The Fallen Angel

1 VATICAN CITY

IT WAS NICCOLÒ MORETTI, CARETAKER of St. Peter’s Basilica, who made the discovery that started it all. The time was 6:24 a.m., but owing to a wholly innocent error of transcription, the Vatican’s first official statement incorrectly reported it as 6:42. It was one of numerous missteps, large and small, that would lead many to conclude the Holy See had something to hide, which was indeed the case. The Roman Catholic Church, said a noteworthy dissident, was but one scandal away from oblivion. The last thing His Holiness needed now was a dead body in the sacred heart of Christendom.

A scandal was the last thing Niccolò Moretti had been expecting to find that morning when he arrived at the Vatican one hour earlier than his usual time. Dressed in dark trousers and a knee-length gray coat, he was scarcely visible as he hurried across the darkened piazza toward the steps of the Basilica. Glancing to his right, he saw lights burning in the third-floor windows of the Apostolic Palace. His Holiness Pope Paul VII was already awake. Moretti wondered whether the Holy Father had slept at all. The Vatican was swirling with rumors he was suffering from a crippling bout of insomnia, that he spent most nights writing in his private study or walking alone in the gardens. The caretaker had seen it before. Eventually, they all lost the ability to sleep.

Moretti heard voices behind him and, turning, saw a pair of Curial priests materialize from the gloom. They were engaged in animated conversation and paid him no heed as they marched toward the Bronze Doors and melted once more into the shadows. The children of Rome called them bagarozzi—black beetles. Moretti had used the word once as a child and had been scolded by none other than Pope Pius XII. He’d never said it since. When one is chastised by the Vicar of Christ, he thought now, one rarely repeats the same offense.

He hiked up the steps of the Basilica and slipped into the portico. Five doors led into the nave. All were sealed except for the one at the far left, the Door of Death. In the opening stood Father Jacobo, an emaciated-looking Mexican cleric with strawlike gray hair. He stepped aside so Moretti could enter, then closed the door and lowered the heavy bar. “I’ll come back at seven to let in your men,” the priest said. “Be careful up there, Niccolò. You’re not as young as you used to be.”

The priest withdrew. Moretti dipped his fingers in holy water and made the sign of the cross before setting out up the center of the vast nave. Where others might have paused to gaze in awe, Moretti forged on with the familiarity of a man entering his own home. As chief of the sampietrini, the official caretakers of the Basilica, he had been coming to St. Peter’s six mornings a week for the past twenty-seven years. It was because of Moretti and his men that the Basilica glowed with heaven’s light while the other great churches of Europe seemed forever shrouded in darkness. Moretti considered himself not only a servant of the papacy but a partner in the enterprise. The popes were entrusted with the care of one billion Roman Catholic souls, but it was Niccolò Moretti who looked after the mighty Basilica that symbolized their earthly power. He knew every square inch of the building, from the peak of Michelangelo’s dome to the depths of the crypt—all forty-four altars, twenty-seven chapels, eight hundred columns, four hundred statues, and three hundred windows. He knew where it was cracked and where it leaked. He knew when it was feeling well and when it was in pain. The Basilica, when it spoke, whispered into the ear of Niccolò Moretti.

St. Peter’s had a way of shrinking mere mortals, and Moretti, as he made his way toward the Papal Altar in the gray coat of his uniform, looked remarkably like a thimble come to life. He genuflected before the Confessio and then tilted his face skyward. Soaring nearly one hundred feet above him was the baldacchino, four twisting columns of bronze and gold crowned by a majestic canopy. On that morning, it was partially concealed by an aluminum scaffolding. Bernini’s masterpiece, with its ornate figures and sprigs of olive and bay, was a magnet for dust and smoke. Every year, in the week preceding the beginning of Lent, Moretti and his men gave it a thorough cleaning. The Vatican was a place of timeless ritual, and there was ritual, too, in the cleaning of the baldacchino. Laid down by Moretti himself, it stated that once the scaffolding was in place, he was always the first to scale it. The view from the summit was one that only a handful of people had ever seen—and Niccolò Moretti, as chief of the sampietrini, demanded the privilege of beholding it first.

Moretti climbed to the pinnacle of the front column, then, after attaching his safety line, inched his way on all fours up the slope of the canopy. At the very apex of the baldacchino was a globe supported by four ribs and crowned by a cross. Here was the most sacred spot in the Roman Catholic Church, the vertical axis running from the exact center of the dome straight down into the Tomb of St. Peter. It represented the very idea on which the enterprise rested. You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church. As the first crepuscular rays of light illuminated the interior of the Basilica, Moretti, faithful servant of the popes, could almost feel the finger of God tapping him on the shoulder.

As usual, time slipped from his grasp. Later, when questioned by the Vatican police, he would be unable to recall exactly how long he had been atop the baldacchino before he saw the object for the first time. From Moretti’s lofty perspective, it appeared to be a broken-winged bird. He assumed it to be something innocent, a tarpaulin left by another sampietrino or perhaps a scarf dropped by a tourist. They were always leaving their possessions behind, Moretti thought, including things that had no business being in a church.

Regardless, it had to be investigated, and so Moretti, the spell broken, maneuvered himself cautiously around and made the long descent to the floor. He set out across the transept but within a few paces realized the object was not a discarded scarf or tarpaulin at all. Moving closer, he could see the blood dried on the sacred marble of his Basilica and the eyes staring upward into the dome, sightlessly, like his four hundred statues. “Dear God in heaven,” he whispered as he hurried down the nave. “Please take pity on her poor soul.”

The public would know little of the events immediately following Niccolò Moretti’s discovery, for they were carried out in the strictest tradition of the Vatican, in complete secrecy and with a hint of Jesuitical low cunning. No one beyond the walls would know, for example, that the first person Moretti sought out was the cardinal rector of the Basilica, an exacting German from Cologne with a well-honed instinct for self-preservation. The cardinal had been around long enough to recognize trouble when he saw it, which explained why he neglected to report the incident to the police, choosing instead to summon the true keeper of the law inside the Vatican.

Consequently, five minutes later, Niccolò Moretti would bear witness to an extraordinary scene—the private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII picking through the pockets of a dead woman on the floor of the Basilica. The monsignor removed a single item and then set out for the Apostolic Palace. By the time he reached his office, he had settled on a course of action. There would have to be two investigations, he concluded, one for public consumption, the other for his own. And for the private inquiry to be successful, it would have to be carried out by a person of trust and discretion. Not surprisingly, the monsignor chose as his inquisitor a man much like himself. A fallen angel in black. A sinner in the city of saints.

2 PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROME

THE RESTORER DRESSED IN DARKNESS, silently, so as not to wake the woman. Posed as she was now, with her tousled chestnut hair and wide mouth, she reminded him of Modigliani’s Red Nude. He placed a loaded Beretta pistol next to her on the bed. Then he tugged at the duvet, exposing her heavy, rounded breasts, and the masterpiece was complete.

Somewhere a church bell tolled. A hand rose from the bedding, warm and lined from sleep, and drew the restorer down. The woman kissed him, as always, with her eyes closed. Her hair smelled of vanilla. On her lips was the faintest trace of the wine she had drunk the previous evening in a restaurant on the Aventine Hill.

The woman released him, murmured something unintelligible, and drifted back to sleep. The restorer covered her. Then he wedged a second Beretta into the waistband of his faded blue jeans and slipped out of the apartment. Downstairs, the pavements of the Via Gregoriana shimmered in the half-light like a newly varnished painting. The restorer stood in the doorway of the building for a moment while pretending to consult his mobile phone. It took him only a few seconds to spot the man watching him from behind the wheel of a parked Lancia sedan. He gave the man a friendly wave, the ultimate professional insult, and set off toward the Church of the Trinità dei Monti.

At the top of the Spanish Steps, an old gattara was dropping scraps of food into the sea of skinny Roman cats swirling at her feet. Dressed in a shabby overcoat and headscarf, she eyed the restorer warily as he headed down to the piazza. He was below average in height—five foot eight, perhaps, but no more—and had the spare physique of a cyclist. The face was long and narrow at the chin, with wide cheekbones and a slender nose that looked as though it had been carved from wood. The eyes were an unnatural shade of green; the hair was dark and shot with gray at the temples. It was a face of many possible origins, and the restorer possessed the linguistic gifts to put it to good use. Over the course of a long career, he had worked in Italy and elsewhere under numerous pseudonyms and nationalities. The Italian security services, aware of his past exploits, had tried to prevent his entry into the country but had relented after the quiet intervention of the Holy See. For reasons never made public, the restorer had been present at the Vatican several years earlier when it was attacked by Islamic terrorists. More than seven hundred people were killed that day, including four cardinals and eight Curial bishops. The Holy Father himself had been slightly wounded. He might very well have been among the dead had the restorer not shielded him from a shoulder-fired missile and then carried him to safety.

The Italians had imposed two conditions upon the restorer’s return—that he reside in the country under his real name and that he tolerate the presence of occasional physical surveillance. The first he accepted with a certain relief, for after a lifetime on the secret battlefield he was anxious to shed his many aliases and to assume something of a normal life. The second condition, however, had proved more burdensome. The task of following him invariably fell to young trainees. Initially, the restorer had taken mild professional offense until he realized he was being used as the subject of a daily master class in the techniques of street surveillance. He obliged his students by evading them from time to time, always keeping a few of his better moves in reserve lest he find himself in circumstances that required slipping the Italian net.

And so it was that as he made his way through the quiet streets of Rome, he was trailed by no fewer than three probationers of varying skills from the Italian security service. His route presented them with few challenges and no surprises. It bore him westward across the ancient center of the city and terminated, as usual, at St. Anne’s Gate, the business entrance of the Vatican. Because it was technically an international frontier, the watchers had no choice but to entrust the restorer to the care of the Swiss Guard, who admitted him with only a cursory glance at his credentials.

The restorer bade the watchers farewell with a doff of his flat cap and then set out along the Via Belvedere, past the butter-colored Church of St. Anne, the Vatican printing offices, and the headquarters of the Vatican Bank. At the Central Post Office, he turned to the right and crossed a series of courtyards until he came to an unmarked door. Beyond it was a tiny foyer, where a Vatican gendarme sat in a glass box.

“Where’s the usual duty officer?” the restorer asked in rapid Italian.

“Lazio played Milan last night,” the gendarme said with an apathetic shrug.

He ran the restorer’s ID badge through the magnetic card swipe and motioned for him to pass through the metal detector. When the machine emitted a shrill pinging, the restorer stopped in his tracks and nodded wearily at the gendarme’s computer. On the screen, next to the restorer’s unsmiling photograph, was a special notice written by the chief of the Vatican Security Office. The gendarme read it twice to make certain he understood it correctly, then, looking up, found himself staring directly into the restorer’s unusually green eyes. Something about the calmness of his expression—and the hint of a mischievous smile—caused the officer to give an involuntary shiver. He nodded toward the next set of doors and watched intently as the restorer passed through them without a sound.

So, the gendarme thought, the rumors were true. Gabriel Allon, renowned restorer of Old Master paintings, retired Israeli spy and assassin, and savior of the Holy Father, had returned to the Vatican. With a single keystroke, the officer cleared the file from the screen. Then he made the sign of the cross and for the first time in many years recited the act of contrition. It was an odd choice, he thought, because he was guilty of no sin other than curiosity. But surely that was to be forgiven. After all, it wasn’t every day a lowly Vatican policeman had the chance to gaze into the face of a legend.

Fluorescent lights, dimmed to their night settings, hummed softly as Gabriel entered the main conservation lab of the Vatican Picture Gallery. As usual, he was the first to arrive. He closed the door and waited for the reassuring thud of the automatic locks, then made his way along a row of storage cabinets toward the floor-to-ceiling black curtains at the far end of the room. A small sign warned the area beyond the curtains was strictly off-limits. After slipping through the breach, Gabriel went immediately to his trolley and carefully examined the disposition of his supplies. His containers of pigment and medium were precisely as he had left them. So were his Winsor & Newton Series 7 sable brushes, including the one with a telltale spot of azure near the tip that he always left at a precise thirty-degree angle relative to the others. It suggested the cleaning staff had once again resisted the temptation to enter his workspace. He doubted whether his colleagues had shown similar restraint. In fact, he had it on the highest authority that his tiny curtained enclave had displaced the espresso machine in the break room as the most popular gathering spot for museum staff.

He removed his leather jacket and switched on a pair of standing halogen lamps. The Deposition of Christ, widely regarded as Caravaggio’s finest painting, glowed under the intense white light. Gabriel stood motionless before the towering canvas for several minutes, hand pressed to his chin, head tilted to one side, eyes fixed on the haunting image. Nicodemus, muscular and barefoot, stared directly back as he carefully lowered the pale, lifeless body of Christ toward the slab of funerary stone where it would be prepared for entombment. Next to Nicodemus was John the Evangelist, who, in his desperation to touch his beloved teacher one last time, had inadvertently opened the wound in the Savior’s side. Watching silently over them were the Madonna and the Magdalene, their heads bowed, while Mary of Cleophas raised her arms toward the heavens in lamentation. It was a work of both immense sorrow and tenderness, made more striking by Caravaggio’s revolutionary use of light. Even Gabriel, who had been toiling over the painting for weeks, always felt as though he were intruding on a heartbreaking moment of private anguish.

The painting had darkened with age, particularly along the left side of the canvas where the entrance of the tomb had once been clearly visible. There were some in the Italian art establishment—including Giacomo Benedetti, the famed Caravaggisto from the Istituto Centrale per il Restauro—who wondered whether the tomb should be returned to prominence. Benedetti had been forced to share his opinion with a reporter from La Repubblica because the restorer chosen for the project had, for inexplicable reasons, failed to seek his advice before commencing work. What’s more, Benedetti found it disheartening that the museum had refused to make public the restorer’s identity. For many days, the papers had bristled with familiar calls for the Vatican to lift the veil of silence. How was it possible, they fumed, that a national treasure like The Deposition could be entrusted to a man with no name? The tempest, such as it was, finally ended when Antonio Calvesi, the Vatican’s chief conservator, acknowledged that the man in question had impeccable credentials, including two masterful restorations for the Holy See—Reni’s Crucifixion of St. Peter and Poussin’s Martyrdom of St. Erasmus. Calvesi neglected to mention that both projects, conducted at a remote Umbrian villa, had been delayed due to operations the restorer had carried out for the secret intelligence service of the State of Israel.

Gabriel had hoped to restore the Caravaggio in seclusion as well, but Calvesi’s decree that the painting never leave the Vatican had left him with no choice but to work inside the lab, surrounded by the permanent staff. He was the subject of intense curiosity, but then, that was to be expected. For many years, they had believed him to be an unusually gifted if temperamental restorer named Mario Delvecchio, only to learn that he was something quite different. But if they felt betrayed, they gave no sign of it. Indeed, for the most part, they treated him with a tenderness that came naturally to those who care for damaged objects. They were quiet in his presence, mindful to a point of his obvious need for privacy, and were careful not to look too long into his eyes, as if they feared what they might find there. On those rare occasions when they addressed him, their remarks were limited mainly to pleasantries and art. And when office banter turned to the politics of the Middle East, they respectfully muted their criticism of the country of his birth. Only Enrico Bacci, who had lobbied intensely for the Caravaggio restoration, objected to Gabriel’s presence on moral grounds. He referred to the black curtain as “the Separation Fence” and adhered a “Free Palestine” poster to the wall of his tiny office.

Gabriel poured a tiny pool of Mowolith 20 medium onto his palette, added a few granules of dry pigment, and thinned the mixture with Arcosolve until it reached the desired consistency and intensity. Then he slipped on a magnifying visor and focused his gaze on the right hand of Christ. It hung in the manner of Michelangelo’s Pietà, with the fingers pointing allegorically toward the corner of the funerary stone. For several days, Gabriel had been attempting to repair a series of abrasions along the knuckles. He was not the first artist to struggle over the composition; Caravaggio himself had painted five other versions before finally completing the painting in 1604. Unlike his previous commission—a depiction of the Virgin’s death so controversial it was eventually removed from the church of Santa Maria della Scala—The Deposition was instantly hailed as a masterwork, and its reputation quickly spread throughout Europe. In 1797, the painting caught the eye of Napoléon Bonaparte, one of history’s greatest looters of art and antiquities, and it was carted over the Alps to Paris. It remained there until 1817, when it was returned to the custody of the papacy and hung in the Vatican.

For several hours, Gabriel had the lab to himself. Then, at the thoroughly Roman hour of ten, he heard the snap of the automatic locks, followed by Enrico Bacci’s lumbering plod. Next came Donatella Ricci, an Early Renaissance expert who whispered soothingly to the paintings in her care. After that it was Tommaso Antonelli, one of the stars of the Sistine Chapel restoration, who always tiptoed around the lab in his crepe-soled shoes with the stealth of a night thief.

Finally, at half past ten, Gabriel heard the distinctive tap of Antonio Calvesi’s handmade shoes over the linoleum floor. A few seconds later, Calvesi came whirling through the black curtain like a matador. With his disheveled forelock and perpetually loosened necktie, he had the air of a man who was running late for an appointment he would rather not keep. He settled himself atop a tall stool and nibbled thoughtfully at the stem of his reading glasses while inspecting Gabriel’s work.

“Not bad,” Calvesi said with genuine admiration. “Did you do that on your own, or did Caravaggio drop by to handle the inpainting himself?”

“I asked for his help,” Gabriel replied, “but he was unavailable.”

“Really? Where was he?”

“Back in prison at Tor di Nona. Apparently, he was roaming the Campo Marzio with a sword.”

“Again?” Calvesi leaned closer to the canvas. “If I were you, I’d consider replacing those lines of craquelure along the index finger.”

Gabriel raised his magnifying visor and offered Calvesi the palette. The Italian responded with a conciliatory smile. He was a gifted restorer in his own right—indeed, in their youth, the two men had been rivals—but it had been many years since he had actually applied a brush to canvas. These days, Calvesi spent most of his time pursuing money. For all its earthly riches, the Vatican was forced to rely on the kindness of strangers to care for its extraordinary collection of art and antiquities. Gabriel’s paltry stipend was a fraction of what he earned for a private restoration. It was, however, a small price to pay for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to clean a painting like The Deposition.

“Any chance you might actually finish it sometime soon?” Calvesi asked. “I’d like to have it back in the gallery for Holy Week.”

“When does it fall this year?”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” Calvesi picked absently through the contents of Gabriel’s trolley.

“Something on your mind, Antonio?”

“One of our most important patrons is dropping by the museum tomorrow. An American. Very deep pockets. The kind of pockets that keep this place functioning.”

“And?”

“He’s asked to see the Caravaggio. In fact, he was wondering whether someone might be willing to give him a brief lecture on the restoration.”

“Have you been sniffing the acetone again, Antonio?”

“Won’t you at least let him see it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Gabriel gazed at the painting for a moment in silence. “Because it wouldn’t be fair to him,” he said finally.

“The patron?”

“Caravaggio. Restoration is supposed to be our little secret, Antonio. Our job is to come and go without being seen. And it should be done in private.”

“What if I get Caravaggio’s permission?”

“Just don’t ask him while he has a sword in his hand.” Gabriel lowered the magnifying visor and resumed his work.

