He composed another brief message—Where are you?—and fired it into the ether. This time, perhaps because of the wind direction, he heard the bell-like tolling of Father Graf’s phone. Several seconds elapsed before a bloom of light illuminated the tableau at the center of the piazza. Unfortunately, the position of the two figures had changed. Both were now facing north. Veronica was kneeling. Father Graf was holding a gun to the back of her head.

The priest turned when he heard the crunch of gravel beneath Gabriel’s feet. Instantly, there was another burst of light in the center of the piazza. The light of a muzzle flash. The superheated round split the air a few inches from Gabriel’s left shoulder. Nevertheless, he rushed headlong toward his target, the Beretta in his outstretched hand. There were worse places to die, he thought, than the Piazza di Siena. He only hoped that God was in a good mood when it was his turn in the dock.

DONATI WAITED UNTIL HE HAD left the Casa Santa Marta before switching on his phone. He had received no calls or text messages during his remarks to the cardinals. He tried Veronica’s number. There was no answer. He started to dial Gabriel, but stopped himself. Now was not the time.

The two Swiss Guards at the entrance of the guesthouse were staring vacantly into the night, unaware of the pandemonium Donati had left in his wake. My God, what had he done? He had lit the match, he thought. It would be Cardinal Francona’s task to preside over a conclave in flames. Only heaven knew what kind of pope it would produce. Donati didn’t much care at this point, so long as the next pontiff wasn’t a puppet of Bishop Hans Richter.

The southern facade of the basilica was awash in floodlight. Donati noticed that one of the side doors was ajar. Entering, he crossed the left transept to Bernini’s soaring baldacchino and fell to his knees on the cold marble floor. In the grottos beneath him lay his master, a small puncture wound in his right thigh. Eyes closed, Donati prayed with a fervor he had not felt in many years.

Kill him, he was thinking. Slowly and with a great deal of pain.

THE NIGHT WAS GABRIEL’S ALLY, for it rendered him all but invisible. Father Graf, however, betrayed his exact location with every undisciplined pull of his trigger. Gabriel took no evasive action, made no changes in heading. Instead, he advanced directly toward his target as quickly as his legs could carry him, the way Shamron had trained him in the autumn of 1972.

Eleven times, one for every Israeli killed at Munich …

He had lost count of how many shots Father Graf had fired. He was confident Father Graf had, too. The Beretta held fifteen 9mm rounds. Gabriel, however, required only one. The one he intended to put between the priest’s eyes when he was certain he would not hit Veronica by mistake. She was still on her knees, her hands covering her ears. Her mouth was open, but Gabriel could hear no sound other than the gunshots. A trick of the piazza’s acoustics made it seem as though they were coming from every direction at once.

Gabriel was now about twenty meters from Graf, close enough so he could see him clearly without the aid of the muzzle flashes. Which meant Graf could see Gabriel, too. He could wait no longer, approach no closer. A police officer might have stopped and turned slightly to one side to reduce his profile. But not an Office assassin who had been trained by the great Ari Shamron. He continued his relentless advance, as though he intended to beat his bullet to its target.

Finally, his arm swung up, and he placed the sight of the Beretta over Father Graf’s face. But in the instant before Gabriel could place the required pressure on the trigger, a portion of the face was blown away. Father Graf then vanished from view, as though a hole in the earth had opened beneath him.

Gabriel stumbled to a stop, unsure of the direction from which the shot had come. After a moment Alois Metzler emerged from the darkness, a SIG Sauer 226 pistol in his outstretched hand.

He lowered the gun and looked at Veronica. “You’d better get her out of here before the Polizia arrive. I’ll take care of it.”

“I’d say you already have.”

Metzler contemplated the dead priest. “Don’t worry, Allon. His blood is on my hands.”

56

VIA GREGORIANA, ROME

AT TEN FIFTEEN THE FOLLOWING morning, Gabriel was awakened by a quarrel in the street beneath his window. For a moment he could not recall the name of the street or its location. Nor did he have any memory of the circumstances under which he had reached his place of rest, a small and hideously uncomfortable couch.

It was the couch, he recalled with a sudden lucidity, in the sitting room of the old Office safe flat near the top of the Spanish Steps. Veronica Marchese had offered to sleep there. But in an ill-advised display of chivalry, Gabriel had insisted she take the bedroom instead. They had stayed up past two o’clock sharing a bottle of Tuscan red wine, which had left him with a dull headache. It paired nicely with the pain in his lower back.

His clothing lay on the floor next to the couch. Dressed, he went into the kitchen and poured bottled water into the electric kettle. After spooning coffee into the French press, he entered the spare bathroom to confront his reflection in the mirror. If only he were a painting, he could erase the damage. The best he could hope for was a minor improvement before Chiara’s arrival. At Gabriel’s suggestion, she and the children were coming to Rome for the start of the conclave. Donati had invited them to watch the opening ceremony live on television at the Jesuit Curia. He had asked Veronica to join them. It promised to be an interesting afternoon.

Gabriel filled the French press with water and read the Italian papers on his phone while waiting for the coffee to brew. The shocking events in Germany were of little interest to the editors in Rome and Milan. Only the conclave mattered. The vaticanisti remained convinced that the papacy was Navarro’s to lose. One predicted Pietro Lucchesi would be the last Italian pope. In none of the papers was there any mention of a dead priest from a reactionary Catholic order, or a shooting in the Borghese Gardens involving a prominent Italian museum director. Somehow, Alois Metzler had managed to keep it quiet. At least for now.

Gabriel carried his coffee into the sitting room and switched on the television. Fifteen thousand Catholics, religious and lay, were crammed into St. Peter’s Basilica for the Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice pre-conclave Mass. Another two hundred thousand were watching on the jumbo screens outside in the square. Dean Angelo Francona was the celebrant. Arrayed before him in four semicircular rows of chairs was the entire College of Cardinals, including those cardinals who were too old to participate in the conclave that was now just hours away. Donati was seated directly behind them. In his choir dress, he looked every inch the Roman Catholic prelate. His expression was grave, determined. Gabriel would not have wanted to be on the receiving end of his stern gaze.

“What do you suppose he’s thinking?”

Gabriel looked up and smiled at Veronica Marchese. She was wearing a pair of Chiara’s old cotton pajamas. One hand was propped on her hip. The other was tugging at her right ear.

“I still can’t hear anything.”

“It was exposed to several gunshots with no protection. It’s going to take a few days.”

Her hand moved to the back of her head.

“How does it feel?”

“A bit of caffeine might help.” She looked longingly at his coffee. “Is there enough for me?”