The Confessor

ROME

ERIC LANGE DID NOT sleep well that night. A rare bout of conscience? Nerves? Perhaps it was the furnacelike heat of Katrine's body nestled against him on the tiny cot. Whatever the reason, he awoke at three-thirty and lay there, wide-eyed, Katrine pressing against his ribs, until the first gray shreds of light entered the window of Carlo Casagrande's hateful room.

He swung his legs out of the bed and crept naked across the bare floor to the window, parted the net curtains, and peered down into the street. His motorcycle was there, parked outside the entrance of the tenement house. There were no signs of surveillance. He released the curtain and it fell back into place. Katrine stirred, wrestled with the blanket, then rolled over and slept on.

Lange brewed a pot of espresso on the electric ring and drank several cups before entering the bathroom. He spent the next hour

there, carefully grooming and altering his appearance. He darkened his hair with dye, transformed his gray eyes to brown with a pair of contact lenses. Lastly, he added eyeglasses, black-rimmed and cheap-looking, the spectacles of a priest. When he finished, the face staring back at him in the fogged glass was that of a stranger. He compared it to the photograph on the badge Casagrande had prepared for him: Manfred Beck, Special Investigation Division, Vatican Security Office. Satisfied, he went back into the main room.

Katrine was still sleeping. Lange padded across the floor, a towel around his waist, and opened the dresser drawer. He slipped on underwear and a pair of the threadbare socks, then went to the closet and opened the door. Black shirt and Roman collar, black trousers, black suit-jacket. Finally, he stepped into the shoes and carefully knotted the laces.

He walked back to the bathroom and stared at himself for a long time in the mirror, slowly transforming himself into the man in the black suit, an actor assuming the role. An assassin, wrapped in a priest's garments; the man he might have been, concealing the man he was. He slipped the Stechkin into the waistband of his trousers and looked at himself one last time. Priest. Revolutionary. Killer. Which one are you, old man?

He poured the last of the coffee into a cup and sat down at the edge of the bed. Katrine opened her eyes and recoiled, hands reflexively padding the bedding for a weapon. When Lange gently touched her leg, she froze, a hand over her breast as she tried to gather herself.

"My God, Eric. I didn't recognize you."

"That's the point, my dear." Lange handed her the cup of coffee. "Get dressed, Katrine. We haven't much time."

Chiara was brewing coffee in the kitchen of the safe flat when the telephone rang. She recognized the voice of Father Donati.

"I'll be there in a minute or two. Send him down."

Chiara hung up as Gabriel came into the room. He was wearing a gray suit, white shirt, and dark tie, all compliments of Shimon Pazner's Rome station. Chiara brushed a bit of lint from his sleeve.

"You look very handsome." Then she added: "A bit like an undertaker, but handsome."

"Let's hope not. Who was on the phone?"

"Father Donati. He's on his way."

Gabriel swallowed a cup of coffee and pulled on a tan raincoat. Then he kissed Chiara on the cheek and held her in his arms for a moment.

"You will be careful, won't you, Gabriel?"

A car horn sounded outside. When Gabriel tried to pull away, Chiara held him tightly for a moment, refusing to let him leave. When Father Donati honked the horn again, this time with more urgency, she released her hold on him. Gabriel kissed her one last time.

He slipped his Beretta into a shoulder holster and walked downstairs. A gray Fiat sedan with Vatican plates stood outside the entrance. Father Donati sat behind the wheel, dressed in a clerical suit and a black raincoat. Gabriel climbed into the passenger seat and closed the door. Donati turned toward the Tiber embankment.

It was a gray morning, low, dark clouds, a gusty wind making whitecaps on the river. The priest was hunched over the wheel, eyes wide, foot heavy on the accelerator. Gabriel squeezed the armrest, thinking that it was a miracle the Pope had made it back to the Vatican alive last night.

"Drive much, Father Donati?"

"Last night was the first time in about eighteen years."

"I wouldn't have guessed."

"You're a terrible liar, Mr. Allon. I thought people in your line of work were supposed to be good at deception."

"How's the Holy Father this morning?"

"He's quite well, actually. Despite the events of last night, he managed to get a few hours of sleep. He's looking forward to his journey across the river."

"I'll be happy when it's over and he's safely back in the papal apartments."

"That makes two of us."

As they sped along the Tiber, Father Donati briefed Gabriel on the security arrangements. The Pope would travel to the synagogue in his usual armor-plated Mercedes limousine, accompanied by Donati and Gabriel. Immediately surrounding the Pope would be a ring of plainclothes Swiss Guards. As always, Italian police and security forces would provide a second cordon of protection. The route from the Vatican to the old ghetto would be lined by carabinieri traffic units and closed to all other traffic.

The square dome of the Great Synagogue rose before them, a towering structure of pale gray stone and aluminum, Persian and Babylonian in its architectural design. The extreme height of the structure, coupled with its unique facade, made it stand out from the surrounding ocher-colored baroque buildings. The effect was intentional. The community that built the synagogue a hundred years earlier had wished to make it easily visible to the men on the other side of the Tiber--the men behind the ancient walls of the Vatican.

A hundred meters from the synagogue, they came to a police

checkpoint. Father Donati lowered his window, flashed his Vatican identification, and exchanged a few words in Italian with an officer. A moment later, they pulled into the courtyard at the front of the synagogue and braked to a halt. Before Father Donati could shut down the engine, they were set upon by a carabiniere with an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. Gabriel liked what he saw so far.

