The Confessor

ROME

The Abruzzi had fallen on hard times. Located in the San Lorenzo Quarter, between Stazione Termini train station and the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, its mustard-colored facade looked as though it had been raked by machine-gun fire, and the lobby smelled of cat litter. Despite its tumbledown appearance, the little pensione suited Gabriel's needs perfectly. The headquarters of the Polizia di Stato was a short walk away, and unlike most pensiones in Rome each room in this one had a telephone. Most importantly, if Crux Vera was searching for him, the last place they would look was the Abruzzi.

The night manager was an overweight man with round shoulders and a florid face. Gabriel checked in under the name Heinrich Siedler and spoke to him in labored Italian with a murderous German accent. The manager appraised Gabriel with a pair of melancholy eyes, then jotted down his name and passport number in the hotel registry.

Gabriel crossed a cluttered common room, where a pair of Croatian teenagers was engaged in a ferocious ping-pong match. He trod silently up the soiled staircase, let himself into his room, and locked the door. He entered the bathroom. The rust stains in the sink looked like dried blood. He washed his face, then removed his shoes and collapsed onto the bed. He tried to close his eyes but could not. Too exhausted to sleep, he lay on his back, listening to the TAP-a-TAP-a-TAP of the table-tennis match downstairs, reliving the last twenty-four hours.

He had been traveling since dawn. Instead of flying directly from London to Rome, which would have required him to clear customs at Fiumicino Airport, he had flown to Nice. At the airport there he had paid a visit to the Hertz outlet, where a friend of the Office called Monsieur Henri had rented him a Renault sedan in such a way that it could never be traced back to him. From Nice, he drove toward Italy along the A8 autoroute. Near Monaco, he switched on the English-language Radio Riviera to catch a bit of news on the war in the territories and learned instead that Peter Malone had been found shot to death in his London home.

Parked at the side of the motorway, traffic hurtling past, Gabriel had listened to the rest of the report with his hands strangling the steering wheel and his heart banging against his ribs. Like a chess grandmaster, he had played out the moves and saw disaster looming. He had spent two hours inside the reporter's home. Malone had taken copious notes. Surely the Metropolitan Police had discovered those notes. Because of the intelligence connection, they had probably briefed MI5. There was a very good chance every major police force and security service in Europe was looking for the Israeli assassin codenamed Sword. The safe thing to do? Call Shamron on an emergency line, arrange a bolt-hole, and sit on the beach in Ne-tanya until things cooled down. But that would entail surrendering the search for Benjamin's killers. And Malone's. He pulled back onto the autoroute and accelerated toward Italy. At the border, a drowsy guard admitted him into the country with a languid wave of his hand.

And now, after an interminable drive down the Italian peninsula, he found himself here, in his sour-smelling room at the Abruzzi. Downstairs, the table-tennis match had deteriorated into something of a new Balkan war. The shouts of the aggrieved party filled Gabriel's room. He thought of Peter Malone and wondered whether he was responsible for his death. Had he led the killers to him, or had Malone already been marked for elimination? Was Gabriel next on the list? As he drifted toward sleep, he heard Malone's warning careening about his memory: "If they think you pose a threat, they won't hesitate to kill you"

Tomorrow he would find Alessio Rossi. Then he would get out of Rome as quickly as possible.

Gabriel slept poorly and was awakened early by the ringing of church bells. He opened his eyes and blinked in the severe sunlight. He showered and changed into fresh clothing, then went downstairs to the dining room for breakfast. The Croatians were nowhere to be seen, only a pair of churchy American pilgrims and a band of noisy college students from Barcelona. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and Gabriel remembered that it was a Wednesday, the day the Holy Father greeted pilgrims in St. Peter's Square.

At nine o'clock, Gabriel returned to his room and placed his first call to Inspector Alessio Rossi of the Polizia di Stato. A switchboard operator put him through to the detective's voice mail. "My name is Heinrich Siedler," Gabriel said. "I have information regarding Father Felici and Father Manzini. You can reach me at the Pensione Abruzzi."

He hung up. Now what? He had no choice but to wait and hope the detective called him back. There was no television in the room. The bedside table had a built-in radio, but the tuning knob was broken.

After one hour of paralyzing boredom, he dialed the number a second time. Once again the switchboard officer transferred him straight to Rossi's voice mail. Gabriel left a second message, identical to the first, but with a faint note of urgency in his voice.

At eleven-thirty, he placed a third call to Rossi's number. This time he was put through to a colleague who explained that the inspector was on assignment and would not be back in the office until late afternoon. Gabriel left a third message and hung up.

He decided to use the opportunity to get out of the room. In the streets around the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore he checked his tail for signs of surveillance and saw nothing. Then he walked down the Via Napoleone III. The March air was crisp and clear and scented with woodsmoke. He ate pasta in a restaurant near the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II. After lunch, he walked along the looming western facade of the Stazione Termini, then wandered among! the classical edifices of Rome's government quarter until he found! the headquarters of the Polizia di Stato. In a cafe across the street,! he drank espresso and watched officers and secretaries filing in and out, wondering whether Rossi was among them.

