The Third Revelation (10 page)

“Where did you go to school?” Hannan asked.

“Boston College.”

“Another one? What was your major?”

“Philosophy.”

“Come on.”

“Ask me a question.”

“Who was Empedocles?”

She rattled it off. It was the only philosophical answer he could have judged.

“The town is now called Agrigento.”

She was right. He looked it up. And he noticed the name of the harbor. Porto Empedocle.

“What experience do you have?”

“None.”

“Good.” He liked her manner, he liked her mind, and he liked her honesty. He hired her. As with Ray, it was one of the smartest moves he ever made.

“Is everyone here Catholic?”

He thought about it. “I never took a poll.”

How high is up? With Ray and Laura, Empedocles found new roofs to go through. On his thirtieth birthday Nate thought of what he was worth—a guess; who really knew?—and the number he came up with frightened him. He had a sleepless night. He turned on the television and there was a nun talking away, looking at him as if she knew all about him. He had been about to change channels when she started to talk about the Blessed Virgin. She sounded like his mother. He was fascinated. He watched the channel, EWTN, for hours. He turned it off when sun shone in his windows. He called Laura and told her he wasn't coming in.

“You're kidding. I've got you booked solid all day.”

“Reschedule everything.”

A pause. “Are you sick?”

“No. Nothing like that. I just want a day off.”

“You are sick.”

He visited his mother, not just popping in, staying a minute, and fleeing, as he had before, but sitting with her and wishing they could have a real talk. But there was no chance of that. Her lunch came and he helped her with it. The shrunken little woman with the bewildered expression seemed a metaphor of the fragility of life. What did it profit a man if he gained the whole world and suffered the loss of his soul? He hadn't had a thought like that in years. Suddenly his wealth seemed a curse.

He leaned toward his mother and whispered in her ear. “I'll be a good boy.”

He tried to imagine she understood him. Did he understand himself? He whispered again. “I'll go to Mass.” And then he added, “I'll go to confession.”

The next morning, he went to Mass and watched people going to confession. The boxes he remembered had been replaced by reconciliation rooms in which penitents sat facing the priest and chatting about their sins. When they emerged their expression was not the one he remembered wearing when he came out of the confessional. He remembered the way his parents had griped about what was happening to the Catholic Church. How could you come back to something that wasn't there anymore?

He flew to Birmingham, Alabama, to Mother Angelica's church, and waited in line forty-five minutes before he got into a confessional. What followed was more like it.

“Father, it's been years.”

“Very well. Would you like help in examining your conscience?”

“Please.”

The priest began with sins against the flesh.

“There's been none of that.”

“Good.” He went down the list of capital sins, and Nate wanted to accuse himself of them all, but it wasn't until they came to greed that he felt on firm ground. He had been devoting twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to making money. “I haven't been to Sunday Mass since I don't know when.”

“And now you've come to confession.”

“I'm going to change.”

“I couldn't give you absolution otherwise.”

For his penance he was to say the rosary every day for a week. Laura had got one for him, the first day he returned to the office. “Yes, Father.”

“Now thank God for the grace of this confession.”

When he went into the church and knelt it was with the feeling that scales had fallen from his eyes. He looked at the altar, at the sanctuary light flickering there. God had made him rich, and now he would use his wealth to honor God. And Mary his Blessed Mother.

It was then that he resolved to put the bulk of his fortune into a foundation, the Refuge of Sinners Foundation. Who would run it? He couldn't spare Ray or Laura. He prayed that he would find the right person as director, then flew home.

“What do they pay you?”

Ignatius Hannan was wearing jeans, loafers, and a Notre Dame sweatshirt when Laura ushered her brother John and Father Crowe into his office. The loafers were propped on the waste-basket: he sat deep in his chair, his face in his hands, facing the window through which the grotto was visible. A contemplative moment. When he sat up and swung toward them, Laura was almost relieved that he didn't have a rosary in his hands.

“The Roman delegation,” she announced.

Immediately, he was on his feet and rounding the desk, and on his face was the great smile he reserved for competitors whose company he intended to buy.

“Welcome to Empedocles!”

Brendan Crowe smiled, although he would have seen the name of the enterprise any number of times during the drive up the private road to the administration building.

“I suppose you would like wine?”

It was midmorning. Laura intervened, offering coffee, mineral water, a soft drink. Coffee it was, and soon they were all seated at the big table in the conference room and Nate was telling his clerical guests about his new dream. Refuge of Sinners.

“A rest home?” Crowe asked. He had the look of someone trying to get used to aliens from another planet.

Hannan looked at him. “It does suggest that, doesn't it? I am open to other names for it.”

John asked what the aim was, and Nate was once more in full flight. Enthusiasm is contagious, but the enthusiasm of Ignatius Hannan was in a league by itself. Laura watched the wariness fade from Crowe's face. John of course was easily won, but it was important that Crowe be sympathetic.

John had faxed ahead the preliminary list of paintings that Crowe had drawn up, including subject, artist, current location.

“No prices?” Nate had asked.

“They're all in museums.”

Nate asked, “Don't museums buy their stuff?”

“I suppose.”

“Then they'll sell it,” Nate said.

Laura wasn't going to argue with him. She had some sense of the lack of realism in Nate's assumption that whatever he wanted was for sale and he could afford to buy it.

“A kind of museum?” Crowe asked.

Nate frowned. “It's what they represent, mysteries of the rosary. I want Refuge of Sinners—assuming we keep that name—to sell devotion to the Blessed Virgin with every marketing technique available. I have several people at work designing a building. What do you think of our present buildings?”

“Very impressive.”

“ ‘Monuments to mediocrity.' Duncan Stroik told me that.”

