The Messenger

paperwork would exist there. Gabriel kept going toward the Arch of Bells. The Swiss Guard on duty there, startled by the sight of a man running toward him, lowered his halberd defensively as Gabriel approached. He raised it again when he saw Gabriel waving his Security Office ID badge.

“Give me your sidearm,” Gabriel ordered.

“Sir?”

“Give me your gun!” Gabriel shouted at the Guard in German.

The Guard reached inside his multicolored Renaissance tunic and came out with a very modern SIG-Sauer 9mm, just as Luca Angelli emerged through the archway.

“El-Banna cleared a delegation of three German priests into the Vatican at eleven-thirty.”

“They’re not priests, Luca. They’re shaheeds. Martyrs.” Gabriel looked at the crowd gathered in the square. “And I doubt they’re inside the Vatican any longer. They’re probably out there now, armed with explosives and only God knows what else.”

“Why did they come through the Arch of Bells into the Vatican?”

“To get their bombs, of course.” It was the chink in the Vatican ’s security armor. The terrorists had discovered it through repeated surveillance and had used the Holy Father’s initiative of peace to exploit it. “El- Banna probably smuggled the bombs inside over time and stored them in his office. The shaheeds collected them after clearing security at the Permissions Office, then made their way into the square by some route without metal detectors.”

“The Basilica,” said Angelli. “They could have entered the Basilica from the side and come out through one of the front doors. We could have passed them a few moments ago, and we never would have known it.”

Gabriel and Angelli vaulted the wooden fencing separating the Arch of Bells entrance area from the rest of the square and mounted the dais. Their sudden movement sent a murmur through the audience. Donati was standing behind the Pope. Gabriel went quietly to his side and handed him the note he’d taken from el-Banna’s office.

“They’re here.”

Donati looked down, saw the Arabic script, then looked up at Gabriel again.

“We found that in Ibrahim el-Banna’s office. It says they’re going to destroy the Basilica. It says they’re going to kill the Holy Father. We have to get him off the dais. Now, Luigi.”

Donati looked out at the multitude in the square: Catholic pilgrims and dignitaries from around the globe, schoolchildren in white, groups of sick and elderly come to the get the pontiff’s blessing. The Pope was seated in a scarlet ceremonial throne. In the tradition he’d inherited from his predecessor, he was greeting the pilgrims in their native languages, moving rapidly from one to the next.

“And what about the pilgrims?” Donati asked. “How do we protect them?”

“It may be too late for them. Some of them, at least. If we try to warn them, there’ll be panic. Get the Holy Father out of the square as quickly and quietly as possible. Then we’ll start moving the pilgrims out.”

Colonel Brunner, the Swiss Guard commandant, joined them on the dais. Like the rest of the Pope’s personal security detail, he was dressed in a dark business suit and wore an earpiece. When Donati explained the situation, Brunner’s face drained of color.

“We’ll take him through the Basilica.”

“And if they’ve concealed bombs in there?” Gabriel asked.

Brunner opened his mouth to reply, but his words were swept away by a searing blast wave. The sound came a millisecond later, a deafening thunderclap made more intense by the vast echo chamber of St. Peter’s Square. Gabriel was blown from the dais-a scrap of paper on a gale-force wind. His body took flight and turned over at least once. Then he landed hard on the steps of the Basilica and blacked out.

WHEN HE opened his eyes he saw Christ’s Apostles peering down at him from their perch atop the facade. He did not know how long he had been unconscious. A few seconds, perhaps, but not longer. He sat up, ears ringing, and looked around. To his right were the Curial prelates who had been on the dais with the Pope. They appeared shocked and tousled but largely unhurt. To his left lay Donati and next to Donati was Karl Brunner. The commandant’s eyes were closed, and he was bleeding heavily from a wound at the back of his head.

Gabriel got to his feet and looked around.

Where was the Pope?

Ibrahim el-Banna had cleared three priests into the Vatican.

Gabriel suspected there were two more blasts to come.

He found the SIG-Sauer he’d taken from the Swiss Guard and shouted at the prelates to stay down. Then, as he climbed back onto the dais to look for Lucchesi, the second bomb exploded.

Another wave of searing heat and wind.

Another thunderclap.

Gabriel was hurled backward. This time he came to rest atop Donati.

He got to his feet again. He wasn’t able to reach the dais before the third bomb detonated.

When the thunderclap finally died out, he mounted the platform and looked out at the devastation. The shaheeds had distributed themselves evenly throughout the crowd near the front of the dais: one near the Bronze Doors, the second in the center of the square, and the third close to the Arch of Bells. All that remained of them were three plumes of black smoke rising toward the cloudless pale-blue sky. On the spots where the bombers had been standing, the paving stones were blackened by fire, drenched in blood, and littered with human limbs and tissue. Farther away from the blast points, it was possible to imagine that the tattered corpses had moments before been human beings. The folding chairs that Gabriel had watched being put into place earlier that morning had been tossed about like playing cards, and everywhere there were shoes. How many dead? Hundreds, he thought. But his concern at that moment was not with the dead but with the Holy Father.

We declare war on you, the Crusaders, with the destruction of your infidel temple to polytheism…

The attack, Gabriel knew, was not yet finished.

And then, through the screen of black smoke, he saw the next phase unfolding. A delivery van had stopped just beyond the barricade at the far end of the square. The rear cargo doors were open and three men were scrambling out. Each one had a shoulder-launched missile.

IT WAS THEN that Gabriel saw the throne on which the Pope had been seated. It had been blown sideways by the force of the first blast and had come to rest upside down on the steps of the Basilica. Poking from beneath it was a small hand with a gold ring…and the skirt of a white cassock stained in blood.

Gabriel looked at Donati. “They’ve got missiles, Luigi! Get everyone away from the Basilica!”

Gabriel leaped from the dais and lifted the throne. The Pope’s eyes were closed, and he was bleeding from several small cuts. As Gabriel reached down and cradled the Pope in his arms, he heard the distinctive whoosh of an approaching RPG-7. He turned his head, long enough to glimpse the missile streaking over the square toward the Basilica. An instant later the warhead struck Michelangelo’s dome and exploded in a shower of fire, glass, and stone.

Gabriel sheltered the Pope from the falling debris, then lifted him and started running toward the Bronze Doors. Before they could reach the shelter of the Colonnade, the second missile came streaking across the square. It struck the facade of the Basilica, just beneath the balustrade on the Loggia of the Blessings.

Gabriel lost his balance and fell to the paving stones. He lifted his head and saw the third missile on its way. It was coming in lower than the others and heading directly toward the dais. In the instant before it struck, Gabriel glimpsed a nightmarish image: Luigi Donati trying desperately to move the Curial cardinals and prelates to safety. Gabriel stayed on the ground and covered the Pope’s body with his own as another shower of wreckage rained down upon them.

“Is it you, Gabriel?” the Pope asked, eyes still closed.

“Yes, Holiness.”

“Is it over?”

Three bombs, three missiles-symbolic of the Holy Trinity, Gabriel reckoned. A calculated insult to the mushrikun.

“Yes, Holiness. I believe it’s over.”