The Fallen Angel

lace-up dress shoes.
    “Where did you get my measurements?” asked Gabriel.
    “Your wife.” Metzler opened the top drawer of his desk and removed a 9mm pistol. “You’re also going to need one of these.”
    “I have one of those.”
    “But if you’re going to pass for Swiss Guard, you have to carry a standard-issue Swiss Guard sidearm.”
    “A SIG Sauer P226.”
    “Very impressive.”
    “I’ve been around the block a time or two.”
    “So I’ve heard.” Metzler smiled. “You’ll just need to pass a range proficiency exam before I can issue the weapon.”
    “You’re joking.”
    “I’m Swiss, which means I never joke.” Metzler rose. “I assume you remember the way.”
    “Take a right at the suit of armor and follow the corridor to the courtyard. The door to the firing range is on the other side.”
    “Let’s go.”
    The walk took less than two minutes. When they entered the range, four Swiss boys in their early twenties were blasting away, and the air was thick with smoke. Metzler ordered them to leave before giving Gabriel the SIG Sauer, an empty magazine, and a box of ammunition. Gabriel quickly inserted fifteen rounds into the magazine and rammed it into the butt of the gun. Metzler put on ear and eye protection.
    “You?” he asked.
    Gabriel shook his head.
    “Why not?”
    “Because if someone is trying to kill the Holy Father, I won’t have time to protect my eyes and ears.”
    Metzler hung a target on the line and ran it twenty yards down the range.
    “Farther,” said Gabriel.
    “How far?”
    “All the way.”
    Metzler did as he was told. Gabriel raised the gun in a classic triangular firing position and poured all fifteen rounds through the eyes, nose, and forehead of the target.
    “Not bad,” said Metzler. “Let’s see if you can do it again.”
    Metzler ran another target to the end of the range while Gabriel quickly reloaded the weapon. He emptied it in a matter of seconds. This time, instead of fifteen holes grouped around the face, there was just a single large hole in the center of the forehead.
    “Good Lord,” said Metzler.
    “Good gun,” said Gabriel.
    At midday, Gabriel would slip the bonds of the Vatican in the back of Donati’s official sedan and make his way to the Israeli Embassy to review the daily intelligence from King Saul Boulevard. Time permitting, he would return to the conservation lab for a few more hours of work. Then, at seven, he would join Donati and the pope for supper in the private papal dining room. Gabriel knew better than to raise the issue of security again, so he used the extraordinary opportunity to help prepare the pope for what would be one of the most important foreign trips of his papacy. The Secretariat of State, the rough equivalent of the Vatican foreign ministry, had written a series of predictably safe statements for the pope to issue at the various stops he planned to make in both Israel and the territories under Palestinian authority. But with each passing day, it became apparent that the pope intended to radically reshape the historically tense relationship between the Holy See and the Jewish State. The trip would be more than just a pilgrimage; it would be the culmination of the process the pope had set in motion almost a decade earlier with his act of contrition at the Great Synagogue of Rome.
    On the final night, Gabriel listened as the Holy Father wrestled with the remarks he intended to deliver at Yad Vashem, Israel’s museum and memorial to the Holocaust. Afterward, a restless Donati insisted on walking Gabriel back to his apartment. A detour brought them to one of the doorways leading to the Sistine Chapel. Donati hesitated before turning the latch.
    “It’s probably better if you go in without me this time.”
    “Who’s in there, Luigi?”
    “The one person in the world who can give Carlo the punishment he deserves.”
     
     
    Veronica Marchese was standing behind the altar, her arms folded defensively, her eyes on The Last Judgment . They remained there as Gabriel went quietly to her side.
    “Do you think it will look like this?” she asked.
    “The end?”
    She nodded.
    “I hope not. Otherwise, I’m in serious trouble.”
    She looked at him for the first time. He could see she had been crying. “How did it happen, Mr. Allon? How did a man like you become one of the world’s finest restorers of Christian art?”
    “It’s a long story.”
    “I think I need one,” she said.
    “I was asked to do