workshop and opened a storage cabinet. Inside was a small overnight bag, containing a change of clothing and a shaving kit. The fax machine rang. The Clockmaker pulled on an overcoat and hat while the face of a dead man eased slowly into view.
21 ROME
GABRIEL TOOK A table inside Doney the following morning to have coffee. Thirty minutes later, a man entered and went to the bar. He had hair like steel wool and acne scars on his broad cheeks. His clothing was expensive but worn poorly. He drank two espressos rapid-fire and kept a cigarette working the entire time. Gabriel looked down at hisLa Repubblica and smiled. Shimon Pazner had been the Office man in Rome for five years, yet he had still not lost the prickly exterior of a Negev settler. Pazner paid his bill and went to the toilet. When he came out, he was wearing sunglasses, the signal that the meeting was on. He headed through the revolving door, paused on the pavement of the Via Veneto, then turned right and started walking. Gabriel left money on the table and followed after him.
Pazner crossed the Corso d’Italia and entered the Villa Borghese. Gabriel walked a little farther along the Corso and entered the park at another point. He met Pazner on a tree-lined footpath and introduced himself as Rene Duran of Montreal. Together they walked toward the Galleria. Pazner lit a cigarette.
“Word is you had a close shave up in the Alps the other night.”
“Word travels fast.”
“The Office is like a Jewish sewing circle, you know that. But you have a bigger problem. Lev has laid down the law. Allon is off limits. Allon, should he come knocking on your door, is to be turned into the street.” Pazner spat at the ground. “I’m here out of loyalty to the Old Man, not you, MonsieurDuran. This had better be good.”
They sat on a marble bench in the forecourt of the Galleria Borghese and looked in opposite directions for watchers. Gabriel told Pazner about the SS man Erich Radek who had traveled to Syria under the name Otto Krebs. “He didn’t go to Damascus to study ancient civilization,” Gabriel said. “The Syrians let him in for a reason. If he was close to the regime, he might show up in the files.”
“So you want me to run a search and see if we can place him in Damascus?”
“Exactly.”
“And how do you expect me to request this search without Lev and Security finding out about it?”
Gabriel looked at Pazner as though he found the question insulting. Pazner retreated. “All right, let’s say I might have a girl in Research who can have a quiet look through the files for me.”
“Just one girl?”
Pazner shrugged and tossed his cigarette onto the gravel. “It still sounds like a long shot to me. Where are you staying?”
Gabriel told him.
“There’s a place called La Carbonara on the northern end of the Campo dei Fiori, near the fountain.”
“I know it.”
“Be there at eight o’clock. There’ll be a reservation in the name of Brunacci for eight-thirty. If the reservation is for two, that means the search was a bust. If it’s for four, come to the Piazza Farnese.”
ON THE OPPOSITE bank of the Tiber, in a small square a few paces from St. Anne’s Gate, the Clockmaker sat in the cold late-afternoon shadows of an outdoor cafe, sipping a cappuccino. At the next table, a pair of cassocked priests were engaged in animated conversation. The Clockmaker, though he spoke no Italian, assumed them to be Vatican bureaucrats. A hunchbacked alley cat threaded its way between the Clockmaker’s legs and begged for food. He trapped the animal between his ankles and squeezed, slowly increasing the pressure, until the cat let out a strangled howl and scampered off. The priests looked up in disapproval; the Clockmaker left money on the table and walked away. Imagine, cats in a cafe. He was looking forward to concluding his business in Rome and returning to Vienna.
He walked along the edge of Bernini’s Colonnade and paused for a moment to peer down the broad Via della Conciliazione toward the Tiber. A tourist thrust a disposable camera toward him and pleaded, in some indecipherable Slavic tongue, for the Clockmaker to take his photograph in front of the Vatican. The Austrian wordlessly pointed toward his wristwatch, indicating he was late for an appointment, and turned his back.
He crossed the large, thunderous square just beyond the opening in the Colonnade. It bore the name of a recent pope. The Clockmaker, though he had few interests other than antique timepieces, knew that this pope was a rather controversial figure. He found the intrigue swirling about him rather amusing. So he did not help the Jews during the war. Since when was it the responsibility of a pope to help Jews? They were, after all, the enemies of the Church.
He turned into the mouth of a narrow street, leading away from the Vatican toward the base of the Janiculum park. It was deeply shadowed and lined with ocher-colored buildings covered in a powdery dust. The Clockmaker walked the cracked pavement, searching for the address he had been given earlier that morning by telephone. He found it but hesitated before entering. Stenciled to the sooty glass were the words ARTICOLIRELIGIOSI. Below, in smaller letters, was the name GIUSEPPE MONDIANI. The Clockmaker consulted the slip of paper where he’d written the address. Number 22 Via Borgo Santo Spirito. He had come to the right place.
He pressed his face to the glass. The room on the other side was cluttered with crucifixes, statues of the Virgin, carvings of long-dead saints, rosaries and medals, all certified to have been blessed by il papa himself. Everything seemed to be covered with the fine, flourlike dust from the street. The Clockmaker, though raised in a strict Austrian Catholic home, wondered what would compel a person to pray to a statue. He no longer believed in God or the Church, nor did he believe in fate, divine intervention, an afterlife, or luck. He believed men controlled the course of their lives, just as the wheelwork of a clock controlled the motion of the hands.
He pulled open the door and stepped inside, accompanied by the tinkle of a small bell. A man emerged from a back room, dressed in an amber V-neck sweater with no shirt beneath and tan gabardine trousers that no longer held a crease. His limp, thinning hair was waxed into place atop his head. The Clockmaker, even from several paces away, could smell his offensive aftershave. He wondered whether the men of the Vatican knew their blessed religious articles were being dispensed by so reprehensible a creature.
“May I help you?”
“I’m looking for Signor Mondiani.”
He nodded, as if to say the Clockmaker had found the man he was looking for. A watery smile revealed the fact that he was missing several teeth. “You must be the gentleman from Vienna,” Mondiani said. “I recognize your voice.”
He held out his hand. It was spongy and damp, just as the Clockmaker had feared. Mondiani locked the front door and hung a sign in the window that said, in English and Italian, that the shop was now closed. Then he led the Clockmaker through a doorway and up a flight of rickety wooden stairs. At the top of the steps was a small office. The curtains were drawn, and the air was heavy with the scent of a woman’s perfume. And something else, sour and ammonia-like. Mondiani gestured toward the couch. The Clockmaker looked down; an image flashed before his eyes. He remained standing. Mondiani shrugged his narrow shoulders-As you wish.
The Italian sat down at his desk, straightened some papers, and smoothed his hair. It was dyed an unnatural shade of orange-black. The Clockmaker, balding with a salt-and-pepper fringe, seemed to be making him more self-conscious than he already was.
“Your colleague from Vienna said you required a weapon.” Mondiani pulled open a desk drawer, removed a dark item with a flat metallic finish, and laid it reverently on his coffee-stained desk blotter, as though it were a sacred relic. “I trust you’ll find this satisfactory.”
The Clockmaker held out his hand. Mondiani placed the weapon in his palm.
“As you can see, it’s a Glock nine-millimeter. I trust you’re familiar with the Glock. After all, it is an Austrian- made weapon.”
The Clockmaker raised his eyes from the weapon. “Has this been blessed by the Holy Father, like the rest of your inventory?”
Mondiani, judging from his dark expression, did not find the remark humorous. He reached into the open
