The Messenger Page 4

  “It certainly cannot be imposed on them by the barrel of a white man’s gun.”

  “I agree, Holiness. Only when Islam reforms itself will there be social justice and true prosperity within the Arab world. But in the meantime we cannot sit idly by and do nothing while the jihadists plot our destruction. That, Holiness, is immoral, too.”

  The Pope rose from his desk and pushed open the large window overlooking St. Peter’s Square. Night had fallen. Rome stirred beneath his feet.

  “I was right about the war, Gabriel, and I’m right about the future that awaits us all—Muslim, Christian, and Jew—if we do not choose another path. But who’s going to listen to me? I’m just an old man in a cassock who lives in a gilded cage. Even my own parishioners don’t listen to me anymore. In Europe we are living as if God does not exist. Anti-Americanism is our only religion now.” He turned and looked at Gabriel. “And anti-Semitism.”

  Gabriel was silent. The Pope said, “Luigi tells me you’ve uncovered evidence of a plot against my life. Another plot,” he added with a sad smile.

  “I’m afraid so, Holiness.”

  “Isn’t it ironic? I’m the one who tried to prevent the war in Iraq. I’m the one who has tried to build a bridge between Christians and Muslims, and yet I’m the one they want to kill.” The Pope looked out his window. “Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps they don’t want a bridge after all.”

  MOST EVENINGS Pope Paul VII and Monsignor Donati dined alone in the private papal apartments with one or two invited guests for company. Donati tended to keep the mood deliberately light and relaxed, and talk of work was generally restricted to the sort of Curial gossip that the Pope secretly loved. On that evening, however, the atmosphere in the papal dining room was decidedly different. The hastily assembled guest list consisted not of old friends but of men responsible for protecting the pontiff’s life: Colonel Karl Brunner, commandant of the Pontifical Swiss Guard, General Carlo Marchese of the Carabinieri, and Martino Bellano, deputy chief of the Italian security service.

  Gabriel passed around the photographs and briefed them in his Venetian-accented Italian. His presentation was more sanitized than the one he had given Donati in Jerusalem that morning, and the name Ali Massoudi was not spoken. Still, his tone left little doubt that Israeli intelligence regarded the threat as credible and that steps needed to be taken to safeguard the pontiff and the territory of the Holy See. When he finished speaking, the faces of the security men were somber, but there was no visible sense of panic. They had been through this many times, and together they had put in place automatic procedures for elevating the security around the Vatican and the Holy Father when it was deemed necessary. Gabriel listened while the three men reviewed those procedures now. During a pause in their conversation, he carefully cleared his throat.

  “You wish to suggest something?” Donati asked.

  “Perhaps it might be wise to move tomorrow’s ceremony indoors—to the Papal Audience Chamber.”

  “The Holy Father is announcing the beatification of a Portuguese nun tomorrow,” Donati said. “We’re expecting several thousand Portuguese pilgrims, along with the usual crowds. If we move the audience into the chamber, many of those will have to be turned away.”

  “Better to turn away a few pilgrims than expose the Holy Father unnecessarily.”

  The Pope looked at Gabriel. “Do you have specific credible evidence that the terrorists intend to strike tomorrow?”

  “No, Holiness. Operational intelligence of that nature is very difficult to come by.”

  “If we move the audience into the chamber, and turn away good people, then the terrorists have won, have they not?”

  “Sometimes it is better to give an opponent a small victory than suffer a devastating defeat yourself.”

  “Your people are famous for living their lives normally in the face of terrorist threats.”

  “We still take sensible precautions,” Gabriel said. “For example, one cannot enter most public places in my country without being searched.”

  “So search the pilgrims and take other sensible precautions,” the Pope replied, “but I’ll be in St. Peter’s Square tomorrow afternoon, where I belong. And it’s your job to make certain nothing happens.”

