The Confessor ga-3 Page 15

  He had been traveling since dawn. Instead of flying directly from London to Rome, which would have required him to clear customs at Fiumicino Airport, he had flown to Nice. At the airport there he had paid a visit to the Hertz outlet, where a friend of the Office called Monsieur Henri had rented him a Renault sedan in such a way that it could never be traced back to him. From Nice, he drove toward Italy along the A8 autoroute. Near Monaco, he switched on the English-language Radio Riviera to catch a bit of news on the war in the territories and learned instead that Peter Malone had been found shot to death in his London home.

  Parked at the side of the motorway, traffic hurtling past, Gabriel had listened to the rest of the report with his hands strangling the steering wheel and his heart banging against his ribs. Like a chess grandmaster, he had played out the moves and saw disaster looming. He had spent two hours inside the reporter's home. Malone had taken copious notes. Surely the Metropolitan Police had discovered those notes. Because of the intelligence connection, they had probably briefed MI5. There was a very good chance every major police force and security service in Europe was looking for the Israeli assassin codenamed Sword. The safe thing to do? Call Shamron on an emergency line, arrange a bolt-hole, and sit on the beach in Ne-tanya until things cooled down. But that would entail surrendering the search for Benjamin's killers. And Malone's. He pulled back onto the autoroute and accelerated toward Italy. At the border, a drowsy guard admitted him into the country with a languid wave of his hand.

  And now, after an interminable drive down the Italian peninsula, he found himself here, in his sour-smelling room at the Abruzzi. Downstairs, the table-tennis match had deteriorated into something of a new Balkan war. The shouts of the aggrieved party filled Gabriel's room. He thought of Peter Malone and wondered whether he was responsible for his death. Had he led the killers to him, or had Malone already been marked for elimination? Was Gabriel next on the list? As he drifted toward sleep, he heard Malone's warning careening about his memory: "If they think you pose a threat, they won't hesitate to kill you"

  Tomorrow he would find Alessio Rossi. Then he would get out of Rome as quickly as possible.

  Gabriel slept poorly and was awakened early by the ringing of church bells. He opened his eyes and blinked in the severe sunlight. He showered and changed into fresh clothing, then went downstairs to the dining room for breakfast. The Croatians were nowhere to be seen, only a pair of churchy American pilgrims and a band of noisy college students from Barcelona. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and Gabriel remembered that it was a Wednesday, the day the Holy Father greeted pilgrims in St. Peter's Square.

  At nine o'clock, Gabriel returned to his room and placed his first call to Inspector Alessio Rossi of the Polizia di Stato. A switchboard operator put him through to the detective's voice mail. "My name is Heinrich Siedler," Gabriel said. "I have information regarding Father Felici and Father Manzini. You can reach me at the Pensione Abruzzi."

  He hung up. Now what? He had no choice but to wait and hope the detective called him back. There was no television in the room. The bedside table had a built-in radio, but the tuning knob was broken.

  After one hour of paralyzing boredom, he dialed the number a second time. Once again the switchboard officer transferred him straight to Rossi's voice mail. Gabriel left a second message, identical to the first, but with a faint note of urgency in his voice.

  At eleven-thirty, he placed a third call to Rossi's number. This time he was put through to a colleague who explained that the inspector was on assignment and would not be back in the office until late afternoon. Gabriel left a third message and hung up.

  He decided to use the opportunity to get out of the room. In the streets around the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore he checked his tail for signs of surveillance and saw nothing. Then he walked down the Via Napoleone III. The March air was crisp and clear and scented with woodsmoke. He ate pasta in a restaurant near the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II. After lunch, he walked along the looming western facade of the Stazione Termini, then wandered among! the classical edifices of Rome's government quarter until he found! the headquarters of the Polizia di Stato. In a cafe across the street,! he drank espresso and watched officers and secretaries filing in and out, wondering whether Rossi was among them.

  At three o'clock, he started back toward the Pensione Abruzzi.

