The Confessor Page 9

  “You’ve reached the office of Peter Malone. I’m sorry, but I’m not available to take your call. If you’d like to leave a—”

  Gabriel placed the receiver back in the cradle.

  Peter Malone? The British investigative reporter? Why would Benjamin be calling a man like him? Gabriel folded the bill and slipped it back into the envelope. He was about to drop it into Ehud Landau’s briefcase when the telephone rang.

  He reached out, but hesitated. No one knew he was here—no one but the concierge and the man who’d followed Gabriel after dinner. Perhaps Malone had captured his number and was calling back. Better to know than remain ignorant, he thought. He snatched up the receiver and held it to his ear for a moment without speaking.

  Finally: “Yes?”

  “Mother Vincenza is lying to you, the same way she lied to your friend. Find Sister Regina and Martin Luther. Then you’ll know the truth about what happened at the convent.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Don’t come back. It’s not safe for you here.”

  CLICK.

  9

  GRINDELWALD, SWITZERLAND

  THE MAN WHO LIVED in the large chalet in the shadow of the Eiger was a private person, even by the exacting standards of the mountains of Inner Switzerland. He made it his business to learn what was being said about him and knew that in the bars and cafés of Grindelwald there was constant speculation about his occupation. Some thought him a successful private banker from Zurich; others believed him to be the owner of a large chemical concern headquartered in Zug. There was a theory he was born to wealth and had no career at all. There was baseless gossip he was an arms dealer or a money launderer. The girl who cleaned his chalet told of a kitchen filled with expensive copper pots and cooking implements of every kind. A rumor circulated that he was a chef or restaurateur. He liked that one the best. He always thought he might have enjoyed cooking for a living, had he not fallen into his current profession.

  The limited amount of mail that arrived daily at his chalet bore the name Eric Lange. He spoke German with the accent of a Zuricher but with the sing-song cadence of those native to the valleys of Inner Switzerland. He did his shopping at the Migros supermarket in town and always paid in cash. He received no visitors and, despite his good looks, was never seen in the company of a woman. He was prone to long periods of absence. When asked for an explanation, he would murmur something about a business venture. When pressed to elaborate, his gray eyes would grow so suddenly cold that few possessed the courage to pursue the matter further.

  Mostly, he seemed a man with too much time on his hands. From December to March, when the snow was good, he spent most days on the slopes. He was an expert skier, fast but never reckless, with the size and strength of a downhiller and the quickness and agility of a slalom racer. His outfits were costly but reserved, carefully chosen to deflect attention rather than attract it. On chairlifts, he was notorious for his silence. In summer, when all but the permanent glaciers melted, he set out from the chalet each morning and hiked up the steep slope of the valley. His body seemed to have been constructed for this very purpose: tall and powerful, narrow hips and broad shoulders, heavily muscled thighs, and calves shaped like diamonds. He moved along the rocky footpaths with the agility of a large cat and seemed never to tire.

  Usually, he would pause at the base of the Eiger for a drink from his canteen and to squint upward toward the windswept face. He never climbed—indeed, he thought men who hurled themselves against the Eiger were some of nature’s greatest fools. Some afternoons, from the terrace of his chalet, he could hear the beating of rescue helicopters, and sometimes, with the aid of his Zeiss telescope, he could see dead climbers hanging by their lines, twisting in the föhn, the famed Eiger wind. He had the utmost respect for the mountain. The Eiger, like the man known as Eric Lange, was a perfect killer.

  SHORTLY BEFORE noon, Lange slid off the chairlift for his final run of the day. At the bottom of the trail, he disappeared into a grove of pine and glided through the shadows until he arrived at the back door of his chalet. He removed his skis and gloves and punched a series of numbers into the keypad on the wall next to the door. He stepped inside, stripped off his jacket and powder pants, and hung the skis on a professional-style rack. Upstairs, he showered and changed into traveling clothes: corduroy trousers, a dark-gray cashmere sweater, suede brogues. His overnight bag was already packed.

