by Daniel Silva
“The Vatican is like a labyrinth,” Carlo continued. “You should know there are forces within the Curia who believe Monsignor Donati has unwittingly opened a Pandora’s box that will further damage the Church’s reputation at a time when it cannot afford it. They also resent the fact that he has chosen to place this matter in the hands of an outsider.”
“I assume you share their opinion.”
“I am officially agnostic on the question. But I’ve learned from experience that, when it comes to the Vatican, it’s often better to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“What about dead women?”
It was a deliberate provocation. Carlo appeared impressed by Gabriel’s nerve. “Dead women are like bank vaults,” he responded with surprising candor. “They almost always contain unpleasant secrets.” He removed a business card from a silver case. “I hope you’ll reconsider my offer on the Reni. I can assure you I’ll make it well worth your while.”
As Gabriel slipped the card into his pocket, there came the sound of a chime summoning the guests to dinner. Carlo placed a hand at the small of Gabriel’s back and guided him toward the staircase. A moment later, he was taking his seat next to Chiara. “What did he want?” she asked quietly in Hebrew.
“I think he was trying to put me on the Marchese family payroll.”
“Is that all?”
“No,” said Gabriel. “He wanted to make sure I wasn’t carrying a gun.”
They emerged from the palazzo shortly after midnight to find the air filled with soft, downy snowflakes the size of Eucharistic wafers. A Vatican sedan waited curbside; it followed slowly behind as Donati, Gabriel, and Chiara made their way along the deserted pavements of the Via Veneto. Chiara held Gabriel’s arm tightly as the snow whitened her hair. Donati walked wordlessly next to her. A moment earlier, as he bade farewell to Veronica with a formal kiss on her cheek, he had been smiling. Now, faced with the prospect of a long, cold night in an empty bed, his mood was noticeably gloomy.
“Was it my imagination,” Gabriel asked, “or were you actually enjoying yourself tonight?”
“I always do. It’s the hardest part about spending time with her.”
“So why do you do it?”
“Veronica is convinced it’s a little-known Jesuitical test of faith, that I deliberately place myself in the proximity of temptation to see whether God will reach down and catch me if I fall.”
“Do you?”
“It’s not as Ignatian as all that. I simply enjoy her company. Most people can never see past the Roman collar, but Veronica doesn’t see it at all. She makes me forget I’m a priest.”
“What happens if you fail your test?”
“I would never allow that to happen. And neither would Veronica.” Donati signaled for his car. Then he turned to Gabriel and asked, “How was your meeting with Carlo?”
“Businesslike.”
“Did he mention my name?”
“He spoke of you only in the most glowing of terms.”
“What did he want?”
“He thinks it would be a good idea if I dropped the investigation.”
“I don’t suppose he confessed to killing Claudia Andreatti.”
“No, Luigi, he didn’t.”
“What now?”
“I’m going to find something irresistible,” answered Gabriel. “And then I’m going to smash it to pieces.”
“Just make sure it isn’t my Church—or me, for that matter.”
Donati made two solemn movements of his long hand, one vertical, one horizontal, and disappeared into the back of his car.
By the time Gabriel and Chiara reached the Via Gregoriana, the snowfall had ended. Gabriel paused at the base of the street and peered up the hill toward the Church of the Trinità dei Monti. The streetlamps were doused, yet another effort by the government to preserve precious resources. Rome, it seemed, was receding into time. Gabriel would have scarcely been surprised to see a chariot clattering toward them through the gloom.
The cars were parked tightly against the narrow pavements, so they walked, like most Romans, in the center of the street. The engine block of a wrecked Fiat ticked like cracking ice, but otherwise there was no sound, only the rhythmic tapping of Chiara’s heels. Gabriel could feel the heavy warmth of her breast pressing against his arm. He imagined her lying nude in their bed, his private Modigliani. A part of him wanted to keep her there until a child appeared in her womb, but it was not possible; the case had its hooks in him. To abandon it would be tantamount to leaving a masterpiece partially restored. He would pursue the truth not for General Ferrari, or even for his friend Luigi Donati, but for Claudia Andreatti. The image of her lying dead on the floor of the Basilica now hung in his nightmarish gallery of memory—Death of the Virgin, oil on canvas, by Carlo Marchese.
