Malachy, a bishop who was born in Armagh in Northern Ireland in 1094, had accurately predicted the reformation more than 300 years before it occurred. More astonishingly still, Malachy had arrived in Rome in 1140, accompanied by a number of monks. He had fallen into a trance on the Janiculum Hill above the old city, where he started talking in Latin. His scribe faithfully took down all his utterances; it was nearly dawn by the time Malachy had finished. When he woke, Malachy confirmed to his companions that God had given him a vision of the identity of every Pope until the end of time. The list was extraordinarily accurate, and Felici shivered involuntarily as he thought of the prediction for John XXIII: ‘Saint Malachy was holding a long scroll in front of him, and he continued to read in Latin: Pastor et Nauta.’
Shepherd and sailor. In 1958 the American Cardinal Francis Spellman had hired a boat and sailed up and down the Tiber with a cargo of sheep, in the hope that he might fulfil Malachy’s prediction for the conclave, but to no avail. Although it had indeed been a shepherd and a sailor whom God had chosen. The keys of Peter had been handed to John XXIII. Angelo Roncalli had previously been the patriarch of the maritime city of Venice.
The accuracy of Malachy’s predictions weighed heavily on Felici’s ambitions. Malachy had designated the second-last Pope before the end of time as de Gloria Olivae. Felici knew that ‘from the glory of the olive’ was a reference to the olive branch being a symbol of the order of Saint Benedict; Benedict XVI was the name Joseph Ratzinger had chosen. Aged seventy-eight at the time of his election, Benedict XVI was one of the oldest in the history of the papacy. Malachy had insisted that the last Pope would be known as ‘Peter the Roman’, bringing to an end the rock upon which Peter had built the original church, as well as the end of the world itself. Felici took a deep breath and went back to the final part of the real secret of Fatima, to Sister Lucia’s record of the Virgin Mary’s appearance. The Archangel Raguel spoke in a voice of great authority. ‘Penance! This is the last of your warnings!’ Then came a series of visions. Immense, uncontrollable wildfires raged across great swathes of Spain and Italy. In Australia exhausted men and women battled impossible odds to try to save their homes but to no avail. In the United States California was ablaze, as were the Balkans and Africa. Hurricanes of enormous power pounded the coastlines of the continents. Earthquakes rent the ground from beneath San Francisco, New York, Tokyo and London. The earth trembled as her massive tectonic plates ground together. An intense white light emanated from Our Lady but it seemed strangely blocked above the Basilica of Saint Peter. Great bolts of blue lightning crackled from the tip of Raguel’s sword, reducing Saint Peter’s and the rest of Vatican City to smoking rubble. Hundreds of children swarmed over the walls, chasing the priests from where they were hiding. The Pope appeared amongst the rubble, his white robes stained with blood, until he too was cut down by Raguel’s sword. Beyond the walls of the Vatican, the Tiber had been reduced to stinking mud. Suddenly there was a vision of three enormous interlocking toothed wheels, each larger than the other, and each tooth was designated with a Mayan hieroglyph. The two largest wheels slowly turned until the teeth meshed in an enormous flash of energy, giving a date of 21 December 2012. Our Lady, the Archangel Raguel, all the prophets and seers and the old civilisations faded back towards the company of heaven, leaving planet earth wobbling in its orbit, the changing positions of the poles and the equator devastating the entire world.
Cardinal Felici replaced Sister Lucia’s letter in its crimson folder and sealed it in the vault, where he was determined it would remain.
48
T he Galapagos was due to sail in three hours and all but one of the crew had returned from shore leave. O’Connor surveyed the Havana docks from his position beneath the port wing of the bridge. The traffic on Primer Anillo del Puerto, the main road connecting the ports on the south side of the harbour, was heavy. Containers were piled up on the concrete docks serviced by railroad and trucking companies. Beyond them, huge forklifts charged to and from three giant warehouses. The Galapagos was taking on cargo, and O’Connor watched as the crane operator eased a big thirty-tonne container of machinery into position.
Fifteen minutes later the last crew member, one O’Connor had not seen before, reached the bottom of the gangplank. O’Connor wandered over to the rail where the ship’s steward was standing, dragging on a cigarette.
‘New crew member, Alfredo?’
Alfredo shrugged and smiled. ‘ Si. One of the crew – too much fucking, too much to drink. This one’s Sicilian. He’s probably no better, and I’ve got to share a cabin with him.’ Alfredo stubbed his cigarette out on the rail and disappeared through the nearest bulkhead, leaving O’Connor to watch the new arrival negotiate the gangplank.
The Sicilian was thickset and muscled, with black hair and a thick black moustache, his face pockmarked and scarred. O’Connor was immediately on high alert.
‘We’ve got company again,’ he told Aleta as he closed the cabin door behind him.
‘Who? Where?’
‘It may be coincidence, but I don’t think so. One of the crew supposedly had too much to drink and they’ve had to replace him. It’s plausible, but it’s also a classic move in CIA asset substitution.’ O’Connor opened his bag and took out the small compact CIA toolkit he carried, as well as a heavy door-hasp. ‘High-quality hair dye is not the only thing they sell in Hamburg.’
‘What do you need that for?
‘Our new friend, if he’s one of Wiley’s buddies, will pick the lock on this cabin in an instant, but this one will be tougher to crack,’ he said, marking the spots for the heavy-duty bolts. Ten minutes later he shouldered the cabin door from the companionway outside, but it held fast.
O’Connor waited until just before sailing time. He instructed Aleta to remain in the cabin and made his way to the port bridge-wing. The last container was being loaded and two tugs were standing by, one for’ard of the bow and one aft of the stern. The captain was on the starboard bridge wing, barking orders to the deck crew through the tannoy system. The Sicilian had been assigned duty on the for’ard hawser. O’Connor made his way off the bridge, down a series of steep narrow companionways, reaching the crew quarters in less than two minutes. The door to Alfredo’s cabin was unlocked, but the Sicilian had secured his gear in one of two lockers screwed to a bulkhead in the cramped quarters. The brass padlock was child’s play for O’Connor. He chose a diamond-shaped lock pick and a small tension wrench and had it open in an instant.
The Glock pistol, complete with silencer, was in a small worn leather pouch at the bottom of the Sicilian’s kit bag. O’Connor sat on one of the bunks, quickly extracted the magazine, checked the chamber was empty, pulled the slide back, released the lock lever and removed the slide from the Glock. The countless hours of arms training at Camp Peary in Virginia kicked in and seconds later O’Connor had taken out the recoil mechanism and the barrel and put them to one side. He took a small punch from his bag, placed it between the firing pin and the firing pin sleeve and pressed down to take the pressure from the spring, allowing the slide backing plate to be prised free.
Suddenly the deck vibrated as deep in the bowels of the ship the massive drive shaft began to turn. Above decks, the crew had stowed the mooring hawsers and the Sicilian was making his way aft along the companionway that housed a maze of pipes beneath the containers. O’Connor removed the firing pin from the slide mechanism and pocketed it. He quickly replaced the slide backing plate, reassembled the barrel and recoil mechanism, replaced the slide on the pistol, rammed the magazine full of nine-millimetre rounds back into the butt and returned the gun to where he’d found it.