“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m standing behind you.”

Janson wheeled round, the phone to his ear. “I don’t see you.”

Donati turned as well, slowly.

“Excellency? Is that you?”

“Yes, Niklaus.”

“Who’s the man standing next to you?”

“A friend.”

“He’s been following me.”

“He was acting on my behalf.”

“I was afraid he was going to kill me.”

“Why would anyone want to kill you?”

“Forgive me, Excellency,” he whispered.

“For what?”

“Grant me absolution.”

“I have to hear your confession first.”

He looked to his left. “There isn’t time, Excellency.”

Janson lowered the phone and started horizontally across the bridge. In the center of the span he stopped abruptly and spread his arms wide. The first shot struck him in the left shoulder, spinning him like a top. The second punched a hole through his chest and dropped him penitentially to his knees. There, with his arms now hanging limply at his sides, he received a third shot. It struck him above the right eye and sheared away a large portion of his skull.

On the ancient bridge the shots sounded like cannon fire. Instantly, a maelstrom of panic erupted. Gabriel spotted the assassin briefly as he fled the bridge to the south. Then, turning, he saw Chiara and Donati kneeling over Niklaus Janson. The final shot had driven him backward, with his legs trapped beneath him. Despite the terrible wound to his head, he was still alive, still conscious. Gabriel crouched over him. He was whispering something.

His phone was lying on the paving stones, its screen shattered. Gabriel slipped the device into his coat pocket, along with the nylon billfold he plucked from the back pocket of Janson’s jeans. Donati was praying softly, the thumb of his right hand resting near the entrance wound in Janson’s forehead. With two small movements, one vertical, the other horizontal, he absolved the Swiss Guard of his sins.

By then an anguished crowd had gathered around them. Gabriel heard expressions of shock and horror in a dozen different languages and, in the distance, the scream of approaching sirens. Rising, he pulled Chiara to her feet, then Donati. As they stepped away from the body, the crowd surged forward. Calmly, they walked north, into the flashing blue light of the first Polizia di Stato unit.

“What just happened?” asked Donati.

“I’m not sure,” said Gabriel. “But we’ll know in a minute.”

AT THE FOOT OF THE Ponte Vecchio, they joined the exodus of frightened tourists fleeing through the archways of the Vasari Corridor. When they reached the entrance of the Uffizi Gallery, Gabriel dug Janson’s phone from his pocket. It was an iPhone, unlocked, eighty-four percent charged. His darkest fears, his deepest desires, his very soul, all at Gabriel’s fingertips.

“Let’s hope I was the only one who saw you take it,” said Donati reproachfully. “And his wallet.”

“You were. But try not to look so guilty.”

“I just fled the scene of a murder. What on earth do I have to feel guilty about?”

Gabriel pressed the home button. Several applications were open, including a stream of text messages. He scrolled to the top of the exchange. There was no name, only a number. Written in English, the first text had arrived at 4:47 p.m. the previous afternoon.

Please tell me where you are, Niklaus …

“We’ve got him.”

“Who?” asked Donati.

“The person who was sending text messages to Janson while we were following him.”

Donati peered over Gabriel’s right shoulder, Chiara over his left, their faces lit by the glow of the iPhone. All at once the light was extinguished. Gabriel pressed the home button again, but there was no response. The phone had not drifted off to sleep. It had shut down entirely.

Gabriel squeezed the power button and waited for the ubiquitous white apple to appear on the screen.

Nothing.

The phone was as dead as its owner.

“Perhaps you touched something by mistake,” suggested Donati.

“Are you referring to the magic icon that instantly blows up the operating system and shreds the memory?” Gabriel looked up from the darkened screen. “It was erased remotely so we couldn’t see what was on it.”

“By whom?”

“The same men who deleted his personnel file from the Swiss Guard computer network.” Gabriel looked at Chiara. “The same men who murdered the Holy Father.”

“Do you believe me now?” asked Donati.

“Ten minutes ago, I had my doubts. Not anymore.” Gabriel stared at the Ponte Vecchio. It was ablaze with flashing blue lights. “Were you able to make out what he was whispering before he died?”

“He was speaking in Aramaic. Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? It means—”

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Donati nodded slowly. “They were the last words Jesus cried out before dying on the cross.”

“Why would he say such a thing?”

“Maybe the other guards were right,” said Donati. “Maybe Niklaus was a saint after all.”

15

VENICE—FRIBOURG, SWIZTERLAND

THEY RETURNED TO VENICE, COLLECTED two sleeping children from a house in the ancient ghetto, and carried them across the city’s only iron bridge to an apartment on the Rio della Misericordia. There they passed a largely sleepless night, Donati in the spare room. At breakfast the following morning he could scarcely take his eyes off Raphael, who bore a striking resemblance to his famous father. The child had even been cursed with Gabriel’s unnaturally green eyes. Irene looked like Gabriel’s mother, never more so than when she was annoyed with him.

“It will only be a day or two,” he assured her.

“That’s what you always say, Abba.”

They said their goodbyes downstairs on the Fondamenta dei Ormesini. Chiara’s final kiss was decorous. “Do try not to get yourself killed,” she whispered into Gabriel’s ear. “Your children need you. And so do I.”

Gabriel and Donati settled into the aft seating compartment of a waiting motoscafo and skimmed across the gray-green waters of the lagoon to Marco Polo Airport. In the crowded concourse, passengers were gathered beneath the television monitors. Another bomb had exploded in Germany. This time the target was a market in the northern city of Hamburg. A claim of responsibility had appeared on social media, along with a professionally edited video from the purported mastermind. In perfect colloquial German, his face concealed behind an Arab headdress, he promised the bombings would continue until the black flag of the Islamic State flew over the Bundestag. Having suffered two terrorist attacks in just forty-eight hours, Germany was now on high alert.

The bombing immediately snarled air travel across Europe, but somehow the late-morning Alitalia flight to Geneva departed on time. Despite the increased security at Switzerland’s second-busiest airport, Gabriel and Donati cleared passport control with no delay. Transport had left a BMW sedan in the short-term car park, with the key taped beneath the front bumper. In the glove box, wrapped in a protective cloth, was a 9mm Beretta.