The Fallen Angel

do we do about Carlo?”
    “I know what I’d like to do.”
    “How much hard evidence do you have?”
    “Enough to tie a cordata around his scrawny neck.”
    “How do you want to handle it?”
    “I’m going to tell him to resign his post at the Vatican Bank immediately. But first, I’m going to offer him a chance to confess his sins.”
    The general smiled. “I’ve always found that confession can be good for the soul.”
     
     
    After lunch, Gabriel hiked across the river, to the faded old palazzo in Trastevere that had been turned into a faded old apartment building. He still had the key. Entering the foyer, he once again checked the postbox. This time, it was empty.
    He headed upstairs and let himself into the flat. It was exactly as he had left it nearly four months ago, with one exception: the electricity had been cut off. And so he sat alone at her desk, watching as the creeping afternoon shadows slowly reclaimed her possessions. Finally, a few minutes after six, he heard the scrape of a key entering the lock. Then the door swung open, and Dr. Claudia Andreatti came floating toward him through the darkness.
     
     
    Her sister’s death had spared the world a cataclysm, which meant that Paola Andreatti deserved to know nothing less than the complete truth about what had happened. Not the Office’s version of the truth, thought Gabriel, and surely not the Vatican’s. It had to be truth without evasion and without regard to the sensitivities of powerful individuals or institutions. A truth she could take to the grave of her sister and, one day, to her own.
    And so Gabriel told her the entire story of his remarkable journey from the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica to the hole in the heart of the Holy Mountain, where he had found the twenty-two pillars of Solomon’s First Temple and the bomb that could have caused a conflict of biblical proportions. She remained silent throughout, her hands folded neatly on her lap. The eyes that watched him from the evening shadows were identical to the ones that had gazed up at him from the floor of the Basilica. The voice, when finally she spoke, was the same voice that had spoken to him briefly in the stairwell of the Vatican Museum the night of her death.
    “What are you going to do about Carlo?”
    Gabriel’s answer seemed to cause her physical pain.
    “Is that all?” she asked.
    “If the Italian prosecutors bring charges against him—”
    “I know how the justice system works in Italy, Mr. Allon,” she said, cutting him off. “The case will drag on for years, and the chances are good he’ll never see the inside of a jail.”
    “What do you want, Dr. Andreatti?”
    “Justice for my sister.”
    “It’s not something I can give you.”
    “Then why did you bring me to Rome?”
    “For the truth,” he said. “I wanted you to hear the truth. And not just from me. From him as well.”
    “When?” she asked.
    “Tomorrow night.”
    She was silent for a moment. “If there was a God,” she said finally, “he would die the same death as my sister.”
    Yes, thought Gabriel. If there was a God.

50
     
    VATICAN CITY
     
    D ONATI RANG C ARLO M ARCHESE LATE the following afternoon and said the Vicar of Christ wanted a word.
    “When?” asked Carlo.
    “Tonight.”
    “I have something.”
    “Cancel it.”
    “What time?”
    “Nine o’clock,” said Donati. “The Bronze Doors.”
    The time had not been chosen at random, but Carlo appeared not to notice. Nor did he seem to think it was odd when he found Father Mark waiting to greet him. Carlo was the kind of man who didn’t have to stop at the Permissions Desk on his way into the building. Carlo could find his own way from the Bronze Doors to the papal apartments.
    “This way,” said Father Mark, taking Carlo’s elbow with a grip that indicated he had been lifting more than just a communion chalice. He led him up the Scala Regia and into the Sistine Chapel. There they passed beneath Michelangelo’s Last Judgment , with its swirling vision of the Apocalypse and the Second Coming of Christ, before heading down the gray-green tube to the Basilica. As they crossed to the other side of the soaring nave, Carlo began to show his first signs of agitation. It increased sharply when Father Mark informed him they would be taking the stairs to the dome rather than the elevator. The stairs were General Ferrari’s idea. He wanted Carlo to suffer, even in a small way, on his way to absolution.
    The climb took