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  And finally, right up in front, there was Justin. He was here because the cardinal had big plans for him. But why else? Why now? Why had he and I been brought together again? I couldn’t help thinking that there had to be a reason. I wanted everything to be logical and clear and sane — but would it happen that way?

  Kathleen stared out into the noisy, unreal scene and she shivered. I felt for her.

  More cameras flashed and popped wickedly in her eyes. She blinked rapidly; her eyes teared up.

  She began unconsciously to grab and squeeze handfuls of her tunic top, the only thing she could fit into comfortably these days. I knew what she was thinking, because she’d told me: What did these important men and women think of her? They weren’t stupid, and they were paid to be skeptical. Did the news people think she was a terrible liar? A freak? A fraud? What could she possibly say that would make them believe her?

  Tall and imposing in his courtly red clerical robes, John Cardinal Rooney finally stepped up to the microphones.

  The press conference had begun. The world had to be told something.

  Chapter 29

  “THANK YOU one and all for coming here on such short notice,” said the cardinal in his pleasant man-of-the-people tone. He smiled engagingly over the shifting, restless crowd, seeming to look each and every person in the eye.

  He wouldn’t let anyone know how worried he was, or how scared, or, especially, how his feelings about related, apocalyptic events occurring all over the world during the past several weeks would affect the gathering.

  “Will you please join me in a brief silent prayer?” He folded his hands and bowed his head. Many, even those who’d never been to a Catholic church, lowered their heads.

  After the silent moment, the archbishop of Boston opened the news conference for background-information questions.

  An attractive woman in a tan Burberry raincoat began.

  “Terry Mayer, Chicago Sun-Times. It seems to me and many others I speak to that the Church is going through an extinguishing period.” The reporter spoke with a pleasant Midwestern accent. “We hear rumors that a schism is possible between the conservatives and the liberals. Is there any connection between these political difficulties and what is happening here today?”

  Cardinal Rooney was already shaking his head before Terry Mayer completed the question.

  “I don’t want to sound apologetic, but there really shouldn’t be such disappointment and concern when the leaders of the Church struggle. The Church is human. That is its flaw. But that is also its strength, and its beauty.

  “As to Church politics and Kathleen Beavier, there is absolutely no connection. The birth of this child has nothing to do with Church politics.”

  Cardinal Rooney’s deep voice hung over the crowd. He sounded both serious and wise, and he certainly seemed truthful and sincere.

  He answered several more questions before he finally acknowledged the reporter from the New York Daily News.

  “Les Porter, the New York Daily News. Cardinal Rooney, could Kathleen Beavier please give us some of the background information from her unique perspective? There is a lot of conjecture right now. We want to hear from Kathleen herself.”

  The cardinal nodded thoughtfully, then he gestured for Kathleen to come forward. “Yes, Kathleen will speak to you. She wants to be heard.”

  Chapter 30

  KATHLEEN FELT NUMB and unreal. For a few seconds her mind went completely blank as she stared out at the reporters.

  Then she saw her three girlfriends — Sara, Francesca, Chuck — and that made it a little better, or worse. She wasn’t quite sure. Of anything.

  “I’ve never spoken to a large, august group like this,” she finally managed to say. Her voice boomed across the lawn, surprising her with its volume.

  She turned to Anne, who gave her a smile and a wink of encouragement. “And so,” Kathleen continued, “I’m not very good at this. To be honest, I did some practicing in the house before and I was terrible.”

  Kathleen finally smiled at her own obvious discomfort. So far, the reporters seemed taken with her honesty and simplicity.

  “Last spring,” Kathleen went on, “I discovered that I was pregnant, although I was — am — still a virgin. I was frightened and confused, of course, and I finally worked up the necessary courage to tell my parents. They took me to our family doctor, who said I definitely was pregnant, and a virgin.

