The Fallen Angel

She greeted Gabriel and Chiara warmly and then led them along a wide corridor hung with Italian Renaissance paintings in ornate frames. Between the canvases, balanced atop fluted shoulder-height pedestals, were Roman busts and statuary. The paintings were museum quality. So were the antiquities.
    “The Marchese family has been collecting for many generations,” she explained, a note of disapproval in her voice. “I don’t mind the paintings, but the antiquities have been a source of some embarrassment for me, since I am on record as saying the collectors are the real looters. It’s quite simple. If the rich would stop buying antiquities, the tombaroli would stop digging them up.”
    “Your husband has excellent taste,” Chiara said.
    “He has an expert adviser,” Veronica replied playfully. “But we’re not responsible for any of these acquisitions. Carlo’s ancestors purchased them long before there were any laws restricting the trade in ancient artifacts. Even so, I’m trying to convince him to give away at least a portion of the collection so the public can finally see it. I’m afraid I still have a bit of work to do.”
    At the end of the hall was a wide double doorway that gave onto a grand drawing room with tapestried walls. The furnishings were stately and elegant, as were the guests scattered among them. Gabriel had been expecting a quiet dinner for six, but the room was filled with no fewer than twenty people, including the Italian minister of finance, the host of an influential television talk show, and one of the country’s most popular sopranos. Donati had cloistered himself at one end of a brocaded sofa. He was dressed in a double-breasted clerical suit and was imparting some well-rehearsed Curial gossip to a pair of bejeweled women who seemed to be hanging breathlessly on his every utterance.
    At the opposite end of the room, surrounded by a group of prosperous-looking businessmen, stood Carlo Marchese. He had the square shoulders of a man who had been a star athlete at school, and was groomed as if for a photo shoot. His small wireless spectacles lent a priestly gravity to his even features, and he was gesturing thoughtfully with a hand that had wielded no tool other than a Montblanc pen or a silver fork. His resemblance to Donati was unmistakable. It was as if Veronica, having lost Donati to the Church, had acquired another version of him absent a Roman collar and a conscience.
    As Gabriel and Chiara entered the room, several heads turned in unison and the conversation fell silent for a few seconds before resuming in a subdued murmur. Gabriel accepted two glasses of Prosecco from a white-jacketed waiter and handed one to Chiara. Then, turning, he found himself staring into Carlo’s face.
    “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mr. Allon.” One hand closed around Gabriel’s while the other grasped his arm just above the elbow. “I was in St. Peter’s Square when the terrorists attacked the Vatican. None of us who are close to the Holy Father will ever forget what you did that day.” He released Gabriel’s hand and introduced himself to Chiara. “Would you be kind enough to allow me to borrow your husband for a moment? I have a small problem I’d like to discuss with him.”
    “I suppose that depends on the nature of the problem.”
    “I can assure you it’s entirely artistic in nature.”
    Without waiting for a reply, Carlo Marchese led Gabriel up a sweeping central staircase, to the second level of the palazzo. Before them stretched an endless gallery of ancestral treasures: paintings and tapestries, sculptures and timepieces, antiquities of every sort. Carlo played the role of tour guide, slowing every few paces in order to point out a noteworthy piece or two. He spoke with the erudition of a man who knew much about art but also with a trace of discomfort, as though his possessions were a great burden to him. Even Gabriel found the presence of so much art in one space overwhelming; it was like wandering through storerooms filled with the plunder of a distant war. He paused before a Canaletto. The painting, a luminous depiction of the Piazza di San Marco, was vaguely familiar. Then Gabriel realized where he had seen it before. A few years earlier, the work had been stolen. Its successful recovery, announced with much fanfare by General Ferrari, was regarded as one of the great triumphs of the Art Squad.
    “Now I know why the general refused to release the name of the