The Confessor

including the doctrinaire head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Following the appointment of a replacement for Marco Brindisi, there were wholesale staff changes in the Secretariat of State. Press office chief Rudolf Gertz returned to Vienna.
    Ari Shamron monitored Gabriel's recovery from Tel Aviv. Against Lev's wishes, Shamron managed to tunnel his way back into King SauL Boulevard to head up what eventually became known as Team Leopard. The sole purpose of the group was to locate and neutralize the elusive terrorist thought to be responsible for the murder of Benjamin Stern and countless others. Shamron seemed rejuvenated by the new assignment. Those closest to him noticed a marked improvement in his appearance.
    Unfortunately for those drafted onto his team, better health brought the return of his fiery temper, and he drove himself and his underlings to the point of exhaustion. No lead, no piece of gossip,
    was deemed too small to ignore. There was a suspected sighting of the Leopard in Paris and another in Helsinki. There was a report that Czech police suspected the Leopard was behind a murder in Prague. His name surfaced in Moscow in connection with the murder of a senior intelligence official. An Office agent in Baghdad heard rumors that the Leopard had just signed a contract to work for the Iraqi secret service.
    The clues were tantalizing, but eventually they all proved fruitless. In spite of the setbacks, the old man pleaded with his team not to lose faith. Shamron had his own theory about how the Leopard would be found. It was money that fueled him, Shamron told his team, and it would be money that would bring him down.
    One warm evening in the last days of May, a soccer ball bounded toward Gabriel as he walked in the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo with Chiara. He released her hand and lunged toward the moving ball with three swift steps. "Gabriel! Your head!" she shouted, but he did not listen. He drew back his foot and met the ball with a solid thump that echoed off the facade of the synagogue. It sailed through the air in a graceful arc and landed in the hands of a boy, about twelve years old, with a kippah clipped to his head of curly hair. The child stared at Gabriel for a moment, then smiled and ran off to rejoin his friends. Returning home, Gabriel telephoned Francesco Tiepolo and told him he was ready to go back to work.
    HIS PLATFORM was as he had left it: his brushes and his palette, his pigment and his medium. He had the church to himself. The
    others--Adriana, Antonio Politi, and the rest of the San Zaccaria team--had completed their work and moved on long ago. Chiara never left the church while Gabriel was inside. With his back to the door, framed by the majestic altarpiece, he made an inviting target, so she sat at the base of his scaffolding while he worked, her dark eyes fixed on the door. She made only one demand--that he remove the shroud--and uncharacteristically he agreed.
    He worked long hours, longer than he would have preferred under normal circumstances, but he was determined to finish as quickly as possible. Tiepolo stopped by once a day to bring food and check on his progress. Some days he would linger for a few minutes to keep Chiara company. Once he even hauled his lumbering frame up the scaffolding to consult with Gabriel on a difficult section of the apse.
    Gabriel worked with renewed confidence. He had spent so much time studying Bellini and his works that some days he could almost feel the presence of the master standing next to him, telling him what to do next. He worked from the center outward--the Madonna and child, the saints and the donors, the intricate background. He thought about the case in much the same way. As he worked, he was troubled by two questions that ran incessantly through his subconscious. Who had given Benjamin the documents on the Garda covenant in the first place? And why?
    ONE AFTERNOON late in June, Chiara looked up and saw him standing on the edge of the scaffolding, right hand on his chin, left hand supporting his right elbow, head tilted slightly down. He stood motionless for a long time, ten minutes by Chiara's watch, his
    eyes traveling the length and breadth of the towering canvas. Chiara took the scaffolding in hand and shook it once, the way Tiepolo always did. Gabriel looked down at her and smiled.
    "Is it finished, Signor Delvecchio?"
    "Almost," said he distantly. "I just need to talk to him one more time."
    "What on earth are you