“Father Donati was horrified,” the Pope said. “He believed that the Holy Spirit had chosen me for a reason, and that reason was to confess the secret of the Garda covenant and cleanse the Church. But Father Donati is a very clever man and a skilled operative. He knew the secret had to be revealed in such a way that it would not destroy my papacy in its infancy.”
“It had to be revealed by someone other than you.”
The Pope nodded. Indeed.
Father Donati went looking for Sister Regina Carcassi. In retrospect, it was probably Father Donati’s relentless search of Church records that alerted the hounds of Crux Vera. He found her living alone in a village in the north. He asked about her memories of that night in 1942, and she gave him a copy of a letter—a letter she had written the night before her wedding. Father Donati then asked whether she would be willing to speak publicly. Enough time had passed, Regina Carcassi said. She would do whatever Father Donati asked.
As powerful as Sister Regina’s letter was, Father Donati knew he needed more. There had been rumors inside the Curia for years that the KGB had been in possession of a document that had the power to inflict serious damage on the Church. According to the rumor mill, the document was almost leaked during the showdown with the Polish pope, but calmer heads inside the KGB prevailed, and it remained buried in the KGB archives. Father Donati traveled secretly to Moscow and met with the chief of the KGB’s successor, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. After three days of negotiation, he took possession of the document. Captured by advancing Russian forces in the final days of the war, it was a memorandum written by Martin Luther to Adolf Eichmann about a meeting at a convent on Lake Garda.
“When I read it, I knew the battle that lay ahead would be a difficult one,” the Pope said. “You see, the document contained two ominous words.”
“Crux Vera,” said Gabriel, and the Pope nodded in agreement. Crux Vera.
Father Donati began searching for the right man to bring these documents to the attention of the world. A man of passion. A man whose past work made him above reproach. Father Donati settled on an Israeli Holocaust historian attached to Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich: Professor Benjamin Stern. Father Donati traveled to Munich and met with him secretly at his flat on the Adalbertstrasse. He showed Professor Stern the documents and promised full cooperation. Senior Vatican officials, who for obvious reasons could not be named, would attest to their authenticity. At the time of publication, the Vatican would refrain from public attacks on the book. Professor Stern accepted the offer and took possession of the documents. He secured a contract for the work from his publisher in New York and a leave of absence from his department at Ludwig-Maximilian. Then he began his work. At Father Donati’s suggestion, he did so under the utmost secrecy.
Three months later, the trouble began. Father Cesare Felici disappeared. Two days after that, Father Manzini vanished. Father Donati tried to warn Regina Carcassi, but it was too late. She too disappeared. He traveled to Munich to meet with Benjamin Stern and warn him that his life was in grave danger. Professor Stern promised to take precautions. Father Donati feared for the professor’s life and for his own stratagem. Skilled operative that he was, he began to prepare a backup plan.
“And then they killed Benjamin,” Gabriel said.
“It was a terrible blow. Needless to say, I felt responsible for his death.”
Father Donati was outraged by the murder, the Pope resumed. He vowed to use the secret of the Garda covenant to destroy Crux Vera—or, better still, to force Crux Vera to destroy itself. He hastily scheduled the appearance at the synagogue. He whispered secrets into the ears of known Crux Vera members—secrets he knew would eventually reach Carlo Casagrande and Cardinal Brindisi. He enlisted Benedetto Foà of La Repubblica to ask questions about the Pope’s childhood at the press office, which was run by Rudolf Gertz, a member of the society.
“Father Donati was waving a red flag in front of the bull,” Gabriel said. “And you were the red flag.”
“That’s right,” the Pope replied. “He was hoping he could goad Crux Vera into an act so repulsive that he could use it as justification to destroy them once and for all, and purge the group’s influence from the Curia.”
“A tale as old as time,” Gabriel said. “A Vatican intrigue, with your life hanging in the balance. And it worked out better than Father Donati could have hoped. Carlo Casagrande sent his assassin against Cardinal Brindisi and then killed himself. Then Father Donati rewarded Benedetto Foà by giving him the dirt on Crux Vera. The group is discredited and disgraced.”
“And the Curia is free of its poisonous influence, at least for the moment.” The Pope took hold of Gabriel’s hand and looked directly into his eyes. “And now I have a question for you. Will you grant me forgiveness for the murder of your friend?”
“It’s not mine to give, Holiness.”
The Pope lifted his gaze toward the river. “Some nights, when the wind is right, I swear I can still hear it. The rumble of the German trucks. The pleading for the Pope to do something. Sometimes now, when I look at my hands, I see blood. The blood of Benjamin. We used him to do our dirty work. It is because of us that he is dead.” He turned and looked at Gabriel. “I need your forgiveness. I need to sleep.”
