“But Carlo wasn’t Donati,” Gabriel said.
“No,” she replied, “there’s only one Luigi. And I would have had him all to myself if it wasn’t for Pietro Lucchesi.”
Her tone was suddenly bitter, resentful, as though His Holiness were somehow to blame for the fact she had married a murderer.
“It was probably for the better,” said Gabriel carefully.
“That Luigi returned to the priesthood instead of marrying me?”
He nodded.
“That’s easy for you to say, Mr. Allon.” Then she added softly, “You weren’t the one who was in love with him.”
“He’s happy here, Veronica.”
“And what happens when they remove the Fisherman’s Ring from Lucchesi’s finger and place his body in the crypt beneath the Basilica? What will Luigi do then?” She quickly answered her own question. “I suppose he’ll teach canon law for a few years at a pontifical university. And then he’ll spend the last years of his life in a retirement home filled with aging priests. So lonely,” she added after a moment. “So terribly sad and lonely.”
“It’s the life he chose.”
“It was chosen for him, just like yours. You two are quite alike, Mr. Allon. I suppose that’s why you get along so well.”
Gabriel looked at her for a moment. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”
“That’s not a question I care to answer—at least not in here.” She tilted her face toward the ceiling. “Did you know that Claudia called my office at the Villa Giulia the night of her death?”
“At 8:47,” he said.
“Then I assume you also know she placed a call to a different number one minute before that.”
“I do know that. But we were never able to identify it.”
“I could have helped you.”
She handed him one of her business cards. The number Claudia had dialed was for Veronica’s mobile.
“I’d left the office by the time she called me there, and I didn’t realize until the next day that she’d called my BlackBerry.”
“Why not?”
“Because it was missing all day. I found it the next morning on the floor of my car. I didn’t think anything of it until the day you came to see me at the museum. Then I realized how Carlo had done it. After I left you standing in that downpour, I drove into the Villa Borghese and cried for an hour before going home. Carlo could see something was wrong.”
“Why didn’t you tell me the night of the dinner party?”
“I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That my husband would kill me, too.” She looked at Gabriel, then at
“The end?”
“Yes.”
“Somehow,” said Gabriel, “I doubt we’ll be so lucky.”
He told her as much as he could and then saw her to the Bronze Doors. As she melted into the colonnades, he imagined Donati walking beside her—not a Donati bound by vows of chastity, but Donati as he might have been had God not called him to become a priest. When she was gone, he started back toward his rooms, but something drew him back to the chapel. Alone, he stood motionless for several minutes, his eyes roaming over the frescoes, a single verse of scripture running through his thoughts.
39
VATICAN CITY–JERUSALEM
AS LEADER OF A SOVEREIGN country, the pope has a post office, a mint, a small army, a world-class state museum, and ambassadors stationed at embassies around the world. He does not, however, have an airplane. For that, he must rely on the kindness of Alitalia, Italy’s troubled national carrier. For the flight to Israel, it lent him a Boeing 767 and rechristened it
The pope’s Curial entourage and security detail sat directly behind him in the business-class section of the aircraft, while the Vatican press corps was confined to economy. As they clambered aboard laden with their cameras and luggage, several were wearing black-and-white-checkered Palestinian kaffiyehs as scarves. The second stop on the pope’s busy itinerary would be the refugee camp of Dheisheh. Apparently, the Vaticanisti felt it was important to make a favorable impression on their hosts.
Despite the early-morning departure, Alitalia served a sumptuous in-flight lunch. The priests and bishops devoured the meal as if they had not seen food in days, but Gabriel was far too preoccupied to eat. Seated next to Alois Metzler, he reviewed the protection plans one final time, making a mental list of everything that could possibly go wrong. When the number of nightmare scenarios reached twenty, he closed the briefing book and stared out the window as the aircraft swept low over the Mediterranean toward Israel’s verdant Coastal Plain. Five minutes later, as the wheels thudded onto the runway at Ben Gurion Airport, a member of the Vaticanisti shouted, “Welcome to Occupied Palestine!” To which a doctrinaire archbishop from the Secretariat of State murmured, “Amen to that.” Clearly, thought Gabriel, there were some within the Curia who were unhappy over the pope’s decision to spend Eastertide in a Holy Land controlled by Jews.
At Donati’s direction, Gabriel was to be part of the pope’s core protection unit, meaning he would never be more than a few feet from the pontiff’s side. And so it was that, as His Holiness Pope Paul VII, the Bishop of Rome, Pontifex Maximus, and successor to St. Peter, stepped off his borrowed airplane, he was trailed by the only child of Holocaust survivors from the Valley of Jezreel. Following in the tradition set by his predecessor, the pope immediately lowered himself to his hands and knees and kissed the tarmac. Rising, he walked over to the waiting Israeli prime minister and gave him a vigorous handshake. The two men exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, surrounded by concentric rings of security. Then the prime minister escorted the pope to a helicopter. Gabriel climbed in after him and sat between Donati and Alois Metzler.
“So far, so good,” Donati said as the helicopter rose swiftly into the air.
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “But now the fun begins.”
They headed eastward into the Judean Hills, above the winding staircase-like gorge separating Jerusalem from the sea. Gabriel pointed out some of the villages that had seen the worst fighting during Israel’s War of Independence; then Jerusalem appeared before them, floating, as though held aloft by the hand of God. The pope peered intently out his window as they crossed the city from west to east, new to old. As they passed over the Temple Mount, the golden Dome of the Rock sparkled in the midday sun. Gabriel showed the pope the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Church of the Dormition, and the Garden of Gethsemane.
“And your son?” asked the pope.
“There,” said Gabriel as they passed over the Mount of Olives.
The helicopter banked gently to the south and flew along the 1949 Green Line, now commonly referred to as the pre-1967 border. From the air, it was plain to see how the border had effectively dissolved after more than forty years of Israeli occupation. In the span of a few seconds, they passed over the mixed Jerusalem neighborhood of Abu Tor, the small West Bank Jewish settlement of Har Homa, and the Arab village of Beit Jala. Adjacent to Beit Jala was Bethlehem. Manger Square was easily visible from the distance, for it was crammed with several thousand people, each one waving a small Palestinian flag. On the roads leading into the city, not a car moved, only the trucks and jeeps of the IDF.
