inflicted by two 9mm rounds. The monsignor’s condition was described as “extremely grave,” and the
They were seated together on a couch in the sitting room. On the other side of an open connecting door lay Donati, pale and unconscious. A team of doctors and nurses stood round him, their expressions grim. The Holy Father’s eyes were closed and he was working the beads of a rosary. A broad smear of blood stained the front of his white cassock. He had refused to change out of it. Gabriel, looking at him now, thought of Shamron and his torn leather jacket. He hoped the Holy Father didn’t blame himself for what had happened today.
Gabriel looked at the television. Video of the attack, one of the most dramatic moments ever broadcast live, was flickering on the screen. It had been playing nonstop. Gabriel had watched it at least a dozen times, and he watched again now. He saw Muller lunge from the knot of Swiss Guards, the gun in his outstretched hands. He saw himself, drawing his own gun from the inside of his jacket, and Donati, throwing his long body in front of the president of the United States as Muller opened fire.
“How did he know to step in front of the president instead of me?”
“I suppose he understood that Muller could have killed you countless times if he’d wanted to. Muller was going for the president first, and Luigi understood that.”
“In the blink of an eye.”
“He’s one of the smartest men I’ve ever met, Holiness.” Gabriel looked at Donati. “He saved the president of the United States, and he probably isn’t even aware of it.”
“Luigi just stopped the bullets,” the Pope said, “but you’re the one who saved him. If it wasn’t for you, we would have never been on alert for something like this. How did you know, Gabriel? How did you know they were going to hit us again today?”
“We’ll have to talk about this at a later date. A
“You’re in the middle of an operation, aren’t you?”
Gabriel was silent.
“Erich Muller, a member of my palace guard…” The Pope’s voice trailed off. “I still can’t believe it. How did they do it, Gabriel? How did they get an assassin into the Swiss Guard?”
“The details are sketchy, Holiness, but it appears Muller was recruited sometime after he left the Swiss army. He didn’t have a job waiting for him, so he spent about a year and half traveling around Europe and the Mediterranean. He spent several months in Hamburg, and several more in Amsterdam. He was known to be a frequent participant in anti-American, anti-Israel demonstrations. He may have actually converted to Islam. We believe he was recruited into the terrorist network by a man named Professor Ali Massoudi.”
“Massoudi? Really? Good God, Gabriel, but I think Professor Massoudi submitted some of his writings to my special commission on improving ties between Islam and the West. I think he may have actually visited the Vatican at some point.”
“Improving ties between Islam and the Church was not part of Professor Massoudi’s real agenda, Holiness.”
“Obviously,” said the Pope. “I suppose we now know who opened the Door of Death for the suicide bombers in October. It was Muller, wasn’t it?”
Gabriel nodded and looked at the television as the video of the attack began again.
“I wonder how many people have seen this image today,” the Pope said.
“Billions, Holiness.”
“Something tells me your days as a
“It’s not a world in which I’m comfortable.”
“What are your plans?”
“I have to return to Israel.”
“And then?”
“My future is somewhat uncertain.”
“As usual,” the Pope said. “Francesco Tiepolo tells me you and Chiara have reunited.”
“Yes, Holiness. She’s in Israel now.”
“What are your plans?”
“I have to marry her before she leaves me again.”
“Wise man. And then?”
“One step at a time, Holiness.”
“Will you allow me to give you one more piece of advice?”
“Of course.”
“As of this moment, you are the most famous man in Italy. A national hero. Something tells me the country would welcome you back with open arms. And this time not as Mario Delvecchio.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“If I were you, I’d make it a bridge back to Venice.”
The Pope gazed silently for a moment through the open door. “I don’t know what I’ll do if God takes him from me. I can’t run the Roman Catholic Church without Luigi Donati.”
“I remember the day he came to Jerusalem to see me,” Gabriel said. “When we were walking through the Old City, I foolishly described him as a faithless man at the side of a man of great faith. But it took a great deal of faith to step in front of those bullets.”
“Luigi Donati is a man of extraordinary faith. He just doesn’t realize it sometimes. Now I have to have faith. I have to believe that God will see fit to let me have him a little longer-and that He will now see fit to end this madness.”
The next question the Pope asked was the same one he had posed to Gabriel at the end of the attack in October.
“Is it over?”
This time Gabriel gazed at the television and said nothing.
PART FOUR
39.
THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE convened one month after the attempt on the president’s life. In their opening statements the ranking members assured the American people that their investigation would be thorough and unsparing, but by the end of the first week senators from both parties were openly frustrated by what they came to regard as a lack of candor by the president’s security and intelligence chiefs. The president’s men explained in painstaking detail how the forces of global Islamic extremism had managed to penetrate the center of Christendom, and how Professor Ali Massoudi had managed to recruit a young