“You know, Gabriel, you’re just like him. Stubborn, conceited, and far too talented for your own good.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you, Antonio?” asked Gabriel, tapping his brush impatiently against his palette.

“Not me,” Calvesi replied, “but you’re wanted in the chapel.”

“Which chapel?”

“The only one that matters.”

Gabriel wiped his brush and placed it carefully on the trolley. Calvesi smiled.

“You share one other trait with your friend Caravaggio.”

“What’s that?”

“Paranoia.”

“Caravaggio had good reason to be paranoid. And so do I.”

3 THE SISTINE CHAPEL

THE 5,896 SQUARE FEET OF the Sistine Chapel are perhaps the most visited piece of real estate in Rome. Each day, several thousand tourists pour through its rather ordinary doors to crane their necks in wonder at the glorious frescoes that adorn its walls and ceiling, watched over by blue-uniformed gendarmes who seem to have no other job than to constantly plead for silenzio. To stand alone in the chapel, however, is to experience it as its namesake Pope Sixtus IV had intended. With the lights dimmed and the crowds absent, it is almost possible to hear the quarrels of conclaves past or to see Michelangelo atop his scaffolding putting the finishing touches on The Creation of Adam.

On the western wall of the chapel is Michelangelo’s other Sistine masterwork, The Last Judgment. Begun thirty years after the ceiling was completed, it depicts the Apocalypse and the Second Coming of Christ, with all the souls of humanity rising or falling to meet their eternal reward or punishment in a swirl of color and anguish. The fresco is the first thing the cardinals see when they enter the chapel to choose a new pope, and on that morning it seemed the primary preoccupation of a single priest. Tall, lean, and strikingly handsome, he was cloaked in a black cassock with a magenta-colored sash and piping, handmade by an ecclesiastical tailor near the Pantheon. His dark eyes radiated a fierce and uncompromising intelligence, while the set of his jaw indicated he was a dangerous man to cross, which had the added benefit of being the truth. Monsignor Luigi Donati, private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII, had few friends behind the walls of the Vatican, only occasional allies and sworn rivals. They often referred to him as a clerical Rasputin, the true power behind the papal throne, or “the Black Pope,” an unflattering reference to his Jesuit past. Donati didn’t mind. Though he was a devoted student of Ignatius and Augustine, he tended to rely more on the guidance of a secular Italian philosopher named Machiavelli, who counseled that it is far better for a prince to be feared than loved.

Among Donati’s many transgressions, at least in the eyes of some members of the Vatican’s gossipy papal court, were his unusually close ties to the notorious spy and assassin Gabriel Allon. Theirs was a partnership that defied history and faith—Donati, the soldier of Christ, and Gabriel, the man of art who by accident of birth had been compelled to lead a clandestine life of violence. Despite those obvious differences, they had much in common. Both were men of high morals and principle, and both believed that matters of consequence were best handled in private. During their long friendship, Gabriel had acted as both the Vatican’s protector and a revealer of some of its darkest secrets—and Donati, the Holy Father’s hard man in black, had served as his willing accomplice. As a result, the two men had done much to quietly improve the tortured relationship between the world’s Catholics and their twelve million distant spiritual cousins, the Jews.

Gabriel stood wordlessly at Donati’s side and gazed up at The Last Judgment. Near the center of the image, adjacent to the left foot of Christ, was one of two self-portraits Michelangelo had hidden within the frescoes. Here he had depicted himself as St. Bartholomew holding his own flayed skin, perhaps a not-so-subtle rejoinder to contemporary critics of his work.

“I assume you’ve been here before,” said Donati, his sonorous voice echoing in the empty chapel.

“Just once,” said Gabriel after a moment. “It was in the autumn of 1972, long before the restoration. I was posing as a German student traveling Europe. I came here in the afternoon and stayed until the guards forced me to leave. The next day . . .”

His voice trailed off. The next day, with Michelangelo’s vision of the end times still fresh in his mind, Gabriel entered the foyer of a drab apartment building in the Piazza Annibaliano. Standing before the elevator, a bottle of fig wine in one hand and a copy of A Thousand and One Nights in the other, was a skinny Palestinian intellectual named Wadal Zwaiter. The Palestinian was a member of the terrorist group Black September, perpetrators of the Munich Olympics massacre, and for that he had been secretly sentenced to death. Gabriel had calmly asked Zwaiter to say his name aloud. Then he had shot him eleven times, once for each Israeli butchered at Munich. In the months that followed, Gabriel would assassinate five other members of Black September, the opening act of a distinguished career that lasted far longer than he ever intended. Working at the behest of his mentor, the legendary spymaster Ari Shamron, he had carried out some of the most fabled operations in the history of Israeli intelligence. Now, blown and battered, he had returned to Rome, to the place where it all began. And one of the few people in the world he could trust was a Catholic priest named Luigi Donati.

Gabriel turned his back to The Last Judgment and gazed down the length of the rectangular chapel, past the frescoes by Botticelli and Perugino, toward the little potbellied stove where ballots were burned during papal conclaves. Then he recited, “ ‘The House which King Solomon built for the Lord was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high.’ ”

“Kings,” said Donati. “Chapter six, verse two.”

Gabriel lifted his face toward the ceiling. “Your forefathers built this rather simple chapel to the exact dimensions of the Temple of Solomon for a reason. But why? Did they wish to pay tribute to their elder brothers the Jews? Or were they declaring that the old law had been superseded by the new law, that the ancient temple had been brought to Rome, along with the sacred contents of the Holy of Holies?”

“Perhaps it was a little of both,” said Donati philosophically.

“How diplomatic of you, Monsignor.”

“I was trained as a Jesuit. Obfuscation is our strong suit.”

Gabriel pondered his wristwatch. “It’s rather late in the morning for this place to be empty.”

“Yes,” Donati said absently.

“Where are the tourists, Luigi?”

“For the moment, only the museums are open to the public.”

“Why?”

“We have a problem.”

“Where?”

Donati frowned and tilted his head toward the left.

The stairwell leading from the glory of the Sistine Chapel to the most magnificent church in Christendom is decidedly ugly. A gray-green tube with slick cement walls, it deposited Gabriel and Donati into the Basilica, not far from the Chapel of the Pietà. In the center of the nave, a yellow tarpaulin was spread over the unmistakable form of a human corpse. Standing over it were two men. Gabriel knew them both. One was Colonel Alois Metzler, commandant of the Pontifical Swiss Guard. The other was Lorenzo Vitale, chief of the Corpo della Gendarmeria, the Vatican’s 130-member police force. In his previous life, Vitale had investigated government corruption cases for Italy’s powerful Guardia di Finanza. Metzler was retired Swiss Army. His predecessor, Karl Brunner, had been killed in the al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the Vatican.

The two men looked up in unison and watched Gabriel crossing the nave at the side of the second-most powerful man in the Roman Catholic Church. Metzler was clearly displeased. He extended his hand toward Gabriel with the cold precision of a Swiss timepiece and nodded his head once in formal greeting. He was Donati’s equal in height and build but had been blessed by the Almighty with the jutting, angular face of a hound. He wore a dark gray suit, a white shirt, and a banker’s silver necktie. His receding hair was shorn to the length of stubble; small, rimless spectacles framed a pair of judgmental blue eyes. Metzler had friends inside the Swiss security service, which meant that he knew about Gabriel’s past exploits on the soil of his homeland. His presence in the Basilica was intriguing. Strictly speaking, dead bodies at the Vatican fell under the jurisdiction of the gendarmes, not the Swiss Guard—unless, of course, there was an element of papal security involved. If that were the case, Metzler would be free to poke his snout anywhere he pleased. Almost anywhere, thought Gabriel, for there were places behind the walls where even the commander of the palace guard was forbidden to enter.

Donati exchanged a look with Vitale, then instructed the police chief to remove the tarpaulin. It was obvious the body had fallen from a great height. What remained was a split sack of skin filled with shattered bone and organs. Remarkably, the attractive face was largely intact. So was the identification badge around the neck. It stated that the bearer was an employee of the Vatican Museums. Gabriel didn’t bother to read the name. The dead woman was Claudia Andreatti, a curator in the antiquities division.

Gabriel crouched next to the body with the ease of someone used to being in the presence of the newly dead and examined it as though it were a painting in need of restoration. She was dressed, like all the laywomen of the Vatican, professionally but piously: dark trousers, a gray cardigan, a white blouse. Her woolen overcoat was unbuttoned and had arranged itself across the floor like an unfurled cape. The right arm was draped across the abdomen. The left was extended in a straight line from the shoulder, the wrist slightly bent. Gabriel carefully lifted a few strands of the shoulder-length hair from the face, revealing a pair of eyes that remained open and vaguely watchful. The last time he had seen them, they had been appraising him in a stairwell of the museum. The encounter had occurred a few minutes before nine the previous evening. Gabriel was just leaving after a long session before the Caravaggio; Claudia was clutching a batch of files to her breast and heading back to her office. Her demeanor, though somewhat harried, was hardly that of a woman about to kill herself in St. Peter’s. In fact, thought Gabriel, it had been mildly flirtatious.

“You knew her?” asked Vitale.

“No, but I knew who she was.” It was a professional compulsion. Even in retirement, Gabriel couldn’t help but assemble a mental dossier on those around him.

“I noticed you were both working late last night.” The Italian managed to make it sound like an offhand remark, which it wasn’t. “According to the log at the security desk, you exited the museum at 8:47. Dottoressa Andreatti left a short time later, at 8:56.”

“By then, I’d already left the territory of the city-state via St. Anne’s Gate.”

“I know.” Vitale gave a humorless smile. “I checked those logs, too.”

“So I’m no longer a suspect in the death of my colleague?” Gabriel asked sardonically.

“Forgive me, Signor Allon, but people do have a way of dying whenever you show up at the Vatican.”

Gabriel lifted his gaze from the body and looked at Vitale. Though he was now in his early sixties, the police chief had the handsome features and permanent suntan of an aging Italian movie idol, the sort who drives down the Via Veneto in an open-top car with a younger woman at his side. At the Guardia di Finanza, he had been regarded as an unbending zealot, a crusader who had taken it upon himself to eliminate the corruption that had been the scourge of Italian politics and commerce for generations. Having failed, he had taken refuge behind the walls of the Vatican to protect his pope and his Church. Like Gabriel, he was a man used to being in the presence of the dead. Even so, he seemed incapable of looking at the woman on the floor of his beloved Basilica.

“Who found her?” asked Gabriel.

Vitale nodded toward a group of sampietrini standing halfway down the nave.

“Did they touch anything?”

“Why do you ask?”

“She’s barefoot.”

“We found one of her shoes near the baldacchino. The other was found in front of the Altar of St. Joseph. We assume they came off during the fall. Or . . .”

“Or what?”

“It’s possible she dropped them from the gallery of the dome before jumping.”

“Why?”

“Perhaps she wanted to see whether she really had the nerve to go through with it,” Metzler suggested. “A moment of doubt.”

Gabriel looked heavenward. Just above the Latin inscription at the base of the dome was the viewing platform. Running along the edge was a waist-high metal balustrade. It was enough to make suicide difficult, but not impossible. In fact, every few months, Vitale’s gendarmes had to prevent some poor soul from hurling himself into the blessed abyss. But late in the evening, when the Basilica was closed to the public, Claudia Andreatti would have had the gallery entirely to herself.

“Time of death?” asked Gabriel quietly, as though he were posing the question to the corpse itself.

“Unclear,” replied Vitale.

Gabriel looked around the interior of the Basilica, as if to remind the Italian of their whereabouts. Then he asked how it was possible there was no established time of death.

“Once each week,” Vitale answered, “the Central Security Office disables the cameras for a routine system reset. We do it in the evening when the Basilica is closed. Usually, it’s not a problem.”

“How long does the shutdown last?”

“Nine to midnight.”

“That’s quite a coincidence.” Gabriel looked at the body again. “What do you suppose the odds are that she decided to kill herself during the time the cameras were switched off?”

“Perhaps it wasn’t a coincidence at all,” said Metzler. “Perhaps she chose the time intentionally so there would be no video recording of her death.”

“How would she have known about the cameras being shut down?”

“It’s common knowledge around here.”

Gabriel shook his head slowly. Despite numerous outside threats, terrorist and otherwise, security inside the borders of the world’s smallest country remained startlingly lax. What’s more, those who worked behind the walls enjoyed extraordinary freedom of movement. They knew the doors that were never locked, the chapels that were never used, and the storerooms where it was possible to plot, scheme, or caress the flesh of a lover in complete privacy. They also knew the secret passageways leading into the Basilica. Gabriel knew one or two himself.

“Was there anyone else in the Basilica at the time?”

“Not that we’re aware of,” replied Vitale.

“But you can’t rule it out.”

“That’s correct. But no one reported anything unusual.”

“Where’s her handbag?”

“She left it up in the gallery before jumping.”

“Was anything missing?”

“Not that we know of.”

But there was something missing; Gabriel was certain of it. He closed his eyes and for an instant saw Claudia as she had been the previous evening—the warm smile, the flirtatious glance from her blue eyes, the batch of files she had been clutching to her breast.

And the cross of gold around her neck.

“I’d like to have a look at the gallery,” he said.

“I’ll take you up,” answered Vitale.

“That won’t be necessary.” Gabriel rose. “I’m sure the monsignor will be good enough to show me the way.”

4 ST. PETER’S BASILICA

THERE WERE TWO WAYS TO make the ascent from the main level of the Basilica to the base of the dome—a long, twisting stairwell or an elevator large enough to accommodate two dozen well-fed pilgrims. Donati, an unrepentant smoker, suggested the elevator, but Gabriel headed for the steps instead.

“The elevator is shut down in the afternoon after the last group of tourists is admitted. There’s no way Claudia could have used it late at night.”

“That’s true,” Donati said with a morose glance at his handmade loafers, “but it’s several hundred steps.”

“And we’re going to search every one.”

“For what?”

“When I saw Claudia last night, she was wearing a gold cross around her neck.”

“And?”

“It’s no longer there.”

Gabriel mounted the first step with Donati at his heels and climbed slowly upward. His careful search of the stairwell produced nothing but a few discarded admission tickets and a crumpled flier advertising the services of a less-than-saintly enterprise involving young women from Eastern Europe. At the top of the stairs was a landing. In one direction was the roof terrace; in the other, the viewing gallery for the dome. Gabriel peered over the balustrade at the now-miniaturized figures of Vitale and Metzler, then set out slowly along the catwalk with his eyes lowered toward the timeworn marble. After a few paces, he found the cross. The clasp was intact, but the thin gold chain had been snapped.

“It’s possible she tore it off before climbing over the balustrade,” Donati said, examining the broken chain by the light of one of the dome’s sixteen windows.

“I suppose anything is possible. But the more likely explanation is that the chain was broken by someone else.”

“Who?”

“The person who killed her.” Gabriel was silent for a moment. “Her neck was snapped like a twig, Luigi. I suppose the break could have occurred on impact, but I believe it happened up here. Her killer probably didn’t notice he broke the chain of Claudia’s cross as well. He did notice the shoes, though. That’s why they were found so far apart. He probably hurled them over the barrier before making his escape.”

“How certain are you that she was murdered?”

“As certain as you are.” Gabriel studied Donati’s face carefully. “Something tells me you know more than you’re saying, Luigi.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Is there anything you wish to confess, Monsignor?”

“Yes,” said Donati, peering down at the floor of the Basilica. “It’s possible the person responsible for Claudia Andreatti’s death might be standing right in front of you.”

They headed out onto the roof terrace of the Basilica to walk among the apostles and the saints. Donati’s black cassock billowed and snapped in the cold wind. In one hand, entwined around his fingers like the beads of a rosary, was Claudia’s gold necklace.

“She was conducting . . .” Donati paused for a moment, as if searching for the appropriate word. “An investigation,” he said at last.

“What sort of investigation?”

“The only kind we ever do around here.”

“A secret investigation,” said Gabriel. “Ordered by you, of course.”

“At the behest of the Holy Father,” Donati added hastily.

“And the nature of this investigation?”

“As you know, there’s been a debate raging within the art world and the curatorial community over who owns antiquity. For centuries, the great empires of Europe looted the treasures of the ancient world with reckless abandon. The Rosetta Stone, the Elgin Marbles, the great temples of ancient Egypt—the list goes on and on. Now the source countries are demanding the symbols of their cultural heritage be returned. And they often turn to the police and courts for help in getting them back.”

“You were afraid the Vatican Museums were vulnerable?”

“We probably are.” Donati paused along the façade of the Basilica and pointed toward the Egyptian obelisk in the center of the square. “It’s one of eight here in Rome. They were built by craftsmen from an empire that no longer exists and brought here by soldiers of an empire that also no longer exists. Should we send them back to Egypt? What about the Venus de Milo or the Winged Victory of Samothrace? Would they really be better off in Athens than in the Louvre? Would more people see them?”

“You sound like a bit of a hawk on this issue.”

“My enemies often mistake me for a liberal who’s trying to destroy the Church. In reality, despite my Jesuit education, I am as doctrinaire as they come. I believe that great treasures of antiquity should be displayed in great museums.”

“Why Claudia?”

“Because she disagreed with me vehemently,” Donati replied. “I didn’t want the report to be a whitewash. I wanted the potential worst-case scenario, the unvarnished truth about the source of every piece in our possession. The Vatican’s collection is among the oldest and largest in the world. And much of it is completely unprovenanced.”

“Which means you don’t know exactly where it came from.”

“Or even when it was acquired.” Donati shook his head slowly. “You might find this hard to believe, but until the 1930s, the Vatican Library had no proper catalog system. Books were stored by size and color. Size and color,” Donati repeated incredulously. “I’m afraid the record keeping at the museums wasn’t much better.”

“So you asked Claudia to undertake a review of the collection to see whether any of the pieces might be tainted.”

“With a special emphasis on the Egyptian and Etruscan collections,” Donati added. “But I should stipulate that Claudia’s inquiry was completely defensive in nature. In a way, it was a bit like a campaign manager who investigates his own candidate in order to uncover any dirt his opponent might find.”

“And if she’d discovered a problem?”

“We would have weighed our options carefully,” Donati said with lawyerly precision. “Lengthy deliberation is our specialty. It’s one of the reasons we’re still around after two thousand years.”

The two men turned and started slowly back toward the dome. Gabriel asked how long Claudia had been working on the project.

“Six months.”

“Who else knew about it?”

“Only the director of the museum. And the Holy Father, of course.”

“Had she given you any findings?”

“Not yet.” Donati hesitated. “But we had a meeting scheduled. She said she had something urgent to tell me.”

“What was it?”

“She didn’t say.”

“When were you supposed to meet?”

“Last night.” Donati paused, then added, “At nine o’clock.”

Gabriel stopped and turned toward Donati. “Why so late?”

“Running a church of one billion souls is a big job. It was the only time I was free.”

“What happened?”

“Claudia called my assistant and asked to reschedule the meeting for this morning. She didn’t give a reason.”

Donati removed a cigarette from an elegant gold case and tapped it against the cover before igniting it with a gold lighter. Not for the first time, Gabriel had to remind himself that the tall man in black was actually a Catholic priest.

