The Confessor ga-3 Page 6

  The woman looked at Gabriel as though she was used to strangers standing outside her home with disbelieving expressions on their faces. Yes, she seemed to be saying. Yes, this is the place where it happened. But now it's my home, so please go. She seemed to sense something else in his gaze--something that unnerved her--and she quickly strapped the child into the stroller and headed toward a playground.

  Gabriel climbed a grassy hillock and sat in the cool grass. Usually when the memories came, he tried desperately to push them away, but now he unchained the door and allowed them to enter. Romano . .. Springer... Spitzer... Slavin ... the faces of the dead flashed through his memory. Eleven in all. Two killed in the takeover. Nine more during the bungled German rescue attempt at Fiirsten-feldbruck. Golda Meir wanted revenge of Biblical proportions-- an eye for an eye--and she ordered the Office to "send forth the boys" to hunt down the members of Black September who had plotted the attack. A brash operations officer named Ari Shamron was placed in charge of the mission, and one of the boys he came for was a promising young student at Jerusalem's Betsal'el School of Art named Gabriel Allon.

  Somehow, Shamron had come across the file from Gabriel's unhappy compulsory service in the army. The child of Auschwitz survivors, Gabriel was found arrogant and selfish by his superiors; prone to periods of melancholia, but also highly intelligent and capable of taking independent action without waiting for guidance from commanding officers. He was also multilingual, an attribute that had little value in a frontline infantry unit but was much sought after by Ari Shamron. His war would not be fought in the Golan or the Sinai. It would be a secret war waged in the shadows of Europe. Gabriel had tried to resist him. Shamron left him no choice.

  "Once again, Jews are dying on German soil with their hands tied behind their backs," Shamron had said. "Your parents survived, but how many didn't? Their brothers and sisters? Their aunts and uncles?

  tGrandparents? They're all gone, aren't they? Are you really going to sit here in Tel Aviv with your brushes and your paints and do nothing? You have gifts. Let me borrow them for a few months. Then you can do whatever you want with your life."

  The mission was code-named Operation Wrath of God. In the lexicon of the unit, Gabriel was an aleph, an assassin. The agents who tracked Black Septembrists and learned their habits were code-named ayin. A qoph was a communications officer. Benjamin Stern had been a heth, a logistician. His job was to procure transport and lodging in ways that could never be traced to the Office. Sometimes he doubled as a getaway driver. Indeed, Benjamin had been behind the wheel of the green Fiat that carried Gabriel away from the Piazza Annibaliano the night he assassinated Black September's chief in Italy. On the way to the airport, Gabriel had forced Benjamin to pull to the side of the road so he could be sick. Even now, he could hear Benjamin shouting at him to get back into the car.

  "Give me a minute."

  "You'll miss your flight."

  "I said give me a minute!"

  "What's wrong with you? That bastard deserved to die!"

  "You didn't see his face, Beni. You didn't see his fucking face."

  Over the next eighteen months, Shamron's team assassinated a dozen members of Black September. Gabriel personally killed six men. When it was over, Benjamin resumed his academic career. Gabriel tried to go back to Betsal'el and do the same, but his ability to paint had been chased away by the ghosts of the men he had killed, so he left Leah behind in Israel and moved to Venice to study restoration with Umberto Conti. In restoration, he found healing, who knew nothing of Gabriel's past, seemed to understand

  this. Late at night he would come to Gabriel's room in a sagging pensione and drag him into the streets of Venice to look at art. One evening, standing before the great Titian altarpiece in the Frari church, he seized Gabriel by the arm.

  "A man who is pleased with himself can be an adequate restorer but not a great restorer. Only a man with a damaged canvas of his own can truly be a great restorer. It is a meditation for you. A ritual. One day you will be a great restorer. You will be better than I am. I'm sure of it."

  And though Conti did not know it, those were the same words Shamron had said to Gabriel the night before he sent him to Rome to kill his first Palestinian.

  Gabriel Was standing outside the Gastatte Atzinger at six-thirty sharp. The first thing he saw of Professor Helmut Berger was the headlamp on his bicycle floating above the Amalienstrasse. Then his form appeared, legs pumping rhythmically, his thinning gray hair floating above his large ears like wings. A brown leather satchel hung across his back.