  “There were more tests by doctors in Boston, then at Harvard University. There were a lot of suspicious questions by all sorts of priests, and finally Rome became involved. Last week, another doctor flew here from New York. Once again, he verified that I’m intact. That’s all there is to say. That’s all there is so far. I’m eight months pregnant now. I’m healthy. The child is very healthy. I see him once a month — on the sonogram.”

  A reporter’s voice floated up out of the crowd. “Ms. Beavier, you just said ‘That’s all there is to say.’ With all respect to you, why should we accept that? Many of us think there might be much more to this.”

  Kathleen hesitated. She felt like telling them everything.

  And then she heard the Voice: Yes. Do it. Tell them everything! Tell them!

  “Well, there is something that happened to me back in January,” Kathleen whispered. Her breathiness was a rumble amplified by the sound equipment.

  “Will you tell us what it is, Kathleen?”

  Tell them the truth about your fucking child! Yes, yes, yes — do it now!

  “I’m sorry.” Kathleen shook her head, her satin-blond hair shimmering in the overcast atmosphere. “There are some things that I can’t tell you about yet. I’m sorry. For now, you have to accept certain things on faith.”

  Kathleen suddenly choked up as the picture-taking accelerated. She felt cold and frightened, and so alone in front of all the microphones. She didn’t want to cry, but she couldn’t tell them the truth. She wasn’t able to do it.

  “I really don’t mean to be this way. I’m sorry,” she said.

  Suddenly, Kathleen appeared distracted. She leaned forward.

  Something was happening near a dark stand of pine trees that stood tall, like giant sentries, behind the mass of reporters.

  Kathleen’s heart began to pound rapidly. The child moved inside — violently. A strange heat rushed through her and she was terribly afraid.

  She heard the Voice again — Tell them! Tell the truth, bitch! Tell them whose child it is!

  Kathleen shook her head, then raised her voice above the crowd, above the other voice.

  “She’s here. She’s here now!”

  The reporters looked back to where the young girl was pointing.

  “Our Lady has come.”

  Kathleen’s soft blue eyes glazed over. They became distant and peaceful. Her face was beaming.

  Every camera moved in for a close-up of the young girl. They all wanted to capture the innocence and rapture of her expression.

  “Can’t you all see her?” Kathleen whispered to them. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She began to tremble violently. She looked as if she were about to faint.

  “Can’t you see her? Oh, please God, why me? Why me alone? She’s here now and none of you can see her. She’s here, I promise you. Oh, God, she’s so beautiful! Can’t any of you see?”

  Chapter 31

  PEOPLE HAD ALWAYS NEEDED to believe in something, but especially now. They wanted to have faith, but maybe they no longer knew how to go about it. That night I sat in the den of the Beavier house with Justin, Cardinal Rooney, the Beaviers, and Kathleen. We watched the reports come in from all over the world.

  It was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced. I kept remembering the old TV show You Are There and thinking, Yes, I am.

  A thunderous and resonant chant occurred and seemed to spread spontaneously around the globe: “A miracle! A miracle!”

  An eighty-year-old Italian laborer danced and spun his wife across the magnificent consecrated piazza of St. Peter
’s in Rome. She looked twenty again in his arms. A newspaper photographer captured the couple’s magical dance.

  Six-foot-wide gold bells began to toll across the majestic basilica’s cobblestone piazza. The ageless chimes of the bells held a new and special meaning for the more than ten thousand faithful gathered in the vast shadows cast by the world’s largest church.

  A long ribbon of Germans trailed out of the wafflelike exterior of Berlin’s famous cathedral, the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche. The line extended far down the glittering Kurfürstendamm.

  At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, John Cardinal O’Connor celebrated an unscheduled High Mass at nine o’clock. Nearly six thousand New Yorkers crowded into the Gothic cathedral. Cardinal O’Connor knew there was a somber message to be delivered, a message of caution.

  But the congregation didn’t seem to want to hear it.

  In Dublin and Cork, white-and-yellow papal flags flew from the general post office on O’Connell Street, from all the restaurant and pub roofs, from the portal of the famous Gresham House.