“In case you’re wondering,” Donati said, “I did not kill Claudia Andreatti. Nor do I know why anyone would want her dead. But if it becomes public that I was scheduled to meet with her the evening of her death, I’ll be placed in a difficult position, to say the least. And so will the Holy Father.”

“Which is why you haven’t mentioned any of this to Vitale or Metzler.”

Donati was silent.

“What do you want from me, Luigi?”

“I want you to help protect my Church from another scandal. And me, as well.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Two investigations. One will be carried out by Vitale and the gendarmes. It will be short in duration and will conclude that Dottoressa Andreatti took her own life by throwing herself from the gallery of the dome.”

“Rome has spoken; the case is closed.”

“Amen.”

“And the second investigation?”

“Will be carried out by you,” Donati said. “And its findings will be presented to only one person.”

“The private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII.”

Donati nodded.

“I came to Rome to restore a painting, Luigi.”

“You wouldn’t be in Rome if it wasn’t for the intervention of my master and me. And now we need a favor in return.”

“How Christlike of you, Monsignor.”

“Christ never had to run a church. I do.”

Gabriel smiled in spite of himself. “You told the Italian security services you needed me to clean a Caravaggio. Something tells me they won’t be pleased if they find out I’m conducting a murder investigation.”

“So I suppose we’ll have to deceive them. Trust me,” Donati added, “it won’t be the first time.”

They paused along the railing. Directly below, in the small courtyard outside the entrance to the Vatican necropolis, the body of Claudia Andreatti was being placed in the back of an unmarked van. Standing a few feet away, like a mourner at the side of an open grave, was Lorenzo Vitale.

“I’ll need a few things to get started,” Gabriel said, watching the Vatican police chief. “And I need you to get them for me without Vitale knowing.”

“Such as?”

“A copy of the hard drive of the computer in her office, along with her telephone records and all the documentation she assembled while conducting her review of the Vatican collection.”

Donati nodded. “In the meantime,” he said, “it might be wise to have a look inside Claudia’s apartment before Vitale can obtain clearance from the Italian authorities to do so himself.”

“How do you suggest I get through the front door?”

Donati handed Gabriel a ring of keys.

“Where did you get these?”

“Rule number one at the Vatican,” Donati said. “Don’t ask too many questions.”

5 PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROME

BY THE TIME THE VATICAN PRESS OFFICE confirmed that Dr. Claudia Andreatti, the esteemed curator of antiquities, had committed suicide in St. Peter’s Basilica, rumors of her demise had thoroughly penetrated the gossipy little village known as the Holy See. Inside the restoration lab, work ceased as the staff gathered around the examination tables to ponder how they had missed the signs of Dr. Andreatti’s emotional distress, how it was possible to work with someone for years and know so little about her personal life. Gabriel murmured a few appropriate words of sympathy but for the most part kept to his private corner of the lab. He remained there, alone with the Caravaggio, until late afternoon, when he hiked back to the apartment near the Piazza di Spagna through a freezing drizzle. He found Chiara leaning against the kitchen counter. Her dark hair was held in place by a velvet ribbon at the nape of her neck. Her eyes were fixed on the television, where a reporter for the BBC was recounting a story of a tragic suicide under a computer-generated banner that read DEATH IN THE BASILICA. When a still photograph of Claudia appeared on the screen, Chiara shook her head slowly.

“She was such a beautiful girl. Somehow it always seems harder to understand when they’re pretty.”

She removed the cork from a bottle of Sangiovese and poured out two glasses. Gabriel reached for his, then stopped. Dark and rich, the wine was the color of blood.

“Is something wrong?”

“Donati asked me to have a look at the body.”

“Why ever would he do that?”

“He wanted a second opinion.”

“He doesn’t think she committed suicide?”

“No. And neither do I.”

He told Chiara about the broken necklace, about the shoes that landed too far apart, about the quiet review of the Vatican’s antiquities collection. Lastly, he told her about the urgent meeting that was supposed to take place in Donati’s office.

“Now I understand the problem,” Chiara said. “Attractive female curator is supposed to meet with powerful private secretary. Instead, attractive female curator ends up dead.”

“Leaving every conspiracy theorist in the world to speculate that the powerful private secretary was somehow involved in the curator’s death.”

“Which explains why he’s asking you to help with a cover-up.”

“That’s not how I would describe it.”

“How would you?”

“A private fact-finding mission, like the ones we used to carry out for King Saul Boulevard.”

King Saul Boulevard was the address of Israel’s foreign intelligence service. It had a long and deliberately misleading name that had very little to do with the true nature of its work. Even retired agents like Gabriel and Chiara referred to it as the Office and nothing else.

“This has all the makings of yet another Vatican scandal,” Chiara warned. “And if you’re not careful, your friend Monsignor Luigi Donati is going to drop you right in the middle of it.”

She switched off the television without another word and carried their wineglasses into the sitting room. On the coffee table was a tray of assorted bruschetta. Chiara watched Gabriel intently as he selected one smeared with artichoke hearts and ricotta cheese and washed it down with the Sangiovese. Her eyes, wide and oriental in shape, were the color of caramel and flecked with gold. They tended to change color with her mood. Gabriel could see she was troubled. She had a right to be. Their last assignment for the Office, an operation against a jihadist terror network, had been a particularly violent affair that ended in the Empty Quarter of Saudi Arabia. Chiara had hoped the Caravaggio restoration would prove to be the final stage of Gabriel’s long and difficult recovery, the start of a new life free from the gravitational pull of the Office. It was not supposed to include an investigation carried out on behalf of the pope’s private secretary.

“Well?” she asked.

“It was delicious,” said Gabriel.

“I wasn’t talking about the bruschetta.” Chiara rearranged the pillows at the end of the couch. She always rearranged things when she was annoyed. “Have you considered what the Italian security service is going to do if they find out you’re freelancing for the Vatican? They’ll run us out of the country. Again.”

“I tried to explain that to Donati.”

“And?”

“He invoked the name of his master.”

“He’s not your pope, Gabriel.”

“What should I have said?”

“Find someone else,” she replied. “They’re three lovely little words you need to learn.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen Claudia’s body.”

“That’s not fair.”

“But it happens to be the truth. I’ve seen many dead bodies in my life, but I’ve never seen one that had fallen more than a hundred and fifty feet and landed on a marble floor.”

“What a terrible way to die.” Chiara watched the rain pattering on the little terrace overlooking the Spanish Steps. “How certain are you that Donati is telling you the truth?”

“About what?”

“About his relationship with Claudia Andreatti.”

“If you’re asking whether I think they were romantically involved, the answer is no.”

“You grew up with a mother who never told you about the things that happened to her during the war.”

“Your point?”

“Everyone keeps secrets. Even from the people they trust the most. Call it female intuition, but I’ve always felt there was more to Monsignor Donati than meets the eye. He has a past. I’m sure of it.”

“We all do.”

“But some of us have more interesting pasts than others. Besides,” she added, “how much do you really know about his personal life?”

“Enough to know that he would never do anything as reckless as having an affair with an employee of the Vatican.”

“I suppose you’re right. But I can’t imagine what it’s like for a man who looks like Luigi Donati to be celibate.”

“He deals with it by giving off an aura of absolute unavailability. He also wears a long black skirt and sleeps next door to the pope.”

Chiara smiled and plucked a bruschetta from the tray. “There is at least one fringe benefit to accepting the case,” she said thoughtfully. “It would give us a chance to take a look at the Church’s private collection of antiquities. God only knows what they really have locked away in their storerooms.”

“God and the popes,” said Gabriel. “But it’s far too much material for me to review on my own. I’m going to need help from someone who knows a thing or two about antiquities.”

“Me?”

“If the Office hadn’t got its hooks into you, you’d be a professor at an important Italian university.”

“That’s true,” she said. “But I studied the history of the Roman Empire.”

“Anyone who studies the Romans knows something about their artifacts. And your knowledge of Greek and Etruscan civilization is far superior to mine.”

“I’m afraid that’s not saying much, darling.”

Chiara arched one eyebrow before raising the glass of wine to her lips. Her appearance had changed noticeably since their arrival in Rome. Seated as she was now, with her hair tumbling about her shoulders and her olive skin aglow, she looked remarkably like the intoxicating young Italian woman Gabriel had encountered for the first time, ten years earlier, in the ancient ghetto of Venice. It was almost as if the toll of the many long and dangerous operations had been erased. Only the faint shadow of loss fell across her face. It had been left there by the child she had miscarried while being held as ransom by the Russian oligarch and arms dealer Ivan Kharkov. They had not been able to conceive since. Privately, Chiara had resigned herself to the prospect that she and Gabriel might never have a child.

“There is one other possibility,” she suggested.

“What’s that?”

“That Dr. Claudia Andreatti climbed to the top of the Basilica in a state of emotional turmoil and threw herself to her death.”

“When I saw her last night, she didn’t look like a woman in turmoil. In fact . . .” Gabriel’s voice trailed off.

“What?”

“I got the sense she wanted to tell me something.”

Chiara was silent for a moment. “How long will it take for Donati to get us her files?” she asked finally.

“A day or two.”

“So what do we do in the meantime?”

“I think we should get to know her a little better.”

“How?”

Gabriel held up the ring of keys.

She lived on the opposite side of the river in Trastevere, in a faded old palazzo that had been converted into a faded old apartment house. Gabriel and Chiara strolled past the doorway twice while determining that their usual complement of Italian watchers had decided to take the night off. Then, on the third pass, Gabriel approached the door with the easy confidence of a man who had business within the premises and ushered Chiara inside. They found the foyer in semi-darkness and Claudia’s mailbox bulging with what appeared to be several days’ worth of uncollected post. Gabriel removed the items and placed them into Chiara’s handbag. Then he led her to the base of the wide central staircase and together they started to climb.

It did not take long for Gabriel to feel a familiar sensation spreading over him. Shamron, his mentor, called it “the operational buzz.” It caused him to walk on the balls of his feet with a slight forward tilt and to draw his breath with the evenness of a ventilator. And it compelled him to instinctively assume the worst, that behind every door, around every darkened corner, lurked an old enemy with a gun and an unpaid debt to collect. His eyes flickered restlessly, and his sense of hearing, suddenly acute, locked onto every sound, no matter how faint or trivial—the splash of water in a basin, the diminishment of a violin concerto, the wail of an inconsolable child.

It was this sound, the sound of a child weeping, that followed Gabriel and Chiara onto the third-floor landing. Gabriel walked over to the door of 3B and ran his fingertips quickly round the doorjamb before inserting the key into the lock. Then, soundlessly, he turned the latch and they slipped inside. Instantly, they realized they were not alone. Seated in a pool of lamplight, weeping softly, was Dr. Claudia Andreatti.

6 TRASTEVERE, ROME

THE WOMAN WAS NOT CLAUDIA, of course, but the likeness was unnerving. It was as if Caravaggio had painted the curator’s portrait, and then, pleased with his creation, had produced an exact copy down to the smallest detail—the same scale and composition, the same features, the same sandstone-colored hair, the same translucent blue eyes. Now the copy appraised Gabriel and Chiara silently for a moment before wiping a tear from her cheek.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I’m a colleague of Claudia’s from the museum,” Gabriel answered vaguely. He realized suddenly that he was staring too intently at the woman’s face. Earlier that morning, on the way out of the Basilica, Luigi Donati had mentioned something about a sister who lived in London, but he’d left out the part about an identical twin.

“You worked with Claudia in the antiquities division?” she asked.

“No,” replied Gabriel. “I was asked to collect some files that she borrowed from the archives. If I had known you were here, I never would have intruded on your privacy.”

The woman appeared to accept the explanation. Gabriel felt an uncharacteristic stab of guilt. Though he was trained in the fine art of lying, he was understandably apprehensive about telling an untruth to the wraith of a dead woman. Now the wraith rose to her feet and came slowly toward him through the half-light.

“Where did you get those?” she asked, nodding toward the keys in Gabriel’s hand.

“They were found in Claudia’s desk,” he said as the knife of guilt twisted slowly within his chest.

“Was anything else found?”

“Such as?”

“A suicide note?”

Gabriel could scarcely believe she hadn’t said my suicide note. “I’m afraid you’ll have to ask the Vatican police about that,” he said.

“I intend to.” She took a step closer. “I’m Paola Andreatti,” she said, extending her hand. When Gabriel hesitated to grasp it, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “So it’s true, after all.”

“What’s that?”

“My sister told me that you were the one who was restoring the Caravaggio, Mr. Allon. I have to admit I’m rather surprised to see you here now.”

Gabriel grasped the outstretched hand and found it warm and damp to the touch.

“Forgive me,” she said, “but I was doing the dishes before you arrived. I’m afraid my sister left quite a mess.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everything in the apartment was slightly out of place,” she said, looking around. “I’ve tried to restore some semblance of order.”

“When did you speak to her last?”

“A week ago Wednesday.” The answer came without hesitation. “She sounded busy but entirely normal, not at all like someone who was about to . . .”

She stopped herself and looked at Chiara. “Your assistant?” she asked.

“She has the great misfortune of being married to me.”

Paola Andreatti smiled sadly. “I’m tempted to say you’re a lucky man, Mr. Allon, but I’ve read enough about your past to know that’s not exactly the case.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you read in the newspapers.”

“I don’t.”

She studied Gabriel carefully for a moment. Her eyes were identical to the ones he had seen earlier that morning staring lifelessly into the dome of the Basilica. It was like being scrutinized by a ghost.

“Perhaps we should begin this conversation again,” she said finally. “But this time, don’t lie to me, Mr. Allon. I just lost my sister and my closest friend in the world. And there’s no way the Vatican would send a man like you to collect a few stray files.”

“I won’t lie to you.”

“Then please tell me why you’re here.”

“For the same reason you are.”

“I’m trying to find out why my sister is dead.”

“So am I.”

The ghost seemed relieved she was no longer alone. She stood her ground for another moment as if guarding the passageway to her secrets. Then she stepped to one side and invited Gabriel and Chiara to enter.

The sitting room was a place of academic disarray, of shelves sagging beneath the weight of countless books, of end tables piled high with dog-eared files and hulking monographs. It had an air of urgency, as though its occupant had been in pursuit of something and had been struggling to meet a deadline. Paola Andreatti was right about one thing; everything in the apartment looked slightly askew, as though it had been moved and hastily put back into place. Gabriel walked over to the cluttered writing desk and switched on the lamp. Then he crouched and examined the surface of the desk in the raked lighting. In the center was a perfect rectangle, about ten inches by fifteen inches, where no dust was present. He picked up a half-drunk cup of coffee and carried it into the kitchen, where Chiara and Paola Andreatti stood before the sink finishing the last of the dishes. Neither woman spoke as he placed the cup on the counter and sat at the tiny café-style table.

“Was your sister a believer?” he asked.

“She was a devout Catholic. I’m not so sure whether she actually believed in God.” She looked up from her work at the sink. “Why do you ask?”

“She wore a cross.”

“It belonged to our mother. It was the one possession of hers that Claudia wanted. Fortunately, it was the one thing I didn’t want.”

“You don’t share your sister’s faith?”

“I’m a cardiologist, Mr. Allon. I’m a woman of science, not faith. I also believe that more evil has been carried out in the name of religion than any other force in human history. Look at the terrible fate of your own people. The Church falsely branded you as the murderers of God, and for two thousand years you’ve suffered the consequences. Now you’ve returned to the land of your birth only to find yourself locked in a war without end. Is this really what God had in mind when he made his pact with Abraham?”

“Perhaps Abraham forgot to read the fine print.”

Chiara fixed Gabriel with a reproachful stare, but Paola Andreatti managed a fleeting smile. “If you’re asking whether my sister would be reluctant to kill herself because of her religious beliefs, the answer is yes. She also regarded St. Peter’s Basilica as a sacred place that was inspired by God. Besides,” she added, “I’m a physician. I know a suicidal person when I see one. And my sister was not suicidal.”

“No trouble at work?” asked Gabriel.

“Not that she mentioned.”

“What about a man?” asked Chiara.

“Like many women in this country, my sister hadn’t managed to find an Italian man suitable for marriage or even a serious relationship. It’s one of the reasons I ended up in London. I married a proper Englishman. Then, five years later, he gave me a proper English divorce.”

She dried her hands and began returning the newly clean dishes to the cabinets. There was something mildly absurd about her actions, like watering a garden while thunder cracked in the distance, but they seemed to give her a momentary sense of peace.

“Twins are different,” she said, closing the cabinet. “We shared everything—our mother’s womb, our nursery, our clothing. You might find this rather strange, Mr. Allon, but I always assumed my sister and I would share the same coffin.”

She walked over to the refrigerator. On the door, held in place by a magnet, was a photograph of the sisters posed along the railing of a ferry. Even Gabriel, who had an artist’s appreciation of the human form, could scarcely tell one from the other.

“It was taken during a day cruise on Lake Como last August,” said Paola Andreatti. “I was recently separated from my husband. Claudia and I went alone, just the two of us. I paid, of course. Employees of the Vatican can’t afford to stay in five-star hotels. It was the best vacation I’d had in years. Claudia said all the appropriate things about my pending divorce, but I suspect she was secretly relieved. It meant she would have me to herself again.”

She opened the refrigerator, exhaled heavily, and began placing the contents in a plastic rubbish bin. “As of this moment,” she said, “several hundred million people around the world believe my sister committed suicide. But not one of them knows that Gabriel Allon, a former Israeli intelligence agent and friend of the Vatican, is now sitting at her kitchen table.”

“I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

“I’m sure the men of the Vatican would, too. Because your presence suggests they believe there’s more to my sister’s death than merely a soul in distress.”

Gabriel made no response.

“Do you believe Claudia killed herself?”

“No,” Gabriel said. “I do not believe Claudia killed herself.”

“Why not?”

He told her about the broken necklace, about the shoes, and about the perfect rectangle on her sister’s desk where no dust was present. “You weren’t the first person to come here tonight,” he said. “Others came before you. They were professionals. They took anything that might be incriminating, including your sister’s laptop computer.”

She closed the refrigerator and stared silently at the photograph on the door.

“You did notice the computer was missing, didn’t you?”

“It’s not the only thing,” she said softly.

“What else?”

“My sister never went to sleep at night without writing a few lines in her diary. She kept it on her bedside table. It’s no longer there.” Paola Andreatti looked at Gabriel for a moment without speaking. “How long will it be necessary to allow this terrible lie about my sister to persist?”

“For as long as it takes to discover the truth. But I can’t do it alone. I’m going to need your help.”

“What kind of help?”

“You can start by telling me about your sister.”

“And then?”

“We’re going to search this apartment together one more time.”

“I thought you said the men were professionals.”

“They were,” said Gabriel. “But sometimes even professionals make mistakes.”

They moved into the sitting room and settled amid Claudia’s books and papers. Paola Andreatti spoke of her sister as though she were speaking of herself. For Gabriel, it was like interviewing a corpse that had been granted the ability to speak.

“Did she use any other e-mail address besides her Vatican account?”

“Everyone at the Vatican keeps a private account. Especially the priests.”

She recited a Gmail address. Gabriel didn’t need to write it down; his uncanny ability to mimic the brushstrokes of the Old Masters was matched only by the precision of his memory. Besides, he thought, when one is pitted against professionals, it is best to behave like one.

