance at the confessionals along the south wall, he sought out number nineteen. The identifying Roman numerals near the top of the tall wooden booths were barely legible, but looking closely a keen observer could discern what were once resplendent Roman numerals hand-painted in gold, with the designation, "Heavenly Listening Room" in the upper right hand corner.

Number nineteen was the easternmost booth, closest to Adrian VI's extravagant tomb. Visible on the entrance to the booth was a plaque, laden with years of grime, which announced Confessions Will be Heard in Polish by the Designated Priest, Father Czestocowa.

Baldi felt like a fool. Just thinking about it embarrashed him. It must have been more than a hundred years since members of the clergy used the confessionals for clandestine meetings, much less in these times when the Vatican had entire auditoriums wired with illegal listening devices.

Still it was unlikely that the sophisticated listening devices the Holy Office's secret service and other foreign agencies liked to plant in the offices of the cardinals had been installed here.

The Benedictine had no choice. The message in the mail box at the residence where he was lodging had made it perfectly clear.

Thus, obediently, the Benedictine entered booth nineteen on the right-hand side and knelt down. As he might have guessed, there were no Polish Catholics on line at that hour to receive absolution. The Holy Father's countrymen tended to use that time of day to sleep or watch television.

"Hall Mary Full of Grace," he whispered.

"Conceived without sin, Father Baldi."

The voice on the other side of the screen made it clear he had made the right choice. The 'evangelist' tried to camouflage his enthusiasm.

"Monsignor?"

"I'm glad you have come, Giuseppe," he said. ";I have important news for you, and I have good reason to believe that even my office is no longer secure."

Stanislaw Zsidiv's unmistakably nasal voice bore a certain funereal air that disturbed the 'penitent.' His heart began to beat faster.

"Have you learned anything new about the death of Father Corso?"

"Analysis of the adrenaline content of his blood indicates that our beloved Saint Matthew had some sort of grave crisis before he died. Something that so overwhelmed him, he made the decision to take his own life."

"What could it be, Your Eminence?"

"I have no idea, my son, but doubtless something terrible. Now, as Doctor Ferrell will tell you, we must make every effort to find out who the last person to see Corso alive, and what his or her influence was on Corso's decision, if any."

"I understand."

"But I didn't ask you to come here for that, my son."

"No?"

"Do you remember when we spoke of Benavides' Memorial in my office?"

"If I remember correctly, it was a report assembled by a Portuguese Franciscan in the seventeenth century concerning the apparitions of the Lady in Blue in the southwestern United States."

"Exactly." His Eminence nodded with satisfaction. "That document, as I already told you, fascinated Corso at the very end of his life, because he believed that he had discovered in it a description of how a cloistered nun was physically carried from Spain to the New World in order to preach to the Indians in 1629!"

"I see."

"What you may not know is that Corso was in the process of requesting an unpublished manuscript by the same Friar Benavides, in which he identified the Lady in Blue as a nun by the name of Sor Mar�a Jes�s de �greda, and that he had learned the method she used to send herself, by bilocation, to America."

"The formula for bilocation ...?"

"Just so."

"And he discovered it? Is it in the manuscript?"

"This is where things get murky, my son. We are talking about a text to which no one has paid the slightest attention until now. Corso searched for it in the Pontiff's archives the very day before his death, without success.

Nevertheless, that same day someone entered the National Library in Madrid and stole a manuscript belonging to King Philip the Fourth."

The Cardinal took a deep breath before the Benedictine had a chance to react.

"Yes, Giuseppe. It was the very same 'Memorial' that Saint Matthew was looking for."

The Venetian friar struggled desperately to find some sort of logical connection between the disparate events.

"According to what we learned this morning," Zsidiv went on, "the Spanish police have not as yet detained any suspects, but everything points to the robbery being the work of professionals. Perhaps the same criminals who stole Father Corso's files."

"What makes you suspect that, Your Eminence?"

"It is my impression that someone wants to make all information relating to the Lady in Blue disappear. Someone on the inside who wants to block the development of our Chronovision, and who does not seem inclined to settle for half measures in order to succeed."

"But why go to so much trouble?"

"The only thing that makes sense to me," Zsidiv whispered, "is that this 'someone' has developed an investigation parallel to ours, has obtained successful results, and is presently erasing each and every clue that lead them to their accomplishment."

Baldi protested.

"But that is nothing more than conjecture."

