Daniel Silva - The Confessor

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

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

"Protesters?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE POPE WAS SCHEDULED to begin his remarks at eleven a.m. At ten-thirty, he left the papal study, accompanied by Father Donati and Gabriel. In the hall outside the papal apartments, they encountered a detail of plainclothes Swiss Guard. The chief of the detail was a towering Helvetian named Karl Brunner. This was the moment Gabriel was dreading most, his first confrontation with the Swiss Catholic noblemen sworn to lay down their lives if necessary to protect the Pope.

When Brunner spotted Gabriel, his hand slipped inside the jacket of his blue suit and came out with a pistol. He rushed forward, pushing the Pope aside with a sweeping forearm, and seized Gabriel by the throat. Gabriel fought every survival instinct and allowed himself to be brought down by the Swiss Guard. Not that there was much he could do about it. Karl Brunner outweighed him by at least fifty pounds and was built like a rugby player. The hand around

Gabriel's throat was like a steel vise. He landed on his back, with Brunner falling on his chest. He kept his hands in plain sight and allowed the security man to tear the Beretta from his shoulder holster. Brunner tossed the gun away and pointed his own weapon at Gabriel's face while two other members of the detail pinned Gabriel firmly to the floor.