The interview complete, they searched the apartment. Chiara and Paola Andreatti saw to the bedroom while Gabriel handled the desk. He searched now as he imagined it had been searched in the hours after Claudia’s death—drawer by drawer, file by file, page by page. Despite his thoroughness, he found nothing to indicate why anyone might want to kill her.

But the men who had come before Gabriel had indeed made one mistake; they had left the building without emptying Claudia’s mailbox. Now Gabriel withdrew the post from Chiara’s handbag and quickly flipped through it until he found a credit card bill. The charges were a glimpse into a typical Roman life, preserved forever, like archaeological debris, in the memory banks of a mainframe computer. All the expenditures appeared unremarkable except for one. Two weeks before her death, it appeared that Claudia had spent the night in a hotel in Ladispoli, a drab seaside resort just north of Rome. Gabriel had passed through the town once in another lifetime. He recalled little of the place other than mediocre restaurants and a beach the color of asphalt. He returned the bill to its envelope and sat there for several minutes, a single question turning over in his mind. Why would a woman like Claudia Andreatti spend the night in a hotel on the Italian coast, just thirty minutes from her own apartment, in the middle of winter? He could think of only two possible explanations. The first involved love. The second was the reason she was dead.

7 VATICAN CITY

THEY HELD THE FUNERAL MASS on the third day, in the Church of St. Anne. The Holy Father did not attend, but after much quiet debate, it was decided somewhere within the halls of the Apostolic Palace that the papal private secretary would officiate. Gabriel entered the church as Donati, cloaked in white vestments, led the mourners in the recitation of the Penitential Act. Paola Andreatti sat silently in the second row, her face expressionless. Her presence made Claudia’s colleagues visibly uneasy; it was as if the soul of the departed had decided to attend her own burial. At the conclusion of the mass, as she followed the casket slowly into the Via Belvedere, she passed Gabriel without a glance. A few seconds later, Donati did the same.

The restoration lab was officially closed that day, but Gabriel decided to use the opportunity to spend a few uninterrupted hours alone with the Caravaggio. Shortly after four o’clock, he received a text message from Father Mark, Donati’s assistant, asking him to come to a café just beyond the walls of the Vatican on the Borgo Pio. When Gabriel arrived, the young priest was contemplating the screen of his BlackBerry at a table near the window. Father Mark was an American from Philadelphia. He had a face like an altar boy and the eyes of someone who never lost at cards, which was why he worked for Donati.

“A gift from the monsignor,” he said, handing Gabriel a small plastic bag from the Vatican bookstore.

“A collection of the Holy Father’s encyclicals?”

Father Mark frowned. He didn’t like jokes about His Holiness. He didn’t like Gabriel much, either.

“It’s all of Dr. Andreatti’s research into the entire antiquities collection, just as you requested.”

“All in this little bag? How miraculous.”

“Thumb drives,” the priest explained pedantically. Father Mark might have had a sense of humor once, but it had been scrubbed away by eight years of seminary training.

“What about her phone records?”

“I’m working on it.”

“E-mail?”

“This is the Vatican we’re talking about. These things take time.” Nothing registered on the young priest’s angelic face. Even Gabriel couldn’t tell whether he was holding a straight flush or a pair of deuces. “The monsignor would like to know how you intend to proceed with your inquiry,” he said, checking his BlackBerry.

“The first thing I’m going to do is go blind reading several thousand pages of documentation regarding the provenance of your antiquities collection.”

“And then?”

“Tell the monsignor he’ll be the first to know.”

The priest stood abruptly and, citing an urgent matter requiring his attention, headed back to the Vatican. Gabriel slipped the plastic bag into his coat pocket, hesitated for a moment, and then autodialed a number on his BlackBerry. A gruff male voice answered in Hebrew. Gabriel murmured a few words in the same language and quickly severed the connection before the man at the other end could object. Then he sat there as night fell over the narrow street, wondering whether he had just made his first mistake.

There were few more thankless jobs than to be the declared chief of an Office station in Western Europe. Shimon Pazner, head of the generously staffed post inside the Israeli Embassy in Rome, had borne that burden longer than most. His tenure had coincided with a precipitous slide in Israel’s public standing among Europeans of every stripe. Where once his country was regarded as a minor irritant, Europeans now viewed the Zionist enterprise with almost universal contempt and scorn. Israel was no longer a beacon of democracy in a troubled Middle East; it was an illegitimate rogue, an occupier, and a threat to world peace. Famously undiplomatic, Pazner had done little to help his cause. High on the list of Italian grievances was his conduct during meetings. His standard response when questioned about Israeli tactics and operations was to remind his brethren that, were it not for the deplorable conduct of Europeans, there would be no Israel at all.

Gabriel found Pazner seated alone on a stone bench outside the Galleria Borghese. Short and compact, he had gunmetal gray hair and a face like pumice. He offered Gabriel a perfunctory greeting in Italian, then suggested it might be better if they walked. They headed westward across the gardens along a footpath lined with umbrella pine. The cold air was heavy with the scent of damp leaves, wood smoke, and cooking—the smell of Rome on a winter’s night. Pazner spoiled it by lighting a cigarette. His mood seemed worse than usual, but it was always a little hard to tell with Pazner. Rome annoyed him. As far as Pazner was concerned, it would always be the center of the empire that had destroyed the Second Temple and scattered the Jews to the four winds of the diaspora. He was a man with a long memory who held grudges. Gabriel was the object of several.

“I suppose it’s fortuitous you called,” he said finally. “We needed to have a word with you.”

“We?”

“Don’t get nervous, Gabriel. No one at King Saul Boulevard has any intention of calling you out of retirement again, not after what you went through in Saudi Arabia. Even the old man seems content to leave you in peace this time.”

“Are you sure we’re talking about the same Ari Shamron?”

“Actually, he’s not the same, not anymore.” Pazner was silent for a moment. “Far be it from me to tell you how to live your life,” he said at last, “but it might be a good idea to pay him a visit the next time you’re in town.”

“When did you see him last?”

“A few weeks ago when I was in Tel Aviv for the annual meeting of the station chiefs. Shamron made his traditional appearance at dinner on the last night. He used to stay up to all hours regaling us with stories about the old days, but this time I had the sense he was just going through the motions. All I could think about was how things were when we were kids. Do you remember what he was like back then, Gabriel? The ground seemed to tremble whenever the old man entered a room.”

“I remember,” said Gabriel distantly, and for a moment he was striding across the courtyard of the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, on a sun-bleached afternoon in September 1972. Seemingly from nowhere there appeared a small iron bar of a man with hideous black spectacles and teeth like a steel trap. The man didn’t offer a name, for none was necessary. He was the one they spoke of only in whispers. The one who had stolen the secrets that led to Israel’s lightning victory in the Six-Day War. The one who had plucked Adolf Eichmann, managing director of the Holocaust, from an Argentine street corner.

As usual, Shamron had come well prepared that day. He had known, for example, that Gabriel descended from a long line of gifted artists, that he spoke fluent German with a pronounced Berlin accent, and that he was married to a fellow art student named Leah Savir. He had also known that Gabriel, having been raised by a woman who had survived the Nazi death camp at Birkenau, was a natural keeper of secrets. “The operation will be called Wrath of God,” he had said that day. “It’s not about justice. It’s about vengeance, pure and simple—vengeance for the eleven innocent lives lost at Munich.” Gabriel had told Shamron to find someone else. “I don’t want someone else,” Shamron had said. “I want you.”

It was but one of many arguments Shamron would eventually win. Time and time again, he had managed to manipulate Gabriel into doing his bidding, always coming up with some excuse, some minor operational errand, to keep his gifted prodigy within reach of the Office. It had been Shamron’s wish that Gabriel assume his rightful place in the director’s suite at King Saul Boulevard. But Gabriel, in one final act of defiance, had turned his back on the offer, handing the job instead to an old rival named Uzi Navot. For a time, it seemed Navot would be willing to act merely as Shamron’s puppet. But now, having established his hold over the Office, Navot had banished Shamron to the Judean Wilderness, thus severing the old man’s ties to the intelligence service he had created in his own image. Shamron lived now in something akin to internal exile at his villa overlooking the Sea of Galilee. The politicians and generals who used to seek his advice no longer beat a path to his door. To fill the empty hours, he repaired antique radios and tried to concoct some way to convince Gabriel, whom he loved as a son, to come home again.

“How often does he call to check up on me?”

“Never,” replied Pazner, shaking his head for emphasis.

“How often, Shimon?”

“Twice a week, sometimes three. In fact, I just got off the phone with him before you called.”

“What did he want?”

“King Saul Boulevard is in an uproar. They’re convinced something is about to come down. Something big.”

“Is there anything specific on the target?”

Pazner took a final pull at his cigarette and sent the ember arcing into the darkness. “It might be an embassy or a consulate. It might be a synagogue or a community center. They think it’s going to happen in the south, probably Istanbul or Athens, but they can’t rule out Rome. We’ve barely finished rebuilding from the last time we were hit.” Pazner glanced at Gabriel and added, “Something tells me you remember that attack well.”

Gabriel didn’t respond directly. “Is it al-Qaeda?”

“After your last operation, there’s probably no al-Qaeda network or cell capable of carrying out a major attack in Europe. And since the Palestinians have no interest in hitting us here at the moment, that leaves only one other candidate.”

“The Iranians.”

“Acting through their favorite proxy, of course.”

Hezbollah . . .

They had reached the edge of the Piazza di Siena. The broad dusty oval was awash with pale moonlight, and the sound of the traffic along the Corso was but a whisper. It was almost possible to imagine they were the last two men alive in an ancient city.

“What’s the source?” asked Gabriel.

“Sources,” countered Pazner. “It’s a mosaic of intelligence, both human and signals. It appears the Qods Force of the Revolutionary Guard is running the operation. Department Five of VEVAK is apparently involved as well.”

VEVAK was the Persian-language acronym of the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, Iran’s formidable intelligence service. Department Five was among its most important divisions, for it dealt exclusively with the State of Israel.

“According to one of our assets in southern Lebanon,” Pazner continued, “a team of Hezbollah operatives left Beirut about six weeks ago. We think it’s a straight revenge operation. Frankly, we’ve been expecting something like this for some time. They have good reason to be angry at us.”

For much of the past decade, the Office had been waging a not-so-secret war against the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Scientists had been assassinated, destructive computer viruses had been introduced into labs and facilities, and faulty parts had been cleverly inserted into Iran’s nuclear supply chain—including several dozen sabotaged industrial centrifuges that destroyed four secret enrichment facilities. The operation had been one of Gabriel’s finest. Fittingly, it had been code-named Masterpiece.

“Has my name come up in any of the intel?”

“Not a whisper. But that doesn’t mean they don’t suspect you were the one behind it. Anyone who underestimates the Iranians does so at his own risk, you included.”

“I’ve never underestimated them. But I have no intention of spending the rest of my life in hiding.”

“No one’s suggesting that.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Jerusalem is lovely this time of year.”

“Actually, it’s miserable. But that’s beside the point. I’m too busy to leave Rome.”

“So I’ve heard. I’ve also heard that your friend the monsignor asked you to have a look at the suicide in the Basilica while the body was still in situ.”

“Very impressive, Shimon. How did you know I was there?”

“Because Lorenzo Vitale told one of his old friends in the Guardia di Finanza. And that friend told one of his friends in the Italian security service. And the friend from the Italian security service told me. He also told me that if you step out of line, he’ll put you on the first plane out of town.”

“Tell him I’m living up to the letter and spirit of our agreement.”

“Is that why Donati’s assistant invited you to coffee this afternoon?”

“I see you’re monitoring my mobile phone again.”

“What makes you think I ever stopped?” Pazner walked in silence for a moment. “I don’t suppose that woman actually threw herself from the dome of the Basilica, did she?”

“No, Shimon, she didn’t.”

“Any idea why she was killed?”

“I have a theory, but I can’t pursue it without help.”

“What kind of help?”

“Forensic help,” replied Gabriel. “I need Unit 8200 to have a look under her fingernails.”

Unit 8200 was Israel’s signals intelligence service, the equivalent of the National Security Agency in the United States. Though formally under the command of the military chief of staff, it carried out tasks for all the Israeli intelligence and security agencies, including the Office. Its alumni included some of the most successful entrepreneurs in Israel’s thriving high-tech industry.

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” Pazner said. “The State of Israel is currently facing existential threats too numerous to count, and you would like the Unit to expend valuable time and effort data-mining a dead Italian woman?”

Gabriel said nothing. Pazner exhaled heavily.

“How far back do you need them to go?”

“Six months. E-mails, browsing histories, data searches.”

Pazner ignited another cigarette and blew smoke at the moon. “If I had an ounce of common sense, I’d drop this down a very deep hole, and you with it. But now you owe me one, Gabriel. And I never forget a debt.”

“How can I ever possibly repay you, Shimon?”

“You can start by telling your wife to stop dropping my watchers when she’s running her errands. I put them there for her own good.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Anything else?”

“If you happen to spot a team of Hezbollah operatives walking around Rome, give me a call. But do me a favor, and leave your gun in your pocket. I have enough problems.”

8 PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROME

THEY APPROACHED THE CASE THE way they did most things in life, with the alert, operational calm of a covert team working in a hostile land. Their target was the killer of Claudia Andreatti. And now, with the arrival of her files from the Vatican, they had the means to begin their search. Still, they braced themselves for the prospect of disappointment. The files were a bit like intelligence. And Gabriel and Chiara knew that intelligence was often incomplete, contradictory, misleading, or a combination of all three.

They worked under the assumption that others were watching their every move, and conducted themselves accordingly. Gabriel in particular had no choice but to maintain his busy daily routine. He was a man of many faces and many different missions. To the youthful Swiss Guards who greeted him each morning at St. Anne’s Gate, he was a fellow soldier, a secret sentinel, and a sometime ally. To his colleagues in the restoration lab, he was the gifted but melancholic loner who spent his days behind his black curtain, alone with his Caravaggio and his demons. And to the Italian watchers who trailed him home each afternoon, he was a legendary operative with a past so tangled they knew only bits and pieces of the story. Upon entering the apartment, he would invariably find Chiara hunched over a stack of printouts. Gabriel would work by her side for several more hours before taking her into the streets of Rome for a late supper. They ate only in small restaurants frequented by locals and never spoke of the case outside the walls of the flat.

With each passing day, Claudia Andreatti slipped further from the public’s consciousness. The doubts surrounding the publicly stated circumstances of her death diminished, the stories disappeared from the newspapers, and even the most conspiracy-minded Web sites reluctantly concluded it was time to allow her troubled soul to rest in peace. But in the little apartment above the Spanish Steps, the questions persisted. Regrettably, the files given to Gabriel by Father Mark provided not a single answer. The institution they portrayed had been blessed by the fact that, for more than a millennium, the popes held direct sovereign rule over the Papal States, an archaeologically fertile land bursting with Etruscan, Greek, and Roman antiquities. Still, like traditional museums, the Vatican had supplemented its vast holdings by purchasing or inheriting private collections. Here was a potential area for trouble. What if, for example, a private collection contained material that had been illegally excavated or had no clear provenance? But after a thorough investigation, it appeared that Claudia had discovered nothing that would present the Vatican with any legal or ethical problems. In fact, according to the documents, the hands of the Holy See were remarkably clean.

“I suppose there’s a first for everything,” Chiara said. “It looks as though the Vatican has the only museum in the world without a stolen statue hidden somewhere in its basement.”

“They have enough other problems,” said Gabriel.

“So what do we do now?”

“We wait for the Unit to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle.”

It would not be a long wait. Indeed, the following evening, one of Shimon Pazner’s underlings drew alongside Gabriel on the Via Condotti and handed over a flash drive containing six months’ worth of e-mail from Claudia Andreatti’s accounts. The next night, it was the browsing history from her IP address, along with a complete list of her Internet searches. The material provided a shockingly intimate window into the life of a woman whom Gabriel had known only in passing—news stories she had read, video clips she had watched, the secret desires she had confessed to the little white box of Google. They could see that she preferred French undergarments to Italian, that she enjoyed the music of Diana Krall and Sara Bareilles, and that she was a regular reader of the New York Times, as well as the Web log of a well-known Catholic dissident. She seemed intrigued by the prospect of traveling to New Zealand and the west coast of Ireland. She suffered from chronic back pain. She wanted to lose ten pounds.

Wherever possible, Gabriel and Chiara averted their eyes, but for the most part, they pored over her online musings as though they were fragments of stone tablets from a lost civilization. They found nothing to suggest that she was contemplating suicide or that anyone might want her dead—no jealous lovers, no debts, no personal or professional crises of any kind. Claudia Andreatti, it seemed, was the most contented woman in all of Rome.

The final batch of material from the Unit contained the records from Claudia’s mobile phone. They revealed that during the final weeks of her life, she placed several calls to a number in Cerveteri, a midsize Italian town north of Rome known for its Etruscan tombs. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was just a few miles inland from the seaside resort of Ladispoli. At Gabriel’s request, the Unit tracked down the name and address of the person associated with the number: Roberto Falcone, 22 Via Lombardia.

Late the following morning, Gabriel and Chiara walked to the bustling Stazione Termini and boarded a train to Venice. One minute before departure, they calmly exited the carriage and returned to the crowded ticket hall. As expected, the two watchers who had followed them from the Piazza di Spagna were gone. Now free of surveillance, they made their way to a nearby parking garage where Shimon Pazner kept an Office Mercedes sedan on permanent standby. Twenty minutes elapsed before the car finally came squealing up the steep ramp, though Gabriel uttered not a word of protest. To be a motorist in Rome was to suffer minor indignities in silence.

After crossing the river, Gabriel followed the walls of the Vatican to the entrance of the Via Aurelia. It bore them westward, past mile after mile of tired-looking apartment blocks, to the A12 Autostrada. From there it was only a dozen miles to Cerveteri. Gabriel spent much of the drive glancing into his rearview mirror.

“Anyone following us?” asked Chiara.

“Just five of the worst drivers in Italy.”

“What do you think is going to happen when that train arrives in Venice and we’re not on it?”

“I suspect there will be recriminations.”

“For them or us?”

A road sign warned that the turnoff for Cerveteri was approaching. Gabriel exited the motorway and spent several minutes driving through the town’s ancient center before making his way to the house located just beyond the city limits at 22 Via Lombardia. It was a modest two-level villa, set back from the road, with a flaking ocher exterior and faded green shutters that hung at a slightly drunken angle. On one side was an orchard; on the other, a small vineyard pruned for winter. Behind the villa, next to a tumbledown outbuilding, was a battered station wagon with dust-covered windows. A German shepherd snapped and snarled at them from the trampled front garden. It looked as though it hadn’t eaten in several days.

“All in all,” said Gabriel, staring morosely at the dog, “it’s not the sort of place one would normally expect to find a museum curator.”

He dialed Falcone’s number from his mobile phone. After five rings without an answer, he severed the connection.

“What now?” asked Chiara.

“We give him an hour. Then we come back.”

“Where are we going to wait?”

“Somewhere we won’t stick out.”

“That’s not so easy in a town like this,” she said.

“Any suggestions?”

“Just one.”