Laura had been there when the young Notre Dame architect made this dismissive judgment. She had feared that Nate would undo the young man's bow tie and drape it over his ears.

“He's right,” Nate said now. “I want something different, a building appropriate to the purpose of the foundation.”

The luncheon that eventually followed was also dominated by Nate, and the two priests were beginning to show strain. Whether it was ESP or simply belatedly remembered courtesy, Nate suddenly switched gears.

“Father Crowe, tell me what you do?”

He wanted a job description, and he got it, low key, self-deprecatory, but in a tone that conveyed to Nate that he was listening to a man who spoke with authority.

“I liked the list you made out.”

“Anyone could have done that.”

John protested. He seemed worried that Crowe would be taken on his own self-effacing description. “Father Crowe is second in command in the Vatican Library and head of the archives as well. He will very likely succeed Cardinal Maguire as prefect.”

“Good Lord, John,” Crowe said.

“It's true.”

“What do they pay you?” Nate asked.

Silence fell. Crowe hadn't gotten much opportunity to speak before this, but now he was rendered speechless. He looked at John. John looked at him. In that setting, in the atmosphere of Empedocles where worth and wealth were two names for the same quality, the two men were nonetheless astounded by the directness of the question.

“Don't answer,” Nate said, holding up a hand. “Whatever it is, I'll multiply it by as many factors as you wish.”

“Nate,” Laura pleaded. “Father Crowe is not looking for a job.”

“That's why he's the man for the job.”

In preliminary conversations, once they knew John was bringing Father Crowe with him, Ray had made the point that the Vatican librarian would doubtless be able to suggest names for the new post of forming and developing Refuge of Sinners. It had never entered Laura's mind that Nate would actually offer the job to Crowe. What wasn't surprising was that he assumed a large enough salary would overcome any reluctance.

“Father Crowe could act as a consultant,” John said. “You could do that, couldn't you, Brendan?”

Crowe tried to laugh away this onslaught, he tried being serious, he tried everything, and Laura could see that he was flattered. And weakening. Of course, he couldn't be expected to pull up his roots in the Vatican and relocate to New England, but the role of senior consultant would not entail that.

“You could fly in every other week,” Nate said. “You can keep an eye on things here from there. We'll provide state of the art access and make that easy.”

Laura was instructed to draw up a memo indicating the current planning on the project. Planning? There had been effusions from Nate, excited and disconnected thoughts that might be considered the elements of what he was proposing to Brendan Crowe. Nate took Crowe out to the see the grotto, and Laura turned to John.

“Did I hear him agree, John?”

“He didn't say no.”

“What do you think?”

“I feel I've been witnessing a seduction.”

Through the course of the day, it was obvious that Brendan Crowe had an effect on Nate. It did take persuasion to get him away from the idea that he could simply buy up the list of paintings Crowe had prepared.

“But I know I've seen several of these.”

“In books.”

“On walls.”

“Reproductions. Copies.”

“They look real enough to me.”

“They're real enough. They're just not the originals. Nowadays it's almost impossible to tell the difference.”

And so emerged the idea that the new foundation would commission reproductions of the great works of art on Brendan Crowe's list. Crowe assured him that this would entail a healthy expenditure, and the deal was done. Brendan Crowe had already earned his title of chief consultant.

Hannan liked the little lecture on Thomas Aquinas.

Brendan Crowe felt that he had been taken to the pinnacle of the temple and shown all the good things of the world, good things that could all be his if only he would bend his will to that of Ignatius Hannan. When the exuberant tycoon rose from his knees at the grotto, he turned to the man he hoped he had gotten to join his team and said, “What do you think of it?”

He meant the grotto. Brendan found words to express his admiration for the exact replica. Americans were more amazing than he had thought. Hadn't one of the Rockefellers transported a medieval monastery stone by stone from Europe to New York? Hadn't the London Bridge been brought to Texas?

“It's more accurate than the one at Notre Dame,” Hannan said, admiring what he had wrought.

Crowe had no words for that.

“You think I'm crazy, don't you?”

“Why would I think a thing like that?”

“Father, the only sure way to learn that money isn't the answer is to have it. I have it. More than I myself know. Of course my value fluctuates all the time, but it is a rising line. Where does it lead? How much more will be enough?”

Crowe, who for the first time in his life was in a position where he had only to reach out his hand and have things he had never really wanted before, nodded. “Saint Thomas Aquinas says much the same thing.”

“Tell me about it. Come, let's walk.”

Hannan led the way along a path that would take them to the building in which guests were lodged, while Crowe, feeling at once ridiculous and wise, gave Hannan a sketch of Thomas's discussion of all the things that cannot make us happy, cannot fulfill our desires. Wealth, fame, power, pleasure.

“After the abstract arguments against any of these, or all of them, being the happiness we seek, he adds what you just said. Having them is the best argument against them.”

“Because it's God we want.”

“That's right.”

“And God came to us as a human being and to do that he needed a mother. He came to us through Mary. She's the way we go to him.”

Sound doctrine, of course, but Brendan would never have imagined he would hear it preached in such a setting.

Hannan said, “Why do I have money? There's got to be a reason besides just having it. Well, I finally saw the reason and I want to do something about it. That's the point of Refuge of Sinners.”

He made it easier, putting it like that. After all, why else was Brendan Crowe a priest if not to lead people to God? Being a priest had become his studies, his work in the Vatican Library, helping Maguire administer the museums, the archives, the library. And of course saying his daily Mass at the Domus, reciting the office each day. If Hannan's life seemed odd to him, what must his own seem to Hannan? He thought of the almost childish pleasure Cardinal Maguire had taken in his rooftop villa, and the garden he had there.