The Messenger

soup in the pantry he would find a loaded Beretta and a spare clip of ammunition.
    He hiked up the rest of the steps to the Church of the Trinità dei Monti. The apartment house was not fifty yards from the church, on the Via Gregoriana. It had two bedrooms and a small terrace. Gabriel retrieved the Beretta from the pantry, then went into the larger of the two bedrooms. The telephone, like all safe-flat telephones, had no ringer, only a red light to indicate incoming calls. Gabriel, lying in bed in the clothes he’d donned to meet the prime minister, picked up the receiver and dialed a number in Venice. A woman’s voice answered. “What is it?” she asked in Italian. Then, receiving no answer, she muttered a curse and slammed down the phone—hard enough so that Gabriel jerked the receiver away from his ear before replacing it gently in the cradle.
    He removed his clothing and pillowed his head, but as he was sliding toward sleep the room was suddenly illuminated by a flash of lightning. Instinctively he began to count to calculate the proximity of the strike. He saw a skinny black-haired boy with eyes as green as emeralds chasing lightning in the hills above Nazareth. The thunderclap exploded before he reached the count of four. It shook the building.
    More strikes followed in quick succession, and rain hammered against the bedroom window. Gabriel tried to sleep but could not. He switched on the bedside lamp, opened the file containing the photographs taken from Ali Massoudi’s computer, and worked his way through them slowly, committing each image to memory. An hour later he switched off the light and, in his mind, flipped through the images once more. Lightning flashed over the bell towers of the church. Gabriel closed his eyes and counted.

5.

Vatican City

    B Y SUNRISE THE RAIN was gone. Gabriel left the safe flat early and headed back to the Vatican through the empty streets. As he crossed the river, dusty pink light lay on the umbrella pine atop the Janiculum Hill, but St. Peter’s Square was in shadow and lamps still burned in the Colonnade. A café was open not far from the entrance of the Vatican Press Office. Gabriel drank two cups of cappuccino at a sidewalk table and read the morning newspapers. None of the major Rome dailies seemed to know that the Pope’s private secretary had made a brief visit to Jerusalem yesterday—or that last night the Vatican and Italian security chiefs had gathered in the papal dining room to discuss a terrorist threat against the Holy Father’s life.
    By eight o’clock, preparations were under way in St. Peter’s Square for the general audience. Vatican work crews were erecting folding chairs and temporary metal dividers in the esplanade in front of the Basilica, and security personnel were placing magnetometers along the Colonnade. Gabriel left the café and stood along the steel barricade separating the territory of the Holy See from Italian soil. He acted in a deliberately tense and agitated manner, made several glances at his wristwatch, and paid particular attention to the operation of the magnetometers. In short, he engaged in all the behaviors that the Carabinieri and Vigilanza, the Vatican police force, should have been looking for. It took ten minutes for a uniformed carabiniere to approach him and ask for identification. Gabriel, in perfect Italian, informed the officer that he was attached to the Vatican Security Office.
    “My apologies,” the carabiniere said, and moved off.
    “Wait,” Gabriel said.
    The carabiniere stopped and turned around.
    “Aren’t you going to ask to see my identification?”
    The carabiniere held out his hand. He gave the ID badge a bored glance, then handed it back.
    “Don’t trust anyone,” Gabriel said. “Ask for identification, and if it doesn’t look right, call your superior.”
    Gabriel turned and walked over to St. Anne’s Gate, where a flock of nuns in gray habits was being admitted simply by saying “Annona,” the name of the Vatican supermarket. He tried the same tactic and, like the nuns, was waved onto Vatican territory. Just inside the gate he withdrew his Vatican ID badge and chastised the Swiss Guard in the Berlin-accented German he had acquired from his mother. Then he went back into the street. A moment later there came an elderly priest with very white hair who informed the Swiss Guard he was going to the Vatican pharmacy. The Guard detained the priest at the gate until he could produce ID from