"Which is why I asked you to come here today. I don't feel safe in Saint Peter's, my son. The walls have ears. The Holy Office has called a meeting to take a look at the latest developments on the project. A meeting at the very highest level."

"Do you think the enemy resides in the very heart of the Church, Your Eminence?"

"And what would you propose, Giuseppe?"

"None. Perhaps if we knew the contents of that purloined document, we would know where to start looking...."

Zsidiv made an effort to stretch his legs inside the sort of vertical coffin that is a confessional, then added laconically, "But we know what's in it."

"Really?"

"Certainly, my son. Benavides wrote his Memorial of New Mexico here, in Rome. He made two copies of the document: one for Urban the Eight and a second for Philip the Fourth. The second is the copy that was stolen."

"Which means, we still have it!"

"Yes and no..." he clarified. "You see, Friar Alonso de Benavides was Father Custodian of the Province of New Mexico region until 1629. After interrogating the missionaries who had collected data on the Lady in Blue, he went off to Mexico, whence his superior, the Basque Archbishop Manso y Z��iga, sent him to Spain to bring a certain investigation to a close."

"Which investigation was that, Your Eminence?"

On the other side of the screen, Saint John, the coordinator of the Chronovision project, let out a short laugh. "Benavides left New Mexico convinced that the Lady in Blue was a nun famous in Europe as a miracle worker, a woman by the name of Mar�a Luisa de Carri�n.

The only problem with that theory is that the Indians described a woman who was young and attractive, and at that point Carri�n was well over sixty years old.

However, that still was not enough to convince Benavides. So instead of believing that the Lady in Blue could be a new apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe, he preferred to believe that her 'voyage through the air' had somehow rejuvenated Carri�n."

"Ridiculous!"

"It was the seventeenth century, my son. Nobody knew what might happen to someone who could fly through the air."

"Of course, but..."

"And another thing," the Monsignor cut in. "Something I learned this morning in the Secret Archive."

Giuseppe Baldi's ears pricked up.

"In Mexico City, the Archbishop showed Benavides a letter from a certain Franciscan friar by the name of Sebasti�n Marcilla, in which he spoke of another nun, younger, with mystical powers, who also suffered all sorts of supernatural ecstasies."

"She was able to bilocate?"

"That was, in fact, one of her graces. Her name was Mar�a Jes�s de �greda. Manso y Z��iga, unnerved by the letter, sent the very same Benavides to Spain to investigate. The latter crossed the Atlantic at the beginning of 1630, disembarked at Seville and from there travelled to Madrid and �greda to investigate. He personally interrogated the alleged Lady in Blue, and afterwards took up residence in Rome, where he wrote his Memorial."

"Then why did you say that the copy of Memorial he made for the Pope is of no use to us?"

"Because the copy in the king of Spain's possession and the one in the Pope's library are not identical. To begin with, the copy given to the Pope was incorrectly dated in 1630, and it is still listed under that date in the Archive, which is why Corso ever found it. Second, in the copy that Benavides sent to the king, the Portuguese friar added notes in the margins, specifying how he believed the nun was able to transport herself physically, taking with her liturgical objects that she gave to the Indians."

"Liturgical objects?"

"Rosaries, chalices... The Franciscans found them when they arrived in New Mexico. The Indians preserved them, regarding them as gifts from the Lady in Blue. Benavides obtained one and asked to be buried with it."

"And how could this lady..."

"It seems, my son, that at the same time that the nun in the monastery in �greda plunged into a trance that left her in a sleeplike state, her "essence" materialized in a different location. It became flesh."

"Exactly like Ferrell's 'dreamers'!"

"What's that?"

Baldi imagined Cardinal Zsidiv's gesture of surprise on the other side of the screen.

"I thought you already knew about that, Your Eminence."

"Knew what?"

"That the final experiment undertaken by Corso, in conjunction with the 'doctor', was an attempt to project a woman whom they called 'the dreamer' back to the time of the Lady in Blue. They hoped she would discover the secret of those voyages, which they would then present on a silver platter to INSCOM, an organization within the CIA."

"And did they succeed?"

"Well, they dropped the woman from the experiment. They said she became distraught and broke off all connection with them She returned to the United States, but I have not as yet been able to verify her whereabouts."

"Find her!" Zsidiv ordered in a very serious tone. "She has the key! I'm sure of it!"

"But how will I do it?"

The Cardinal leaned in so closely to the partition that Baldi could feel the other man's breath on his face.

"Let yourself be led by the signs," the Cardinal said.

Copyright � 2007 by Javier Sierra