  At Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, the south tower’s great thirteen-ton bell sent out the holy message to the Left Bank’s La Sorbonne, the Marché aux Fleurs, and Les Halles. Below the great towers in the Place du Paris, the people watchers, the lovers, the street entertainers, and the clochards actually stopped for a solemn moment. The crowd offered a prayer for the young American girl. And the French were especially proud of her, for Kathleen was related to them by blood.

  At midnight, smoke wafted upward from a small chimney in the papal palace near the chapel. Great ceremonial cannons exploded across Bernini’s magnificent elliptical piazza in front of St. Peter’s in Rome. “We have a pope,” cried the people in ecstasy.

  High up in a top-floor window of the gold-domed Apostolic Palace, a tiny figure in a white silk cassock and skullcap finally appeared. The Holy Father, the new pope, Benedict XVI, extended his cloaked arms out over the people.

  People in the crowd began to wave to the distant papal figure. “Papa, Papa,” they chorused. “Tell us of the virgin.”

  Chapter 32

  THAT NIGHT AROUND DINNERTIME, two nuns from the school and the parish priest came out to Colleen’s house. She saw the priest’s old Volkswagen bus coming through the fields and she went and hid in the attic.

  There was a musty-smelling pile of old clothes, bed sheets, and a rag rug in one corner of the room. It was dark there, even with the overhead lightbulb on.

  Colleen burrowed underneath the clothes and made sure she was completely covered up. She could see nothing, smell very little except the clothes and the mothballs her mother had once sprinkled among them. But Colleen heard everything.

  They were in the house now, downstairs, talking among themselves, then calling her name.

  “Colleen, Colleen, it’s Sister Katherine.”

  “It’s Father Flannery. Are you here, Colleen?”

  Finally they were upstairs and in the bedroom with her mother.

  Ma wouldn’t help them find her, even if she could. She rarely made sense to anyone anymore. Her memory was gone too. Colleen was virtually alone in the house these days — except for the baby, of course.

  She cradled her belly carefully with both hands.

  “Hello, sweet baby. Don’t be afraid. No one is going to hurt you, baby. No one is going to bother us.

  “It’s just the two of us, sweet baby. It’s just the two of us, but we’ll be good. You’ll see, sweet baby. It’s just the two of us.”

  Chapter 33

  Ireland.

  THAT SAME NIGHT, Father Nicholas Rosetti took a commuter plane to Shannon Airport. He knew where he had to go now. He had to see the second girl. There were two virgins: One in Ireland. One in America.

  He was pleased that, because she lived in such a small and distant village, the story of Colleen Galaher hadn’t spread. He wished the same thing were true in America, but that story was spreading like wildfire. Rosetti wondered why. What did it mean? What did it tell him? What did it say about the two girls?

  He tried to relax. He hoped the damnable Voice wouldn’t come again.

  He wrote several pages of notes about Colleen. He tried to sleep after that, but couldn’t. Around him, other passengers slept peacefully, and he couldn’t help envying them.

  With his seat reclined, Nicholas Rosetti leaned back and reread his notes on Colleen Galaher. He was becoming obsessive, wasn’t he? Suddenly the small commuter plane began to buck and shake. He was reminded of his attack in Rome. What was happening now? What in the name of God?

  Rosetti looked around him. Everyone was suddenly awake. The passengers were afraid.

  And then the engine of the Beech 1900 seemed to explode. It was as if a small bomb had gone off inside his head.

  For a moment, he believed the plane might have struck another aircraft. Instinctively, he covered his head with his arms. The man beside him clutched at him. “We’re going down! We’re going to die!” he screamed.

  The shrieking in the cabin was the audible manifestation of terror. Time became elastic. The plane was coasting downward with a sickening, unrelenting pull.

  This can’t be happening. It’s too much; it just can’t be. My plane can’t be going down.

  But the plane was going down! It had gone into a spiraling descent in a wide circle to the right. This meant that the pilot couldn’t see where the plane was heading. Moisture was whipping past the window like shreds of gauze. A shroud of clouds enveloped the plane.

