3
THE SISTINE CHAPEL
THE 5,896 SQUARE FEET OF the Sistine Chapel are perhaps the most visited piece of real estate in Rome. Each day, several thousand tourists pour through its rather ordinary doors to crane their necks in wonder at the glorious frescoes that adorn its walls and ceiling, watched over by blue-uniformed gendarmes who seem to have no other job than to constantly plead for
On the western wall of the chapel is Michelangelo’s other Sistine masterwork,
Among Donati’s many transgressions, at least in the eyes of some members of the Vatican’s gossipy papal court, were his unusually close ties to the notorious spy and assassin Gabriel Allon. Theirs was a partnership that defied history and faith—Donati, the soldier of Christ, and Gabriel, the man of art who by accident of birth had been compelled to lead a clandestine life of violence. Despite those obvious differences, they had much in common. Both were men of high morals and principle, and both believed that matters of consequence were best handled in private. During their long friendship, Gabriel had acted as both the Vatican’s protector and a revealer of some of its darkest secrets—and Donati, the Holy Father’s hard man in black, had served as his willing accomplice. As a result, the two men had done much to quietly improve the tortured relationship between the world’s Catholics and their twelve million distant spiritual cousins, the Jews.
Gabriel stood wordlessly at Donati’s side and gazed up at
“I assume you’ve been here before,” said Donati, his sonorous voice echoing in the empty chapel.
“Just once,” said Gabriel after a moment. “It was in the autumn of 1972, long before the restoration. I was posing as a German student traveling Europe. I came here in the afternoon and stayed until the guards forced me to leave. The next day . . .”
His voice trailed off. The next day, with Michelangelo’s vision of the end times still fresh in his mind, Gabriel entered the foyer of a drab apartment building in the Piazza Annibaliano. Standing before the elevator, a bottle of fig wine in one hand and a copy of
Gabriel turned his back to
“Kings,” said Donati. “Chapter six, verse two.”
Gabriel lifted his face toward the ceiling. “Your forefathers built this rather simple chapel to the exact dimensions of the Temple of Solomon for a reason. But why? Did they wish to pay tribute to their elder brothers the Jews? Or were they declaring that the old law had been superseded by the new law, that the ancient temple had been brought to Rome, along with the sacred contents of the Holy of Holies?”
“Perhaps it was a little of both,” said Donati philosophically.
“How diplomatic of you, Monsignor.”
“I was trained as a Jesuit. Obfuscation is our strong suit.”
Gabriel pondered his wristwatch. “It’s rather late in the morning for this place to be empty.”
“Yes,” Donati said absently.
“Where are the tourists, Luigi?”
“For the moment, only the museums are open to the public.”
“Why?”
“We have a problem.”
“Where?”
Donati frowned and tilted his head toward the left.
The stairwell leading from the glory of the Sistine Chapel to the most magnificent church in Christendom is decidedly ugly. A gray-green tube with slick cement walls, it deposited Gabriel and Donati into the Basilica, not far from the Chapel of the Pietà. In the center of the nave, a yellow tarpaulin was spread over the unmistakable form of a human corpse. Standing over it were two men. Gabriel knew them both. One was Colonel Alois Metzler, commandant of the Pontifical Swiss Guard. The other was Lorenzo Vitale, chief of the Corpo della Gendarmeria, the Vatican’s 130-member police force. In his previous life, Vitale had investigated government corruption cases for Italy’s powerful Guardia di Finanza. Metzler was retired Swiss Army. His predecessor, Karl Brunner, had been killed in the al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the Vatican.
The two men looked up in unison and watched Gabriel crossing the nave at the side of the second-most powerful man in the Roman Catholic Church. Metzler was clearly displeased. He extended his hand toward Gabriel with the cold precision of a Swiss timepiece and nodded his head once in formal greeting. He was Donati’s equal in height and build but had been blessed by the Almighty with the jutting, angular face of a hound. He wore a dark gray suit, a white shirt, and a banker’s silver necktie. His receding hair was shorn to the length of stubble; small, rimless spectacles framed a pair of judgmental blue eyes. Metzler had friends inside the Swiss security service, which meant that he knew about Gabriel’s past exploits on the soil of his homeland. His presence in the Basilica was intriguing. Strictly speaking, dead bodies at the Vatican fell under the jurisdiction of the gendarmes, not the Swiss Guard—unless, of course, there was an element of papal security involved. If that were the case, Metzler would be free to poke his snout anywhere he pleased. Almost anywhere, thought Gabriel, for there were places behind the walls where even the commander of the palace guard was forbidden to enter.
Donati exchanged a look with Vitale, then instructed the police chief to remove the tarpaulin. It was obvious the body had fallen from a great height. What remained was a split sack of skin filled with shattered bone and organs. Remarkably, the attractive face was largely intact. So was the identification badge around the neck. It stated that the bearer was an employee of the Vatican Museums. Gabriel didn’t bother to read the name. The dead woman was Claudia Andreatti, a curator in the antiquities division.
Gabriel crouched next to the body with the ease of someone used to being in the presence of the newly dead and examined it as though it were a painting in need of restoration. She was dressed, like all the laywomen of the Vatican, professionally but piously: dark trousers, a gray cardigan, a white blouse. Her woolen overcoat was