  He paused in front of the bathroom mirror and examined his appearance. The hair was a combination of sun-streaked blond and gray. The eyes were naturally colorless and took well to contact lenses. The features were altered periodically by a plastic surgeon at a discreet clinic located outside Geneva. He slipped on a pair of tortoise-shell eyeglasses, then added gel to his hair and combed it straight back. The change in his appearance was remarkable.

  He walked into his bedroom. Concealed inside the large walk-in closet was a combination safe. He worked the tumbler and pulled open the heavy door. Inside were the tools of his trade: false passports, a large amount of cash in various currencies, a collection of handguns. He filled his wallet with Swiss francs and selected a Stechkin nine-millimeter pistol, his favorite weapon. He nestled the gun into his overnight bag and closed the door of the safe. Five minutes later, he climbed into his Audi sedan and set out for Zurich.

  IN THE violent history of European political extremism, no terrorist was suspected of shedding more blood than the man dubbed the Leopard. A freelance assassin-for-hire, he had plied his trade across the continent and left a trail of bodies and bomb damage stretching from Athens to London and Madrid to Stockholm. He had worked for the Red Army Faction in West Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, and Action Directe in France. He had killed a British army officer for the Irish Republican Army and a Spanish minister for the Basque separatist group ETA. His relationship with Palestinian terrorists had been long and fruitful. He had committed a string of kidnappings and assassinations for Abu Jihad, the second-in-command of the PLO, and he had killed for the fanatical Palestinian dissident Abu Nidal. Indeed, the Leopard was believed to have been the mastermind behind the simultaneous attacks on the Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985 that left nineteen people dead and 120 wounded. It had been nine years since his last suspected attack, the murder of a French industrialist in Paris. Some within the Western European security and intelligence community believed that the Leopard was dead—that he had been killed in a dispute with one of his old employers. Some doubted he had ever existed at all.

  NIGHT HAD fallen by the time Eric Lange arrived in Zurich. He parked his car on a rather unpleasant street north of the train station and walked to the Hotel St. Gotthard, just off the gentle sweep of the Bahnhofstrasse. A room had been reserved for him. The absence of luggage did not surprise the clerk. Because of its location and reputation for discretion, the hotel was often used for business meetings too confidential to take place even on the premises of a private bank. Hitler himself was rumored to have stayed at the St. Gotthard when he was in Zurich to meet with his Swiss bankers.

  Lange took the lift up to his room. He drew the curtains and spent a moment rearranging the furniture. He pushed an armchair into the center of the room, facing the door, and in front of the chair placed a low, circular coffee table. On the table he left two items, a small but powerful flashlight and the Stechkin. Then he sat down and switched off the lights. The darkness was absolute.

  He sipped a disappointing red wine from the minibar while waiting for the client to arrive. As a condition of employment, he refused to deal with cutouts or couriers. If a man wanted his services, he had to have the courage to present himself in person and show his face. Lange insisted on this not out of ego but for his own protection. His services were so costly that only very wealthy men could afford him, men skilled in the art of betrayal, men who knew how to set up others to pay the price for their sins.

  At 8:15 P.M., the precise time Lange had requested, there was a knock at the door. Lange picked up the
Stechkin with one hand and the flashlight with the other and gave his visitor permission to enter the pitch-black room. When the door had closed again, he switched on the light. The beam fell upon a small, well-dressed man, late sixties, with a monkish fringe of iron-gray hair. Lange knew him: General Carlo Casagrande, the former Carabinieri chief of counterterrorism, now keeper of all things secret at the Vatican. How many of the general’s former foes would love to be in Lange’s position now—pointing a loaded gun at the great Casagrande, slayer of the Brigate Rossa, savior of Italy. The Brigades had tried to kill him, but Casagrande had lived underground during the war, moving from bunker to bunker, barracks to barracks. Instead, they’d massacred his wife and daughter. The old general was never the same after that, which probably explained why he was here now, in a darkened hotel room in Zurich, hiring a professional killer.

