“Not the faith, Eminence. Only the Church. Rest assured, I would rather see her in ruins than leave her in the grubby hands of the Order of St. Helena.”
“And then what?” asked Tardini. “What will we do when our Church is destroyed?”
“We’ll start over, Eminence. We’ll meet in homes and sharesimple meals of bread and wine. We’ll recite the Psalms and tell stories of Jesus’ teaching and his death and resurrection. We’ll build a new church. A church he would recognize.” Donati looked at Cardinal Francona. “Thank you, Dean. I believe I’ve said quite enough.”
55
Villa Borghese
Veronica’s car wasparked haphazardly against the barricade at the end of the access road. The passenger-side door was slightly ajar. The keys were lying on the floor. Gabriel slipped them into his pocket and then drew the Beretta.
“Is there really no other way?” asked Metzler.
“What did you have in mind? A gentlemanly negotiation?”
“He’s a priest.”
“He killed the Holy Father. If I were you—”
“I’m not like you, Allon. I’ll let my God be Father Graf’s judge.”
“He’s my God, too. But that’s probably a discussion for another time.” Gabriel looked down at his phone. Father Graf’s device was about two hundred meters to the east, in the centerof the Piazza di Siena. “Stay here with the car. I won’t be but a minute.”
Gabriel set out through the shelter of the trees. After a few paces he came upon the Tudor facade of the Globe Theatre Roma, the reproduction of the legendary London playhouse where Shakespeare debuted many of his most beloved works. Surrounded by towering Roman umbrella pines, it looked sorely out of place, like an igloo in the Negev.
Adjacent to the theater was the Piazza di Siena. Gabriel could have painted it from memory, but in the darkness he could discern almost nothing. Somewhere out there were two people—a woman who was desperately in love with a priest, and a priest who had murdered a pope. And to think he was scarcely five hours removed from Jonas Wolf’s Hitlerian shop of horrors in the Obersalzberg. Hewasa normal person, he assured himself.
All at once he remembered the oval track. The track he had to cross to reach the center of the piazza. It was a provable fact that it was not possible for a man, even a man of his build and agility, to walk upon gravel without making a sound. Gabriel reckoned that was why Father Graf had brought her here. Perhaps a gentlemanly negotiation was called for, after all. It wouldn’t be difficult to establish contact. Gabriel had Graf’s phone number.
The instant messaging application on Gabriel’s Solaris allowed him to send texts anonymously. Carefully shielding his screen, he typed a brief message in colloquial Italian about dinner at La Carbonara in the Campo de’ Fiori. Then he tapped thesendicon. A few seconds later, light flared like a match in the center of the piazza. It was surprisingly bright—bright enough for Gabriel to determine their alignment and orientation. Father Graf held the phone in his left hand, the handnearest Gabriel. He and Veronica were facing one another. Like the needle of a compass, the priest was pointed true north.
Gabriel moved in the opposite direction along an asphalt footpath. Then he crept eastward through a stand of umbrella pines until he was approximately level with Veronica and Father Graf.
He sent the priest another anonymous text.
Helllloooooo...
Once again light flared in the center of the piazza. Only Gabriel’s position had changed. He was now directly behind Father Graf. They were separated by about thirty meters of grass and the dust-and-gravel oval track. The grass, Gabriel could cross with the silence of a house cat. The track, however, was a tripwire. It was too wide to traverse with a leap unless one were an Olympic-caliber athlete, which Gabriel most certainly was not. He was a man of advancing years who had recently fractured two vertebrae in his lower back.
He was still a damn good shot, though. Especially with a Beretta 92 FS. He only needed to illuminate the target with another text message. Then Father Markus Graf, murderer of a pope, would cease to exist. Perhaps he might find himself before a celestial tribunal where he would be sentenced for his crimes. If so, Gabriel hoped that God was in a foul mood when it was Father Graf’s turn in the dock.
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 soaringbaldacchinoand 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.
