The Confessor (37 page)

Shamron had stopped pacing and seemed to be studying his face in the glass. He took a long time lighting his next cigarette. Gabriel could see he was thinking four moves ahead. “It’s been some time since we last spoke,” he said. “Before we go any further, I think you need to explain how you came by these documents.”

As Gabriel began his account, Shamron resumed his private journey before the window. Gabriel told him about his meeting in London with Peter Malone and how in France the following morning he learned of Malone’s murder. He told him of his meeting with Inspector Alessio Rossi at the Pensione Abruzzi and the gun battle that left Rossi and four other men dead. He told him of his decision to hijack the motor yacht to continue his investigation rather than return to Israel.

“But you’re forgetting something,” Shamron interjected. He spoke with uncharacteristic gentleness, as though he were addressing small children. “I saw Shimon Pazner’s field report. According to Pazner, you were followed as you left the safe flat—a pair of men in a beige Lancia sedan. The second team dealt with the Lancia, and you then proceeded without incident to the departure point on the beach. Is that correct?”

“I never saw the surveillance. I only heard what Pazner told me. The people in the Lancia might have been watching us, or they might have been a couple of ordinary Romans on their way to dinner who got the surprise of their life.”

“They might have been, but I doubt it. You see, a short time later, a beige Lancia was discovered near the train station. Behind the wheel was a Palestinian named Marwan Aziz, a man known to be an agent of PLO intelligence. He’d been shot three times and was quite dead. And by the way, the Lancia’s left rear bumper was damaged. Marwan Aziz was one of the men who was following you. I wonder where the second man went. I wonder whether he was the one who killed Aziz. But I digress. Please continue.”

Intrigued by Shamron’s revelations, Gabriel pressed forward. The boat journey to Cannes. The meeting with Antonella Huber at which she surrendered the letter written by her mother, the former Sister Regina Carcassi. The dying man he had left behind in the field outside St-Cézaire. The midnight search of Benjamin’s flat and the near-fatal confrontation with his caretaker, Frau Ratzinger. Shamron ceased his pacing only once, when Gabriel admitted that he had actually threatened Carlo Casagrande. An understandable reaction, said the look on the old man’s creased face, but hardly the behavior one would expect from an agent of Gabriel’s training and experience.

“Which brings us to the obvious next question,” Shamron said. “Is the document real? Or is it the Vatican equivalent of the Hitler diaries?”

Lavon held it up. “Do you see these markings? They’re consistent with documents from the KGB archives. If I had to guess, the Russians came across this while they were cleaning out their archives after the collapse of the empire. Somehow, it reached Benjamin’s hands.”

“But is it a hoax?”

“Taken in isolation, it might be easy to dismiss as a clever forgery concocted by the KGB in order to discredit the Catholic Church. After all, they were at each other’s throats throughout much of the century, especially during the reign of Wojty
^—
la and the crisis in Poland.”

Gabriel leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “But if it’s read in concert with Sister Regina’s letter and all the other things I’ve learned?”

“Then it’s probably the single most damning document I’ve ever seen. A senior Vatican official discussing genocide with Martin Luther over dinner? The covenant at Garda? It’s no wonder people are dying because of this. If this is made public, it will be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb going off in St. Peter’s Square.”

“Can you authenticate it?”

“I have a few contacts inside the old KGB. So does the quiet little man standing in the window over there. It’s not something he likes to talk about, but he and his friends from Dzerzhinsky Square did quite a lot of business together over the years. I bet he could get to the bottom of this in a couple of days if he set his mind to it.”

Shamron looked at Lavon as if to say it would take him no more than an afternoon.

“Then what would we do with the information?” asked Gabriel. “Leak it to
The New York Times
? A Nazi memorandum, via the KGB and Israeli intelligence? The Church would deny that the meeting ever took place and attack the messenger. Very few people would believe us. It would also poison relations between Israel and the Vatican. Everything John Paul the Second did to repair relations between Catholics and Jews would go up in flames.”

Frustration showed on Lavon’s face. “The conduct of Pope Pius and the Vatican during the war is a matter of state concern for the government of Israel. There are those in the Church who wish to declare Pius the Twelfth a saint. It is the policy of the Israeli government that no canonization should take place until all relevant documents in the Secret Archives have been released and examined. This material should be turned over to the Foreign Ministry in Tel Aviv and acted upon.”

“It
should,
Elijah,” said Shamron, “but I’m afraid Gabriel speaks the truth. That document is too dangerous to make public. What do you think the Vatican is going to say? ‘Oh dear, how could this have happened? We’re terribly sorry.’ No, that’s not how they’ll react. They’ll attack us, and it will blow up in our faces. Our relations with the Vatican are tenuous at best. There are many members of the Secretariat of State who would use any excuse—including our involvement in this affair—to sever them. For anything good to come out of this, it has to be handled delicately and quietly—from the inside.”

“By you? Forgive me, boss, but the words
delicate
and
quiet
don’t leap into my mind when I think about you. Lev gave you and Gabriel permission to investigate Beni’s death, not cause a firestorm in our relations with the Holy See. You should turn the material over to the Foreign Ministry and go back to Tiberias.”

“Under normal circumstances, I might take your advice, but I’m afraid the situation has changed.”

“What are you talking about, boss?”

“The phone call I took earlier this morning was from Aaron Shiloh, our ambassador to the Holy See. It seems there’s been an unexpected addition to the Holy Father’s schedule.”