Dead women are like bank vaults. They almost always contain unpleasant secrets. . . .
The buzz of an approaching motorcycle dissolved the image in Gabriel’s thoughts. It was speeding directly toward them, the beam of its headlight quivering with the vibration of the cobbles. Gabriel nudged Chiara closer to the parked cars and trained his gaze toward the helmeted figure atop the bike. He was piloting the machine with one hand. The other, the right, was inserted into the front of his leather jacket. When it emerged, Gabriel saw the unmistakable silhouette of a gun with a suppressor screwed into the barrel. The gun moved first toward Gabriel’s chest. Then it swung a few degrees and took aim at Chiara.
Gabriel felt a sudden hollowness at the small of his back where he usually carried his Beretta. As a student of Krav Maga, the Israeli martial arts discipline, he was trained in the many techniques of neutralizing an armed opponent. But nearly all involved an opponent standing in close proximity, not one riding at high speed on a motorbike. Gabriel had no choice but to rely upon one of the central tenets of Office tradecraft—when confronted with few decent options, improvise, and do it quickly.
Using his left hand, he forced Chiara to the paving stones. Then, with a violent blow of his right elbow, he snapped a side view mirror off the nearest parked car. The throw, while lacking in velocity, was remarkably accurate. The assassin instinctively swerved to avoid the projectile, thus shifting the gun off its target line for a crucial second or two. Gabriel immediately dropped into a crouch. Then, with the bike bearing down on him, he drove his shoulder into the visor of the assassin’s helmet, separating man, bike, and gun. The assassin crashed to the cobblestones, the gun a few inches beyond his reach. Gabriel broke the man’s wrist, just to be on the safe side, and kicked the helmet from his head. The killer had the complexion of a Calabrian. His breath stank of tobacco and fear.
“Do you have any idea who I am?” asked Gabriel calmly.
“No,” the assassin gasped, clutching his broken limb.
“That means you are the dumbest contract killer who ever walked the earth.” Gabriel picked up the gun, a Heckler & Koch .45-caliber, and pointed it at the assassin’s face. “Who sent you?”
“I don’t know,” the assassin replied, panting. “I never know.”
“Wrong answer.”
Gabriel placed the end of the suppressor against the assassin’s kneecap.
“Let’s try this one more time. Who sent you?”
PART TWO
CITY OF GOD
17
BEN GURION AIRPORT, ISRAEL
IN THE ARRIVALS HALL OF Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport is a special reception room reserved for Office personnel. As Gabriel and Chiara entered late the following afternoon, they were surprised to find it occupied by a single man. He was seated in one of the faux-leather lounge chairs with his thick legs crossed, reading the contents of a manila file folder by the glow of a halogen lamp. He wore a charcoal-gray suit, an open-neck dress shirt, and a pair of stylish silver eyeglasses that were far too small for his face. The overall impression was of a busy executive catching up on a bit of paperwork between flights, which was not far from the truth. Since taking control of the Office, Uzi N
avot had spent a great deal of time on airplanes.
“To what do we owe the honor?” asked Gabriel.
Navot looked up from the file as if surprised by the interruption. “It’s not every day someone tries to kill a pair of Office agents in the middle of Rome,” he said. “In fact, it only seems to happen whenever you’re in town.”
Navot placed the file in his secure briefcase and rose slowly to his feet. He was several pounds heavier than the last time Gabriel had seen him, evidence he was not adhering to the strict diet and exercise regime imposed by his demanding wife, Bella. Or perhaps, thought Gabriel, looking at the additional gray in Navot’s cropped hair, he was merely feeling the stress of his enormous job. He had a right to. The State of Israel was confronted by an Arab world in turmoil and faced threats too numerous to count. Topping the list was the prospect that Iran’s nuclear program was about to bear fruit despite the secret war of sabotage and assassination waged by the Office and its allies.
