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smuggle the Judas package out by submarine. But the package never reached Britain. The plot against Hitler failed. The traitors were executed. And Judas's identity remains an unsolved mystery of the Second World War."
    "Do you believe the rumor?"
    "It's unsubstantiated. But isn't that how secrets escape?
    A confidant lets a secret slip 'off the record,' and whisper becomes rumor. With Judas, the rumor seems to come from several sources."
     "Did you see this?" Liz asked, handing him the tabloid interview with Mick Balsdon, the wartime navigator of the resurrected Ace of Clubs.
    "No," said Wyatt.
    "Read it."
    So he did.
    "Balsdon, my granddad's navigator, believes the secret agent was disguised as one of his fellow crew members.
    The flight plan he was given on the hush-hush never made sense to him. They were told to break away from the main bomber stream and fly a solitary run to an isolated target of no apparent value. That's how their plane got shot down by a lone wolf fighter, and why they had to bail out over Germany."
    "It's not uncommon for vets to embellish their war records,"
    Wyatt countered.
    Liz shook her head. "Mick's put together an archive documenting his belief. It's taken him a lifetime. For years, he's kept in touch with his surviving mates and the relatives of those now gone. The discovery of the Ace of Clubs offers him a chance to prove he's right. Mick's confined to a wheelchair and is in failing health, so he can't make the trip, but he wants those who can to travel to Germany for the opening of the bomber.
    The plane's a time capsule from 1944. It might hold a clue to the Judas puzzle."
    "You're going?"
    "Yes."
    "Where do I fit in?"
    "If Mick's right, imagine the book and TV show you'll get out of this. Mick still lives in Yorkshire, the wartime base of the Ace. Will you at least go to see his archive?"
    "Ms. Hannah—"
     "Liz."
    "I'm a busy man. I don't have time to—"
    "Every man has his price."
    "Yes, and mine's higher than two undone buttons."
    Flick.
    Flick.
    Flick.
    Liz undid three.
     

LEGION OF CHRIST

    THE VATICAN, ROME

    Unbeknown to those around him—and even to himself—the Legionary of Christ was in subconscious combat with Satan for possession of his soul.
    Here, in the heart of the Roman Catholic Church, the young priest sat reading in a secret locked room, encircled by wooden cabinets inlaid with symbolic designs and by frescoes depicting the trials of heretics during the Inquisition. So ancient were the books and documents burying his desk that their centuries-old dust grayed his plain black cassock. As he studied the blasphemies that were wrenched from heretics by torture, his fingers caressed the crucifix on his chest. The page before him bore an incantation that was said to conjure Satan up from hell, and as his mind absorbed the words the Church's cardinal inquisitor had recorded, the nail-hole scars through his palms began to throb.
    The Crucifixion of St. Peter hung on the opposite wall.
    From it, the eyes of the upside-down apostle met his.
    "Get thee behind me, Satan," quoted the priest.
    The Secret Archives of the Vatican occupy thirty miles of shelving in rooms that border the Belvedere Courtyard, beyond St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel. Founded by Pope Paul V in 1610, the archives were originally "secret" in the sense that the records were for the private use of the pope and his advisers. But since 1881, they have gradually been opened for outside research, and have proved to be a treasure-trove for historians.
    Some documents date back to the 700s, though most are from 1198 on. Recent revelations cover the years from 1922 to 1939, the era of Pope Pius XI, who some say was "Hitler's Pope."
    The real secret archives of the Vatican were the dusty records in this room at the Palace of the Holy Office, or Sant'Uffizio, the home of the Inquisition. The building was lucked in the external crook of Bernini's colonnade, where the south arm arced in a semicircle around