They climbed out of the Fiat. Gabriel could not help but feel the shadow of history hanging over the place. Rome was the oldest Diaspora settlement in Western Europe, and Jews had been living in its center for more than two thousand years. They had come to this place long before the fisherman named Peter from the Galilee. They had seen the assassination of Caesar, witnessed the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Roman empire. Vilified by popes as murderers of God, they had been ghettoized on the banks of the Tiber, humiliated, and ritually degraded. And on a night in October 1943, a thousand were rounded up and sent to the gas chambers and ovens of Auschwitz, while a pope on the other side of the river said nothing. In a few hours' time, Pope Paul VII, a witness to the sins of the men in the Vatican, would come here to atone for the past. If he lives long enough to accomplish his mission.

Father Donati seemed to sense Gabriel's thoughts, for he placed a hand gently on his shoulder and pointed toward the river. "The protesters will be kept behind barricades over there, next to the embankment."

"Protesters?"

"We're not expecting anything terribly large. Just the usual lot." Donati shrugged helplessly. "The birth-control crowd. Women in the priesthood. Gays and lesbians. That sort of thing."

They climbed the steps of the synagogue and went inside. Father Donati seemed perfectly at ease. He sensed Gabriel was looking at him, and he smiled confidently in response.

"When we were still in Venice, it was my job to build better relations between the patriarch and the Jewish community there. I'm quite comfortable in a synagogue, Mr. Allon."

"I can see that," Gabriel said. "Tell me how the ceremony will unfold."

The papal procession would form at the entrance of the synagogue, Father Donati explained. The Pope would walk up the center aisle accompanied by the chief rabbi, and take a seat next to him in a gilded chair on the bimah. Father Donati and Gabriel would trail the Holy Father during the walk to the front of the synagogue, then take their position in a special VIP section, a few feet from the Pope. The chief rabbi would make a few introductory remarks, then the Holy Father would speak. In a break with usual protocol, an advance text of the Pope's remarks would not be released to the Vatican press corps. The speech was bound to provoke an immediate reaction among the reporters, but no one would be permitted to leave their seat until the Pope had completed his remarks and left the synagogue.

Gabriel and the priest walked to the front of the synagogue, the spot where they would be standing during the Pope's remarks. A carabiniere with a bomb-sniffing dog straining at its leash was making steady progress up the left side of the hall. A second dog team was working the opposite side. A few meters from the bimah, a handful of television cameramen were setting up their equipment on a raised platform under the watchful gaze of an armed security man.

"What about the other entrances to the synagogue, Father Donati?"

"They've all been sealed. There's only one way in and out now,

and that's the main entrance." Donati looked at his watch. "I'm afraid we haven't much time, Mr. Allon. If you're satisfied, we should be getting back to the Vatican." "Let's go."

Father Donati waved his Vatican ID badge at the Swiss Guard standing watch at St. Anne's Gate. Before the guard could question the identity of the man in the passenger seat, the priest pushed his foot to the floor and sped along the Via Belvedere toward the Apostolic Palace.

Father Donati left the car in the San Damaso Courtyard, hustled Gabriel around the security checkpoints, and headed upstairs toward the papal apartments. Gabriel's feet felt light on the marble floor, his pulse quickened. He thought of Shamron, standing in the half-light of the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, summoning him to find the men who had murdered Benjamin Stern. Now his search had brought him here, to the epicenter of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the entrance to the papal apartments, they slipped past a Swiss Guard and went inside. Father Donati led him into the study, where the Pope was seated at his desk, working through a stack of morning correspondence. He looked up at Gabriel as he entered the room and smiled warmly.

"Mr. Allon, so good of you to come." With the tip of his pen, he pointed toward the seating area next to the fireplace. "Please make yourself comfortable. Father Donati and I have a few things to attend to before we leave."

Gabriel did as the Pope instructed. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and removed the photographs of the assassin known as the Leopard. Gabriel started from the beginning and worked his way forward. In each picture, the assassin looked remarkably different. Some of the changes had been achieved through plastic surgery, others through more prosaic means, such as hats, wigs, and eyewear.

Gabriel returned the photographs to his pocket and looked across the study toward the little man in white, hunched over a stack of papers at his desk. He felt his spirits sink. If the Leopard had come to Rome to kill the Pope, it would be almost impossible to stop him. And based on the photographs in his pocket, Gabriel was quite certain he would never see him coming.

Lange sanitized the flat while Katrine showered and dressed. With a wet cloth, he meticulously wiped down every surface that he had touched in the room. Doorknobs, the dresser top, bathroom fixtures, the electric ring, the coffee pot. Then he placed his extra clothing in a plastic rubbish bag, along with his toiletries. Satisfied that he had erased every trace of himself from the flat, he sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to touch anything.

Katrine came out of the bathroom. She wore blue jeans, lace-up leather boots, and a bomber-style jacket. Her hair was pulled back tightly against her scalp, her eyes covered by a pair of sunglasses. She looked very beautiful. The average carabiniere would find her terribly distracting. Lange was counting on that.

He stood up, slipped the Stechkin into his trousers, and buttoned his jacket. Then he pulled on a cheap black nylon raincoat, the kind worn by half the clerics in Rome, and picked up the bag of rubbish.

They walked downstairs. Lange held the rubbish bag in one hand, and with the other he drew the collar of his raincoat tight to conceal the clerical suit underneath.

Outside, he mounted the motorcycle and started the engine. Katrine climbed on the back and wrapped her arms around his waist. He eased forward, turned the bike east toward the ancient center of Rome, and opened the throttle. Along the way he dropped the keys to the flat down a sewer. The bag of rubbish he handed to a garbage collector, who tossed it into the back of his truck and wished Lange a pleasant morning.