  As he was crossing the Piazza di Repubblica, a crowd of about five hundred students entered the square from the direction of the Uni-versita Romana. At the head of the procession was an unshaven boy wearing a white headband. Around his waist were sticks of mock dynamite. Behind him a group of pseudo-mourners carried a coffin fashioned of cardboard. As they drew closer Gabriel could see that most of the demonstrators were Italian, including the boy dressed as a suicide bomber. They chanted "Liberate the land of Palestine!" and "Death to the Jews!"--not in Arabic but in Italian. A young Italian girl, no more than twenty, thrust a leaflet into Gabriel's hand. It depicted the Israeli prime minister dressed in the uniform of the SS with a Hitler Ian toothbrush mustache, the heel of his jackboot crushing the skull of a Palestinian girl. Gabriel squeezed the leaflet into a ball and dropped it onto the square.

  He passed a flower stall. A pair of carabinieri were flirting shamelessly with the girl who worked there. They looked up briefly as Gabriel strode by and stared at him with undisguised interest before turning their attention once more to the girl. It could have been nothing, but something about the way they looked at him made sweat run over Gabriel's ribs.

  He took his time walking back to the hotel, careful to make sure no one was following him. Along the way, he passed a bored cara-biniere on a motorcycle, parked in a patch of sunlight, watching the madness of a traffic circle with little interest. Gabriel seemed to intrigue him even less.

  He entered the Pensione Abruzzi. The Spaniards had returned from the Wednesday audience in a state of great excitement. It seemed that one of them, a girl with a spiked haircut, had managed to touch the Pope's hand.

  Upstairs in his room, Gabriel dialed Rossi's number.

  "Pronto."

  "Inspector Rossi?"

  "Si."

  "My name is Heinrich Siedler. I called earlier today."

  "Are you still at the Pensione Abruzzi?"

  "Yes."

  "Don't call here again."

  Click.

  NIGHT FELL and with it came a Mediterranean storm. Gabriel lay on his bed with the window open, listening to the rain smacking against the paving stones in the street below while the conversation with Alessio Rossi played over and over in his head like a loop of audio tape.

  "Are you still at the Pensione Abruzzi?" Yes.

  "Don't call here again."

  Clearly the Italian detective wished to speak with him. It was also clear that he wanted no more contact with Herr Siedler on his office telephone. Gabriel had no choice but to wait him out and hope Rossi would make the next move.

  At nine o'clock the telephone finally rang. It was the night manager.

  "There's a man here to see you."

  "What's his name?"

  "He didn't say. Shall I send him away?"

  "No, I'll be down in a minute."

  Gabriel hung up the phone and stepped into the corridor, lock'ing the door behind him. Downstairs, he found the night manager seated behind the front desk. No one else was there. Gabriel looked at him and shrugged. The night manager pointed a sausage-like forefinger toward the common room. Gabriel entered but found the room deserted, except for the Croatian table-tennis players.

  He went back to the front desk. The Italian threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender and turned his attention to a miniature black-and-white television. Gabriel climbed the stairs to his room. He unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  He saw the blow coming, a glint of light on black metal, sweeping toward him in an arc, like a shimmering swath of wet paint across blank canvas. Too late, he raised his hands to shield his head. The butt of a pistol crashed a
gainst the base of his skull behind his left ear.

  The pain was immediate. His vision blurred. His legs seemed suddenly paralyzed, and he felt himself corkscrewing downward. His attacker caught him and eased him soundlessly to the linoleum floor. He heard Peter Malone's warning one last time--"If they thinly you pose a threat, they won't hesitate to kill you"--and then only the sound of the table tennis match downstairs in the common room.

  TAPa-TAP-a-TAP .. .

  When Gabriel had awoken, his face was burning. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into a halogen bulb not more than an inch from his face. He closed his eyes and tried to turn his head. Pain shot through the back of his skull like a second Wow. He wondered how long he had been out. Long enough for his stacker to bind his mouth and wrists with packing tape. Long enough for blood to dry against the side of his neck.

  The light was so close he could see nothing more of the room.