Gabriel looked into his eyes for a moment, then nodded slowly. The Pope raised his right hand, fingers extended, but stopped himself. He placed his palms on Gabriel’s shoulders and pulled him to his breast.
FATHER DONATI saw him out. At the Bronze Doors, he handed Gabriel an envelope. “Somehow, the Leopard managed to get into the papal study before he killed Cardinal Brindisi. He left this on the Pope’s desk. I thought you might like to see it.”
Then he shook Gabriel’s hand and disappeared into the palace once more. Gabriel crossed the deserted expanse of St. Peter’s Square as the bells of the Basilica tolled nine o’clock. An Office car was waiting near St. Anne’s Gate. There was still time to catch the night train for Venice.
He opened the envelope. The short, handwritten note was a photocopy. The nine-millimeter bullet was not.
This could have been yours, Holiness.
Gabriel crushed the note into a tight ball. A moment later, crossing the Tiber, he tossed it into the black water. The bullet he slipped into his jacket pocket.
39
GRINDELWALD, SWITZERLAND: FIVE MONTHS LATER
THE SNOWS HAD COME EARLY. Overnight, a November gale had swept over the spires of the Eiger and the Jungfrau and left a half-meter of downy powder on the slopes below Kleine Scheidegg. Eric Lange pushed himself clear of the chairlift, the last of the day, and floated gracefully down the slope through the lengthening shadows of late afternoon.
At the bottom of the slope, he turned off the trail and entered a stand of pine. The sun had slipped behind the massif, and the grove was deep in shadow. Lange navigated by memory, picking his way effortlessly between the trees.
His chalet appeared, perched at the edge of the wood, staring out over the valley toward Grindelwald. He skied to the back entrance, removed his gloves, and punched the security code into the keypad located next to the door.
He heard a sound. Footfalls on new snow. He turned and saw a man walking toward him. Dark blue anorak, short hair, gray at the temples. Sunglasses. Lange ripped open his ski jacket and reached inside for his Stechkin. It was too late. The man in the blue anorak already had a Beretta aimed at Lange’s chest, and he was walking faster now.
The Israeli . . . Lange was sure of it. He knew the way they were trained to kill. Advance on the target while shooting. Keep shooting until the target is dead.
Lange seized the grip of the Stechkin and was trying to bring it into play when the Israeli fired—a single shot, which struck Lange perfectly in the heart. He toppled backward into the snow. The Stechkin slipped from his fingers.
The Israeli stood over him. Lange braced himself for the pain of more bullets, but the Israeli just pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead and
stood there, watching Lange curiously. His eyes were a brilliant shade of green. They were the last thing Lange ever saw.
HE HIKED down the valley through the gathering dusk. The car was waiting for him, parked at the edge of a rocky stream. The engine turned over as he approached. Chiara leaned across the passenger seat and pushed open the door. Gabriel climbed in and closed his eyes. For you, Beni, he thought. For you.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The Confessor is a work of fiction. The cardinals and clergy, spies and assassins, secret policemen and secret Church societies portrayed in this novel are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The Convent of the Sacred Heart in Brenzone does not exist. Martin Luther of the German Foreign Ministry was present at the Wannsee Conference, but the actions attributed to him in The Confessor are wholly fictitious. Pope Pius XII reigned from 1939 until his death in 1958. His public silence in the face of the annihilation of Europe’s Jews, despite repeated Allied requests to speak out, is, in the words of Holocaust scholar Susan Zuccotti, a fact that is “rarely contested, nor can it be.” So is the sanctuary and aid given by Church officials to Adolf Eichmann and other prominent Nazi murderers after the defeat of the Third Reich.
Defenders of Pius XII, including the Vatican itself, have portrayed him as a friend of the Jews whose tireless, quiet diplomacy saved hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives. His critics have portrayed him as a calculating politician who, at best, displayed a callous and near-criminal indifference to the plight of the Jews, or, at worst, was actually complicit in the Holocaust.
A more complete portrait of Pope Pius XII might be drawn from documents concealed in the Vatican Secret Archives, but more than a half-century after the end of the war, the Holy See still refuses to open its repository of records to historians in search of the truth. Instead, it insists that historians may review only the eleven volumes of archival material, mainly wartime diplomatic traffic, published between 1965 and 1981. These records, known as Actes et Documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, have contributed to many of the unflattering historical accounts of the war—and these are the documents the Vatican is willing to let the world see.
