Daniel Silva - The Confessor

"They might have been, but I doubt it. You see, a short time later, a beige Lancia was discovered near the train station. Behind the wheel was a Palestinian named Marwan Aziz, a man known to be an agent of PLO intelligence. He'd been shot three times and was quite dead. And by the way, the Lancia's left rear bumper was damaged. Marwan Aziz was one of the men who was following you. I wonder where the second man went. I wonder whether he was the one who killed Aziz. But I digress. Please continue."

Intrigued by Shamron's revelations, Gabriel pressed forward. The boat journey to Cannes. The meeting with Antonella Huber at which she surrendered the letter written by her mother, the former Sister Regina Carcassi. The dying man he had left behind in the field outside St. Cezaire. The midnight search of Benjamin's flat and the near-fatal confrontation with his caretaker, Frau Ratzinger. Shamron ceased his pacing only once, when Gabriel admitted that he had actually threatened Carlo Casagrande. An understandable reaction, said the look on the old man's creased face, but hardly the behavior one would expect from an agent of Gabriel's training and experience.

"Which brings us to the obvious next question," Shamron said. "Is the document real? Or is it the Vatican equivalent of the Hitler diaries?"

Lavon held it up. "Do you see these markings? They're consistent with documents from the KGB archives. If I had to guess, the Russians came across this while they were cleaning out their archives after the collapse of the empire. Somehow, it reached Benjamin's hands."

"But is it a hoax?"

"Taken in isolation, it might be easy to dismiss as a clever forgery concocted by the KGB in order to discredit the Catholic Church. After all, they were at each other's throats throughout much of the century, especially during the reign of Wojtyla and the crisis in Poland."

Gabriel leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "But if it's read in concert with Sister Regina's letter and all the other things I've learned?"

"Then it's probably the single most damning document I've ever seen. A senior Vatican official discussing genocide with Martin Luther over dinner? The covenant at Garda? It's no wonder people are dying because of this. If this is made public, it will be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off in St. Peter's Square."

"Can you authenticate it?"

"I have a few contacts inside the old KGB. So does the quiet little man standing in the window over there. It's not something he likes

to talk about, but he and his friends from Dzerzhinsky Square did quite a lot of business together over the years. I bet he could get to the bottom of this in a couple of days if he set his mind to it."

Shamron looked at Lavon as if to say it would take him no more than an afternoon.

"Then what would we do with the information?" asked Gabriel. "Leak it to The New York Times? A Nazi memorandum, via the KGB and Israeli intelligence? The Church would deny that the meeting ever took place and attack the messenger. Very few people would believe us. It would also poison relations between Israel and the Vatican. Everything John Paul the Second did to repair relations between Catholics and Jews would go up in flames."

Frustration showed on Lavon's face. "The conduct of Pope Pius and the Vatican during the war is a matter of state concern for the government of Israel. There are those in the Church who wish to declare Pius the Twelfth a saint. It is the policy of the Israeli government that no canonization should take place until all relevant documents in the Secret Archives have been released and examined. This material should be turned over to the Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv and acted upon."

"It should, Elijah," said Shamron, "but I'm afraid Gabriel speaks the truth. That document is too dangerous to make public. What do you think the Vatican is going to say? 'Oh dear, how could this have happened? We're terribly sorry.' No, that's not how they'll react. They'll attack us, and it will blow up in our faces. Our relations with the Vatican are tenuous at best. There are many members of the Secretariat of State who would use any excuse--including our , involvement in this affair--to sever them. For anything good to come out of this, it has to be handled delicately and quietly--from the inside."

"By you? Forgive me, Boss, but the words delicate and quiet don't leap into my mind when I think about you. Lev gave you and Gabriel permission to investigate Beni's death, not cause a firestorm in our relations with the Holy See. You should turn the material over to the Foreign Ministry and go back to Tiberias."

"Under normal circumstances, I might take your advice, but I'm afraid the situation has changed."

"What are you talking about, Boss?"

"The phone call I took earlier this morning was from Aaron Shilo, our ambassador to the Holy See. It seems there's been an unexpected addition to the Holy Father's schedule."

"Which brings us back to the gentlemen who followed you when you left the safe flat in Rome." Shamron sat down opposite Gabriel and placed a photograph on the table. "This photograph was taken in Bucharest fifteen years ago. Recognize him?"

Gabriel nodded. The man in the photograph was the assassin and terrorist-for-hire known only as the Leopard.

Shamron laid a second photograph on the table, next to the first. "This photograph was taken by Mordecai in London minutes after the murder of Peter Malone. Research ran the photographs through the face-recognition software. They're the same man. Peter Malone was murdered by the Leopard."

"And Beni?" asked Gabriel.

"If they hired the Leopard to kill Malone, it's quite possible they hired him to kill Beni, but we may never know for certain."

"Obviously, you have a theory about the dead Palestinian in Rome."

"I do," Shamron said. "We know the Leopard had a long and

fruitful association with Palestinian terror groups. The operation on Cyprus was testament to that. We also know that he'd reached a deal with Abu Jihad to carry out additional acts of terror against Israeli citizens. Fortunately, you cut short Abu Jihad's illustrious career and the Leopard's operations never came to pass."

"You think the Leopard renewed his relationship with the Palestinians in order to find me?"

"I'm afraid it does make a certain amount of sense. Crux Vera wants you dead, and so do many people within the Palestinian movement. It's quite possible that the Leopard was the second man in that Lancia--and that he was the one who killed Marwan Aziz."

Gabriel picked up the photographs and studied them carefully, as if they were a pair of canvases, one that had been authenticated and one that was thought to have been painted by the same artist. It was impossible to tell with the naked eye, but he had learned long ago that the face-recognition software in Research rarely made a mistake. Then he closed his eyes and saw different faces. The faces of the dead: Felici... Manzini... Carcassi... Bent... Rossi.... Lastly, he saw a man in a white cassock, entering a synagogue by the river in Rome. A cassock stained with blood.

He opened his eyes and looked at Shamron. "We need to get a message to this Pope that his life may be in grave danger."

Shamron folded his arms and lowered his chin to his chest. "And how shall we do that? Call Rome information and ask for the Pope's private number? Everything goes through channels, and the Curia is famous for its slowness. If our ambassador goes through the Secretariat of State, it could take weeks to arrange an audience with the Pope. If I try to get to him through the Vatican Security Office, we'll run straight into Carlo Casagrande and his Crux Vera goons. We need to find someone who can take us up the back staircase of the Apostolic Palace to see the Pope privately. And we need to do it before Friday. Otherwise, His Holiness might never leave the Great Synagogue of Rome alive--and that's the last thing we need."