  The endearing quality of the professor's arrival evaporated in short order. Like many German intellectuals, Helmut Berger had the put-upon air of a man who had spent the day grappling with beings of inferior intelligence. He claimed to have time only for a small glass of beer, but he invited Gabriel to select something from the menu. Gabriel ordered only mineral water, which the German seemed to find deeply scandalous.

  "I'm very sorry about your brother. Excuse me, your half-brother. He was a valuable member of the faculty. His death was a shock to us all." He spoke these lines without genuine emotion, as though

  they had been written for him by a graduate student. "How can I help you, Herr Landau?"

  "Is it true that Benjamin was on a sabbatical at the time of his murder?"

  "Yes, that's correct. He was working on another book."

  "Do you know the subject of that book?"

  "Actually, I don't."

  "Really?" Gabriel was genuinely surprised. "Is it typical for someone to leave your department to work on a book without telling you the subject matter?"

  "No, but Benjamin was very secretive about this project from the very beginning."

  Gabriel decided he could not press the issue. "Did you know anything about the kind of threats Benjamin received?"

  "There were so many, it was hard to keep them straight. Benjamin's theories about a collective German wartime guilt made him, shall we say, highly unpopular in many quarters."

  "It sounds to me as though you didn't share Benjamin's views."

  The professor shrugged. "A few years ago, I wrote a book on the role of the German Catholic Church during the war. Benjamin disagreed with my conclusions and said so in a very public manner. It was not a pleasant time for either of us."

  The professor looked at his watch. "I'm afraid I have another engagement. Is there anything else I can tell you? Perhaps something more relevant to your inquiries?"

  "Last month, Benjamin made a trip to Italy. Do you happen to know why he went there? Was it connected to the book in any way?"

  "I have no idea. You see, Doctor Stern didn't make a habit of giving me advance warning about his travel plans." The professor finished the last of his beer and stood up. Class dismissed. "Again, my condolences, Herr Landau. I wish you luck in your inquiries." hike hell you do, thought Gabriel, as he watched Professor Berger walk outside and pedal away.

  ON THE WAY back to his hotel, Gabriel entered a large student bookstore on the southern edge of the university district. He gazed at the store directory for a moment, then climbed the stairs to the travel section, where he searched a display bin filled with maps until he came across one for northern Italy.

  He spread it over a nearby table, then reached into his pocket and removed the postcard. The hotel where Benjamin had stayed was in a town called Brenzone. Judging from the photograph, the town was set on the shoreline of one of Italy's northern lakes. He started in the west and worked his way slowly eastward, reading the names of the towns and villages surrounding each of the great northern lakes--first Maggiore, then Como, then Iseo, and finally Garda. Brenzone. There it was, on the eastern shore of the Lago di Garda, about halfway between the bulge at the southern end and the daggerlike northern tip.

  Gabriel refolded the map and carried it downstairs to the cash register. A moment later, he stepped back through the revolving doors into the street, the map and postcard resting in his jacket pocket. Instinctively, hi
s eyes flickered over the pavement, the parked cars, the windows of the surrounding buildings.

  He turned left and started back to his hotel, wondering why Detective Axel Weiss had been sitting in the cafe across the street the entire time Gabriel was in the bookstore--and why he was now following him across the center of Munich.

  Gabriel was confident he could easily evade or expose the German detective, but now was not the time to betray the fact that he was a trained professional. As far as Axel Weiss knew, Gabriel was Ehud Landau, brother of slain historian Benjamin Stern, and nothing else--which made the fact that he was following him all the more curious.

  He entered a hotel on the Maximilianstrasse. He made a brief call on a public telephone in the lobby, then went back outside and kept walking. The policeman was still there, fifty meters back, on the opposite side of the street.

