The Confessor

talking about?"
    But Gabriel made no reply. Instead, he knelt down and spent the next several minutes cleaning his brushes and palette and packing away his pigments and medium in a flat rectangular case. He climbed off the scaffolding, took Chiara by the hand, and walked out of the church for the last time. On the way home, they stopped by Tiepolo's office in San Marco. Gabriel told him that he needed to see the Holy Father. By the time they arrived home in Cannaregio, a message was waiting on the answering machine.
    Bronze Doors, tomorrow evening, eight o'clock. Don't be late.
    VATICAN CITY
    Gabriel crossed St. Peter's square at dusk. Father Donati met him at the Bronze Doors. He shook Gabriel's hand solemnly and remarked that he looked much better than he had the last time they had met. "The Holy Father is expecting you," Father Donati said. "It's best not to keep him waiting."
    The priest led Gabriel up the Scala Regia. A five-minute walk along an~archipelago of looming corridors and darkened courtyards brought them to the Vatican Gardens. In the dusty sienna light it was easy to spot the Pope. He was walking along a footpath near the Ethiopian College, his white soutane glowing like an acetylene torch.
    Father Donati left Gabriel at the Pope's side and drifted slowly back toward the palace. The Pope took Gabriel's arm and led him along the pathway. The evening air was warm and soft and heavy with the scent of pine.
    "I'm pleased to see you looking so well," the Pope said. "You've made a remarkable recovery."
    "Shamron is convinced it was your prayers that brought me out of the coma. He says hell testify to the miracle of the Gemelli Clinic at your beatification proceedings."
    "I'm not sure how many in the Church will support my canonization after the commission has finished its work." He chuckled and squeezed Gabriel's bicep. "Are you pleased with the restoration of the San Zaccaria altarpiece?"
    "Yes, Holiness. Thank you for intervening on my behalf."
    "It was the only just solution. You started the restoration. It was fitting that you complete it. Besides, that altarpiece is one of my favorite paintings. It needed the hands of the great Mario Delvecchio."
    The Pope guided Gabriel onto a narrow pathway leading toward the Vatican walls. "Come," he said. "I want to show you something." They headed directly toward the spire of Vatican Radio's transmission tower. At the wall, they mounted a flight of stone steps and climbed up to the parapet. The city lay before them, rustling and stirring, dusty and dirty, eternal Rome. From this angle, in this light, it was not so different from Jerusalem. All that was missing was the cry of the muezzin, calling the faithful to evening prayer. Then Gabriel's eye traveled down the length of the Tiber, to the synagogue at the entrance of the old ghetto, and he realized why the Pope had brought him here.
    "You have a question you wish to ask me, Gabriel?"
    "I do, Holiness."
    "I suspect you want to know how your friend Benjamin Stern got the documents about the covenant at Garda in the first place."
    "You're a very wise man, Holiness."
    "Am I? Look at what I have wrought."
    The Pope was silent for a moment, his gaze fixed on the towering synagogue. Finally he turned to Gabriel. "Will you be my confessor, Gabriel--metaphorically speaking, of course?"
    "I'll be whatever you want me to be, Holiness."
    "Do you know about the seal of confession? What I tell you here tonight must never be repeated. For a second time, I place my life in your hands." He looked away. "The question is, whose hands are they? Are they the hands of Gabriel Allon? Or are they the hands of Mario Delvecchio, the restorer?"
    "Which would you prefer?"
    The Pope looked across the river once more, toward the synagogue, and leaving Gabriel's question unanswered, he began to speak.
    THE POPE told Gabriel of the conclave, the terrible night of agony at the Dormitory of St. Martha, when, like Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, he had begged God to let this cup pass from his lips. How could a man with knowledge of the terrible secret of the Garda covenant be chosen to lead the Church? What would he do with such knowledge ? The night before the final session of the conclave, he summoned Father Donati to his room and told the priest he would refuse the papacy if chosen. Then, for the first time, he told his trusted aide what had happened at the convent by the lake that night in 1942.
    "Father Donati was horrified," the Pope