The Confessor

ROME

The door of the flat opened to Lange's touch, just as the Italian had said it would. He closed it again and pushed the deadbolt into place before switching on the lights. He was greeted by the sight of a single room with a bare floor and water-marked walls. There was a steel bed--more like a cot than a real bed--with a wafer-thin mattress. No pillow, a scratchy woolen blanket folded at the foot, stains. Piss? Semen? Lange could only guess. It was not unlike the room in Tripoli, where he had once spent a feverish fortnight waiting for his guide from the Libyan secret service to take him to the training camps in the south. There were distinct differences about this place, though, namely the large carved-wood crucifix hanging above the bed, adorned with a rosary and a length of dried palm leaf.

Next to the bed was a small chest. Lange wearily pulled open the drawers. He found underpants, balled black socks, and a dogeared breviary. With some trepidation he ventured into the bathroom: a rust-stained basin with twin taps, a mirror that barely cast a reflection, a toilet with no seat.

He opened the closet. Two clerical suits hung from the rod. On the floor was a pair of black shoes, well worn but polished, the shoes of a poor man who took care of his appearance. Lange pushed the shoes out of the way with the toe of his loafer and saw the loose floorboard. He bent down and pried it up.

Reaching into the small space, he found a bundle of oilcloth. He unfolded the cloth: a Stechkin pistol, a silencer, two magazines of nine millimeter ammunition. Lange rammed one magazine into the butt and slipped the Stechkin into the waistband of his trousers. The silencer and the second magazine he rewrapped in the oilcloth.

He reached into the compartment a second time and found two more items: a set of keys to the motorcycle parked outside the apartment house, and a leather billfold. He opened the billfold. Inside was a Vatican Security Office identification badge, quite obviously the real thing. Lange looked at the name--manfred beck, special investigations division--then at the photograph. It was the one he had given Casagrande in the hotel room in Zurich. It was not him, of course, but the vague resemblance could easily be enhanced with a bit of preparation.

Manfred Beck, Special Investigations Division . . .

He returned the billfold to the compartment, then replaced the floorboard and covered it with the shoes. He looked around at the barren, lonely room. A priest's room, this. A sudden memory overtook him: a winding cobblestone street in Fribourg, a young man in a black cassock drifting through the mist rising from the river Saane. A young man in crisis, Lange remembered. A tormented man. A man who could not bear the acute loneliness of the life that lay ahead

of him. A man who wanted to be on the front lines. How odd that the path he had chosen had resulted in a life more lonely than a parish priest's. How odd that it had led him back here, to this desperate room in Rome.

He went to the window and pushed open the glass. The wet night air washed over his face. The Stazione Termini stood in the distance about a half-kilometer away. Directly across the street lay a straggly unkempt park. A woman was making her way along the puddled walkway. A streetlamp briefly caught the Breton red highlights in her hair. Something made her look up at the open window. Training. Instinct. Fear. Seeing his face, she smiled, and started across the road.