He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “You mustn’t stay long. Cardinal Albanese instructed the security guards to search the Depository. They’re on their way.”

“How do you know?”

He lowered his gaze toward the pale-green door. “I’m afraid the book is gone, Excellency.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“This will tell you everything you need to know.” The priest handed Donati the envelope. The flap was sealed with clear packing tape. “Don’t open it until you’re outside the walls of the Vatican.”

“What is it?” asked Donati.

The priest lifted his eyes toward the ceiling again. “It’s time for you to leave, Excellency. They’re coming.”

ONLY THEN WAS GABRIEL ABLE to hear the voices. He seized his phone from Donati and extinguished the light. The darkness was absolute.

“Follow me,” whispered Father Joshua. “I know the way.”

They walked in a single file, the priest leading, Gabriel behind Donati. They made a right turn, then a left, and a moment later they were back at the door through which they had entered the Depository. It opened to Father Joshua’s touch. He raised a hand in farewell and then melted once more into the gloom.

They entered the stairwell and climbed the eight flights of steps. Gabriel’s phone had lost its connection to Unit 8200. When he redialed, Yuval Gershon answered instantly.

“I was getting worried.”

“Can you see us?”

“I can now.”

Gershon unlocked the last two doors simultaneously. Outside, the sharp Roman sunlight dazzled their eyes. Donati slipped the envelope into his briefcase and reset the combination locks.

“Maybe I should carry that,” said Gabriel as they set off toward the Via Sant’Anna.

“I outrank you, Father Benedetti.”

“That’s true, Excellency. But I’m the one with the gun.”

IT WAS AT THAT INSTANT the lights flickered to life in Cardinal Domenico Albanese’s apartment. Dripping wet, he lifted the receiver of his internal Vatican phone and heard the pleasing pulse of a dial tone. The duty officer in the Archives control room answered on the first ring. Yes, he said, the power had been restored. The computer network was in the process of rebooting, and the security cameras and automatic doors were once again functioning normally.

“Is there any evidence of an intrusion?”

“None, Eminence.”

Relieved, Albanese placed the receiver gently in its cradle and took a moment to ponder the view from the window of his private study. It lacked the grandeur of the vista from the papal apartments—he could not see St. Peter’s Square or even the dome of the basilica—but it allowed him to monitor the comings and goings at St. Anne’s Gate.

At present, the Via Sant’Anna was deserted except for a tall archbishop and a smallish priest in a slightly ill-fitting clerical suit. They were headed toward the gate at a parade-ground clip. The priest’s hands were empty, but in the right hand of the archbishop was a fine leather briefcase. Albanese recognized it. Indeed, he had often expressed admiration for the bag. He recognized the archbishop as well.

But who was the priest? Albanese had but one suspect. He reached for his phone and made one final call.

A DEVOUT CATHOLIC WHO ATTENDED Mass daily, Colonel Alois Metzler, commandant of the Pontifical Swiss Guard, did his best to avoid the office on Sundays. But because it was the Sunday before the start of a conclave, a most sacred undertaking that would be watched by billions around the world, he was at his desk in the Swiss Guard barracks when Cardinal Albanese telephoned. The camerlengo was molto agitato. In frenetic Italian, which Metzler spoke fluently if reluctantly, he explained that Archbishop Luigi Donati and his friend Gabriel Allon had just broken into the Secret Archives and were at that moment headed toward St. Anne’s Gate. Under no circumstances, shouted the cardinal, were they to be allowed to leave the territory of Vatican City.

If the truth be told, Metzler was in no mood to tangle with the likes of Donati and his friend from Israel, whom Metzler had seen in action on more than one occasion. But because the throne of St. Peter was empty, he had no choice but to obey a direct order from the camerlengo.

Rising, he hurried through the barracks to the lobby, where a duty officer sat behind a half-moon desk, his eyes on a bank of video monitors. In one, Metzler saw Donati marching toward St. Anne’s Gate, a priest at his side.

“Good God,” Metzler murmured.

The priest was Allon.

Through the open door of the barracks, Metzler saw a young halberdier standing in the Via Sant’Anna, hands clasped behind his back. He shouted at the sentry to block the gate, but it was too late. Donati and Allon strode across the invisible border in a black blur and were gone.

Metzler hastened after them. They were now walking swiftly through the crowds of tourists along the Via di Porta Angelica. Metzler called Donati’s name. The archbishop stopped and turned. Allon kept walking.

Donati’s smile was disarming. “What is it, Colonel Metzler?”

“Cardinal Albanese believes you just entered the Secret Archives without authorization.”

“And how would I have done that? The Archives are closed today.”

“The cardinal believes you had help from your friend.”

“Father Benedetti?”

“I saw him in the monitor, Excellency. I know who that was.”

“You were mistaken, Colonel Metzler. And so was Cardinal Albanese. Now if you will excuse me, I’m late for an appointment.”

Donati turned without another word and set off toward St. Peter’s Square. Metzler addressed his back.

“Your Vatican pass is no longer valid, Excellency. From now on, you stop at the Permissions Desk like everyone else.”

Donati raised a hand in affirmation and kept walking. Metzler returned to his office and immediately rang Albanese.

The camerlengo was molto agitato.

GABRIEL WAS WAITING FOR DONATI near the end of the Colonnade. Together they returned to the Jesuit Curia. Upstairs in his rooms, Donati drew the envelope from his briefcase and pried open the flap. Inside, between two protective sheets of clear film, was a single page of handwritten text. The left edge of the page was clean and straight, but the right was tattered and frayed. The characters were Roman. The language was Latin.

Donati’s hands shook as he read it.

EVANGELIUM SECUNDUM PILATI …

The Gospel according to Pontius Pilate.

PART TWO

ECCE HOMO

24

JESUIT CURIA, ROME

EVEN HIS FIRST NAME WAS lost to the mists of time—the name his mother and father had called him the day he was presented to the gods and a golden amulet, a bulla, was hung round his tiny neck to ward off evil spirits. Later in life he would have answered to his cognomen, the third name of a Roman citizen, a hereditary label used to distinguish one branch of a family from the others. His had three syllables, not two, and sounded nothing like the version that would follow him down through the ages and into infamy.

The year of his birth is not known, nor the place. One school of thought held that he was from Roman-ruled Spain—perhaps Tarragona on the Catalonian coast or Seville, where even today, near the Plaza de Arguelles, there stands an elaborate Andalusian palace known as the Casa de Pilatos. Another theory, prevalent in the Middle Ages, imagined he was the illegitimate child of a German king called Tyrus and a concubine named Pila. As the legend goes, Pila did not know the name of the man who impregnated her, so she combined her father’s name with her own and called the boy Pilatus.