The Fallen Angel

stipend was a fraction of what he earned for a private restoration. It was, however, a small price to pay for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to clean a painting like The Deposition .
    “Any chance you might actually finish it sometime soon?” Calvesi asked. “I’d like to have it back in the gallery for Holy Week.”
    “When does it fall this year?”
    “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” Calvesi picked absently through the contents of Gabriel’s trolley.
    “Something on your mind, Antonio?”
    “One of our most important patrons is dropping by the museum tomorrow. An American. Very deep pockets. The kind of pockets that keep this place functioning.”
    “And?”
    “He’s asked to see the Caravaggio. In fact, he was wondering whether someone might be willing to give him a brief lecture on the restoration.”
    “Have you been sniffing the acetone again, Antonio?”
    “Won’t you at least let him see it?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    Gabriel gazed at the painting for a moment in silence. “Because it wouldn’t be fair to him,” he said finally.
    “The patron?”
    “Caravaggio. Restoration is supposed to be our little secret, Antonio. Our job is to come and go without being seen. And it should be done in private.”
    “What if I get Caravaggio’s permission?”
    “Just don’t ask him while he has a sword in his hand.” Gabriel lowered the magnifying visor and resumed his work.
    “You know, Gabriel, you’re just like him. Stubborn, conceited, and far too talented for your own good.”
    “Is there anything else I can do for you, Antonio?” asked Gabriel, tapping his brush impatiently against his palette.
    “Not me,” Calvesi replied, “but you’re wanted in the chapel.”
    “Which chapel?”
    “The only one that matters.”
    Gabriel wiped his brush and placed it carefully on the trolley. Calvesi smiled.
    “You share one other trait with your friend Caravaggio.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Paranoia.”
    “Caravaggio had good reason to be paranoid. And so do I.”

3
     
    THE SISTINE CHAPEL
     
    T HE 5,896 SQUARE FEET OF the Sistine Chapel are perhaps the most visited piece of real estate in Rome. Each day, several thousand tourists pour through its rather ordinary doors to crane their necks in wonder at the glorious frescoes that adorn its walls and ceiling, watched over by blue-uniformed gendarmes who seem to have no other job than to constantly plead for silenzio . To stand alone in the chapel, however, is to experience it as its namesake Pope Sixtus IV had intended. With the lights dimmed and the crowds absent, it is almost possible to hear the quarrels of conclaves past or to see Michelangelo atop his scaffolding putting the finishing touches on The Creation of Adam .
    On the western wall of the chapel is Michelangelo’s other Sistine masterwork, The Last Judgment . Begun thirty years after the ceiling was completed, it depicts the Apocalypse and the Second Coming of Christ, with all the souls of humanity rising or falling to meet their eternal reward or punishment in a swirl of color and anguish. The fresco is the first thing the cardinals see when they enter the chapel to choose a new pope, and on that morning it seemed the primary preoccupation of a single priest. Tall, lean, and strikingly handsome, he was cloaked in a black cassock with a magenta-colored sash and piping, handmade by an ecclesiastical tailor near the Pantheon. His dark eyes radiated a fierce and uncompromising intelligence, while the set of his jaw indicated he was a dangerous man to cross, which had the added benefit of being the truth. Monsignor Luigi Donati, private secretary to His Holiness Pope Paul VII, had few friends behind the walls of the Vatican, only occasional allies and sworn rivals. They often referred to him as a clerical Rasputin, the true power behind the papal throne, or “the Black Pope,” an unflattering reference to his Jesuit past. Donati didn’t mind. Though he was a devoted student of Ignatius and Augustine, he tended to rely more on the guidance of a secular Italian philosopher named Machiavelli, who counseled that it is far better for a prince to be feared than loved.
    Among Donati’s many transgressions, at least in the eyes of some members of the Vatican’s gossipy papal court, were his unusually close ties to the notorious spy and assassin Gabriel Allon. Theirs was a partnership that defied history and faith—Donati, the soldier of Christ, and Gabriel, the man of