  “It’s like a confessional in here,” Casagrande said in Italian.

  “That’s the point,” Lange replied in the same language. “You can kneel if it makes you more comfortable.”

  “I think I’ll remain standing.”

  “You have the dossier?”

  Casagrande held up his attaché case. Lange lifted the Stechkin into the beam of light so the man from the Vatican could see it. Casagrande moved with the slowness of a man handling high explosives. He opened his briefcase, removed a large manila envelope, and laid it on the coffee table. Lange scooped it up with his gun hand and shook the contents into his lap. A moment later, he looked up.

  “I’m disappointed. I was hoping you were coming here to ask me to kill the Pope.”

  “You would have done it, wouldn’t you? You would have killed your Pope.”

  “He’s not my pope, but the answer to your question is yes, I would have killed him. And if they’d hired me to do it, instead of that maniacal Turk, the Pole would have died that afternoon in St. Peter’s.”

  “Then I suppose I should be thankful that the KGB didn’t hire you. God knows you did enough other dirty work for them.”

  “The KGB? I don’t think so, General, and neither do you. The KGB wasn’t fond of the Pole, but they weren’t foolish enough to kill him, either. Even you don’t believe it was the KGB. From what I hear, you believe the conspiracy to kill the Pope originated closer to home—within the Church itself. That’s why the findings of your inquiry were kept secret. The prospect of revealing the true identity of the plotters was too embarrassing for all concerned. It was also convenient to keep the finger of unsubstantiated blame pointed eastward, toward Moscow, the true enemies of the Vatican.”

  “The days when we settled our differences by murdering popes ended with the Middle Ages.”

  “Please, General, such statements are beneath a man of your intelligence and experience.” Lange dropped the dossier on the coffee table. “The links between this man and the Jew professor are too strong. I won’t do it. Find someone else.”

  “There is no one else like you. And I don’t have time to find another suitable candidate.”

  “Then it will cost you.”

  “How much?”

  A pause, then: “Five hundred thousand, paid in advance.”

  “That’s a bit excessive, don’t you think?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Casagrande made a show of thought, then nodded. “After you kill him, I want you to search his office and remove any material linking him to the professor or the book. I also want you to bring me his computer. Carry the items back to Zurich and leave them in the same safe-deposit account where you left the material from Munich.”

  “Transporting the computer of a man you’ve just killed is not the wisest thing for an assassin to do.”

  Casagrande looked at the ceiling. “How much?”

  “An additional one hundred thousand.”

  “Done.”

  “When I see that the money has been deposited in my account, I’ll move against the target. Is there a deadline?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Then you should have come to me two days ago.”

  Casagrande turned and let himself out. Eric Lange switched off the light and sat there in the dark, finishing his wine.

  CASAGRANDE WALKED down the Bahnhofstrasse into a swirling wind blowing off the lake. He felt an appalling desire to fall on his knees in a confessional and unburden his sins to a priest. He could not. Under the rules of the Institute, he could confess only to a priest who was a member of the brotherhood. Because of the sensitive nature of Casagrande’s work, his confessor was none other than Cardinal Marco Brindisi.

  He came to the Talstrasse, a quiet street lined with gray stone buildings and modern office blocks. Casagrande walked a short distance, until he arrived at a plain doorway. On the wall next to the doorway was a brass plaque:

  BECKER & PUHL

  PRIVATE BANKERS

  TALSTRASSE 26

  Next to the plaque was a button, which Casagrande pressed with his thumb. He glanced up into the fish eye of the security camera over the door, then looked away. A moment later, the dead bolt snapped back and Casagrande stepped into a small antechamber.

  Herr Becker was waiting for him. Starched, fussy and very bald, Becker was known for absolute discretion, even in the highly secretive world of the Bahnhofstrasse. The exchange of information that took place next was brief and largely a needless formality. Casagrande and Becker were well acquainted and had done much business over the years, though Becker had no idea who Casagrande was or where his money came from. As usual, Casagrande had to struggle to hear Becker’s voice, for it rose barely above a whisper even in normal conversation. As he followed him down the corridor to the strongbox room, the fall of Becker’s Bally loafers on the polished marble floor made no sound.

