The Third Revelation Read Online Free PDF

Columbus on the Via della Conciliazione into Roman traffic.
    A car zipping along the street running parallel to the Via della Conciliazione nearly flattened her when she stepped off the curb.
    And are there crazier drivers anywhere else in the world? She felt a powerful and uncharacteristic impulse to give a digital salute to the car. However good it might feel, it wouldn’t do a bit of good. And it would have been out of character. She and Ray had been sitting in the courtyard of the hotel, near the fountain, reading the Herald Tribune , when she looked at her watch and got to her feet.
    â€œI’d better get going, Ray.”
    â€œSure you don’t want me to come along?”
    She put her hand on Ray’s shoulder. “Better not.”
    He thought about it, then nodded. “Don’t forget to ask him.”
    It took a moment before she understood.
    â€œThe paintings,” he said.
    â€œOf course.”
    The noise and traffic on the Via della Conciliazione, and the heat, came as a shocking contrast to the cool and secluded peace of the hotel courtyard from which she had just come. There were taxis, tourist buses, hundreds of pedestrians flowing to and from Saint Peter’s Square. Pilgrims come from the four corners of the earth to visit the churches and pray, to feel closer to God here where the Vicar of Christ on earth dwelt in the little city-state familiar to television viewers throughout the world.
    She headed toward the piazza that was embraced by the massive Bernini Arcade and the enormous size of the basilica, its massive dome seeming to lift her off her feet, causing her to stop. Jostled by the eager pilgrims, Laura suddenly felt like a hypocrite among them. She had just left her lover at the hotel and was now hurrying to meet her brother, Father John Burke, for lunch at the Domus Sanctae Marthae where he lived, inside the Vatican walls. What would John, a Catholic priest from tip to toe, think of the life she was leading if he knew of it?
    No need to wonder. In thoughtful moments she would pass the same judgment on herself.
    Calling it love didn’t seem to help.
    But it had changed her world. For a long, long time, work had been the focus of her life.
    Ignatius Hannan, her boss, was a billionaire computer maven. Hannan’s net worth could scarcely be calculated, even by one of the computers on which his fortune was based. Laura was called Hannan’s “administrative assistant.” It was a dream job, as long as you liked late hours, incredible pressure, impossible demands, and being on call 24-7. But she’d always believed it was worth a certain amount of suffering to work for a true genius.
    Ray Sinclair, Hannan’s right-hand man, had been important to Laura first as a colleague, then as a lover. It didn’t change the job. But it changed Laura.
    Hannan hadn’t even given the growing relationship between his two closest associates a passing thought. He had other interests. Bigger interests. And neither she nor Ray could get him to think of anything else.
    Hannan had dropped out of Boston College in his sophomore year. Already his electronic wizardry and Midas touch had manifested themselves. By the time he was in his midtwenties he had hired Ray, his former classmate, to oversee operations, lest he be robbed by his employees. Hannan himself was more than a match for his competitors. Laura managed his day, made sure his plane was ready at the Manchester airport in New Hampshire so that they could take off at an hour’s notice, was in effect his factotum. The pace of the business had seemed to spin the three of them out of reach of the religion in which they had been raised.
    Now, in his early thirties, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, Ignatius Hannan had got religion again. He’d returned to the Catholicism of his youth, but this time with an almost obsessive focus. He had become what his enemies called a “ferocious Catholic.” He even