“Actually,” Navot said, raising one eyebrow, “you don’t look half bad for someone who narrowly survived an assassination attempt.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you could see the bruises on my shoulder.”
“That’s what you get for walking into the home of a man like Carlo Marchese without a gun in your pocket.” Navot pulled a disapproving frown. “You should have had a word with Shimon Pazner before accepting that invitation. He could have told you a few things about Carlo that even your friend Monsignor Donati doesn’t know.”
“Such as?”
“Let’s just say the Office has had its eye on Carlo for some time.”
“Why?”
“Because Carlo’s never been terribly discerning about the company he keeps. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Navot added. “The Old Man wants to tell you the rest. He’s been counting the minutes until your arrival.”
“Is there any chance you would let us get on the next plane out of the country?”
Navot placed his heavy hand on Gabriel’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere,” he said. “At least, not yet.”
In the heart of Jerusalem, not far from the Old City, was a quiet, leafy lane known as Narkiss Street. The apartment house at Number 16 was small, just three stories in height, and partially concealed behind a sturdy limestone wall. An overgrown eucalyptus tree shaded the tiny balconies; the garden gate screeched when opened. In the foyer was an intercom panel with three buttons and three corresponding nameplates. Few people ever called upon the occupants of the unit on the top floor, for they were rarely there. The neighbors had been told that the husband, a taciturn man with ash-colored temples and vivid green eyes, was an artist who traveled often and jealously guarded his privacy. They no longer believed that to be true.
The sitting room of the apartment was hung with paintings. There were three canvases by Gabriel’s grandfather, the renowned German Expressionist Viktor Frankel, and several more works by his mother. There was also a three-quarter-length portrait, unsigned, of a gaunt young man who appeared haunted by the shadow of death. Gazing up at it, as though lost in memories, was Ari Shamron. He was dressed, as usual, in pressed khaki trousers, a white oxford cloth shirt, and a leather jacket with an unrepaired tear in the left shoulder. As Gabriel, Chiara, and Navot entered, he hastily crushed out his filterless Turkish cigarette and placed the butt in the decorative dish he was using as an ashtray.
“How did you get in here?” asked Gabriel.
Shamron held up a key.
“I thought I took that away from you.”
“You did,” answered Shamron with a shrug. “Housekeeping was good enough to give me another copy.”
Housekeeping was the Office division that managed safe houses and other secure properties. The apartment on Narkiss Street had once fallen into that category, but Shamron had bequeathed it to Gabriel as payment for services rendered—an act of generosity that, in Shamron’s opinion, entitled him to enter the apartment whenever he pleased. He slipped the key into his pocket and scrutinized Gabriel with his rheumy blue eyes. His liver-spotted hands were bunched atop the crook of his olive wood cane. They looked as though they had been borrowed from a man twice his size.
“I was beginning to think we would never see each other again,” he said after a moment. “Now it seems Carlo has reunited us.”
“I didn’t realize you two were on a first-name basis.”
“Carlo?” Shamron squeezed his deeply lined face into an expression of profound disdain. “Carlo Marchese has occupied a special place in our hearts for some time. He’s the transnational threat of tomorrow, a criminal without borders, creed, or conscience who’s willing to do business with anyone as long as the money keeps rolling in.”
“Who are his partners?”
“As you might expect, Carlo prefers his crime organized. He’s also something of a globalist, which I admire. He does business with the Russian mafiya, the Japanese yakuza, and the Chinese gangs that control Hong Kong and Taiwan. But what concerns us most are his ties to numerous criminal gangs from southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. Their members come almost entirely from the Shiite branch of Islam. They also happen to be affiliated with the world’s most dangerous terrorist group.”
“Hezbollah?”
Shamron nodded slowly. “Now that I have your attention, I’m wondering whether you will indulge me by listening to the rest of the story.”
“I suppose that depends on the ending.”
“It ends the way it always ends.”
Shamron gave a seductive smile, the one he reserved for recruitments, and ignited another cigarette.
