The Confessor

reddened visibly, and she explained that there was no one at the convent by that name. When Gabriel asked whether there had ever been a Sister Regina at the convent, Mother Vincenza shook her head and suggested that Signor Landau respect the cloistered nature of the convent and never return. Without another word, she crossed the courtyard and disappeared inside. Gabriel then spotted Licio, the groundskeeper, trimming the vines on a trellis. When he tried to summon him, the old man glanced up, then hurried away through the shadowed garden. At that moment Gabriel concluded that it was Licio who had followed him through the streets of Brenzone the previous night and Licio who had placed the anonymous call to his hotel room. Clearly, the old man was frightened. Gabriel decided that, for now at least, he would do nothing to make Licio's situation worse. Instead, he would focus on the convent itself. If Mother Vincenza were telling him the truth--that Jews had been sheltered at the convent during the war--then somewhere there would be a record of it.
    Returning to Venice, he'd had a nagging impression that he was being followed by a gray Lancia. In Verona he left the autostrada and entered the ancient city center, where he performed a series of field-tested maneuvers designed to shake surveillance. In Padua he did the same thing. Half an hour later, racing across the causeway toward Venice, he was quite confident he was alone.
    He worked on the altarpiece all afternoon and into the evening. At seven o'clock, he left the church and wandered over to Francesco Tiepolo's office in San Marco and found him sitting alone at the broad oak table he used as a desk, working his way through a stack of papers. Tiepolo was a highly skilled restorer in his own right, but had long ago set aside his brushes and palette to focus his
    attention on running his thriving restoration business. As Gabriel entered the room, Tiepolo smiled at him through his tangled black beard. On the streets of Venice, he was often mistaken by tourists for Luciano Pavarotti.
    Over a glass of ripasso, Gabriel broke the news that he had to leave Venice again for a few days to take care of a personal matter. Tiepolo buried his big face in his hands and murmured a string of Italian curses before looking up in frustration.
    "Mario, in six weeks the venerable Church of the San Zaccaria is scheduled to reopen to the public. If it docs not reopen to the public in six weeks, restored to its original glory, the superintendents will take me down to the cellars of the Doge's Palace for a ritual dis-embowelment. Am I making myself clear to you, Mario? If you don't finish that Bellini, my reputation will be ruined."
    "I'm close, Francesco. I just need to sort out some personal affairs."
    "What sort of affairs?"
    "A death in the family."
    "Really?"
    "Don't ask any more questions, Francesco."
    "You do whatever you need, Mario. But let me tell you this. If I think the Bellini is in danger of not being finished on schedule, I'll have no choice but to remove you from the project and give it to Antonio."
    "Antonio's not qualified to restore that altarpiece, and you know it."
    "What else can I do? Restore it myself? You leave me no choice."
    Tiepolo's anger quickly evaporated, as it usually did, and he poured more ripasso into his empty glass. Gabriel looked up at the behind Tiepolo's desk. Amid photos of churches and scuolas
    restored by Tiepolo's firm was a curious image: Tiepolo himself, strolling through the Vatican Gardens, with none other than Pope Paul VII at his side.
    "You had a private audience with the Pope?"
    "Not an audience really. It was more informal than that."
    "Would you care to explain?"
    Tiepolo looked down and shuffled his stack of paperwork. It did not take a trained interrogator to conclude that he was reluctant to answer Gabriel's question. Finally, he said, "It's not something I discuss frequently, but the Holy Father and I are rather good friends."
    "Really?"
    "The Holy Father and I worked very closely together here in Venice when he was the patriarch. He's actually something of an art historian. Oh, we used to have the most terrible battles. Now we get on famously. I go down to Rome to have supper with him at least once a month. He insists on doing the cooking himself. His specialty is tuna and spaghettini, but he puts so much red pepper in it that we spend the rest of the night sweating. He's a warrior, that man! A culinary sadist."
    Gabriel smiled and