Donati looked at his wristwatch. “Will you give me a ride back to the airport? If we hurry, we can be in Rome in time for supper.”

“We?”

“We’ll stop at your apartment on the way out of town so you can pack a bag,” Donati said. “It’s been stormy in Rome. Make sure you pack a raincoat.”

He would have to bring more than a raincoat, Gabriel thought as he led Donati through the crowded market. He was going to need a false passport, too.

4. Vatican City

Vatican City

IT WAS A RATHER ordinary office for so powerful a man. The Oriental carpet was faded and timeworn, and the curtains were heavy and drab. As Gabriel and Donati entered the room, the small figure in white seated behind the large austere desk was gazing intently at the screen of a television. A scene of violence played there: fire and smoke, bloodstained survivors pulling at their hair and weeping over the tattered bodies of the dead. Pope Paul VII, Bishop of Rome, Pontifex Maximus, successor to St. Peter, pressed the Power button on his remote control, and the image turned to black. “Gabriel,” he said. “It’s so good to see you again.”

The Pope rose slowly to his feet and extended a small hand—not with the fisherman’s ring facing upward, the way he did toward most people, but with the palm sideways. The grip was still strong, and the eyes that gazed fondly up at Gabriel were still vibrant and clear. Gabriel had forgotten how diminutive Pietro Lucchesi really was. He thought of the afternoon Lucchesi had emerged from the conclave, an elfin figure, swimming in the hastily prepared cassock and barely visible over the balustrade of the Basilica’s great loggia. A commentator for Italian television had proclaimed him Pietro the Improbable. Cardinal Marco Brindisi, the reactionary secretary of state who had assumed he would be the one to emerge from the conclave dressed in white, had acidly referred to Lucchesi as “Pope Accidental I.”

For Gabriel, though, it was another image of Pietro Lucchesi that he would always think of first, the sight of him standing on the bimah of the Great Synagogue of Rome, speaking words no pope had ever spoken before. “For these sins, and others soon to be revealed, we offer our confession, and we beg your forgiveness. There are no words to describe the depth of our grief. In your hour of greatest need, when the forces of Nazi Germany pulled you from your houses in the very streets surrounding this synagogue, you cried out for help, but your pleas were met by silence. And so today, as I plead for forgiveness, I will do it in the same manner. In silence….”