  He had the sense that he had not left the Abruzzi. This was confirmed when he heard shouting in Serbo-Croatian. He was on his own bed.

  He tried to sit up. A gun barrel seemed to flow out of the light It pressed against his breastbone and pushed him back onto the mattress. Then a face appeared. Heavy shadows beneath the eyes, stubble on the square chin. The lips moved, sound reached Gabriel's ears. In his delirium, it seemed like a film out of sync, and his brain required a moment to process and comprehend the words he had just heard.

  "My name is Alessio Rossi. What the fuck do you want?"

  ROME

  THE YOUNG MAN sitting astride the motorino on the Via Gioberti had an air of bored insolence typical of Roman teenagers. He was not bored, nor was he a teenager, but a thirty-year-old Vigilanza officer assigned to Carlo Casagrande's special section of the Vatican Security Office. His youthful appearance proved an asset in his present assignment: the surveillance of Inspector Alessio Rossi of the Polizia di Stato. The Vigilanza man knew only what he needed to know about Rossi. A troublemaker, the inspector. Poking his nose into places it didn't belong. At the end of each shift, the officer returned to the Vatican, then typed up a detailed report and left it on Casagrande's desk. The old general always read the Rossi reports the moment they came in. He had taken a special "interest in the case.

  Rossi had been acting suspiciously. Twice that day--once in the again in the late afternoon--he'd driven an unmarked

  car from headquarters to the Via Gioberti and parked there. The Vigilanza man had observed Rossi staring at the Pensione Abruzzi like a man who suspected his wife was having an affair upstairs. After the second visit, the officer contacted an informant in Rossi's department, a pretty young girl who answered the telephones and handled the filing. The girl told him that Rossi had received several telephone calls that day from a guest at the Abruzzi offering information about a cold case. The guest's name? Siedler, the informant had answered. Heinrich Siedler.

  The Vigilanza man had a hunch. He climbed off the motorino and entered the pensione. The night manager looked up from a pornographic magazine.

  "Is there a man named Heinrich Siedler staying in this hotel?"

  The night manager shrugged his heavy shoulders. The Vigilanza officer slid a pair of euro notes across the counter and watched them disappear into the manager's grubby paw.

  "Yes, I believe we have a man called Siedler staying here. Let me check." He made a vast show of consulting the registry book. "Ah,

  yes, Siedler."

  The man from the Vatican pulled a photograph from the pocket of his leather jacket and laid it on the counter. This produced a noncommittal frown from the night manager. His face brightened at the appearance of more money.

  "Yes, that's him. That's Siedler."

  The Vigilanza man scooped up the picture. "What room?"

  THE APARTMENT on the Via Pinciana was too large for an old man living alone: vaulted ceilings, a spacious sitting room, a broad terrace with a sweeping view of the Villa Borghese. On nights when

  Carlo Casagrande was tormented by memories of his wife and daughter, it seemed as cavernous as the Basilica. Had he still been a mere carabinieri general, the flat would have been well beyond his reach, but because the building was owned by the Vatican, Casagrande paid nothing. He felt no guilt about living well on the donations of the faithful. The flat served not only as his residence, but as his primary office as well. As a result, he took precautions that his neighbors did not. There was a Vigilanza man permanently at his door and another in a car parked on the Via Pinciana. Once a week, a team from the Vatican Security Office scoured the flat to make sure it was free of listening devices.

  He answered the telephone on the first ring and immediately recognized the voice of the Vigilanza man assigned to the Rossi case. He listened in silence while the officer filed his report, then severed the connection and dialed a number.

  "I need to speak to Bartoletti. It's an emergency."

  "I'm afraid the director is unavailable at this time."

  "This is Carlo Casagrande. Make him available."

  "Yes, General Casagrande. Please hold."

  A moment later, Bartoletti came on the line. Casagrande wasted no time on pleasantries.

  "We have received information that the papal assassin is staying in room twenty-two of the Pensione Abruzzi in the San Lorenzo Quarter. We have reason to believe he is armed and very dangerous."

