Daniel Silva - The Confessor

ST. Peter's square was in chaos. Clearly, the first priority of the police would be to secure the area and tend to the victims rather than pursue the man who had wreaked the havoc. Gabriel knew it would take only a matter of seconds for a trained professional to disappear into the labyrinth of Rome. Indeed, he had done it once himself. In a moment, the Leopard, the man who had murdered Benjamin and countless others, would be gone forever.

The motorcycle Gabriel and Father Donati had ridden from the synagogue was where they had left it, resting on its kickstand a few meters from the Bronze Doors. Gabriel still had the keys in his pocket. He climbed into the saddle and roared across the square.

Rounding the end of the colonnade, he turned right, as the assassin had done, and was immediately confronted with a decision. He

could continue along the perimeter of the city state or turn to the left, toward the southern end of the sprawling Janiculum Park. As Gabriel slowed to make his decision, a tourist with a camera around his neck stepped forward and shouted at him in French: "Are you looking for the priest with a gun?"

The Frenchman pointed down the Borgo Santo Spirito, a narrow cobbled street lined with Vatican office buildings and souvenir shops selling religious articles. Gabriel turned left and opened the throttle. It made sense. If the assassin followed this route of escape, he could disappear into the open spaces of the park. From there he could make his way to the tangled streets of Trastevere in a matter of minutes. From Trastevere he could cross the river to the residential districts of the Aventine Hill.

After a hundred meters, Gabriel banked to the right and sped along the facade of a dusty palazzo. He came to a busy piazza near the river, swerved to the right, and headed up an access ramp leading into the park. At the top of the ramp was a traffic circle outside the entrance of an underground bus terminal. Gabriel thought he saw the assassin for the first time, a motorcyclist dressed in black, with a female passenger on the back. The bike accelerated around the circle and disappeared into the park. Gabriel sped after it.

The roadway was lined with broad gravel walkways and towering umbrella pine. It ran along the spine of the hill and rose gradually, so that after a few seconds Gabriel felt as though he was floating above the city. As he neared the Piazzale Garibaldi, he saw a flash in the heavy traffic, a motorcycle knifing dangerously between cars, a man in black at the handlebars. Entering the chaos of the massive piazzale, Gabriel briefly lost sight of the bike; then he spotted it again, turning onto a smaller road that led down the hill toward Trastevere. Gabriel leaned the bike hard and fought his way through the traffic, ignoring the symphony of horns and curses, and followed after him.

The descent out of the park was a steep series of switchbacks and hairpin turns. The carabinieri motorcycle had more power than the assassin's, and Gabriel did not have the added weight and balance problems of a passenger. He closed the distance quickly, and was soon about thirty meters behind.

Gabriel reached inside his coat and drew the Beretta. He maneuvered the weapon into his left hand and twisted hard on the throttle with his right. The bike roared forward. The woman glanced over her shoulder, then turned and took awkward aim at him with an automatic pistol.

Gabriel barely heard the sound of the shots over the drone of the motorcycles. One of the rounds pierced the windscreen. The bike bucked from the impact. Gabriel's hand slipped from the throttle. The Leopard began to pull away. Gabriel managed to get his hand back on the throttle. With agonizing slowness, he gradually closed the gap.

Lange took his eyes off the street long enough to glance into his rearview mirror at the man pursuing him. Dark hair, olive skin, narrow features, a look of sheer determination in his eyes. Was he Gabriel Allon? The agent codenamed Sword who had coldly walked into a villa in Tunis and assassinated one of the most heavily protected men on the planet? The man whom Casagrande had promised would not be a problem? Lange hoped someday to repay the favor.

For now he focused his thoughts on the task at hand: finding some avenue of escape. A car was waiting across the river on the Aventine Hill. To get there, he needed to navigate the maze of Trastevere. He was confident he could lose the Israeli there--if they survived that long.

He thought of his home in Grindelwald, of skiing beneath the face of the Eiger and bringing women home to his enormous bed. Then he pictured the alternative: rotting in an Italian jail, subsisting on rancid food, never touching a woman again for the rest of his life. Anything was better--even death.

He opened the throttle full and drove perilously fast. The streets of Trastevere lay before him. Freedom. He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw that the Israeli had closed the gap and was preparing to fire. Lange tried to increase his speed, but couldn't. It was Katrine. Her weight was slowing him down.

Then he heard the gunshots, felt the rounds shearing past him. Katrine screamed. Her grip on his pelvis weakened. "Hold on!" Lange said, but there was little conviction in his voice.

He left the park and entered Trastevere, racing along a street lined with faded tenement houses. Then he turned into a smaller street, narrow and cobblestoned, cars parked on both sides. At the head of the street rose the spire of a Romanesque church, a cross on top, like the site of a rifle. Lange made for it.

Katrine's grip was slackening. Lange glanced over his shoulder. There was blood in her mouth and her face was the color of chalk. He looked into the mirror. The Israeli was about thirty meters behind, no more, and making up ground quickly.

Lange murmured, "Forgive me, Katrine."

He grabbed her wrist and twisted it until he could feel the bones cracking. Katrine screamed and tried to grab hold of his torso, but with only one hand it was futile.

Lange felt the weight of her body tumbling helplessly off the back of the bike. The sound of her body striking cobblestones was something he would never forget. He did not look back.

The woman fell diagonally across the street. Gabriel had less than a second to react. He squeezed the brakes in a vise-grip but realized that the powerful motorcycle was not going to stop in time. He leaned hard to the left and laid the bike on the cobblestones. His head slammed to the pavement. As he slid along the street, skin was torn from his body. At some point he saw the bike cartwheel into the air.

He came to rest atop the body of the woman and found himself staring into a pair of beautiful lifeless eyes. He lifted his head and saw the Leopard roar up the street and vanish into a church steeple.

Then he blacked out.

IN THE turmoil of St. Peter's Square, no one took notice of the old man making-his way slowly across the timeworn paving stones. He glanced at a dying Swiss Guard, his vibrant uniform stained with blood. He paused briefly near the body of a young carabiniere. He saw a young American girl, screaming in the arms of her mother. In a few minutes, the horror would be amplified when news of the cardinal's assassination was made public. The stones of St. Peter's, awash in blood. A nightmare. Worse than that day in 1981, when the Pole was nearly killed. I have wrought this, thought Casagrande. It is my doing.

He slipped through the colonnade and made for St. Anne's Gate. He thought of what lay ahead. The inevitable exposure of the conspiracy. The unmasking of Crux Vera. How could Casagrande explain that he had actually saved the life of the Pope? Indeed, that he had saved the life of the Church itself by killing Cardinal Brindisi? The blood in St. Peter's was necessary, he thought. It was a cleansing blood. But no one would believe him. He would die in shame, a disgraced man. A murderer.