The Necropoli della Banditaccia lay to the north of the city, at the end of a long, narrow drive lined with cypress pine. In the car park was a kiosk-style coffee bar and café. A few steps away, in a featureless building that looked oddly temporary, were an admissions office and a small gift shop. The lone attendant, a birdlike woman with enormous spectacles, seemed startled to see them. Evidently, they were the first visitors of the day.

Gabriel and Chiara surrendered the modest admission fee and were given a handwritten map, which they were expected to return at the end of their visit. Playing the role of tourists, they descended into the first tomb and gazed at the cold, empty burial chambers. After that, they remained on the surface, wandering the labyrinth of beehive-shaped tombs, alone in the ancient city of the dead.

To help pass the time, Chiara lectured quietly on the subject of the Etruscans—a mysterious people, deeply religious but rumored to be sexually decadent, who treated men and women as social equals. Highly advanced in the arts and sciences, Etruscan craftsmen taught the Romans how to pave their roads and construct their aqueducts and sewers, a debt the Romans repaid by wiping the Etruscans from the face of the earth. Now little remained of their once-flourishing civilization other than their tombs, which is precisely what they had intended. The Etruscans had fashioned their homes of transitory materials, but their necropolises were built to last forever. In the rooms of the dead they had placed vessels, utensils, and jewelry—treasures that now were displayed in the world’s museums and in the drawing rooms of the rich.

After completing the tour, Gabriel and Chiara dutifully returned the map and headed out to the parking lot, where Gabriel dialed Roberto Falcone’s number a second time. Once again, there was no answer.

“What now?” asked Chiara.

“Lunch,” replied Gabriel.

He walked over to the kiosk and bought a half-dozen premade sandwiches in plastic wrappers.

“Hungry?” Chiara asked.

“They’re not for us.”

They climbed into the car and headed back to Falcone’s villa.

9 CERVETERI, ITALY

WITHIN THE FRATERNITY OF WESTERN intelligence, Gabriel’s fear of dogs was as legendary as his exploits. It was not an irrational fear; it was supported by a vast body of empirical evidence gathered during violent encounters too numerous to count. It seemed there was something in Gabriel’s very appearance—his catlike demeanor, his vivid green eyes—that caused even the most docile of dogs to revert to the feral, prehistoric beasts from which they all had sprung. He had been stalked by dogs, bitten by dogs, mauled by dogs, and, once, in a snowbound valley in the mountains of Inner Switzerland, the Alsatian guard dog of a prominent banker had broken his arm. Gabriel had survived the attack only because he had shot the dog in the head with a Beretta pistol. Gunplay was surely not the preferred option here in Cerveteri, but the current agitated state of Falcone’s dog meant that Gabriel would not be able to rule it out entirely. The shepherd’s mood seemed to have deteriorated in the hour since they had last seen it. There was only one reason to keep such a disagreeable creature—Roberto Falcone was obviously hiding something on his property, and it was the dog’s assignment to keep the curious at bay. Fortunately for Gabriel, it appeared the animal had been mistreated, which meant he was ripe for recruitment. Thus the large bag of sandwiches from the café at the Etruscan necropolis.

“Maybe you should let me do it,” said Chiara.

Gabriel gave her a withering glance but said nothing.

“I was just thinking—”

“I know what you were thinking.”

Gabriel turned into the property and headed slowly up the pitted gravel drive. The dog set upon the car instantly—not the passenger side, of course, but Gabriel’s. It galloped alongside the front tire, pausing every now and again to drop into an aggressive crouch and bare its savage teeth. Then, when the car came to a stop, it launched itself toward Gabriel’s window like a missile and tried to bite him through the glass. Gabriel regarded the animal calmly, which incensed it even more. It had the pale yellow eyes of a wolf and was frothing at the mouth as though it were rabid.

“Maybe you should try talking to it,” suggested Chiara.

“I don’t believe in negotiating with terrorists.”

Gabriel sighed heavily and removed the plastic wrapper from one of the sandwiches. Then he cracked the window and quickly shoved the sandwich through the gap. Six inches of Parma ham, fontina, and bread disappeared in a single ravenous bite.

“He’s obviously not kosher,” said Chiara.

“Is that a good sign or bad?”

“Bad,” she replied. “Very bad.”

Gabriel slipped another sandwich through the window. This time, the dog’s incisor nicked the tip of his finger.

“Are you all right?”

“It’s a good thing I’m ambidextrous.” He quickly fed the dog three more of the sandwiches in assembly-line fashion.

“The poor thing is starving.”

“Let’s not start feeling sorry for the dog just yet.”

“Aren’t you going to give him the last one?”

“Better to keep it in reserve. That way I’ll have something to fling at him if he decides to go for my throat.”

Gabriel unlocked the door but hesitated.

“What are you waiting for?”

“A declaration of his intentions.”

He opened the door a few inches and put a foot on the ground. The dog growled low in its throat but remained motionless. The ears were up, which Gabriel supposed was a positive development. Usually, whenever a canine was attempting to tear him to shreds, the ears were always back and down, like the wings of an attack aircraft.

Gabriel placed the last sandwich on the ground and emerged slowly from the car. Then, with his eyes still fixed on the animal’s jaws, he instructed Chiara to get out. He did so in rapid Hebrew, so the dog wouldn’t understand. Partially satiated, it devoured the food at a more decorous pace, its yellow gaze fixed on Gabriel and Chiara as they made their way toward the back door of the house. Gabriel knocked twice but there was no answer. Then he tried the latch. It was locked.

He removed the small, thin metal tool he carried always in his wallet and worked it gently inside the lock until the mechanism gave way. When he tried the latch a second time, it yielded to his touch. Inside was a cluttered mudroom filled with old work clothes and tall rubber boots caked with earth. The utility sink was dry. So were the boots.

He motioned for Chiara to enter and led her into the kitchen. The counters were stacked with dirty dishes, and hanging in the air was the acrid stench of something burning. Gabriel walked over to the automatic coffeemaker. The power light was aglow, and on the bottom of the carafe was a patch of burnt coffee the color of tar. Clearly, the machine had been on for several days—the same number of days, Gabriel reckoned, the dog had gone without food.

“He’s lucky he didn’t burn the house down,” Chiara said.

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“About what?”

“The part about Falcone being lucky.”

Gabriel switched off the coffeemaker, and they moved into the dining room. The chandelier, like the coffeemaker, had been left on, and five of the eight bulbs had burned out. At one end of the rectangular table was a meal that had been abandoned. At the other end was a cardboard box with the name of a local winery printed on the side. Gabriel lifted one of the flaps and looked inside. The box was filled with objects carefully wrapped in sheets of the Corriere della Sera. It was a rather highbrow paper for a man like Falcone, he thought. Gabriel had him figured for the Gazzetta dello Sport.

“Looks like he left in a hurry,” Chiara said.

“Or maybe he was forced to leave.”

He removed one of the objects from the box and cautiously opened the newsprint wrapper. Inside was a concave fragment of pottery about the size of Gabriel’s palm, decorated with the partial image of a young woman in semi-profile. She wore a pleated gown and appeared to be playing a flute-like instrument. Her flesh and garment were depicted in the same terra-cotta color, but the background was a luminous solid black.

“My God,” said Chiara softly.

“It looks like a portion of a red-figure Attic vessel of some sort.”

Chiara nodded. “Judging from the shape and the imagery, I’d say it comes from the upper portion of a stamnos, a Greek vase used for transporting wine. The woman is clearly a maenad, a follower of Dionysus. The instrument is a two-reed pipe known as an aulos.”

“Could it be a Roman copy of a Greek original?”

“I suppose so. But in all likelihood, it was produced in Greece two and a half millennia ago specifically for export to the Etruscan cities. The Etruscans were great admirers of Greek vases. That’s why so many important pieces have been discovered in Etruscan tomb rooms.”

“What’s it doing in a cardboard box on Roberto Falcone’s dining room table?”

“That’s the easy part. He’s a tombarolo.”

A tomb robber.

“That would explain the dog,” said Gabriel.

“And the muddy boots at the back door. He’s obviously been doing some digging, probably quite recently.” She held up the newspaper. “It’s from last week.”

Gabriel reached into the box again and withdrew another bundle of newsprint. Inside was another section of the vase. The face of a second maenad was visible, along with the kylix, a shallow cup for drinking wine, she held in her hand. Gabriel examined the image in silence before looking at the newspaper. It contained a fragment, too—a fragment of a story about a Vatican curator who had committed suicide by hurling herself from the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. The account neglected to mention that the curator had been conducting a secret inventory of the Vatican’s collection of antiquities. It appeared her inquiry had led her here, to the home of a tombarolo. Perhaps that alone had been enough to get her killed, but Gabriel suspected there had to be more.

He looked at the fragment of pottery again and lifted it to his nose. There was a trace of a chemical odor, not unlike the smell of the solvents he used to remove varnish from paintings. It suggested the fragment had recently been cleaned of soil and other encrustations, probably with a solution of nitrohydrochloric acid. Even an old man living alone in an unkempt house would find it difficult to be around such a smell for more than a few minutes. He would need to maintain a separate facility where objects could be left for long periods without fear of discovery.

Gabriel placed the fragment of pottery into his coat pocket and looked out the window toward the tumbledown outbuilding at the back of the property. Pacing outside, head down, ears back, was Falcone’s dog. Gabriel sighed heavily. Then he went into the kitchen, found a large mixing bowl, and began filling it with anything that looked remotely edible.

There were two padlocks, German made, rusted by rain. Gabriel picked them as the dog supped greedily on a casserole of canned tuna, fava beans, artichoke hearts, and condensed milk. When the door swung open, the animal looked up briefly but paid Gabriel and Chiara no heed as they slipped inside. Here the stench of acid was overwhelming. Gabriel groped blindly, one hand covering his nose and mouth, until he found the light switch. Overhead a row of fluorescent lamps flickered to life, revealing a professional-grade laboratory built for the care and storage of looted antiquities. Its neatness and order stood in stark contrast to the rest of the property. One object looked slightly out of place, a javelin-like iron pike suspended horizontally on a pair of hooks. Gabriel examined the traces of mud near the tip. It was the same color and consistency as the mud on the boots.

“It’s a spillo,” Chiara explained. “The tombaroli use it to probe for underground burial chambers. They insert it into the ground until they hear the telltale clank of a tomb room or a Roman villa. Then they bring in the shovels and the backhoes and grab whatever they can find.”

“And then,” said Gabriel, looking around, “they bring it here.”

He walked over to Falcone’s worktable. Clean and white, it was similar to the tables in the restoration lab at the Vatican Museums. At one end was a stack of scholarly monographs dealing with the antiquities of the Roman, Greek, and Etruscan empires—the same sort of books Gabriel had seen in Claudia Andreatti’s apartment. One of the volumes lay open to an image of a red-figure Attic stamnos vase decorated with maenads.

Gabriel snapped a photo of the open page with his BlackBerry before making his way over to Falcone’s storage shelves. Chrome and spotless, they were lined with antiquities arranged by type: pottery, household utensils, tools, weapons, and bits of iron that looked as though they had been extracted from the basement of time. It was evidence of looting on a massive scale. Unfortunately, it was a crime that could never be undone. Ripped from their original settings, these antiquities now said very little about the people who had made and used them.

At the far end of the building were four large stainless steel pools, approximately five feet in diameter and three feet in height. In the first three vats, there were bits of pottery, statuary, and other objects clearly visible in the reddish liquid. But in the fourth, the acid was opaque and very close to spilling over the side. Gabriel retrieved the spillo and inserted it gently into the liquid. Just beneath the surface, it collided with something soft and pliant.

“What is it?” asked Chiara.

“I could be wrong,” Gabriel said, wincing, “but I think we just found Roberto Falcone.”

10 PIAZZA DI SANT’IGNAZIO, ROME

IN THE HEART OF ROME, between the Pantheon and the Via del Corso, is a pleasant little square called the Piazza di Sant’Ignazio. On the northern side stands a church by the same name, best known for a glorious ceiling fresco painted by the Jesuit brother Andrea Pozzo. On the southern flank, across an expanse of gray paving stones, is an ornate palazzo with façades of creamy yellow and white. Two official flags fly from its third-floor balcony, and above the solemn entrance is the seal of the Carabinieri. A small plaque states that the premises are occupied by the Division for the Defense of Cultural Patrimony. But within the world of law enforcement, the unit is known simply as the Art Squad.

At the time of its formation in 1969, it was the only police organization anywhere in the world dedicated exclusively to combating the lucrative trade in stolen art and antiquities. Italy surely had need of such a unit, for it was blessed with both an abundance of art and countless professional criminals bent on stealing every last bit of it. During the next two decades, the Art Squad brought charges against thousands of people suspected of involvement in art crime and made numerous high-profile recoveries, including works by Raphael, Giorgione, and Tintoretto. Then the institutional paralysis began to set in. Manpower dwindled to a few dozen retirement-age officers—many of whom knew next to nothing about art—and inside the graceful palazzo, work proceeded at a decidedly Roman pace. It was said by the unit’s legion of detractors that more time was spent debating where to have lunch than searching for the museum’s worth of paintings that went missing in Italy each year.

That changed with the arrival of General Cesare Ferrari. The son of schoolteachers from the impoverished Campania region, Ferrari had spent his entire career battling the country’s most intractable problems. During the 1970s, a time of deadly terrorist bombings in Italy, he helped to neutralize the Communist Red Brigades. Then, during the Mafia wars of the 1980s, he served as a commander in the Camorra-infested Naples division. The assignment was so dangerous that Ferrari’s wife and three daughters were forced to live under twenty-four-hour guard. Ferrari himself was the target of numerous assassination attempts, including a letter bomb attack that claimed two of his fingers and his right eye. His ocular prosthesis, with its immobile pupil and unyielding gaze, left some of his underlings with the unnerving sense that they were staring into the all-seeing eye of God. Ferrari used the eye to great effect in coaxing low-level criminals to betray their superiors. One of the bosses Ferrari eventually brought down was the mastermind of the letter bombing. After the mafioso’s conviction, Ferrari made a point of personally escorting him to the cell at Naples’ festering Poggioreale prison where he would spend the rest of his life.

The posting to the Art Squad was supposed to be a reward for a long and distinguished career. “Shuffle paper for a few years,” the chief of the Carabinieri told him, “and then retire to your village in Campania and grow tomatoes.” Ferrari accepted the appointment and then proceeded to do exactly the opposite. Within days of arriving at the palazzo, he informed half the staff their services were no longer needed. Then he set about modernizing an organization that had been allowed to atrophy with age. He replenished the ranks with aggressive young officers, sought authority to tap the phones of known criminal operatives, and opened offices in the parts of the country where the thieves actually stole art, especially in the south. Most important, he adopted many of the techniques he had used against the Mafia during his days in Naples. Ferrari wasn’t much interested in the street-level hoods who dabbled in art theft; he wanted the big fish, the bosses who brought the stolen goods to market. It did not take long for Ferrari’s new approach to pay dividends. More than a dozen important thieves found themselves behind bars, and statistics for art theft, while still astonishingly high, showed improvement. The palazzo was no longer a retirement home; it was the place where many of the Carabinieri’s best and brightest went to make their name. And those who didn’t measure up found themselves in Ferrari’s office, staring into the unforgiving eye of God.

A career in Italian government spanning some four decades had left the general with a limited capacity for surprise. Even so, he was admittedly taken aback to see the legendary Gabriel Allon stepping through the entrance of his office early that evening, trailed by his beautiful and much younger Venetian-born wife, Chiara. The chain of events that brought them there had been set in motion four hours earlier, when Gabriel, gazing down at the partially emulsified body of Roberto Falcone, came to the disheartening realization that he had stumbled upon a crime scene that could not possibly be fled. Rather than contact the authorities directly, he rang Donati, who in turn made contact with Lorenzo Vitale of the Vatican police. After an unpleasant conversation lasting some fifteen minutes, it was decided that Vitale would approach Ferrari, with whom he had worked on numerous cases. By late afternoon, the Art Squad was on the ground in Cerveteri, along with a team from the Lazio division’s violent crimes unit. And by sunset, Gabriel and Chiara, having been relieved of their weapons, were in the back of a Carabinieri sedan bound for the palazzo.

The walls of Ferrari’s office were hung with paintings—some badly damaged, some without frames or stretchers—that had been recovered from art thieves or dirty collectors. Here they would remain, sometimes for many weeks or months, until they could be returned to their rightful owners. On the wall behind his desk, aglow as if newly restored, hung Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence. It was a copy, of course; the real version had been stolen from the Church of San Lorenzo in Palermo in 1969 and had never been seen since. Finding it was Ferrari’s obsession.

“Two years ago,” he said, “I thought I’d finally located it. A low-level art thief told me he knew the house in Sicily where the painting was being hidden. He offered to tell me in exchange for not sending him to prison for stealing an altarpiece from a village church near Florence. I accepted the offer and raided the property. The painting wasn’t there, but we found these.” Ferrari handed Gabriel a stack of Polaroid photographs. “Heartbreaking.”

Gabriel flipped through the Polaroids. They depicted a painting that had not fared well after more than forty years underground. The edges of the canvas were badly frayed—the result of the painting being cut from its stretcher with a razor—and deep cracks and abrasions marred the once glorious image.

“What happened to the thief who gave you the tip?”

“I sent him to prison.”

“But the information he gave you was good.”

“That’s true. But it wasn’t timely. And in this business, timing is everything.” Ferrari gave a brief smile that did not quite extend to his prosthetic eye. “If we do ever manage to find it, the restoration is obviously going to be difficult, even for a man of your skills.”

“I’ll make you a deal, General. If you find it, I’ll fix it.”

“I’m not in the mood for deals just yet, Allon.”

Ferrari accepted the Polaroids of the lost Caravaggio and returned them to their file. Then he stared contemplatively out the window in the manner of Bellini’s Doge Leonardo Loredan, as if debating whether to send Gabriel across the Bridge of Sighs for a few hours in the torture chambers.

“I’m going to begin this conversation by telling you everything I know. That way, you might be less tempted to lie to me. I know, for example, that your friend Monsignor Donati arranged for you to restore The Deposition of Christ for the Vatican Picture Gallery. I also know that he asked you to view the body of Dottoressa Claudia Andreatti while it was still in the Basilica—and that, subsequently, you undertook a private investigation of the circumstances surrounding her unfortunate death. That investigation led you to Roberto Falcone. And now it has landed you here,” Ferrari concluded, “in the palazzo.”

“I’ve been in far worse places than this.”

“And you will be again unless you cooperate.”

The general lit an American cigarette. He smoked it somewhat awkwardly with his left hand. The right, the one missing two fingers, was concealed in his lap.

“Why was the monsignor so concerned about this woman?” he asked.

Gabriel told him about the review of the Vatican’s antiquities.

“I was led to believe it was nothing more than a routine inventory.”

“It might have started that way. But it appears that somewhere along the line, Claudia uncovered something else.”

“Do you know what?”

“No.”

Ferrari scrutinized Gabriel as if he didn’t quite believe him. “Why were you sniffing around Falcone’s place?”

“Dr. Andreatti was in contact with him shortly before her death.”

“How do you know this?”

“I found his phone number in her records.”

“She called him from her office at the Vatican?”