  Gabriel walked directly to his hotel. He collected his key from the clerk at the front counter and rode the lift up to his room. He packed his clothing into a garment bag of black leather, then unlocked the room safe and removed the file he had been given by the Israeli consulate, along with the envelope containing Benjamin's eyeglasses. He placed the items in the briefcase and closed the lid. Then he switched off the room lights, walked to the window, and parted the curtain. A car was parked just up the street. Gabriel could see the glow of a cigarette ember behind the wheel. Weiss. Gabriel closed the curtain and sat on the end of the bed, waiting for the phone to ring.

  Twenty minutes later: "Landau."

  "It's at the corner of the Seitzstrasse and the Unsoldstrasse, just south of Prinzregenten. Do you know where that is?"

  " Yes," Gabriel said. "Give me the number."

  Nine digits. Gabriel did not bother to write them down.

  "The keys?"

  "Standard location. Back bumper, curbside."

  Gabriel hung up, pulled on his jacket, and collected his bags. In the lobby he explained to the night clerk that he was checking out ahead of schedule.

  "Do you require a taxi, Herr Landau?"

  "No, I'm being picked up. Thank you."

  A bill slid toward him across the counter. Gabriel paid with one of Shamron's credit cards and went out. He turned left and started walking quickly, garment bag in one hand, briefcase in the other. Twenty seconds later, he heard the sound of a car door opening and closing, followed by footsteps on the wet cobblestones of the Annastrasse. He maintained his steady pace, resisting the impulse to look over his shoulder.

  ". . . corner of the Seitzstrasse and the Unsoldstrasse ..."

  Gabriel passed a church, turned left, and paused in a small square to take his bearings. Then he turned right and followed another narrow street toward the sound of the traffic rushing along the Prinzregentenstrasse. Weiss was still trailing him.

  He walked along a line of parked cars, reading registration numbers, until he came across the one he'd just been given over the phone. It was attached to a dark gray Opel Omega. Without stopping, he bent slightly at the waist and ran his fingers beneath the rear bumper until he found the keys. With a movement so brief and smooth that Weiss seemed not to notice, Gabriel tore the keys loose.

  He pressed the button on the remote. The doors unlocked automatically. Then he opened the driver's side door and threw his bags onto the passenger seat. He looked to his right. Weiss was running toward him, panic on his face.

  Gabriel climbed inside, rammed the keys into the ignition, and started the engine. He dropped the car into gear and pulled away from the curb, then turned hard to the right and vanished into the evening traffic.

  Detective Axel Weiss had leapt out of his car so quickly that he had left his cellular phone behind. He ran all the way back, then paused to catch his breath before dialing the number. A moment later, he broke the news to the man in Rome that the Israeli called Landau was gone.

  "How?"

  Embarrassed, Weiss told him.

  "Did you get a photograph at least?"

  "Earlier today--at the Olympic Village."

  "The village? What on earth was he doing there?"

  "Staring at the apartment house at Connollystrasse Thirty-one."

  "Wasn't that where it happened?"

  "Yes, that's right. It's not unusual for Jews to make a pilgrimage there."

  "Is it usual for Jews to detect surveillance and execute a perfect escape?"

  "Point taken."

  "Send me the photograph--tonight."

  Then the man in Rome severed the connection.

  NEAR RIETI. ITALY

  There is an unsettling beauty about the Villa Galatina. A former Benedictine abbey, it stands atop a column of granite in the hills of Lazio and stares disapprovingly down at the village on the floor of the wooded valley. In the seventeenth century an important cardinal purchased the abbey and converted it into a lavish summer residence, a place where His Eminence could escape the broiling heat of Rome in August. His architect had possessed the good sense to preserve the exterior, and its tawny-colored facade remains to this day, along with the teeth of the battlements. On a morning in early March, a man was visible high on the windswept parapet. It was not a bow over his shoulder but a high-powered Beretta sniper's rifle. The current owner was a man who took his security seriously. His name was Roberto Pucci, a financier and industrialist whose power over modern Italy rivaled that of even a Renaissance prince of the Church.

  An armored Mercedes sedan stopped at the steel gate, where it was greeted by a pair of tan-suited security guards. The man seated in the back compartment lowered his window. One of the guards examined his face, then glanced at the distinctive SVC license plates on the Mercedes. Vatican plates. Roberto Pucci's gate swung open and an asphalt drive lined with cypresses stretched before them. A quarter mile up the hillside was the villa itself.