  They entered a windowless chamber, empty of furniture except for a high viewing table. Herr Becker left Casagrande alone, then returned a moment later with a metal safe-deposit box. “Leave it on the table when you’re finished,” the banker said. “I’ll be just outside the door if there’s anything else you require.”

  The Swiss banker went out. Casagrande unbuttoned his overcoat and unzipped the false lining. Hidden inside were several bound stacks of currency, courtesy of Roberto Pucci. One by one, the Italian placed the bundles of cash in the box.

  When Casagrande was finished, he summoned Herr Becker. The little Swiss banker saw him out and bid him a pleasant evening. As Casagrande walked back up the Bahnhofstrasse, he found himself reciting the familiar and comforting words of the Act of Contrition.

  10

  VENICE

  GABRIEL RETURNED TO VENICE early the following morning. He left the Opel in the car park adjacent to the train station and took a water taxi to the Church of San Zaccaria. He entered without greeting the other members of the team, then climbed his scaffolding and concealed himself behind the shroud. After an absence of three days, they were strangers to each other, Gabriel and his virgin, but as the hours slowly passed they grew comfortable in each other’s presence. As always, she blanketed him with a sense of peace, and the concentration required by his work pushed the investigation of Benjamin’s death into a quiet corner of his mind.

  He took a break to replenish his palette. For a moment, his mind left the Bellini and returned to Brenzone. After taking breakfast that morning in his hotel, he had walked to the convent and rung the bell at the front gate to summon Mother Vincenza. When she appeared, Gabriel had asked if he could speak to a woman called Sister Regina. The nun’s face reddened visibly, and she explained that there was no one at the convent by that name. When Gabriel asked whether there had ever been a Sister Regina at the convent, Mother Vincenza shook her head and suggested that Signor Landau respect the cloistered nature of the convent and never return. Without another word, she crossed the courtyard and disappeared inside. Gabriel then spotted Licio, the groundskeeper, trimming the vines on a trellis. When he tried to summon him, the old man glanced up, then hurried away through the shadowed garden. At that moment Gabriel conclude
d that it was Licio who had followed him through the streets of Brenzone the previous night and Licio who had placed the anonymous call to his hotel room. Clearly, the old man was frightened. Gabriel decided that, for now at least, he would do nothing to make Licio’s situation worse. Instead, he would focus on the convent itself. If Mother Vincenza were telling him the truth—that Jews had been sheltered at the convent during the war—then somewhere there would be a record of it.

  Returning to Venice, he’d had a nagging impression that he was being followed by a gray Lancia. In Verona he left the autostrada and entered the ancient city center, where he performed a series of field-tested maneuvers designed to shake surveillance. In Padua he did the same thing. Half an hour later, racing across the causeway toward Venice, he was quite confident he was alone.

  He worked on the altarpiece all afternoon and into the evening. At seven o’clock, he left the church and wandered over to Francesco Tiepolo’s office in San Marco and found him sitting alone at the broad oak table he used as a desk, working his way through a stack of papers. Tiepolo was a highly skilled restorer in his own right, but had long ago set aside his brushes and palette to focus his attention on running his thriving restoration business. As Gabriel entered the room, Tiepolo smiled at him through his tangled black beard. On the streets of Venice, he was often mistaken by tourists for Luciano Pavarotti.

  Over a glass of ripasso, Gabriel broke the news that he had to leave Venice again for a few days to take care of a personal matter. Tiepolo buried his big face in his hands and murmured a string of Italian curses before looking up in frustration.

  “Mario, in six weeks the venerable Church of the San Zaccaria is scheduled to reopen to the public. If it does not reopen to the public in six weeks, restored to its original glory, the superintendents will take me down to the cellars of the Doge’s Palace for a ritual disembowelment. Am I making myself clear to you, Mario? If you don’t finish that Bellini, my reputation will be ruined.”