  IT WAS JUST after ten o’clock when Donati escorted Gabriel down the flight of steps that led from the Apostolic Palace to the Via Belvedere. A light mist was falling; Gabriel zipped his jacket and hitched his overnight bag over his shoulder. Donati, coatless, seemed not to notice the weather. His eyes remained on the paving stones as they walked past the Vatican central post office toward St. Anne’s Gate.

  “Are you sure I can’t offer you a lift?”

  “Until this morning, I thought I might never be allowed to set foot here again. I think I’ll use the opportunity to take a walk.”

  “If the Italian police arrest you before you reach your flat, tell them to give me a call. His Holiness will vouch for your fine character.” They walked in silence for a moment. “Why don’t you come back for good?”

  “To Italy? I’m afraid Shamron has other plans for me.”

  “We miss you,” Donati said. “So does Tiepolo.”

  Francesco Tiepolo, a friend of the Pope and Donati, owned the most successful restoration firm in the Veneto. Gabriel had restored two of Bellini’s greatest altarpieces for him. Nearly two, he thought. Tiepolo had had to finish Bellini’s San Giovanni Crisostomo altarpiece after Gabriel’s flight from Venice.

  “Something tells me Tiepolo will survive without me.”

  “And Chiara?”

  Gabriel, with his moody silence, made it clear he had no desire to discuss with the Pope’s private secretary the state of his tangled love life. Donati adroitly changed the subject.

  “I’m sorry if you felt the Holy Father was putting you on the spot. I’m afraid he’s lost much of his old forbearance. It happens to all of them a few years into their papacy. When one is regarded as the Vicar of Christ, it’s difficult not to become the slightest bit overbearing.”

  “He’s still the gentle soul I met three years ago, Luigi. Just a bit older.”

  “He wasn’t a young man when he got the job. The cardinals wanted a caretaker Pope, someone to keep the throne of St. Peter warm while the reformers and the reactionaries sorted out their differences. My master never had any intention of being a mere caretaker, as you well know. He has much work to do before he dies—things that aren’t necessarily going to make the reactionaries happy. Obviously, I don’t want his papacy cut short.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “Which is why you’re the perfect man to be at his side tomorrow during the general audience.”

  “The Swiss Guard and their helpers from the Carabinieri are more than capable of looking after your master.”

  “They’re very good, but they’ve never experienced an actual terrorist attack.”

  “Few people have,” Gabriel said. “And usually they don’t live to tell about it.”

  Donati looked at Gabriel. “You have,” he said. “You’ve seen the terrorists up close. And you’ve seen the look in a man’s eyes as he was about to press the button on his detonator.”

  They stopped a few yards from St. Anne’s Gate. On the left was the round, butter-colored Church of St. Anne, parish church of Vatican City; to their right the entrance to the Swiss Guards barracks. One of the guards stood watch just inside the gate, dressed in his simple blue night uniform.

  “What do you want me to do, Luigi?”

  “I leave that in your capable hands. Make a general nuisance of yourself. If you see a problem, address it.”

  “On whose authority?”

  “Mine,” Donati said resolutely. He reached into the pocket of his cassock and produced a laminated card, which he handed to Gabriel. It was a Vatican ID badge with Security Office markings. “It will get you anywhere in the Vatican—except for the Secret Archives, of course. I’m afraid we can’t have you rummaging around in there.”

  �
��I already have,” said Gabriel, then he dropped the badge into his coat pocket and slipped into the street. Donati waited at St. Anne’s Gate until Gabriel had disappeared into the darkness, then he turned and headed back to the palace. And though he would not realize it until later, he was murmuring the words of the Hail Mary.

  GABRIEL CROSSED the Tiber over the Ponte Umberto. On the opposite embankment he turned left and made his way to the Piazza di Spagna. The square was deserted, and the Spanish Steps shone in the lamplight like polished wood. On the twenty-eighth step sat a girl. Her hair was similar to Chiara’s, and for a moment Gabriel thought it might actually be her. But as he climbed higher he saw it was only Nurit, a surly courier from Rome Station. She gave him a key to the safe flat and, in Hebrew, told him that behind the tins of soup in the pantry he would find a loaded Beretta and a spare clip of ammunition.