At three o'clock, he started back toward the Pensione Abruzzi.

As he was crossing the Piazza di Repubblica, a crowd of about five hundred students entered the square from the direction of the Uni-versita Romana. At the head of the procession was an unshaven boy wearing a white headband. Around his waist were sticks of mock dynamite. Behind him a group of pseudo-mourners carried a coffin fashioned of cardboard. As they drew closer Gabriel could see that most of the demonstrators were Italian, including the boy dressed as a suicide bomber. They chanted "Liberate the land of Palestine!" and "Death to the Jews!"--not in Arabic but in Italian. A young Italian girl, no more than twenty, thrust a leaflet into Gabriel's hand. It depicted the Israeli prime minister dressed in the uniform of the SS with a Hitler Ian toothbrush mustache, the heel of his jackboot crushing the skull of a Palestinian girl. Gabriel squeezed the leaflet into a ball and dropped it onto the square.

He passed a flower stall. A pair of carabinieri were flirting shamelessly with the girl who worked there. They looked up briefly as Gabriel strode by and stared at him with undisguised interest before turning their attention once more to the girl. It could have been nothing, but something about the way they looked at him made sweat run over Gabriel's ribs.

He took his time walking back to the hotel, careful to make sure no one was following him. Along the way, he passed a bored cara-biniere on a motorcycle, parked in a patch of sunlight, watching the madness of a traffic circle with little interest. Gabriel seemed to intrigue him even less.

He entered the Pensione Abruzzi. The Spaniards had returned from the Wednesday audience in a state of great excitement. It seemed that one of them, a girl with a spiked haircut, had managed to touch the Pope's hand.

Upstairs in his room, Gabriel dialed Rossi's number.

"Pronto."

"Inspector Rossi?"

"Si."

"My name is Heinrich Siedler. I called earlier today."

"Are you still at the Pensione Abruzzi?"

"Yes."

"Don't call here again."

Click.

NIGHT FELL and with it came a Mediterranean storm. Gabriel lay on his bed with the window open, listening to the rain smacking against the paving stones in the street below while the conversation with Alessio Rossi played over and over in his head like a loop of audio tape.

"Are you still at the Pensione Abruzzi?" Yes.

"Don't call here again."

Clearly the Italian detective wished to speak with him. It was also clear that he wanted no more contact with Herr Siedler on his office telephone. Gabriel had no choice but to wait him out and hope Rossi would make the next move.

At nine o'clock the telephone finally rang. It was the night manager.

"There's a man here to see you."

"What's his name?"

"He didn't say. Shall I send him away?"

"No, I'll be down in a minute."

Gabriel hung up the phone and stepped into the corridor, lock'ing the door behind him. Downstairs, he found the night manager seated behind the front desk. No one else was there. Gabriel looked at him and shrugged. The night manager pointed a sausage-like forefinger toward the common room. Gabriel entered but found the room deserted, except for the Croatian table-tennis players.

He went back to the front desk. The Italian threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender and turned his attention to a miniature black-and-white television. Gabriel climbed the stairs to his room. He unlocked the door and stepped inside.

He saw the blow coming, a glint of light on black metal, sweeping toward him in an arc, like a shimmering swath of wet paint across blank canvas. Too late, he raised his hands to shield his head. The butt of a pistol crashed against the base of his skull behind his left ear.

The pain was immediate. His vision blurred. His legs seemed suddenly paralyzed, and he felt himself corkscrewing downward. His attacker caught him and eased him soundlessly to the linoleum floor. He heard Peter Malone's warning one last time--"If they thinly you pose a threat, they won't hesitate to kill you"--and then only the sound of the table tennis match downstairs in the common room.

TAPa-TAP-a-TAP .. .

When Gabriel had awoken, his face was burning. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into a halogen bulb not more than an inch from his face. He closed his eyes and tried to turn his head. Pain shot through the back of his skull like a second Wow. He wondered how long he had been out. Long enough for his stacker to bind his mouth and wrists with packing tape. Long enough for blood to dry against the side of his neck.

The light was so close he could see nothing more of the room.

He had the sense that he had not left the Abruzzi. This was confirmed when he heard shouting in Serbo-Croatian. He was on his own bed.

He tried to sit up. A gun barrel seemed to flow out of the light It pressed against his breastbone and pushed him back onto the mattress. Then a face appeared. Heavy shadows beneath the eyes, stubble on the square chin. The lips moved, sound reached Gabriel's ears. In his delirium, it seemed like a film out of sync, and his brain required a moment to process and comprehend the words he had just heard.

"My name is Alessio Rossi. What the fuck do you want?"