The Third Revelation Read Free Page B

all the leads. Why did you ask for me?”
    This was the important question. Traeger hadn’t come all this way to get a crime report. What lay behind these killings? Why did the Vatican think Traeger could help?
    Rodriguez took a deep breath. “The Russian ambassador seems somehow linked to what has happened. He had been importuning Cardinal Maguire to release some materials from the Vatican Archives to his government.”
    â€œI take it he is asking after my old acquaintance Ali Agca?”
    Rodriguez smiled grimly. “Yes. Incessantly.”
    â€œThat explains what I’m doing here. I worked cleanup on that one. You were sent my report on the assassination attempt, were you not?”
    â€œAnd the British report.”
    â€œKilling four people would not be a good way to get hold of that material.”
    Rodriguez shrugged.
    â€œAre there other possible explanations than the reports on the attempted assassination? That was a long time ago. Very old news.”
    â€œWe suspect that these killings may be connected with something even longer ago than the attempt on John Paul’s life.”
    Traeger waited.
    â€œWhat do you know of Fatima?” Rodriguez asked.
    â€œShe was the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed,” Traeger said.
    Rodriguez smiled. “Wrong Fatima. Think Portugal.”
    â€œNineteen seventeen?” Traeger said, surprised.
    Rodriguez was impressed. “Your memory must be a hard drive. Yes, when the Blessed Virgin appeared to three peasant children.”
    â€œAre you sure? That seems unlikely. And it isn’t my area of expertise.”
    Rodriguez shrugged. “What little evidence we have seems to point there.”
    Traeger waited for more information, but the silence stretched between them. Rodriguez did not elaborate.
    And Traeger did not pursue it. That possibility would not justify his being involved.
    So, silence still hanging between them, both men ate. Traeger relished his soup, his pasta, and his veal, and the hovering waiter kept the wine flowing.
    â€œYou are paying for this, aren’t you?” Rodriguez smiled when he said it, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t serious. “The CIA’s expense accounts are legendary.”
    Traeger sighed and got out a charge card with his cover identity on it.
    â€œJust remember, the next one is on you.”
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    Traeger had spent a lot of time in Rome. He spoke the language. He’d done extensive work with the Vatican at the height of the Cold War and during the Soviet Union’s collapse, back in the late seventies and eighties. He was the official author of the agency’s secret report on the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. He was essentially the CIA’s man in Rome, so he had led the team that conducted the investigation into the shooting. And he hadn’t liked what he’d turned up. The Russians, as represented by the KGB, had their hands all over that plot, in Traeger’s opinion.
    Traeger’s digging led him to believe that Zilo Vassilev, the Bulgarian military attaché in Rome, had masterminded it. Among the connecting threads that made Agca’s assassination attempt unlikely to be a lone-gunman attack was the fact that Agca’s shooting of the pope was not his first political assassination. Agca had already killed for political reasons. On February 1, 1979, Agca murdered Abdi Ipekci, editor of a moderate newspaper called Milliyet in Istanbul. Agca was then working under the orders of a group called the Grey Wolves, a radical terrorist organization seeking to destabilize Turkey.
    Though only Agca was present when the trigger was pulled, the op had the strong scent of state-sponsored terror. Traeger had figured back then that the Russians were worried about what a popular and dynamic pope from Poland and his apparent intention to unravel the Communist Party might do or say. It turned out that they had good reason to worry.
    But that