“From her mobile,” said Gabriel.

“How were you, a foreigner residing in this country temporarily, able to obtain the mobile phone records of an Italian citizen?”

When Gabriel made no reply, Ferrari eyed him over the tip of his cigarette like a marksman lining up a difficult shot.

“The most logical explanation is that you called upon friends in your old service to retrieve the records for you. If that’s the case, you violated your agreement with our security authorities. And that, I’m afraid, places you in a very precarious position indeed.”

It was a threat, thought Gabriel, but only a mild one.

“Did you ever speak to Falcone yourself?” the general asked.

“I tried.”

“And?”

“He wasn’t answering his phone.”

“So you decided to break into his property?”

“Out of concern for his safety.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Ferrari sarcastically. “And once inside, you discovered what appeared to be a large cache of antiquities.”

“Along with a tombarolo simmering in a pot of hydrochloric acid.”

“How did you get past the locks?”

“The dog was more of a challenge than the locks.”

The general smiled, one professional to another, and tapped his cigarette thoughtfully against his ashtray. “Roberto Falcone was no ordinary tombarolo,” he said. “He was a capo zona, the head of a regional looting network. The low-level looters brought him their goods. Then Falcone moved the product up the line to the smugglers and the crooked dealers.”

“You seem to know a great deal about a man whose body was discovered just a few hours ago.”

“That’s because Roberto Falcone was also my informant,” the general admitted. “My very best informant. And now, thanks to you, he’s dead.”

“I had nothing to do with his death.”

“So you say.”

A uniformed aide knocked discreetly on Ferrari’s door. The general waved him away with an imperious gesture and resumed his doge-like pose of solemn deliberation.

“As I see it,” he said at last, “we have two distinct options before us. Option one, we handle everything by the book. That means throwing you to the wolves at the security service. There might be some negative publicity involved, not only for your government but for the Vatican as well. Things could get messy, Allon. Very messy indeed.”

“And the second option?”

“You start by telling me everything you know about Claudia Andreatti’s death.”

“And then?”

“I’ll help you find the man who killed her.”

11 PIAZZA DI SANT’IGNAZIO, ROME

AMONG THE PERQUISITES OF WORKING at the palazzo was Le Cave. Regarded as one of the finest restaurants in Rome, it was located just steps from the entrance of the building, in a quiet corner of the piazza. In summer the tables stood in neat rows across the cobbles, but on that February evening they were stacked forlornly against the outer wall. General Ferrari arrived without advance warning and was immediately shown, along with his two guests, to a table at the back of the room. A waiter brought a plate of arancini di riso and red wine from Ferrari’s native Campania. The general made a toast to a marriage that, for the moment, had yet to be consummated. Then, as he picked at one of the risotto croquettes, he spoke disdainfully of a man named Giacomo Medici.

Though he bore no relation to the Florentine banking dynasty, Medici shared the family’s passion for the arts. A broker of antiquities based in Rome and Switzerland, he had quietly supplied high-quality pieces for decades to some of the world’s most prominent dealers, collectors, and museums. But in 1995, his lucrative business began to unravel when Italian and Swiss authorities raided his warehouse in the Geneva Freeport and found a treasure trove of unprovenanced antiquities, some of which had clearly been recently excavated. The discovery touched off an international investigation led by the Art Squad that would eventually ensnare some of the biggest names in the art world. In 2004, an Italian court convicted Medici of dealing in stolen antiquities and gave him the harshest sentence ever handed down for such a crime—ten years in prison and a ten-million-euro fine. Italian prosecutors then used the evidence against Medici to secure the return of looted artifacts from several prominent museums. Among the items was the renowned Euphronios krater, which New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art reluctantly agreed to return to Italy in 2006. Medici, who was accused of playing a key role in the vessel’s looting, had famously posed before its display case at the Met with his arms akimbo. General Ferrari had mimicked the pose on the day the krater was triumphantly placed in its new display case at Rome’s Villa Giulia museum.

“All told,” Ferrari continued, “Medici was responsible for the looting of thousands of antiquities from Italian soil. But he didn’t do it alone. His operation was like a cordata, a rope that stretched from the tombaroli to the capi zoni to the dealers and auction houses and, ultimately, to the collectors and museums. And let’s not forget our good friends in the Mafia,” Ferrari added. “Nothing came out of the ground without their approval. And nothing went to market without a payoff to the bosses.”

Ferrari spent a moment contemplating his ruined hand before resuming his briefing. “We didn’t spend ten years and millions of euros just to bring down one man and a few of his lieutenants. Our goal was to destroy a network that was slowly pillaging the treasures bequeathed to us by our ancestors. Against all odds, we managed to succeed. But I’m afraid our victory was only temporary. The looting continues. In fact, it’s worse than ever.”

“A new network has taken the place of Medici’s?”

Ferrari nodded and then indulged in a disciplined sip of wine. “Criminals are a bit like terrorists, Allon. If you kill a terrorist, a new terrorist is sure to take his place. And almost without fail, he is more dangerous than his predecessor. This new network is far more sophisticated than Medici’s. It’s a truly global operation. And, obviously, it’s far more ruthless.”

“Who’s running it?”

“I wish I knew. It could be a consortium, but my instincts tell me it’s one man. I’d be surprised if he has any overt links to the antiquities trade. That would be beneath him,” the general added quickly. “He’s a major criminal who’s into more than selling hot pots. And he has the muscle to keep everyone in line, which means he’s connected to the Mafia. This network has the ability to rip a statue out of the ground in Greece and sell it at Sotheby’s a few months later with what appears to be an entirely clean provenance.” The general paused, then added, “He’s also getting product from your neck of the woods.”

“The Middle East?”

“Someone’s been supplying him with artifacts from places like Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. There are some nasty people in that part of the world. One wonders where all the money is going.”

“Where did Falcone fit into the picture?”

“When we stumbled upon his operation a few years ago, I convinced him to go to work for me. It wasn’t difficult,” Ferrari added, “since the alternative was a long prison sentence. We spent several weeks debriefing him here at the palazzo. Then we sent him back to Cerveteri and allowed him to resume his wicked ways.”

“But now you were looking over his shoulder,” Chiara said.

“Exactly.”

“What would happen when a tombarolo brought him a vase or a statue that he’d found?”

“Sometimes we quietly took it off the market and put it away for safekeeping. But usually we allowed Falcone to sell it up the line. That way we could track it as it moved through the bloodstream of the illicit trade. And we wanted everyone in the business to think that Roberto Falcone was a man to be reckoned with.”

“Especially the man at the top of this new smuggling network.”

“You’ve obviously done this a time or two yourself,” the general said.

Gabriel ignored the remark. “How high were you able to get him into the network?” he asked.

“Only the first rung of the ladder,” Ferrari said, frowning. “This new network learned from the mistakes of its predecessor. The men at the top don’t talk to people like Roberto Falcone.”

“So why was Claudia Andreatti talking to him?”

“Clearly, she must have found something during her review of the Vatican’s collection that led her to Falcone’s door. Something dangerous enough to get her killed. The fact that Falcone was killed too suggests it had something to do with the network. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few more bodies turn up in short order.”

“Do you realize what you’re suggesting?”

Ferrari trained his sightless eye on Gabriel and leaned across the table. “It’s not a suggestion,” he said. “I’m saying that Dr. Andreatti discovered a connection between the network and the Vatican. And that means your friend Monsignor Donati has a much bigger problem on his hands than a dead curator. It also means that you and I are pursuing the same target.”

“Which is why you’re willing to pretend that my wife and I were never in Cerveteri today,” Gabriel said. “Because if I can find out who killed Claudia, it will save you the trouble of having to crack the network.”

“It is a rather elegant solution to our dilemma,” Ferrari said.

“Why don’t you just hand me over to the security service and pursue the case yourself?”

“Because now that Falcone is dead, the only door into this new network has been slammed in my face. The chances of putting another informant in place are slim. By now, they’re well aware of my tools and techniques. They also know my personnel, which makes it difficult for me to send them undercover. I need someone who can help me destroy this network from the inside, someone who can think like a criminal.” The general paused. “Someone like you, Allon.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Just a statement of fact.”

“You overestimate my abilities.”

The general gave a knowing smile. “Early in my career, when I was working in the counterterrorism division, I was assigned to a case here in Rome. It seemed a Palestinian translator was shot to death in the lobby of his apartment building. It turned out he was no ordinary translator. As for the man who killed him, we were never able to find a single witness who could recall seeing him. It was as if he were a ghost.” The general paused. “And now he sits before me, in a restaurant in the heart of Rome.”

“I would have never figured you for a blackmailer, General.”

“I wouldn’t dream of trying to blackmail you, Allon. I was simply saying that our paths crossed once before. Now it seems fate has reunited us.”

“I don’t believe in fate.”

“Neither do I,” Ferrari replied. “But I do believe that if there’s anyone who can crack this network, it’s you. Besides,” he added, “the fact that you are already positioned inside the Vatican gives you a distinct advantage.”

Gabriel was silent for a moment. “What happens if I succeed?” he asked finally.

“I will take your information and build a case that will stand up in the Italian courts.”

“And what if that case destroys my friends?”

“I am well aware of your close relationship with this pope and with Monsignor Donati,” the general said evenly. “But if the Vatican has engaged in misdeeds, it will have to atone. Besides, I’ve always found that confession can be good for the soul.”

“If it’s done in private.”

“That might not be possible. But the best way for you to look after the interests of your friends is to accept my offer. Otherwise, there’s no telling what dirt might turn up.”

“That sounds a great deal like blackmail.”

“Yes,” the general said reflectively, “I suppose it does.”

He was smiling slightly, but his prosthetic eye stared blankly into space. It was like gazing into the eye of a figure in a painting, thought Gabriel, the all-seeing eye of an unforgiving God.

Which left only Roberto Falcone—or, more precisely, what to tell the public about his unfortunate demise. Ultimately, it came down to a choice of tactics. The matter could be handled quietly, or, as Gabriel put it, they could announce Falcone’s death with a fanfare of trumpets and thus help their own cause in the process. Ferrari chose the second option, for, like Gabriel, he was predisposed toward operational showmanship. Besides, it was budget time in a season of austerity, and Ferrari needed a victory, even an invented one, to ensure the Art Squad’s enviable funding levels continued for another fiscal year.

And so late the following morning, Ferrari summoned the news media to the palazzo for what he promised would be a major announcement. It being an otherwise slow news day, they came in droves, hoping for something that might actually sell a newspaper or entice a television viewer to pause for a few seconds before surfing off to the next channel. As usual, the general did not disappoint. Impeccably dressed in his blue Carabinieri uniform, he strode to the podium and proceeded to spin a tale as old as Italy itself. It was a tale of a man who appeared to be of modest means but was in fact one of Italy’s biggest looters of antiquities. Regrettably, the man had been brutally murdered, perhaps in a dispute with a colleague over money. The general did not specify exactly how the body was discovered, though he doled out enough of the gruesome details to guarantee front-page play in the livelier tabloids. Then, with the flawless timing of a skilled performer, he drew back a black curtain, revealing a treasure trove of artifacts recovered from the tombarolo’s workshop. The reporters let out a collective gasp. Ferrari beamed as the cameras flashed.

Needless to say, the general made no mention of the role played by the retired Israeli spy and art restorer Gabriel Allon or of the somewhat Machiavellian agreement the two men had reached over dinner at Le Cave. Nor did he divulge the name he had whispered into Gabriel’s ear as they parted company in the darkened piazza. Gabriel waited until the end of the general’s news conference before ringing her. It was clear from her tone that she had been expecting his call.

“I’m in a meeting until five,” she said. “How about five-thirty?”

“Your place or mine?”

“Mine is safer.”

“Where?”

“The krater,” she said. And then the line went dead.

12 VILLA GIULIA, ROME

IN A CITY FILLED WITH museums and archaeological wonders, the Villa Giulia, Italy’s national repository of Etruscan art and antiquities, somehow manages to keep a low profile. Rarely visited and easily missed, it occupies a rambling palazzo on the edge of the Borghese Gardens that was once the country house of Pope Julius III. In the sixteenth century, the villa had overlooked the city walls of Rome and the gentle tan slopes of the Parioli hills. Now the hills were lined with apartment blocks, and beneath the windows of the old papal retreat thundered a broad boulevard that pedestrians crossed at their own risk. The weedy forecourt had been turned into the staff parking lot. The battered fenders and sun-faded paint bore witness to the low wages earned by those who toiled within the state museums of Italy.

Gabriel arrived at 5:15 and made his way to the second-floor gallery where the Euphronios krater, regarded as one of the greatest single pieces of art ever created, resided in a simple glass display case. A small placard told of the vessel’s tangled history—how it had been looted from a tomb near Cerveteri in 1971 and sold to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the astonishing price of one million dollars, and how, thanks to the tireless efforts of the Italian government, it had finally been returned to its rightful home. Cultural patrimony had been protected, thought Gabriel, looking around the uninhabited room, but at what cost? Nearly five million people visited the Met each year, but here in the deserted halls of the Villa Giulia, the krater was left to stand alone with the sadness of a knickknack gathering dust on a shelf. If it belonged anywhere, he thought, it was in the tomb of the wealthy Etruscan who had purchased it from a Greek trader two and a half thousand years ago.

Gabriel heard the clatter of high heels and, turning, glimpsed a tall, elegant woman coming through the passage from the adjoining gallery. Dark hair fell softly about her shoulders, and wide brown eyes shone intelligently from her face. The cut of her suit suggested a source of income beyond the museum, as did the jewelry that sparkled on the suntanned hand she extended in Gabriel’s direction. She held the embrace for a moment longer than was necessary, as though she had been waiting to meet him for some time. She seemed well aware of the impact of her appearance.

“You were expecting someone in a white lab coat?”

“I only know one archaeologist,” said Gabriel, “and he’s usually covered in dirt.”

Dr. Veronica Marchese gave a fleeting smile. She was at least fifty, but even in the unflattering halogen light of the museum she could have easily passed for thirty-five. Her name, when spoken by General Ferrari, had been instantly familiar to Gabriel, for it had appeared dozens of times in Claudia’s e-mail accounts. Now he realized her face was familiar, too. He had seen it for the first time outside the Church of St. Anne, at the conclusion of Claudia Andreatti’s funeral mass. She had been standing slightly apart from the other mourners, and her eyes had been fixed not on the casket but upon Luigi Donati. Something about her gaze, remembered Gabriel, had been vaguely accusatory.

Now she slipped past Gabriel and peered through the shatterproof glass of the display case at the image on the side of the krater. It depicted the lifeless body of Sarpedon, son of Zeus, being carried off for burial by the personifications of Sleep and Death. The image was strikingly similar to the composition of The Deposition of Christ.

“I never tire of looking at it,” Dr. Marchese said softly. “It’s almost as beautiful as the Caravaggio you’re restoring for the Vatican.” She glanced over her shoulder and asked, “Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Allon?”

“Actually, I wouldn’t.”

“You don’t care for Greek vases?”

“I don’t believe I said that.”

Her eyes swept slowly over him, as if he were a statue mounted atop a plinth. “Greek vases are among the most extraordinary objects ever created,” she said. “Without them, there would have been no Caravaggio. And unfortunately, there are some men in the world who will do anything to possess them.” She paused thoughtfully. “But you didn’t come here for a debate about the aesthetic merits of ancient art. You’re here because of Claudia.”

“I assume you saw General Ferrari’s news conference?”

“He had the reporters eating out of his hand as usual.” She didn’t sound impressed. “But he’s obviously been taking lessons in evasion from the Vatican.”

The general had warned Gabriel about Dr. Marchese’s acerbic wit. A graduate of Rome’s La Sapienza University, she was regarded as Italy’s foremost authority on Etruscan civilization and had served as an expert consultant to the Art Squad on numerous cases, including the Medici investigation. After the raid on Medici’s warehouse in Geneva, she had spent weeks examining the contents, trying to determine the origin of each piece and, if possible, when it had been ripped from the ground by tomb raiders. Working at her side had been a gifted young protégée named Claudia Andreatti.

“The general tells me you were the one who was responsible for Claudia getting the job at the Vatican.”

“She was my best friend,” Veronica Marchese replied, “but she didn’t need my help. Claudia was one of the most talented people who ever worked for me. She earned the job entirely on her own.”

“You knew that she had undertaken a review of the Vatican’s collection of antiquities. In fact, she consulted with you on a regular basis.”

“I see you’ve been reading her e-mail.”

“And her phone records as well. I know that she was in contact with Roberto Falcone before her death. I was hoping you might be able to tell me why.”

Veronica Marchese lapsed into silence. “Claudia said she’d discovered a problem with the collection,” she said finally. “She thought Falcone could help.”

“What kind of problem?”

“Apparently things were missing. Lots of things.”

“From the storerooms?”

“Not just the storerooms. From the galleries as well.”

Gabriel joined her at the display case, his eyes on the krater. “And when the Vatican announced that Claudia had committed suicide in the Basilica?”

“I was dubious, to say the least.”

“But you remained silent.”

It was a statement. She delivered her response not to Gabriel but to the corpse of Sarpedon.

“It was difficult,” she said quietly. “But, yes, I remained silent.”

“Why?”

“Because I was asked to.”

“By whom?”

“By the same man who asked you to quietly investigate her death.”

“Monsignor Donati?”

“Monsignor?” She gave a melancholy smile. “I still find it hard to refer to him as that.”

The museum’s café was housed in an old greenhouse set against the villa’s main courtyard. The attendant, a woman of sixty with pins in her gray hair, was in the process of closing down the cash register as they entered, but Veronica managed to cajole her into making two final cups of cappuccino. They sat together at a small wrought-iron table in the corner, next to a trellis of flowering vine. Rain pattered overhead on the glass roof while she examined the fragment of pottery Gabriel had taken from Falcone’s house in Cerveteri.

“Your wife has an excellent eye. The figure is clearly a follower of Dionysus. If I had to guess, it’s probably the work of the Menelaos Painter, which means it should be here in the Villa Giulia, not on the kitchen table of a tombarolo.” She returned the fragment to Gabriel. “Unfortunately, it was probably intact before it fell into the hands of Falcone and his men.”

“How was it broken?”

“Sometimes ceramics are shattered by the spilli that the tombaroli use to locate the tombs. But other times, the tombaroli and their middlemen break vases intentionally. Then they slide the fragments onto the market piecemeal over time so as not to attract unwanted attention. Once all the pieces are in the hands of a single dealer, they pretend a long-lost vase has suddenly materialized.” She shook her head slowly in disgust. “They’re scum. But they’re very clever.”

“And dangerous,” added Gabriel.

“So it would seem.” She started to light a cigarette but stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said, sliding it back into the pack. “Luigi told me how much you hate tobacco.”

“What else has he told you?”

“He said you’re one of the most remarkable men he’s ever met. He also said you would have made an excellent priest.”

“I minister to paintings, not souls. Besides,” he added, “I’m a sinner without hope of redemption.”

“Priests sin, too. Even the good ones.”

She poured three packets of sugar into her cappuccino and gave it a gentle stir. Gabriel should have been thinking about the case, but he couldn’t help but wonder how the life of the Holy Father’s private secretary had intersected with a woman like Veronica Marchese. He imagined several scenarios, none of them good.