  He hiked up the rest of the steps to the Church of the Trinità dei Monti. The apartment house was not fifty yards from the church, on the Via Gregoriana. It had two bedrooms and a small terrace. Gabriel retrieved the Beretta from the pantry, then went into the larger of the two bedrooms. The telephone, like all safe-flat telephones, had no ringer, only a red light to indicate incoming calls. Gabriel, lying in bed in the clothes he’d donned to meet the prime minister, picked up the receiver and dialed a number in Venice. A woman’s voice answered. “What is it?” she asked in Italian. Then, receiving no answer, she muttered a curse and slammed down the phone—hard enough so that Gabriel jerked the receiver away from his ear before replacing it gently in the cradle.

  He removed his clothing and pillowed his head, but as he was sliding toward sleep the room was suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning. Instinctively he began to count to calculate the proximity of the strike. He saw a skinny black-haired boy with eyes as green as emeralds chasing lightning in the hills above Nazareth. The thunderclap exploded before he reached the count of four. It shook the building.

  More strikes followed in quick succession, and rain hammered against the bedroom window. Gabriel tried to sleep but could not. He switched on the bedside lamp, opened the file containing the photographs taken from Ali Massoudi’s computer, and worked his way through them slowly, committing each image to memory. An hour later he switched off the light and, in his mind, flipped through the images once more. Lightning flashed over the bell towers of the church. Gabriel closed his eyes and counted.

  5.

  Vatican City

  BY SUNRISE THE RAIN was gone. Gabriel left the safe flat early and headed back to the Vatican through the empty streets. As he crossed the river, dusty pink light lay on the umbrella pine atop the Janiculum Hill, but St. Peter’s Square was in shadow and lamps still burned in the Colonnade. A café was open not far from the entrance of the Vatican Press Office. Gabriel drank two cups of cappuccino at a sidewalk table and read the morning newspapers. None of the major Rome dailies seemed to know that the Pope’s private secretary had made a brief visit to Jerusalem yesterday—or that last night the Vatican and Italian security chiefs had gathered in the papal dining room to discuss a terrorist threat against the Holy Father’s life.

  By eight o’clock, preparations were under way in St. Peter’s Square for the general audience. Vatican work crews were erecting folding chairs and temporary metal dividers in the esplanade in front of the Basilica, and security personnel were placing magnetometers along the Colonnade. Gabriel left the café and stood along the steel barricade separating the territory of the Holy See from Italian soil. He acted in a deliberately tense and agitated manner, made several glances at his wristwatch, and paid particular attention to the operation of the magnetometers. In short, he engaged in all the behaviors that the Carabinieri and Vigilanza, the Vatican police force, should have been looking for. It took ten minutes for a uniformed carabiniere to approach him and ask for identification. Gabriel, in perfect Italian, informed the officer that he was attached to the Vatican Security Office.

  “My apologies,” the carabiniere said, and moved off.

  “Wait,” Gabriel said.

  The carabiniere stopped and turned around.

  “Aren’t you going to ask to see my identification?”

  The carabiniere held out his hand. He gave the ID badge a bored glance, then handed it back.

  “Don’t trust anyone,” Gabriel said. “Ask for identification, and if it doesn’t look right, call your superior.”

  Gabriel turned and walked over to St. Anne’s Gate, where a flock of nuns in gray habits was being admitted simply by saying “Annona,” the name of the Vatican supermarket. He tried the same tactic and, like the nuns, was waved onto Vatican territory. Just inside the gate he withdrew his Vatican ID badge and chastised the Swiss Guard in the Berlin-accented German he had acquired from his mother. Then he went back into the street. A moment later there came an elderly priest with very white hair who informed the Swiss Guard he was going to the Vatican pharmacy. The Guard detained the priest at the gate until he could produce ID from the pocket of his cassock.

  Gabriel decided to check security at the other main entrance of the Vatican, the Arch of Bells. He arrived five minutes later, just in time to see a Curial cardinal and his two aides passing through the arch without so much as a glance from the Swiss Guard standing at attention near his weather shelter. Gabriel held his badge in front of the Guard’s eyes.

