The Confessor

and forth along the length of the room, trailing cigarette smoke like a steam engine. He moved slowly at first, but as Gabriel's story wore on, his pace increased. When he finished, Lavon stopped walking and shook his head.
    "My goodness, but you've been a busy boy."
    "What does it all mean, Eli?"
    "Let's go back to the telephone call you received at the hotel in Brenzone. Who do you think it was?"
    "If I had to guess, it was the handyman at the convent, an old fellow named Licio. He came into the room while Sister Vincenza and I were speaking, and I think he was following me through the town after I left."
    "I wonder why he left an anonymous message instead of speaking to you."
    "Maybe he was frightened."
    "That would be the logical explanation." Lavon shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at the high ceiling. "You're sure about the name he told you? You're sure it was Martin Luther?"
    "That's right. 'Find Sister Regina and Martin Luther. Then You'll know the truth about what happened at the convent.'"
    Lavon unconsciously smoothed his unruly hair. It was a habit when he was thinking. "There are two possibilities that spring to mind. I suppose we can rule out a certain German monk who turned the Roman Catholic Church on its ear. That would narrow the field to one. I'll be right back."
    He disappeared into an adjoining room. For the next several minutes, Gabriel was treated to the familiar sound of his old friend rifling through file cabinets and cursing in several different languages. Finally, he returned with a thick accordion file bound by a heavy metal clasp. He laid the file on the coffee table in front of Gabriel and turned it so he could read the label.
    MARTIN LUTHER: GERMAN FOREIGN OFFICE, 1938-1943.
    LAVON OPENED the file and removed a photograph, holding it up for Gabriel to see. "The other possibility," he said, "is this Martin Luther. He was a high-school dropout and furniture mover who joined the Nazi Party in the twenties. By chance, he met the wife of Joachim von Ribbentrop during the redecoration of her villa in Berlin. Luther ingratiated himself with Frau von Ribbentrop, then her husband. When Ribbentrop became foreign minister in 1938, Luther got a job at the ministry."
    Gabriel took the photograph from Lavon and looked at it. A rodent of a man stared back at him: a slack face; thick glasses that magnified a pair of rheumy eyes. He handed the photo back to Lavon.
    "Luther rose rapidly through the ranks of the Foreign Office, largely because of his slavish devotion to Ribbentrop. By 1940, he was chief of the Abteilung Deutschland, the Division That made Luther responsible for all Foreign Office business connected to Nazi Party affairs. Included in Luther's Abteilung Deutschland was a department called D-Three, the Jewish desk."
    "So what you're saying is that Martin Luther was in charge of Jewish matters inside the German Foreign Office."
    "Precisely," Lavon said. "What Luther lacked in education and intelligence, he made up for in ruthlessness and ambition. He was interested in only one thing: increasing his own personal power. When it became clear to him that the annihilation of the Jews was a top priority of the regime, he set out to make certain that the Foreign Office wasn't going to be left out of the action. His reward was an invitation to the most despicable luncheon in history."
    Lavon paused for a moment to leaf through the contents of the file. After a moment he found what he was looking for, removed it with a flourish, and laid it on the coffee table in front of Gabriel.
    "This is the protocol from the Wannsee Conference, prepared and drafted by its organizer, none other than Adolf Eichmann. Only thirty copies were made. All were destroyed but one--copy number sixteen. It was discovered after the war during the preparation for the Nuremberg Trials and resides in the archives of the German Foreign Ministry in Bonn. This, of course, is a photocopy."
    Lavon picked up the document. "The meeting was held in a villa overlooking the Wannsee in Berlin on January 20, 1942. It lasted ninety minutes. There were fifteen participants. Eichmann served a$ host and made sure his guests were well fed. Heydrich served as master of ceremonies. Contrary to popular myth, the Wannsee Conference was not the place where the idea of the Final Solution was hatched. Hitler and Himmler had already decided that the Jews of Europe were to be exterminated. The Wannsee Conference was
    more like a bureaucratic