Daniel Silva - The Fallen Angel

“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.

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.”