“I thought spies were supposed to be good at concealing their thoughts,” she said.

“I’m officially retired.”

“Good. Because you’re obviously curious about how Luigi and I know each other. Suffice it to say we’ve been friends for a long time. In fact, I was the one who first suggested a review of the Church’s collection.”

“You were concerned it might be tainted?”

“Let’s just say that, given current political realities, I thought it wise for Luigi to know more than his potential enemies.”

“You would have made a good lawyer.”

“I am a lawyer,” she said, “as well as an archaeologist.”

“Why didn’t you volunteer to conduct the review yourself?”

“It’s not my collection. Besides, Luigi had a perfect candidate for the job on the staff of the museum.”

“Claudia.”

Veronica Marchese nodded slowly. “She was a natural detective. Her work was impeccable.”

“But when I reviewed her notes and research files, there was no mention of any problem whatsoever. In fact, it appeared she’d given the collection a clean bill of health.”

“That’s because she was advised not to put any of her findings in writing.”

“By whom?”

“Me.”

“Did she tell you what was missing?”

“She didn’t go into specifics, only that she couldn’t account for several dozen pieces. Nothing major,” she added quickly, “but they were of great value, exactly the sort of things that can confer instant prestige upon your average Arab sheikh or Russian oligarch. She compiled a list of the items and took it to an old friend who might know where she could find them.”

“Roberto Falcone?”

“Exactly.”

“How did Claudia know someone like Falcone?”

“He was an associate of her father.”

“Are you saying Claudia’s father worked for Roberto Falcone?”

“No,” Veronica Marchese said, shaking her head slowly. “Claudia’s father would never work for a man like Roberto Falcone. Falcone worked for him.”

The woman behind the counter rolled her eyes to indicate she wished to close for the night. Gabriel and Veronica Marchese quickly finished the last of their coffee and then headed outside. Darkness had fallen and a gusty wet wind was swirling in the arcades. Veronica lit a cigarette thoughtfully and proceeded to tell Gabriel things about Claudia Andreatti that had failed to make it into her Vatican personnel file. That she had been raised in Tarquinia, an ancient Etruscan town north of Cerveteri. That her father, Francesco Andreatti, a day laborer of peasant stock, had supplemented the family’s meager income with a spillo and a shovel. It seemed he possessed a unique talent for extracting antiquities from the mounded fields of Lazio, a talent matched only by his ability to keep the Carabinieri and the Mafia at bay. He grew wealthy from his digging, though everyone in Tarquinia believed he was an ordinary stonemason. So, too, did his twin daughters.

“When did they learn the truth about him?”

“He confessed his sins as he was dying of cancer. He also told them about the buried steel container where he stored his discoveries. Claudia and Paola waited until after the funeral to alert the Carabinieri. They were just sixteen at the time.”

“The entire incident seems to have slipped Paola’s mind.”

“I’m not surprised she didn’t tell you. It’s not something a daughter likes to think about. Unfortunately, most of us have a criminal somewhere in the family tree. I’m afraid it is the curse of Italy.”

“Rather ironic, don’t you think?”

“That the daughter of a tombarolo dedicated herself to the care and preservation of antiquities?”

Gabriel nodded.

“Actually, it was no accident. Claudia was deeply ashamed of her father and wanted to make up for some of the damage he had done. Needless to say, she guarded her past carefully. If it ever became known in the curatorial community that her father was a thief, it would have hung over her like a cloud.”

“But you knew.”

“She told me during the Medici investigation. She felt that she had to because we were working with General Ferrari.” Veronica Marchese paused, then added, “Claudia had an exaggerated sense of right and wrong. It was one of the things I loved most about her.”

“Do you know what Falcone told her?”

“She wouldn’t tell me. She said it was necessary to protect the integrity of her investigation.”

They walked past the shuttered museum bookshop and emerged from the front portico. The rain was coming down in torrents. She fished a set of keys from her handbag and with the click of her remote started the engine of a gleaming Mercedes SL coupe. The car looked out of place at the museum. So did Veronica Marchese.

“I’d offer you a lift,” she said apologetically, “but I’m afraid I have another appointment. If there’s anything more I can do to help, please don’t hesitate to call. And do give my best to Luigi.”

She started toward her car, then stopped suddenly and turned to face him. “It occurs to me you have one thing working in your favor,” she said. “General Ferrari just took millions of euros worth of antiquities from the men who killed Claudia. That means they’ll be anxious to replenish their stock. If I were you, I’d find something irresistible.”

“What then?”

“Smash it to pieces,” she replied. “And feed it to them slowly.”

She lowered herself into the car and then guided it into the frenetic traffic of the Roman evening rush. Gabriel stood there for a moment wondering why Luigi Donati had neglected to mention that he was acquainted with Claudia Andreatti’s best friend. Priests sin, too, he thought. Even the good ones.

13 APOSTOLIC PALACE, VATICAN CITY

“WHAT’S THE SOUP OF THE DAY?” asked Gabriel.

“Stone,” replied Donati.

He raised a spoonful of the thin consommé to his lips and tasted it warily. They were seated in the Holy Father’s austere dining room on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace. The tablecloth was white, as were the habits of the household nuns who floated silently in and out of the adjoining kitchen. His Holiness was not present; he was working at the desk in his small private office located directly across the hall. It had been fourteen years since the diminutive Patriarch of Venice ascended to the throne of St. Peter, yet he still maintained a crushing daily schedule that would exhaust a far younger man. He did so in part to preserve his power. The Church faced too many challenges for its absolute monarch to give the appearance of being incapacitated by age. If the princes perceived that His Holiness was beginning to fail, the positioning for the next conclave would commence in earnest. And the papacy of Pope Paul VII, one of the most turbulent in the history of the modern Church, would come to a grinding halt.

“Why the punishment rations?” asked Gabriel.

“As a result of our reduced financial circumstances, the fare at some of the colleges and religious houses in Rome is starting to suffer. His Holiness has asked the bishops and cardinals to avoid lavish dining. I’m afraid I have no choice but to lead by example.”

He held his glass of red wine up to the sunlight slanting through the window and then took a cautious sip.

“How is it?”

“Divine.” Donati placed the glass carefully on the table and then pushed a thick black binder toward Gabriel. “It’s the final itinerary for our trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories. We’ve decided to do it over Holy Week, which will allow His Holiness to take the unprecedented step of celebrating Christ’s death and resurrection in the city where it actually occurred. He will commemorate the passion on the Via Dolorosa and celebrate Easter Mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The schedule also includes a stop in Bethlehem and a courtesy call at the al-Aqsa Mosque, where he intends to issue an unequivocal apology for the Crusades. The soldiers of the cross killed ten thousand people on the Temple Mount when they sacked Jerusalem in 1099, including three thousand who had taken shelter inside al-Aqsa.”

“And they warmed up along the way by killing several thousand innocent Jews in Europe.”

“I believe we’ve already apologized for that,” Donati said archly.

“When do you plan to announce the trip?”

“Next week at the General Audience.”

“It’s too soon.”

“We’ve waited as long as possible. I’d like you to have a look at the security arrangements. The Holy Father also asked whether you would consider serving as his personal bodyguard during the trip.”

“Something tells me it wasn’t his idea.”

“It wasn’t,” Donati conceded.

“The best way to place His Holiness in danger is for me to stand next to him.”

“Think about it.”

Donati raised another spoonful of the consommé to his lips and blew on it pensively—odd, thought Gabriel, because his own soup was already lukewarm.

“Something else on your mind, Luigi?”

“Rumor has it you paid a visit to the Villa Giulia yesterday.”

“It’s filled with many beautiful objects.”

“So I’ve heard.” Donati lowered his voice and added, “You should have told me you were going to see her.”

“I didn’t realize I needed your permission.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“When I took this case,” Gabriel said, pressing him gently, “you assured me that all doors would be open.”

“Not the doors to my past,” Donati said evenly.

“What if your past had something to do with Claudia’s death?”

“My past had nothing to do with her death.”

The monsignor’s words were spoken with an air of liturgical finality. All that was missing was the sign of the cross and the benedictory amen.

“Would you like some more soup?” he asked, trying to ease the tension of the moment.

“I’ll resist,” replied Gabriel.

Two nuns entered and cleared the dishes. They returned a moment later with the entrée—a thin slice of veal, boiled potatoes, and green beans drizzled in olive oil. Donati used the change in course as an opportunity to gather his thoughts.

“I asked for your help,” he said at last, “because I wanted this inquiry handled with a certain discretion. Now General Ferrari and the Carabinieri are involved, which is exactly the outcome I had hoped to avoid.”

“They’re involved because my inquiry led me to a dead tombarolo named Roberto Falcone.”

“I realize that.”

“Would you have preferred it if I had fled the scene?”

“I would have preferred,” Donati said after a moment of deliberation, “that this mess not end up in the lap of Italian authorities who do not always have the best interests of the Holy See in mind.”

“That would have been the outcome regardless of my actions,” Gabriel said.

“Why?”

“Because it wouldn’t have taken General Ferrari long to connect Falcone to Claudia through their phone records. And his next stop would have been Veronica Marchese. Unless she was prepared to lie on your behalf, she would have told the general that, after Claudia’s death, you asked her to remain silent. And then General Ferrari would have been knocking on the Bronze Doors of the Apostolic Palace, subpoena in hand.”

“Point taken.” Donati picked at his food without appetite. “Why do you suppose Ferrari suggested that you meet with her?”

“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” Gabriel said. “I suspect that like any good investigator, he knows more than he’s willing to say.”

“About my friendship with Veronica?”

“About everything.”

Outside a cloud passed before the sun, and a shadow fell across Donati’s face.

“Why didn’t you tell me about her, Luigi?”

“This is beginning to sound like an interrogation.”

“Better me than the Carabinieri.”

Donati, still in shadow, said nothing.

“Perhaps it would be easier if I answered for you.”

“Please do.”

“This entire affair falls under the category of no good deed goes unpunished,” Gabriel began. “It started innocently enough when Veronica suggested you undertake a review of the Vatican collection. But Claudia’s death presented you with two problems. The first was the motive for her murder. The second was your relationship with Veronica Marchese. A thorough investigation of Claudia’s death would have revealed both, thus placing you in a precarious position. So you encouraged an official finding of suicide and asked me to find the truth.”

“And now you’ve discovered a small piece of it.” Donati pushed his plate a few inches toward the center of the table and gazed through the open door toward the private office of his master.

“How much does he know?” asked Gabriel.

“More than you might imagine. But that doesn’t mean he wants it spilling out in public. Gossip and personal scandal can be fatal in a place like this. And if I am tainted in any way, it could harm his papacy.” He paused, then added gravely, “That is something I cannot allow to happen.”

“The best way to prevent that from happening is for you to start telling me the truth. All of it.”

Donati exhaled heavily and contemplated his wristwatch. “I have thirty minutes until the Holy Father’s next meeting,” he said. “Perhaps it would be better if we walked. The walls have ears around here.”

14 THE VATICAN GARDENS

IT IS SAID THAT THE Vatican Gardens were originally planted in soil from Golgotha transported to Rome by St. Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine and, according to Christian legend, discoverer of the True Cross. Now, seventeen centuries later, the gardens were a fifty-seven-acre Eden dotted with ornate palaces housing various arms of the Vatican administration. The overcast weather suited Donati’s mood. Head down, hands clasped behind his back, he was telling Gabriel about a serious young man from a small town in Umbria who heard the calling to become a priest. The young man joined the intellectually rebellious Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, and became a vocal proponent of the controversial doctrine known as liberation theology. In the early 1980s, during a period of violence and revolution in Latin America, he was dispatched to El Salvador to run a health clinic and a school. And it was there, in the mountains of Morazán province, that he lost his faith in God.

“Liberation theologians believe that earthly justice and eternal salvation are inexorably linked, that it is impossible to save a soul if the vessel in which it resides is bound by chains of poverty and oppression. In Latin America, that sort of thinking placed us squarely on the side of the leftist revolutionaries. The military juntas regarded us as little more than Communist subversives. So did the Pole,” Donati added. “But that’s a story for another time.”

Donati stopped walking, as if debating which direction to proceed. Finally, he turned toward the ocher-colored headquarters of Vatican Radio. Rising above it was the city-state’s only eyesore, the transmission tower that beamed Church news and programming to a worldwide flock increasingly distracted by terrestrial matters.

“There was a priest who worked with me in Morazán,” Donati resumed, “a Spanish Jesuit named Father José Martinez. One evening, I was called away to another village to deliver a child. When I returned, Father José was dead. The top of his skull had been hacked away and his brain scooped from its cavity.”

“He was killed by a death squad?”

Donati nodded slowly. “That’s why they took his brain. It symbolized what the regime and its wealthy supporters hated most about us—our intelligence and our commitment to social justice. When I asked the military to investigate Father José’s death, they actually laughed in my face. Then they warned me I would be next if I didn’t leave.”

“Did you take their advice?”

“I should have, but his death made me even more determined to stay and complete my mission. About six months later, a rebel leader came to see me. He knew the identity of the man responsible for Father José’s murder. His name was Alejandro Calderón. He was the scion of a landowning family with close ties to the ruling junta. He kept a mistress in an apartment in the town of San Miguel. The rebels were planning to kill him the next time he went to see her.”

“Why did they tell you in advance?”

“Because they wanted my blessing. I withheld it, of course.”

“But you didn’t tell them not to kill him, either.”

“No,” Donati admitted. “Nor did I warn Calderón. Three days later, his body was found hanging upside down from a lamppost in the central square of San Miguel. Within hours, another death squad was headed toward our village. But this time, they were looking for me. I fled across the border into Honduras and hid in a Jesuit house in Tegucigalpa. When it was safe for me to move, I returned to Rome, whereupon I was immediately summoned by the head of our order. He asked me whether I knew anything about Calderón’s death. Then he reminded me that, as a Jesuit, I was sworn to be obedient perinde ac cadaver—literally, to have no more will than my own corpse. I refused to answer. The next morning, I asked to be released from my vows.”

“You left the priesthood?”

“I had no choice. I’d allowed a man to be killed. What’s more, I no longer believed in God. Surely, I told myself, a just and forgiving God would not have allowed a man like Father José to be killed in such a gruesome manner.”

A group of Curial cardinals emerged from the entrance of the Vatican Radio building, trailed by their priestly staffs. Donati frowned and led Gabriel toward St. John’s Tower.

“I can only imagine that leaving the priesthood is a bit like leaving an intelligence service,” Donati resumed after a moment. “It’s a deliberately long and cumbersome process designed to give the wayward priest ample opportunity to change his mind. But eventually I found myself back in Umbria, living alone in a village near Monte Cucco. I spent my days climbing the mountains. I suppose I was hoping to find God up there among the peaks. But I found Veronica instead.”

“She’s the kind of woman who could restore a man’s faith in the divine.”

“In a way, she did.”

“What was she doing in Umbria?”

“She’d just completed her doctorate and was excavating the ruins of a Roman villa. We bumped into each other quite by accident in the town market. Within days, we were inseparable.”

“Did you tell her you’d been a priest?”

“I told her everything, including what had happened in Salvador. She took it upon herself to heal my wounds and to show me the real world—the world that had passed me by while I was locked away in the seminary. Before long, we began talking about marriage. Veronica was going to teach. I was going to work as an advocate for human rights. We had everything planned.”

“So what happened?”

“I met a man named Pietro Lucchesi.”

Pietro Lucchesi was the given name of His Holiness Pope Paul VII.

“It was shortly after he was appointed Patriarch of Venice,” Donati continued. “He was looking for someone to serve as his private secretary. He’d heard about a former Jesuit who was living like a recluse in Umbria. He arrived unannounced and said he had no intention of leaving until I agreed to return to the priesthood. We spent a week together walking in the mountains, arguing about God and the mysteries of faith. Needless to say, Lucchesi prevailed. Breaking the news to Veronica was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. She is the only woman I ever loved, or ever will.”

“Any regrets?”

“One wonders from time to time, but, no, I have no regrets. I suppose it would have been easier if we’d never seen each other again, but it didn’t work out that way.”

“Please tell me you’re not romantically involved with her.”

“I take my vows seriously,” Donati said dismissively. “And so does Veronica. We are good friends, that’s all.”

“I take it she’s married.”

“Infamously. Her husband is Carlo Marchese. He’s one of the most successful businessmen in Italy.” Donati paused and looked at Gabriel gravely. “He’s also the reason Claudia Andreatti is dead.”

Somewhere beyond the walls of the Vatican a car backfired with the sharp report of a gunshot. A squadron of rooks whirled noisily in the trees before flying off in formation toward the dome of the Basilica. Gabriel watched them for a moment as he pieced together the implications of the story Donati had just told him. He felt as though he were wandering beneath the surface of an altarpiece, stumbling upon partial images concealed beneath layers of obliterating paint—here a woman lying dead on the floor of a church, here a tomb robber suffering for his sins in a cauldron of acid, here a fallen priest searching for God in the arms of his lover. He had questions, a thousand questions, but he knew better than to break the spell under which Donati had fallen. And so he walked at the monsignor’s shoulder with the austere silence of a confessor and waited for his friend to make a full accounting of his sins.

“Carlo descends from the Black Nobility,” Donati said, “the aristocratic Roman families who remained loyal to the pope after the conquest of the Papal States in 1870. His father was part of Pius the Twelfth’s inner circle. He was close to the CIA as well.”

“In what way?”

“He was involved in the Christian Democratic Party. After the Second World War, he worked with the CIA to prevent the Communists from taking control of Italy. Several million dollars’ worth of secret CIA funds flowed through his hands before the election in 1948. Carlo says they used to give his father suitcases filled with cash in the lobby of the Hassler Hotel.”

“It sounds as if you and Carlo are rather well acquainted.”

“We are,” Donati replied. “Like his father, Carlo is a member in good standing of the papal court. He also serves on the lay supervisory council of the Vatican Bank, which means he knows as much about Church finances as I do. Carlo is the kind of man who doesn’t need to stop at the Permissions Desk before entering the Apostolic Palace. He likes to remind me that he’ll still be at the Vatican long after I’m gone.”

“Who appointed him to the bank?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“Because Veronica asked me to. And because Carlo appeared to be the perfect man for the job, a man with long-standing ties to the papacy who was regarded as one of the most honest businessmen in a country known for corruption. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case. Carlo Marchese controls the international trade in illicit antiquities. But that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. He sits atop a global criminal empire that’s into everything from narcotics to counterfeiting to arms trafficking. And he’s laundering his dirty money at the Vatican Bank.”

“And you, the private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul the Seventh, helped him get the job.”

“Unwittingly,” Donati said defensively. “But that small detail won’t matter if this explodes into yet another scandal.”

“When did you learn the truth about Carlo?”

“It wasn’t until I asked a talented curator to conduct a review of the Vatican’s collection of antiquities,” Donati said. “First she discovered that dozens of pieces had vanished from the Vatican Museums. Then she discovered a connection between the thieves and one Carlo Marchese.”

“Why did she want to see you the night of her death?”

“She told me she had evidence of Carlo’s involvement. The next morning, she was dead, and whatever evidence she had was gone.” Donati shook his head. “Carlo actually rang my office that afternoon to offer his condolences. He had the decency not to show his face at the funeral.”