  Bartoletti hung up. Casagrande lit a cigarette and began the wait.

  In Paris, Eric Lange brought his cellular phone to his ear and heard the voice of Rashid Husseini.

  "I think we may have found your man."

  "Where is he?"

  "Your Italian detective has been acting peculiar all day. He just went inside a pensione called the Abruzzi--a real shithole near the train station."

  "What street?"

  "The Via Gioberti."

  Lange looked at his watch. There was no way to get to Rome tonight. He'd have to leave in the morning. "Keep him under surveillance," he said. "Call me if he moves."

  "Right."

  Lange rang off, then dialed Air France reservations and booked a seat on the seven-fifteen flight.

  ROME

  Rossi pressed the gun against Gabriel's forehead and tore the packing tape from his mouth.

  "Who are you?"

  Greeted by silence, the policeman ground the barrel painfully into Gabriel's temple.

  "I'm a friend of Benjamin Stern."

  "Christ! That explains why they're looking for you."

  "Who?"

  "Everyone! Polizia di Stato. The carabinieri. They've even got the SISDE after you."

  With the gun still firmly in place, Rossi removed a slip of facsimile paper from his jacket pocket and held it before Gabriel's eyes. Gabriel squinted in the harsh light. It was a photograph, grainy and obviously shot with a telephoto lens, but clear enough for him to See that the face of the subject was his own. He looked at the clothing

  he was wearing and realized it was the clothing of Ehud Landau. He searched his memory. Munich . . . the Olympic Village. .. Weiss must have been following him then too.

  The photograph rose like a curtain and Gabriel found himself staring once more into the face of Alessio Rossi. The detective smelled of sweat and cigarettes. His shirt collar was damp and grimy. Gabriel had seen men under pressure before. Rossi was on the edge.

  "This photo has been sent to every police station within a hundred miles of Rome. The Vatican Security Office says you've been stalking the Holy Father."

  "It's not true."

  The Italian finally lowered the gun. The spot on Gabriel's temple where the barrel had been pressed throbbed for several seconds. Rossi turned the light toward the wall and kept the gun in his right hand, resting against his thigh.

  "How did you get my name?"

  Gabriel answered truthfully.

  "They killed Malone too," Rossi said. "You're next, my friend. When they find you, they're going to kill you."

  "Who's they?"

  "Take my advice,
Herr Siedler, or whatever the fuck your name is. Get out of Italy. If you can leave tonight, so much the better.

  "I'm not leaving until you tell me what you know."

  The Italian tilted his head. "You're not really in a position to make demands, are you? I came here for one reason--to try to save your life. If you ignore my warning, that's your business."

  "I need to know what you know."

  "You need to leave Italy."

  "Benjamin Stern was my friend," Gabriel said. "I need your help."

  Rossi eyed Gabriel a moment, his gaze tense, then he rose and walked into the bathroom. Gabriel heard water running into the basin. Rossi returned a moment later holding a wet towel. He rolled Gabriel onto his side, unbound his wrists, and gave him the damp cloth. Gabriel cleaned the blood from the side of his neck while Rossi walked to the window and parted the pair of gauzy curtains.

  "Who do you work for?" he asked, staring into the street.

  "Under the circumstances, it's probably better that I don't answer that."

  "Jesus Christ," Rossi murmured. "What on earth have I gotten myself into?"

  The detective pulled a chair close to the window and took another long look into the street. Then he switched off the light and told Gabriel the story from the beginning.

  Monsignor Cessare felici, an elderly and long-retired priest, went missing from his room at the College of San Giovanni Evangelista one evening in June. When the monsignor didn't return by the following evening, his colleagues decided it was time to report the matter to the police. Because the college did not have Vatican territorial status, jurisdiction fell to Italian authorities. Inspector Alessio Rossi of the Polizia di Stato was assigned the case and went to the college early that evening.

  Rossi had investigated crimes involving the clergy before and had seen the rooms of priests. Monsignor Felici's struck him as inordinately spartan. No personal papers of any kind, no diary, no letters