Daniel Silva - The Confessor

"He's not here at the moment."

"Where is he?"

"He's with the Holy Father." He hesitated, then added: "At the synagogue."

"Ah, yes, of course. I'm sure Father Donati would appreciate knowing that you told a complete stranger his whereabouts."

"I'm sorry, Father, but you--"

Lange cut him off. "I need to leave something for Father Donati. Can you take me to his office?"

"As you know, Father Beck, I'm not allowed to leave this post under any circumstances."

"Very good," Lange said with a conciliatory smile. "At least you got. something right. Please point me in the direction of the good father's office."

The Swiss Guard hesitated for a moment, unsure of himself, then told Lange the way. The papal apartments were deserted but for a single nun in gray habit, busy with a feather duster. She smiled at Lange as he walked past the entrance to Father Donati's office and entered the next room.

He closed the door behind him and stood for a moment while his eyes adjusted to the gloom. The heavy curtains were drawn, obscuring the view of St. Peter's Square, and the room was in deep shadow. Lange moved forward, across the simple Oriental carpet, toward the wooden desk. He stood next to the high-backed chair and ran his palm over the pale plush covering while he surveyed the desk. It was too simple for so powerful a man. Too severe. A blotter, a cylindrical container for his pens, a pad of lined paper for jotting down his thoughts. A white telephone with an old-fashioned rotary dial. Looking up, he noticed a painting of the Madonna. She seemed to be peering at Lange through the shadows.

He reached into the breast pocket of his clerical suit, removed an envelope, and dropped it on the blotter. It landed with a muffled metallic thump. He took one last look around the study, turned, and walked quickly out.

At the entrance of the appartamento, he paused to glare sternly at the Swiss Guard. "You'll be hearing from me," Lange snapped, then he turned and disappeared down the corridor.

The desk in the office of Secretary of State Marco Brindisi was quite different from the austere one in the papal study. It was a large Renaissance affair with carved legs and gold inlay. Those who stood before it tended to be uncomfortable, which suited Brindisi's purposes nicely.

At the moment, he sat alone, fingers formed into a bridge, eyes focused somewhere in the middle distance. A few minutes earlier, from his window overlooking St. Peter's Square, he had seen the Pope's motorcade speeding toward the river along the Via della Conciliazione. By now he was probably inside the synagogue.

The cardinal's gaze settled on the bank of television screens on the wall opposite his desk. His goal was to restore the Church to the power it had enjoyed during the Middle Ages, but Marco Brindisi was very much a man of the modern age. Gone were the days when Vatican bureaucrats wrote their memoranda on parchment with quill and ink. Brindisi had spent untold millions upgrading the machinery of the Vatican Secretariat of State in order to make the bureaucracy of the Church run more like the nerve center of a modern nation. He tuned the television to BBC International. A flood in Bangladesh, thousands killed, hundreds of thousands homeless. He jotted a minute to himself to make a suitable donation through Vatican charitable organizations to ease the suffering in any way possible. He switched on a second television and tuned it to RAI, the main Italian network. The third television he set to CNN International.

He had made good on his threat not to accompany the Pope on this disgraceful journey. As a result he was now supposed to be working on a benign-sounding letter of resignation, one that would cause the Holy See no embarrassment and raise no uncomfortable questions for the rabble in the Vatican press corps to ponder in their infantile columns. Had he any intention of resigning, his letter would have stressed a deep desire to return to pastoral duties, to tend to a flock, to baptize the young and anoint the sick. Any Vaticamsti with a bit of intelligence would recognize such a letter as deception on a grand scale. Marco Brindisi had been raised, educated, and nurtured to wield bureaucratic power within the Curia. The notion that he would willingly yield his authority was patently absurd. No one would believe such a letter, and the cardinal had no intention of writing it. Besides, he thought, the man who had ordered him to write it did not have long to live.

Had he started a letter of resignation, it would have raised uncomfortable questions in the days after the Pope's assassination. Had the two most powerful men in the Church experienced a falling out in recent weeks? Did the Cardinal Secretary of State have something to gain by the Pope's death? No letter of resignation, no questions. Indeed, thanks to a series of well-placed leaks, Cardinal Brindisi would be portrayed as the Pope's closest friend and confidant in the Curia, a man who admired the Pope immensely and was much beloved in return. These press clippings would capture the attention of the cardinals when they gathered for the next conclave. So would Marco Brindisi's smooth and adept handling of Church affairs in the traumatic days after the Pope's assassination. At such a time, the conclave would be reluctant to turn to an outsider. A man of the Curia would be the next pope, and the Curial candidate of choice would be Secretary of State Marco Brindisi.

His dreamlike trance was shattered by an image on RAI: Pope Paul VII, entering the Great Synagogue of Rome. Brindisi saw a different image: Beckett standing on his altar at Canterbury. The murder of a meddlesome priest.

Send forth your knights, Carlo. Cut him down.

Cardinal Marco Brindisi turned up the volume and waited for news of a pope's death.

The Rome central synagogue eastern and ornate, stirring in restless anticipation. Gabriel took his place at the front of the synagogue, his right shoulder facing the bimah, his hands behind his back, pressed against the cool marble wall. Father Donati stood next-to him, tense and irritable. The vantage point provided him perfect sightlines around the interior of the chamber. A few feet away sat a group of Curial cardinals, dazzling in crimson cassocks, listening intently as the chief rabbi made his introductory remarks. Just beyond the cardinals stirred the fidgety denizens of the Vatican press corps. The head of the press office, Rudolf Gertz, appeared nauseated. The rest of the seats were filled with ordinary members of Rome's Jewish community. As the Pope finally rose to speak, a palpable sense of electricity filled the hall.

Gabriel resisted the temptation to look at him. Instead, his eyes scanned the synagogue, looking for someone or something that

seemed out of place. Karl Brunner, standing a few feet from Gabriel, was doing the same thing. Their eyes met briefly. Brunner, Gabriel decided, was no threat to the Pope.

The Pope expressed his gratitude to the rabbi and the community at large for inviting him to speak here this day. Then he remarked on the beauty of the synagogue and of the Jewish faith, stressing the common heritage of Christians and Jews. In a term borrowed from his predecessor, he referred to Jews as the elder brothers of Roman Catholics. It is a special relationship, this bond between siblings, the Pope said--one that can pull apart if not tended to properly. Too often over the past two thousand years, the siblings had quarreled, with disastrous consequences for the Jewish people. He spoke without a text or notes. His audience was spellbound.

"In April 1986, my predecessor, Pope John Paul the Second, came to this synagogue to bridge the divide between our two communities and to begin a process of healing. Over these past years, much has been accomplished." The Pope paused for a moment, the silence hanging heavy in the hall. "But much work remains to be done."