“He had other matters to attend to.”

“Such as?”

“Killing a tombarolo named Roberto Falcone.”

They walked past St. John’s Tower and made their way to the helipad in the far southwest corner of the city-state. Donati stared at the walls for a moment, as though calculating how to scale them, before taking a seat on a bench at the edge of the tarmac. Gabriel sat next to him and began mentally sorting through the notes of his investigation. One entry stood out: Claudia Andreatti’s final telephone call on the night of her death. It had been placed to the Villa Giulia, to the wife of a man who didn’t need to stop at the Permissions Desk before entering the Apostolic Palace.

“How much does Veronica know about her husband?”

“If you’re asking whether she thinks Carlo is a criminal, the answer is no. She believes her husband is a descendant of an old Roman family who parlayed his modest inheritance into a successful business.”

“Does this successful businessman know you were engaged to his wife?”

Donati shook his head solemnly.

“You’re sure?”

“Veronica never breathed a word of it to him.”

“What about El Salvador?”

“He knows I served there and that, like most of the Jesuits, I had some trouble with the death squads and their friends in the military. But he has no idea I ever left the priesthood. In fact, very few people inside the Church know about my little sabbatical. Any mention of the affair was purged from my personnel files after I went to work for Lucchesi in Venice. It’s as if it never happened.”

“Almost like Claudia’s murder.”

Donati made no response.

“You lied to me, Luigi.”

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”

“I don’t want your apology. I just want an explanation of why you allowed me to investigate a murder when you already knew the identity of the killer.”

“Because I needed to know how much you could find out on your own before moving on to the next step.”

“And what would that be?”

“I would like you to bring me incontrovertible proof that Carlo Marchese is running a global criminal enterprise from inside my bank. And then I want you to make him go away. Quietly.”

“There’s just one problem with that,” Gabriel said. “After my visit to the Villa Giulia, I suspect I’ve lost the element of surprise.”

“I concur. In fact, I’m quite sure Carlo knows exactly what you’re up to.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve been invited to an intimate dinner party tomorrow evening at his palazzo. I’ve already accepted on your behalf. But do try to find something presentable to wear,” Donati said, frowning at Gabriel’s leather jacket and paint-smudged jeans. “I don’t mind if you walk around the palace dressed like that, but the Black Nobility tend to be a bit on the formal side.”

15 PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROME

GABRIEL POSSESSED A SINGLE SUIT. Italian in design, Office in manufacture, it had hidden compartments for concealing false passports and a holster sewn into the waistband of the trousers large enough to hold a Beretta pistol and a spare magazine. After much debate, he decided it would be unwise to bring a firearm to Carlo Marchese’s dinner party. He knotted the pale blue necktie that Chiara had bought for him that afternoon from a shop in the Via Condotti and artfully stuffed a silk handkerchief into his breast pocket. Chiara made subtle adjustments to both before slipping into the bathroom to finish putting on her makeup. She was wearing a black cocktail-length dress and black stockings. Her hair hung loosely about her bare shoulders, and on her right wrist was the pearl-and-emerald bracelet Gabriel had given her on the occasion of her last birthday. She looked astonishingly beautiful, he thought, and far too young to be on the arm of a battered wreck like him.

“You’d better put some clothes on,” he said. “We need to leave in a few minutes.”

“You don’t like what I’m wearing?”

“What’s not to like?”

“So what’s the problem?”

“It’s rather provocative,” said Gabriel, his eyes roaming freely over her body. “After all, we are having dinner with a priest.”

“At the home of his former lover.” She brushed a bit of powder across her cheekbones that brought out the flecks of honey and gold in her wide brown eyes. “I have to admit I’m curious to meet the woman who managed to penetrate Donati’s armor.”

“You won’t be disappointed.”

“What’s she like?”

“She would have been the perfect match for Donati if he’d chosen a different occupation.”

“It’s more than an occupation. And I’m sure Donati had very little to do with choosing it.”

“You believe it’s truly a calling?”

“I’m the daughter of a rabbi. I know it’s a calling.” Chiara examined her appearance in the mirror for a moment before resuming work on her exquisite face. “For the record, I was right about Donati from the beginning. I told you he had a past. And I warned you that he was hiding something.”

“He had no choice.”

“Really?”

“If he’d told me the truth, that he wanted me to go to war with a made Mafia man like Carlo Marchese, I would have finished the Caravaggio and left town as quickly as possible.”

“It’s still an option.”

Gabriel, with a glance into the mirror, made clear it wasn’t.

“You have no idea what you’re getting into, darling. I grew up in this country. I know them better than you.”

“I never realized the Jewish ghetto of Venice was such a hotbed of Mafia activity.”

“They’re everywhere,” Chiara replied with a frown. “And they kill anyone who gets between them and their money—judges, politicians, policemen, anyone. Carlo has already killed two people to protect his secret. And he won’t hesitate to kill you too if he thinks you’re a threat.”

“I’m not a politician. And I’m not a policeman, either.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they have to play by the rules. I don’t.” Gabriel removed the handkerchief from his pocket and smoothed the front of his suit jacket.

“I liked it better before,” Chiara said.

“I didn’t.”

“They’re very fashionable these days.”

“That’s why I don’t like it.”

Chiara wordlessly returned the handkerchief to Gabriel’s pocket. “I never thought I’d meet a woman whose love life was more complicated than my own,” she said, inspecting her work. “First Veronica falls in love with a priest who’s lost his faith in God. Then, when the priest dumps her, she marries a Mafia chieftain who’s running a global crime syndicate.”

“Donati didn’t dump her,” Gabriel replied. “And Veronica Marchese has no idea where her husband gets his money.”

“Maybe,” Chiara said without conviction. “Or maybe she sees exactly what she wants to see and turns a blind eye to the rest. It’s easier that way, especially when there’s a great deal of money involved.”

“Is that why you married me? For the money?”

“No,” she said, “I married you because I adore your fatalistic sense of humor. You always make dreadful jokes when you’re upset about something and you’re trying to hide it.”

“Why would I be upset?”

“Because you came to Rome to restore one of your favorite paintings. And now you’re about to make an enemy of a man who could kill you with one phone call.”

“I’m not so easy to kill.”

Chiara gathered up her hair and turned her back toward Gabriel. He raised the zipper of her dress slowly and then pressed his lips against the nape of her neck. In the mirror he could see her eyes closing.

“Why do you suppose he wants us at his dinner table tonight?” Chiara asked.

“I can only imagine that he intends to send me a message.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to listen very carefully,” Gabriel said, kissing her neck one last time. “And then I’m going to send him one in return.”

16 THE VIA VENETO, ROME

THE MARCHESES LIVED WITHIN walking distance of the Piazza di Spagna, on a quiet street off the Via Veneto where the ceaseless march of time seemed to have stopped, however briefly, in an age of grace. This was the Rome that travelers dreamed of but rarely saw, the Rome of poets and painters and the fabulously rich. In Carlo’s private little corner of the Eternal City, la dolce vita endured, if only for the moment.

His home was not a real home but a vast ocher-colored palazzo set amid an expanse of parkland. Surrounding it was an iron fence topped with many security cameras—so many, in fact, the property was often mistaken for an embassy or a government building. A large Baroque fountain splashed in the forecourt, and in the entrance hall loomed an armless statue of Pluto, lord of the underworld. Standing next to it was Veronica Marchese, dressed in a flowing gown of crushed green silk. She greeted Gabriel and Chiara warmly and then led them along a wide corridor hung with Italian Renaissance paintings in ornate frames. Between the canvases, balanced atop fluted shoulder-height pedestals, were Roman busts and statuary. The paintings were museum quality. So were the antiquities.

“The Marchese family has been collecting for many generations,” she explained, a note of disapproval in her voice. “I don’t mind the paintings, but the antiquities have been a source of some embarrassment for me, since I am on record as saying the collectors are the real looters. It’s quite simple. If the rich would stop buying antiquities, the tombaroli would stop digging them up.”

“Your husband has excellent taste,” Chiara said.

“He has an expert adviser,” Veronica replied playfully. “But we’re not responsible for any of these acquisitions. Carlo’s ancestors purchased them long before there were any laws restricting the trade in ancient artifacts. Even so, I’m trying to convince him to give away at least a portion of the collection so the public can finally see it. I’m afraid I still have a bit of work to do.”

At the end of the hall was a wide double doorway that gave onto a grand drawing room with tapestried walls. The furnishings were stately and elegant, as were the guests scattered among them. Gabriel had been expecting a quiet dinner for six, but the room was filled with no fewer than twenty people, including the Italian minister of finance, the host of an influential television talk show, and one of the country’s most popular sopranos. Donati had cloistered himself at one end of a brocaded sofa. He was dressed in a double-breasted clerical suit and was imparting some well-rehearsed Curial gossip to a pair of bejeweled women who seemed to be hanging breathlessly on his every utterance.

At the opposite end of the room, surrounded by a group of prosperous-looking businessmen, stood Carlo Marchese. He had the square shoulders of a man who had been a star athlete at school, and was groomed as if for a photo shoot. His small wireless spectacles lent a priestly gravity to his even features, and he was gesturing thoughtfully with a hand that had wielded no tool other than a Montblanc pen or a silver fork. His resemblance to Donati was unmistakable. It was as if Veronica, having lost Donati to the Church, had acquired another version of him absent a Roman collar and a conscience.

As Gabriel and Chiara entered the room, several heads turned in unison and the conversation fell silent for a few seconds before resuming in a subdued murmur. Gabriel accepted two glasses of Prosecco from a white-jacketed waiter and handed one to Chiara. Then, turning, he found himself staring into Carlo’s face.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Allon.” One hand closed around Gabriel’s while the other grasped his arm just above the elbow. “I was in St. Peter’s Square when the terrorists attacked the Vatican. None of us who are close to the Holy Father will ever forget what you did that day.” He released Gabriel’s hand and introduced himself to Chiara. “Would you be kind enough to allow me to borrow your husband for a moment? I have a small problem I’d like to discuss with him.”

“I suppose that depends on the nature of the problem.”

“I can assure you it’s entirely artistic in nature.”

Without waiting for a reply, Carlo Marchese led Gabriel up a sweeping central staircase, to the second level of the palazzo. Before them stretched an endless gallery of ancestral treasures: paintings and tapestries, sculptures and timepieces, antiquities of every sort. Carlo played the role of tour guide, slowing every few paces in order to point out a noteworthy piece or two. He spoke with the erudition of a man who knew much about art but also with a trace of discomfort, as though his possessions were a great burden to him. Even Gabriel found the presence of so much art in one space overwhelming; it was like wandering through storerooms filled with the plunder of a distant war. He paused before a Canaletto. The painting, a luminous depiction of the Piazza di San Marco, was vaguely familiar. Then Gabriel realized where he had seen it before. A few years earlier, the work had been stolen. Its successful recovery, announced with much fanfare by General Ferrari, was regarded as one of the great triumphs of the Art Squad.

“Now I know why the general refused to release the name of the owner,” Gabriel said.

“He did so at my request. We were afraid we would be targeted again if the thieves knew the quality of the pieces contained in our collection.”

“There were reports at the time that the owner played a significant role in the painting’s recovery.”

“You have a good memory, Mr. Allon. I personally conducted the ransom negotiations. In fact, I didn’t even tell General Ferrari the painting had been stolen until after the deal had been struck. He arrested the thieves when they tried to collect the money. They weren’t terribly professional.”

“I remember,” said Gabriel. “I also remember that they were killed not long after their arrival at Regina Coeli Prison.”

“Apparently, it was the result of some sort of struggle over prison turf.”

Or perhaps you had them killed for stealing from the boss, thought Gabriel. ”Is there something in particular you wanted to show me?” he asked.

“This,” Carlo said, inclining his head toward the large canvas at the farthest end of the gallery. The image, a depiction of the Adoration of the Shepherds, was scarcely visible beneath a dense layer of surface grime and a coat of heavily discolored varnish. Carlo illuminated the painting with the flick of a light switch. “I assume you recognize the artist.”

“Guido Reni,” replied Gabriel, “with considerable help from one or two of his better assistants, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’re not. It’s been in my family’s collection for more than two centuries. Unfortunately, it’s been many years since it was restored. I was wondering whether you would consider taking it on after you’ve finished the Caravaggio.”

“I’m afraid I have a prior commitment.”

“So I’ve heard.” Carlo looked at Gabriel. “I know that Monsignor Donati has asked you to investigate Claudia’s death.” Lowering his voice, he added, “The Vatican is nothing if not a village, Mr. Allon. And villagers like to gossip.”

“Gossip can be dangerous.”

“So can sensitive investigations at the Vatican.”

Carlo lowered his chin and stared at Gabriel unblinkingly. Most men tended to avoid looking directly into his eyes, but not Carlo. He possessed a cool, aristocratic assurance that bordered on arrogance. He was also, Gabriel decided, a man without physical fear.

“The Vatican is like a labyrinth,” Carlo continued. “You should know there are forces within the Curia who believe Monsignor Donati has unwittingly opened a Pandora’s box that will further damage the Church’s reputation at a time when it cannot afford it. They also resent the fact that he has chosen to place this matter in the hands of an outsider.”

“I assume you share their opinion.”

“I am officially agnostic on the question. But I’ve learned from experience that, when it comes to the Vatican, it’s often better to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“What about dead women?”

It was a deliberate provocation. Carlo appeared impressed by Gabriel’s nerve. “Dead women are like bank vaults,” he responded with surprising candor. “They almost always contain unpleasant secrets.” He removed a business card from a silver case. “I hope you’ll reconsider my offer on the Reni. I can assure you I’ll make it well worth your while.”

As Gabriel slipped the card into his pocket, there came the sound of a chime summoning the guests to dinner. Carlo placed a hand at the small of Gabriel’s back and guided him toward the staircase. A moment later, he was taking his seat next to Chiara. “What did he want?” she asked quietly in Hebrew.

“I think he was trying to put me on the Marchese family payroll.”

“Is that all?”

“No,” said Gabriel. “He wanted to make sure I wasn’t carrying a gun.”

They emerged from the palazzo shortly after midnight to find the air filled with soft, downy snowflakes the size of Eucharistic wafers. A Vatican sedan waited curbside; it followed slowly behind as Donati, Gabriel, and Chiara made their way along the deserted pavements of the Via Veneto. Chiara held Gabriel’s arm tightly as the snow whitened her hair. Donati walked wordlessly next to her. A moment earlier, as he bade farewell to Veronica with a formal kiss on her cheek, he had been smiling. Now, faced with the prospect of a long, cold night in an empty bed, his mood was noticeably gloomy.

“Was it my imagination,” Gabriel asked, “or were you actually enjoying yourself tonight?”

“I always do. It’s the hardest part about spending time with her.”

“So why do you do it?”

“Veronica is convinced it’s a little-known Jesuitical test of faith, that I deliberately place myself in the proximity of temptation to see whether God will reach down and catch me if I fall.”

“Do you?”

“It’s not as Ignatian as all that. I simply enjoy her company. Most people can never see past the Roman collar, but Veronica doesn’t see it at all. She makes me forget I’m a priest.”

“What happens if you fail your test?”

“I would never allow that to happen. And neither would Veronica.” Donati signaled for his car. Then he turned to Gabriel and asked, “How was your meeting with Carlo?”

“Businesslike.”

“Did he mention my name?”

“He spoke of you only in the most glowing of terms.”

“What did he want?”

“He thinks it would be a good idea if I dropped the investigation.”

“I don’t suppose he confessed to killing Claudia Andreatti.”

“No, Luigi, he didn’t.”

“What now?”

“I’m going to find something irresistible,” answered Gabriel. “And then I’m going to smash it to pieces.”

“Just make sure it isn’t my Church—or me, for that matter.”

Donati made two solemn movements of his long hand, one vertical, one horizontal, and disappeared into the back of his car.

By the time Gabriel and Chiara reached the Via Gregoriana, the snowfall had ended. Gabriel paused at the base of the street and peered up the hill toward the Church of the Trinità dei Monti. The streetlamps were doused, yet another effort by the government to preserve precious resources. Rome, it seemed, was receding into time. Gabriel would have scarcely been surprised to see a chariot clattering toward them through the gloom.

The cars were parked tightly against the narrow pavements, so they walked, like most Romans, in the center of the street. The engine block of a wrecked Fiat ticked like cracking ice, but otherwise there was no sound, only the rhythmic tapping of Chiara’s heels. Gabriel could feel the heavy warmth of her breast pressing against his arm. He imagined her lying nude in their bed, his private Modigliani. A part of him wanted to keep her there until a child appeared in her womb, but it was not possible; the case had its hooks in him. To abandon it would be tantamount to leaving a masterpiece partially restored. He would pursue the truth not for General Ferrari, or even for his friend Luigi Donati, but for Claudia Andreatti. The image of her lying dead on the floor of the Basilica now hung in his nightmarish gallery of memory—Death of the Virgin, oil on canvas, by Carlo Marchese.

Dead women are like bank vaults. They almost always contain unpleasant secrets. . . .

The buzz of an approaching motorcycle dissolved the image in Gabriel’s thoughts. It was speeding directly toward them, the beam of its headlight quivering with the vibration of the cobbles. Gabriel nudged Chiara closer to the parked cars and trained his gaze toward the helmeted figure atop the bike. He was piloting the machine with one hand. The other, the right, was inserted into the front of his leather jacket. When it emerged, Gabriel saw the unmistakable silhouette of a gun with a suppressor screwed into the barrel. The gun moved first toward Gabriel’s chest. Then it swung a few degrees and took aim at Chiara.

Gabriel felt a sudden hollowness at the small of his back where he usually carried his Beretta. As a student of Krav Maga, the Israeli martial arts discipline, he was trained in the many techniques of neutralizing an armed opponent. But nearly all involved an opponent standing in close proximity, not one riding at high speed on a motorbike. Gabriel had no choice but to rely upon one of the central tenets of Office tradecraft—when confronted with few decent options, improvise, and do it quickly.

Using his left hand, he forced Chiara to the paving stones. Then, with a violent blow of his right elbow, he snapped a side view mirror off the nearest parked car. The throw, while lacking in velocity, was remarkably accurate. The assassin instinctively swerved to avoid the projectile, thus shifting the gun off its target line for a crucial second or two. Gabriel immediately dropped into a crouch. Then, with the bike bearing down on him, he drove his shoulder into the visor of the assassin’s helmet, separating man, bike, and gun. The assassin crashed to the cobblestones, the gun a few inches beyond his reach. Gabriel broke the man’s wrist, just to be on the safe side, and kicked the helmet from his head. The killer had the complexion of a Calabrian. His breath stank of tobacco and fear.

“Do you have any idea who I am?” asked Gabriel calmly.

“No,” the assassin gasped, clutching his broken limb.

“That means you are the dumbest contract killer who ever walked the earth.” Gabriel picked up the gun, a Heckler & Koch .45-caliber, and pointed it at the assassin’s face. “Who sent you?”

“I don’t know,” the assassin replied, panting. “I never know.”

“Wrong answer.”

Gabriel placed the end of the suppressor against the assassin’s kneecap.

“Let’s try this one more time. Who sent you?”