“
WHICH BRINGS
us back to the gentlemen who followed you when you left the safe flat in Rome.” Shamron sat down opposite Gabriel and placed a photograph on the table. “This photograph was taken in Bucharest fifteen years ago. Recognize him?”

Gabriel nodded. The man in the photograph was the assassin and terrorist-for-hire known only as the Leopard.

Shamron laid a second photograph on the table, next to the first. “This photograph was taken by Mordecai in London minutes after the murder of Peter Malone. Research ran the photographs through the face-recognition software. They’re the same man. Peter Malone was murdered by the Leopard.”

“And Beni?” asked Gabriel.

“If they hired the Leopard to kill Malone, it’s quite possible they hired him to kill Beni, but we may never know for certain.”

“Obviously, you have a theory about the dead Palestinian in Rome.”

“I do,” Shamron said. “We know the Leopard had a long and fruitful association with Palestinian terror groups. The operation on Cyprus was testament to that. We also know that he’d reached a deal with Abu Jihad to carry out additional acts of terror against Israeli citizens. Fortunately, you cut short Abu Jihad’s illustrious career and the Leopard’s operations never came to pass.”

“You think the Leopard renewed his relationship with the Palestinians in order to find me?”

“I’m afraid it does make a certain amount of sense. Crux Vera wants you dead, and so do many people within the Palestinian movement. It’s quite possible that the Leopard was the second man in that Lancia—and that he was the one who killed Marwan Aziz.”

Gabriel picked up the photographs and studied them carefully, as if they were a pair of canvases, one that had been authenticated and one that was thought to have been painted by the same artist. It was impossible to tell with the naked eye, but he had learned long ago that the face-recognition software in Research rarely made a mistake. Then he closed his eyes and saw different faces. The faces of the dead:
Felici . . . Manzini . . . Carcassi . . . Beni . . . Rossi. . . .
Lastly, he saw a man in a white cassock, entering a synagogue by the river in Rome.
A cassock stained with blood.

He opened his eyes and looked at Shamron. “We need to get a message to this Pope that his life may be in grave danger.”

Shamron folded his arms and lowered his chin to his chest. “And how shall we do that? Call Rome information and ask for the Pope’s private number? Everything goes through channels, and the Curia is famous for its slowness. If our ambassador goes through the Secretariat of State, it could take weeks to arrange an audience with the Pope. If I try to get to him through the Vatican Security Office, we’ll run straight into Carlo Casagrande and his Crux Vera goons. We need to find someone who can take us up the back staircase of the Apostolic Palace to see the Pope privately. And we need to do it before Friday. Otherwise, His Holiness might never leave the Great Synagogue of Rome alive—and that’s the
last
thing we need.”

A long silence hung over the room. It was broken by Gabriel. “I know someone who can get us in to see the Pope,” he said calmly. “But you have to get me back into Venice.”

C
ARLO
C
ASAGRANDE STRODE
the chandeliered hallway on the fourth floor of the Hotel St. Gotthard and presented himself at the door of Room 423. He glanced at his watch—7:20
P
.
M
., the precise time he had been instructed to come—then knocked twice. A confident knock, firm enough to make his presence known, not enough to disturb the occupants of the neighboring rooms. From the other side of the door came a voice in Italian instructing Casagrande to enter the room. He spoke Italian well for a foreigner. The fact that it lacked even the hint of a German accent sent acid flooding into Casagrande’s stomach.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside, pausing on the threshold. A wedge of light from the chandelier in the corridor illuminated a portion of the room, and for an instant Casagrande could see the outline of a figure seated in a wing chair. When the door swung shut, the darkness was complete. Casagrande inched forward through the gloom until his shin collided with an unseen coffee table. He was made to stand there, enveloped in black, for several painful seconds. Finally a powerful lamp burst on, like a searchlight in a guard tower, and shone directly into his face. He raised his hand and tried to shield his eyes from the glare. It felt like a needle in his cornea.

“Good evening, General.” A seductive voice, like warm oil. “Did you bring the dossier?”

Casagrande held up the briefcase. The silenced Stechkin moved into the light and prodded him onward. Casagrande removed the file and laid it on the coffee table like an offertory. The beam of light tilted downward, while the hand holding the weapon lifted the cover of the dossier.
The light . . .
Suddenly Casagrande was standing on the pavement outside his apartment in Rome, viewing the mutilated bodies of Angelina and his daughter by the beam of a
carabinieri
flashlight.
“Death was instantaneous, General Casagrande. You can at least take comfort in the knowledge that your loved ones did not suffer.”

The light tilted suddenly upward. Too late, Casagrande tried to shield his eyes, but the beam found his retina, and for the next several seconds he had the sensation he was being swallowed by a giant, undulating orange sphere.

“So much for the Middle Ages being over,” the assassin said. The dossier slid across the table toward Casagrande. “He’s too heavily protected. This is an assignment for a martyr, not a professional. Find someone else.”

“I need you.”

“How can I be sure I won’t be set up to take the fall, like that idiot from Istanbul? The last thing I want to do is spend the rest of my life rotting away in some Italian jail, begging a pope for forgiveness.”

“I give you my word that you will not be used as a pawn or a patsy in some larger game. You will perform this service for me, then, with my help, you will be permitted to escape.”

“The word of a murderer. How reassuring. Why should I trust you?”

“Because I would do nothing to betray you.”

“Really? Did you know Benjamin Stern was an agent of Israeli intelligence when you hired me to kill him?”