  The Mercedes eased up the drive and pulled into a gravel forecourt shaded by umbrella pine and eucalyptus. Two dozen other cars were already there, surrounded by a small army of security men and chauffeurs. The man in the backseat climbed out, leaving his own bodyguard behind, and walked across the courtyard toward the bell tower of the chapel.

  His name was Carlo Casagrande. For a brief time in Italy, his name had been a household word, for it was General Carlo Casagrande, chief of the antiterrorist unit of L'arma dei Carabinieri, who had crushed the Communist Red Brigades. For reasons of personal security, he was notoriously camera shy, and few people outside the Rome intelligence community would have recognized his face.

  Casagrande no longer worked for the Carabinieri. In 1981, a week after the attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II, he resigned his commission and vanished behind the walls of the Vatican. In a way, Casagrande had been working for the men of the Holy See all along. He took control of the Security Office, vowing that no pope would ever again leave St. Peter's Square in the back of an ambulance praying to the Virgin Mary for his life. One of his first acts was to launch a massive investigation into the shooting, so that the conspirators could be identified and neutralized before they were able to mount a second attempt on the Pope's life. The findings of the inquiry were so sensitive that Casagrande shared them with no one but the Holy Father himself.

  Casagrande was no longer directly responsible for protecting the life of the pope. For the last three years, he had been engaged in another task for his beloved Church. He remained attached to the Vatican Security Office, but it was only a flag of convenience to give him standing in certain quarters. He was now the head of the vaguely named Special Investigations Division. So secret was Casagrande's assignment, only a handful of men within the Vatican knew the true nature of his work.

  Casagrande entered the chapel. Cool air, scented with candle wax and incense, caressed his face. In the sanctuary he dipped his fingers in holy water and made the sign of the cross. Then he walked up the center aisle toward the altar. To call it a chapel was an understatement. It was in fact a rather large church, larger than the parish churches in most of the nearby towns.

  C
asagrande took his place in the first pew. Roberto Pucci, dressed in a gray suit and an open-necked white shirt, nodded at him from across the aisle. Despite his seventy-five years, Pucci still radiated an aura of physical invincibility. His hair was white and his face the color of oiled saddle leather. He appraised Casagrande coldly with a pair of hooded black eyes. The Pucci stare. Whenever Pucci looked at you, it was as if he was deciding whether to stab you in the heart or slit your throat.

  Like Carlo Casagrande, Roberto Pucci was an uomo difiducia, a man of trust. Oonly laymen with a unique skill valued by the men of the Vatican were allowed into its innermost chambers. Casagrande's expertise was security and intelligence. Pucci's was money and political power. He was the hidden hand in Italian politics, a man so influential that no government could form without first making a pilgrimage to the Villa Galatina to secure his blessing. But few people in the Italian political establishment knew that Pucci maintained a similar grip over another Roman institution: the Vatican. His power at the Holy See derived from his covert management of a substantial portion of the vast stock and real estate holdings of the Catholic Church. Under Pucci's sure hand, the net worth of the Vatican's portfolios had experienced explosive growth. Unlike his predecessors, he had achieved this feat without a whiff of scandal.

  Casagrande glanced over his shoulder. The others were scattered in the remaining pews: the Italian foreign minister; an important bishop from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; the chief of the Vatican Press Office; an influential conservative theologian from Cologne; an investment banker from Geneva; the leader of a far-right party in France; the owner of a Spanish media conglomerate; the chief of one of Europe's largest automakers. A dozen more, very much in the same mold--all doctrinaire Catholics, all wielding enormous political or financial power, all dedicated to restoring the Church to the position of supremacy it had enjoyed before the calamity of the Reformation. Casagrande found it vaguely amusing when he overheard debates about where true power resided within the Roman Catholic Church. Did it rest with the Synod of Bishops? The College of Cardinals? Did it rest in the hands of the Supreme Pontiff himself? No, thought Casagrande. True power in the Catholic Church resided here, in this chapel on a mountainside outside Rome, in the hands of this secret brotherhood.