Seth’s taxi driver leaped out of the cab as soon as he had braked to a halt and opened the door for him. Then he opened the trunk and signaled for a porter. In one of the few phrases of German the driver knew, he told the porter to be careful with the bags. Finally Seth pulled a wad of Weinstock’s money from his wallet and counted off the amount on the meter, doubled it, and gave it to the driver.

“Merry Christmas,” Seth told the Turkish cabdriver. The man hugged him, kissed him on both cheeks, then got back in his cab and drove away.

Seth was unaware of the curious looks of the porters and doormen as he turned and walked toward the entrance. He hoped the money would make for a better Christmas, and maybe a better life, for a hardworking husband in Switzerland and a wife and seven children in Turkey.

A bellhop with the imperial bearing of Prussian nobility carried Seth’s bags up to his room, hung up the clothes, adjusted the thermostat, turned down his bed, and demonstrated the dry bar stocked with full bottles of whiskey and cordials, and the refrigerator with its champagne, white wine, fruit juices, and bottled water. His name was Klaus and he spoke impeccable English.

Seth tipped him well enough for the man to remember him if the time ever came to ask him a favor. Seth briefly considered opening one of the bottles of orange juice and lay on the bed to think about it. He fell asleep with his clothes on.

Far to the south, the Austrian wind shrieked up off the valley of the Inn River and heaved its icy shoulders against the lodge’s stout timbers. The half-century-old wood creaked and complained with the stronger gusts. It was after 2 A.M. and lights shone in only one set of windows, high on the Cardinal Nest’s top floor. Behind those windows, Archbishop Cardinal Neils Braun paced his bedroom as he listened to the man on the other end of the telephone line.

“Very good.” Braun smiled into the receiver. “I knew I had placed my trust well with you.”

Braun held the cordless telephone to his ear and listened to the report as he walked into the darkened coolness of his personal study. Flipping on the overhead light switch, he looked about him, at the walls lined with books, at the bound copies of his own books, seven of them, all published by commercial publishers of international renown. Philosophy, theology, history. The works had accounted in large part for the spread of his influence beyond his own important, but clerically insular, niche in the Vatican hierarchy.

Still listening to the frantic man on the other end of the line, Braun walked over to the bookshelf and pulled out a copy of the book that had put his name on the lips of people around the world and elevated him from the obscurity of the Curia to a serious contender fen: the throne of Saint Peter.