Daniel Silva - The Confessor

The carabiniere quickly dismounted the motorcycle.

Gabriel took the handlebars and swung his leg over the saddle. Father Donati climbed on the back.

"Can you drive one of these things?"

"Hold on."

Gabriel turned onto the deserted Lungotevere and opened the throttle full. As he raced north toward the Vatican, he could hear Father Donati reciting the Lord's Prayer in his ear.

Marco Brindisi stood in the center of the room before a bank of television screens. His arms were spread wide, his palms were open, his face seemed to have drained of blood. In his rage, the red. zucchetto had fallen from his pate and lay on the carpet at his feet.

"Will no one silence this heretic?" the cardinal screamed. "Damn you, Carlo! Cut him down! Where is your man?"

"I'm right here," Eric Lange said calmly.

Cardinal Brindisi turned his head a few degrees and took note of the man in a humble clerical suit who had slipped silently into his office.

"Who are you?"

Lange's arm swung up, the Stechkin in his hand.

"Would you like to make a last confession, Eminence?"

The cardinal narrowed his eyes. "May the fires of hell consume your soul."

He closed his eyes and prepared himself for death.

Lange indulged him.

He pulled the trigger three times in rapid succession. The Stechkin spit fire but emitted no sound. Three shots struck the cardinal in the chest, forming a perfect triangle over his heart.

As the cardinal collapsed onto his back, Lange stepped forward and stared into the lifeless eyes. He placed the tip of the silencer against the prelate's temple and fired one last shot.

Then he turned and walked calmly out.

It took three minutes for Gabriel to reach the entrance of St. Peter's Square. As he skidded to a halt at the metal barricades, a startled carabiniere leveled his automatic weapon and braced himself for assault. Father Donati waved his Vatican badge.

"Put your gun down, you idiot! I'm Luigi Donati, the Pope's private secretary. We have an emergency. Move the barricade!"

"But--"

"Move it! Now!"

The carabiniere lifted a section of the barricade, creating a passage wide enough for a motorcycle. Gabriel nosed through and started across the crowded square. Startled tourists leapt out of the way to safety, screaming insults at him in a half-dozen languages.

By the time they reached the Bronze Doors, the Swiss Guard had dispensed with his halberd and was holding a Beretta pistol in his outstretched hands. He lowered the gun when he saw that it truly was Father Donati on the back of the motorcycle.

"We were told there was an intruder," Donati said.

The Swiss Guard nodded. "Now there's been a report of a shooting inside the palace."

In another life, Father Luigi Donati must have been a track star or a footballer. With his long legs and lean build, he bounded up staircases three steps at a time and charged down hallways like a sprinter hurtling toward the finish line. Gabriel was doing all he could do just to keep the cleric in sight.

It took less than two minutes to reach Cardinal Brindisi's apartment on the second floor of the palace. Several Swiss Guards were already there, along with a trio of Curial priests. The body of Father Mascone was slumped over the desk in the antechamber in a pool of blood.

"My God, but this thing has gone too far," murmured Father I Donati. Then he bent over the body of the dead priest and administered last rites.

Gabriel entered the study and found a nun bowed over the body : of Cardinal Brindisi. Father Donati followed a moment later, his, face ashen. He walked wearily across the room, then collapsed to the floor next to the nun, oblivious to the fact that he was kneeling; in blood.

FROM HER position at the end of the colonnade, Katrine Boussard had seen everything: the arrival of the two men on motorcycle, the confrontation between the carabiniere and the priest who claimed to be the Pope's secretary, the mad race across the square. Clearly they knew something was taking place inside the palace. She started the engine, gazed across the square toward the Bronze Doors, and waited.

Lange's hopes of slipping quietly out of the Vatican were all but gone. The entrance hall of the palace was filled with Swiss Guards and Vatican police, and it appeared as though the Bronze Doors had been sealed. Obviously someone had ignored his warnings and sounded an alarm. Lange would have to use other means of escaping. In a hasty attempt to alter his appearance, he removed his eyeglasses and shoved them into his pocket. Then he headed calmly toward the Bronze Doors.

A Swiss Guard put a hand on his chest. "No one in or out for the time being."

"I'm afraid I can't be detained," Lange said calmly. "I need to leave at once for a pressing appointment."

"Orders are orders, Monsignor. There's been a shooting. No one can leave."

"A shooting in the Vatican? Dear God."

For the benefit of the Swiss Guard, Lange made the sign of the cross before reaching inside the jacket of his clerical suit and drawing the Stechkin. The Swiss Guard fumbled in his Renaissance costume trying desperately to remove his own weapon, but before he could bring it into play Lange shot him twice in the chest.

A scream filled the hall as Lange lunged toward the Bronze Doors. A Swiss Guard stepped into his path, a Beretta in his outstretched hands. He hesitated; Lange was surrounded by shouting clerics and Vatican bureaucrats. The man who spent eight hours a

day holding a halberd didn't have the nerve to fire into a crowd and risk innocent casualties. Lange had no such worries. The Stechkin swung up, and he blew the Swiss Guard from his feet.

Lange sprinted through the Bronze Doors. A carabiniere walked toward him, gun leveled on his hip, shouting at him in Italian to lay down his weapon. Lange turned and fired. The carabiniere fell to the paving stones of St. Peter's.

What he saw next was something out of his nightmares: a half dozen carabinieri, running across the square directly toward him, I automatic weapons drawn. There would be no shooting his way out of this. Come on, Katrine. Where are you?

Standing a few feet away was a woman, an American girl by the look of her, about twenty-five years old, too terrified to move. Lange closed the distance between himself and the girl in three powerful strides, then seized her hair and pulled her to his body. The carabinieri skidded to a stop. Lange placed his Stechkin against the side of the girl's head and started dragging her across the square.

Gabriel heard screaming outside the window of Cardinal Brindisi's office. He parted the heavy curtains and looked down. The square was in turmoil: carabinieri running with weapons drawn, tourists scurrying for cover in the colonnade. And walking across the center of the square was a man in a clerical suit, holding a gun to the head of a woman.

Katrine Boussard saw him too, though from a different vantage point: her position at the end of Bernini's Colonnade. As

the square erupted into chaos, the carabiniere who had opened the barricade to the two men on motorcycle left his position and ran toward the palace. Katrine kicked the bike into gear and rolled forward, then she turned through the gap in the fence and started across the square.

Lange saw her coming. When she was a few feet away he pushed the American girl to the ground, climbed on the bike in front of Katrine took hold of the handlebars, then turned the bike around and headed for the edge of St. Peter's Square. A carabiniere was sprinting along the barricade, trying to close the breach before the bike arrived. Lange took aim and squeezed off the last two rounds in his magazine. The carabiniere tumbled to the pavement.

Lange sped through the opening in the barricade and leaned the bike south. A moment later, they were gone.