  The screaming of the passengers got louder and louder.

  “Brace, brace,” came the voice of the captain.

  Rosetti leaned over and grabbed his ankles as hard as he could. He prayed furiously. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti . . . The faces of his mother, his sister, and his older brother flashed before him. And then he saw the face of the virgin Colleen, strikingly, terrifyingly real, as if she were right there.

  He waited to hear the dreaded Voice, but it never came.

  The small aircraft dipped steeply to the right, then it crashed through the trees. The plane hit the ground with a furious crunch of metal. Another deafening explosion . . . Rosetti’s rib cage smashed down on his knees as the craft cartwheeled, shattered, flung pieces of itself across the ground.

  Then every particle of sound — both human and mechanical — stopped. It just stopped.

  He opened his eyes into the black chaos of the plane.

  With a sudden earsplitting rush, flames shot back over his head.

  I’m going to be burned to death. All of these people are going to die. Am I in Hell?

  Breathing hard, he unbuckled his seatbelt with wet and trembling fingers. And he fell to the ceiling!

  Confused, Nicholas Rosetti rolled and tumbled. He found his feet, picked his way over fallen luggage and soft, wet objects, instinctively heading toward the opening that had been the emergency door.

  Beyond the wreckage, sunlight streamed across the brilliant emerald green of the cornfield.

  This couldn’t have happened. But it had. People were lying dead everywhere.

  He hesitated, then looked back at the flames. The heat was building, unrelenting.

  “Is anyone alive?” he shouted back into the furnace.

  When there was no answer but the hiss of melting plastics, he jumped through the hole of crackling flames and onto solid earth. He had no other choice. He ran on rubbery legs toward the center of the field. His breath tore at his burning lungs as he waited for another explosion.

  Turning, he saw the largest section of the cabin lying on its back, consumed in a huge, blackening ball of fire.

  It is Hell, isn’t it? A gateway straight to Hell.

  The surrounding air smelled of polycarbons and charred flesh. It was like nothing he had ever experienced.

  The only movement from inside the plane was the wave of the heated molecules of air.

  Rosetti wiped his forehead with the back of his arm and watch
ed the fire from fifty yards away. He alone had walked away from the disaster. Why him?

  He had a brief, shameful burst of exhilaration — he had survived!

  But this feeling was quickly replaced by overwhelming grief.

  He fell to his knees to pray for the souls of the dead. He remembered the pontiff’s solemn words so recently spoken in Rome: You will be alone. They washed over him like a benediction.

  He stumbled to his feet. He urged himself to think, to plan. Think, think. If there was a cornfield, there would be a farmhouse. There would be a town.

  His shirt and pants were smudged but intact. He still had his shoes. He looked as if he’d slept rough, but otherwise he had not a scratch on him anywhere.

  You will be alone.

  Nicholas Rosetti straightened the fall of his jacket and set off toward a hedgerow that marked the edge of a road. The next thoughts came to him fully formed.

  Something or someone is trying to kill me.

  And something or someone wants me alive.

  Chapter 34

  THE YOUNG GIRL heard a nearby thumping in the dark, and her eyes flashed open. Her heart thundered. A man was in her bedroom! She could see his full figure in profile.

  “Did you miss me?” he asked and laughed. His voice was deep and full. He loomed over her, casting moonshadows across her bed.

  “Not for a second,” she answered, matching his sassy tone. But her heart was galloping. She wanted him deep inside her.

  His coarse woolen pants dropped to his feet, sending coins scattering and rolling. His erection, silky and hard, gleamed in the faint white rays of moonlight.

  She reached out a hand and touched him. He brought it to her mouth and she took him in.

  “Oh — God,” he sighed, and laughed again. He withdrew from her, and in a swift movement threw back the sheets and stretched his muscular body along her milky warmth. He ran his callused hand across her swollen belly in slow, sweeping strokes.

  “You’re a devil,” she said, “and I want you again. I can’t get enough of you.”