The Fallen Angel

“I was right about one thing,” the general said. “You certainly do know how to think like a criminal.”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“And I still have a perfectly good right hand.” The general appraised Gabriel for a moment with his one good eye before asking whether he had stolen the painting and the vase himself.

“Operational verisimilitude required me to utilize the services of a professional.”

“So it was a commissioned theft?”

“You might say that.”

“Does this thief ever practice his trade in Italy?”

“Every chance he gets.”

“How much would I have to pay for his name?”

“I’m afraid it’s not for sale.”

Gabriel returned the paper to the general, who used it to wave away an approaching waiter.

“I’ve been reading the recent news from your country with great interest,” he said, as though Gabriel’s country was some place hard to find on a map. “Do you believe those pillars are truly from Solomon’s First Temple?”

Gabriel nodded.

“You’ve seen them?”

“And the bomb they were going to use to blow them to pieces.”

“Madness,” said the general, shaking his head slowly. “I suppose it puts my efforts to protect Italy’s cultural patrimony in a whole new light. I only have to contend with thieves and smugglers, not religious maniacs who are trying to plunge the Middle East into war.”

“Sometimes the religious maniacs actually get help from the thieves and smugglers.” Gabriel paused, then added, “But then, you already knew that, didn’t you, General Ferrari?”

Ferrari fixed Gabriel with a glassy stare from his prosthetic eye but said nothing.

“That’s why you sent me to Veronica Marchese,” Gabriel continued. “Because you already knew that her husband controlled the global trade in looted antiquities. You also knew he was working with the criminal funding arm of Hezbollah. You knew all this,” Gabriel concluded, “because my service told you it was so.”

“Actually,” the general responded, “I knew about Carlo long before your chief brought us his dossier.”

“Why didn’t you do anything about it?”

“Because it would have destroyed the career of a woman I admire greatly, not to mention a close friend of hers who lives next door to His Holiness on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace.”

“You knew that Donati and Veronica were lovers once?”

“And so does Carlo,” the general said, nodding. “He also knows that the monsignor left his order after a pair of killings in El Salvador. Which is why he wanted to be on the supervisory council of the Vatican Bank so badly.”

“He knew it would be a perfect safe harbor to launder his money because Donati would never dare move against him.”

The general nodded thoughtfully. “The monsignor’s past made him vulnerable,” he said after a moment. “That is the last thing one should be in a place like the Vatican.”

“And when you heard that Claudia Andreatti had been found in the Basilica?”

“I had no doubt as to who was behind her death.”

“Because your informant Roberto Falcone told you that she’d been to Cerveteri to see him,” Gabriel said. “And when I found Falcone’s body in the acid bath, you realized that you had a perfect solution to your Carlo problem. An Italian solution.”

“Not in the strictest sense of the term, but, yes, I suppose I did.” The unblinking eye scrutinized Gabriel for a moment. “And now it seems we have arrived at the place where we began. What do we do about Carlo?”

“I know what I’d like to do.”

“How much hard evidence do you have?”

“Enough to tie a cordata around his scrawny neck.”

“How do you want to handle it?”

“I’m going to tell him to resign his post at the Vatican Bank immediately. But first, I’m going to offer him a chance to confess his sins.”

The general smiled. “I’ve always found that confession can be good for the soul.”

After lunch, Gabriel hiked across the river, to the faded old palazzo in Trastevere that had been turned into a faded old apartment building. He still had the key. Entering the foyer, he once again checked the postbox. This time, it was empty.

He headed upstairs and let himself into the flat. It was exactly as he had left it nearly four months ago, with one exception: the electricity had been cut off. And so he sat alone at her desk, watching as the creeping afternoon shadows slowly reclaimed her possessions. Finally, a few minutes after six, he heard the scrape of a key entering the lock. Then the door swung open, and Dr. Claudia Andreatti came floating toward him through the darkness.

Her sister’s death had spared the world a cataclysm, which meant that Paola Andreatti deserved to know nothing less than the complete truth about what had happened. Not the Office’s version of the truth, thought Gabriel, and surely not the Vatican’s. It had to be truth without evasion and without regard to the sensitivities of powerful individuals or institutions. A truth she could take to the grave of her sister and, one day, to her own.

And so Gabriel told her the entire story of his remarkable journey from the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica to the hole in the heart of the Holy Mountain, where he had found the twenty-two pillars of Solomon’s First Temple and the bomb that could have caused a conflict of biblical proportions. She remained silent throughout, her hands folded neatly on her lap. The eyes that watched him from the evening shadows were identical to the ones that had gazed up at him from the floor of the Basilica. The voice, when finally she spoke, was the same voice that had spoken to him briefly in the stairwell of the Vatican Museum the night of her death.

“What are you going to do about Carlo?”

Gabriel’s answer seemed to cause her physical pain.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“If the Italian prosecutors bring charges against him—”

“I know how the justice system works in Italy, Mr. Allon,” she said, cutting him off. “The case will drag on for years, and the chances are good he’ll never see the inside of a jail.”

“What do you want, Dr. Andreatti?”

“Justice for my sister.”

“It’s not something I can give you.”

“Then why did you bring me to Rome?”

“For the truth,” he said. “I wanted you to hear the truth. And not just from me. From him as well.”

“When?” she asked.

“Tomorrow night.”

She was silent for a moment. “If there was a God,” she said finally, “he would die the same death as my sister.”

Yes, thought Gabriel. If there was a God.

50 VATICAN CITY

DONATI RANG CARLO MARCHESE LATE the following afternoon and said the Vicar of Christ wanted a word.

“When?” asked Carlo.

“Tonight.”

“I have something.”

“Cancel it.”