  “Why didn’t you ask that cardinal for some identification?”

  “His red hat and pectoral cross are his identification.”

  “Not today,” Gabriel said. “Check everyone’s ID.”

  He turned and walked along the outer edge of the Colonnade, pondering the scenes he had just witnessed. St. Peter’s Square, for all its vastness, was largely secure. But if there was a chink in the Vatican’s armor, it was the relatively large number of people who were allowed free movement behind the square. He thought of the photographs on Ali Massoudi’s computer and wondered whether the terrorists had discovered the very same thing.

  HE CROSSED the square to the Bronze Doors. There were no magic words to gain admittance to what was essentially the front door of the Apostolic Palace. Gabriel’s badge was examined outside by a Swiss Guard in full dress uniform and a second time inside the foyer by a Guard in plain clothes. His Security Office clearance allowed him to enter the palace without signing in at the Permissions Desk, but he was required to surrender his firearm, which he did with a certain reluctance.

  The marble steps of the Scala Regia rose before him, shimmering in the glow of the vast iron lamps. Gabriel climbed them to the Cortile di San Damaso and crossed the courtyard to the other side, where a waiting elevator bore him upward to the third floor. He paused briefly in the loggia to admire the Raphael fresco, then hurried along the wide corridor to the papal apartments. Donati, wearing a cassock with a magenta sash, was seated behind the desk in his small office adjacent to the Pope’s. Gabriel slipped inside and closed the door.

  “How many people work inside the Vatican?” Donati said, repeating Gabriel’s question. “About half.”

  Gabriel frowned.

  “Forgive me,” Donati said. “It’s an old Vatican joke. The answer is about twelve hundred. That includes the priests and prelates who work in the Secretariat of State and the various congregations and councils, along with their lay support staff. Then there are the laypeople who make the place run: the tour guides, the street sweepers, the maintenance people and gardeners, the clerks in places like the post office, the pharmacy, and the supermarket. And then there’s the security staff, of course.”

  Gabriel held up his Vatican ID badge. “And they all get one of these?”

  “Not everyone can get into the Apostolic Palace, but they all have credentials that get them beyond the public sections of the Vatican.”

  “You mean the square and the Basilica?”

  “Correct.”

  “What kind of background check do you perform on them?”

  “I take it you’re not referring to the
cardinals, bishops, monsignori, and priests.”

  “We’ll leave them aside.” Gabriel frowned, then added, “For now.”

  “Jobs at the Vatican are highly coveted. The salaries aren’t terribly high, but all our employees have shopping privileges at the pharmacy and the supermarket. The prices are subsidized and much lower than those at Italian markets. The same is true for the prices at our gas station. Aside from that, the hours are reasonable, vacations are long, and the fringe benefits are quite good.”

  “What about a background check for the people who get those jobs?”

  “The jobs are so coveted—and there are so few of them—that they almost always go to someone with a family connection, so the background check is fairly cursory.”

  “I was afraid of that,” Gabriel said. “And what about people like me? People with temporary credentials?”

  “You’re asking how many?” Donati shrugged. “At any given time, I’d say there are several hundred people with temporary access to the Vatican.”

  “How does the system work?”

  “They’re usually assigned to one of the various pontifical councils or commissions as support staff or professional consultants. The prefect or an undersecretary vouch for the character of the individual, and the Vatican Security Office issues the badges.”

  “Does the Security Office keep all the paperwork?”

  “Of course.”

  Gabriel lifted the receiver of the telephone and held it out to Donati.

  TWENTY MINUTES ELAPSED before Donati’s phone rang again. He listened in silence, then replaced the receiver and looked at Gabriel, who was standing in the window overlooking the square, watching the crowds streaming into the square.

  “They’re starting to pull the paperwork now.”

  “Starting?”

  “It required authorization from the chief. He was in a meeting. They’ll be ready for you in fifteen minutes.”