Housekeeping had taken the liberty of provisioning the depleted pantry with all the supplies required for a war party. Chiara saw to the coffee while Gabriel prepared a tray of cookies and other assorted sweets. He placed it directly in front of Navot and then pushed open the French doors leading to the terrace. The chill afternoon air smelled of eucalyptus and pine and faintly of jasmine. He stood there for a moment, watching the shadows lengthening in the quiet street, as Shamron described the origins of the unholy alliance between Carlo Marchese and the Shiite fanatics of Hezbollah.
It began, he said, shortly after the brief but destructive war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. The conflict left Hezbollah’s military forces in ruins. It also destroyed much of the extensive social infrastructure—the schools, hospitals, and housing—that Hezbollah used to purchase the support of Lebanon’s traditionally impoverished Shiites. Hezbollah’s leadership needed a large infusion of money to quickly rebuild and rearm. Not surprisingly, they turned to their two most reliable patrons, Syria and Iran.
“The money poured in for a while,” Shamron continued, “but then the ground shifted suddenly under Hezbollah’s feet. The so-called Arab Spring came to Syria with a vengeance. And the international community finally decided it was time to impose real sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. The mullahs were forced to pinch their pennies. Once they had funded Hezbollah to the tune of two hundred million dollars a year. Now it’s a fraction of that.”
Shamron lapsed into silence. He was seated with his arms folded across his chest and his head cocked slightly to one side, as though he had just heard a familiar voice outside in the street. Navot was seated next to him in an identical pose. But unlike Shamron, who was staring at Gabriel, Navot was gazing down at a plate of Viennese butter cookies with an expression of studied indifference. Gabriel shook his head slowly. It had been many months since his last operation with the Office, yet in his absence it seemed nothing had changed except the color of Navot’s hair.
“Hezbollah realized it had a serious long-term problem,” Navot said, picking up where Shamron had left off. “Since it could no longer count on the benevolence of its patrons, it had to develop an independent, reliable means of financing its operations. It didn’t take long for them to decide how to proceed.”
“Crime,” said Gabriel.
“Big-time cr
ime,” said Navot, snatching one of the cookies from the tray. “Hezbollah is like the Gambino family on steroids. But they tend to operate like limpets.”
“Meaning they attach themselves to other criminal organizations?”
Navot nodded and treated himself to another cookie. “They’re involved in everything from the cocaine trade in South America to diamond smuggling in West Africa. They also do a brisk business in counterfeit goods ranging from Gucci handbags to pirated DVDs.”
“And they’re good at it,” Shamron added. “Hezbollah is now in possession of at least eighty thousand rockets and missiles capable of reaching every square inch of Israel. You can rest assured they didn’t get them by clipping coupons. Its rearmament is being funded in large part by a global crime wave. And Carlo is one of Hezbollah’s most reliable partners.”
“How did you find out about him?”
Shamron studied his hands before answering. “About six months ago, we were able to identify a senior operative in Hezbollah’s criminal fund-raising apparatus. His name is Muhammad Qassem. At the time, he was employed by something called the Lebanon Byzantine Bank. We lured him to Cyprus with a woman. Then we put him in a box and brought him back here.”
Shamron slowly crushed out his cigarette. “Under questioning, Qassem gave us chapter and verse on Hezbollah’s criminal enterprises, including its partnership with a heretofore unknown Italian organized crime figure named Carlo Marchese. According to Qassem, the relationship is multifaceted, but it’s centered on the trade in looted antiquities.”
“What does Hezbollah bring to the relationship?”
“You’re the expert in the dirty antiquities trade. You tell me.”
Gabriel recalled what General Ferrari had told him during their meeting in the Piazza di Sant’Ignazio, that the network was receiving looted goods from someone in the Middle East. “Hezbollah brings a steady stream of product to the relationship,” he said. “It’s active in some of the most archaeologically significant lands in the world. Southern Lebanon alone is a treasure trove of Phoenician, Greek, and Roman antiquities.”