What other damning material might reside in the Secret Archives? In October 1999, in a bid to calm the controversy swirling about its beleaguered Pope, the Vatican created a commission of six independent historians to assess the conduct of Pius XII and the Holy See during the war. After reviewing those documents already made public, the commission concluded: “No serious historian could accept that the published, edited volumes could put us at the end of the story.” It submitted to the Vatican a list of forty-seven questions, along with a request for supporting documentary evidence from the Secret Archives—records such as “diaries, memoranda, appointment books, minutes of meetings, draft documents” and the personal papers of senior wartime Vatican officials. Ten months passed without a response. When it became clear the Vatican had no intention of releasing the documents, the commission disbanded, its work unfinished. The Vatican angrily accused the three Jewish members of “clearly incorrect behavior” and of waging a “slanderous campaign” against the Church, though it leveled no such accusations against the three Catholic members. According to sources quoted by The Guardian newspaper, access to the Secret Archives “was blocked by a cabal led by the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Angelo Sodano.” Cardinal Sodano, it was suggested, opposes opening the Archives because it would set a terribly dangerous precedent and leave the Vatican vulnerable to other historical investigations, such as the relationship between the Holy See and the murderous military regimes of Latin America.
Clearly, there are those within the Church who would like the Vatican to offer a more complete accounting of its wartime actions, coupled with a more energetic admission of guilt for the Church’s persecution of the Jews. Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee appears to be one of them. “We Catholics through the centuries acted in a fashion contrary to God’s law toward our Jewish brothers and sisters,” Archbishop Weakland told Congregation Shalom in Fox Point, Wisconsin, in November 1999. “Such actions harmed the Jewish community through the ages in both physical and psychological ways.”
The archbishop then made the following remarkable statement: “I acknowledge that we Catholics—by preaching a doctrine that the Jewish people were unfaithful, hypocritical and God-killers—reduced the human dignity of our Jewish brothers and sisters and created attitudes that made reprisals against them seem like acts of conformity to God’s will. By doing so, I confess that we Catholics contributed to the attitudes that made the Holocaust possible.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This novel, like the previous two books in the series, The Kill Artist and The English Assassin, could not have been written without the guidance, support, and friendship of David Bull. Unlike the fictitious Gabriel Allon, David is truly one of the world’s finest art restorers. His encyclopedic knowledge of art history, along with his experiences working in the restoration community of Venice, proved invaluable and inspirational and for that I am eternally in his debt. He answered all my questions, no matter how tedious, read my manuscript for accuracy, and never failed to make me laugh.
Fred Francis, the award-winning NBC News correspondent, shared his experiences behind the walls of the Vatican and his memories of the turbulent years when Italy was caught in the grips of Red Brigades terror. Brian Ross, the brilliant ABC News investigative reporter, regaled me with stories about covering the less seemly side of the Vatican, including his infamous encounter with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, which resulted in Brian’s actually being slapped by the Inquisitor. Columnist E. J. Dionne, who covered the Vatican for The New York Times, allowed me to pick his agile and analytical mind, as did Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. My cousins Axel Lorka and Stacey Blatt generously and humorously recounted their days at Adalbertstrasse 68, which allowed me to bring “an apartment in Munich” to life. Italian law enforcement authorities, who cannot be named, helped me to get the details of the country’s security and police agencies as accurate as possible. A special thanks to the Israeli officials in Rome who lent me assistance as well.
One of my dearest friends, journalist and author Louis Toscano, read my manuscript and, as always, made marked improvements. Columnist and MSNBC commentator Bill Press shared his memories of the School of Theology at the University of Fribourg and proofread my manuscript for accuracy on all things Catholic. Rabbi Mindy Portnoy of Temple Sinai in Washington, D.C., was an advisor and friend and managed to change my life for the better along the way.
The evidence of Europe’s new anti-Semitism is all too visible in Rome, where members of the Jewish community pray each evening in a synagogue surrounded by heavily armed carabinieri units. Like the Jews of Venice, they treated me kindly and provided me with experiences I will never forget. My tour guide in Venice, Valentina Ronzan of the Museo Ebraico di Venezia, showed me corners of the ancient ghetto no history book could reveal.
While writing The Confessor, I consulted dozens of books, articles, and websites dealing with the papacy of Pope Pius XII, the Shoah, and the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Among those writers whose work proved especially helpful were John Cornwell, Susan Zuccotti, Garry Wills, David I. Kertzer, James Carroll, Michael Phayer, Gitta Sereny, Guenter Lewy, Michael Novak, Ronald Rychlak, Robert S. Wistrich, Kevin Madigan, Carl Bernstein, Thomas Reese, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Mark Aarons and John Loftus, Peter Hebblethwaite, and Tad Szulc. Without their meticulous scholarship, it would not have been possible for me to construct this work of fiction.
I am fortunate to be represented by the finest agent in the business, Esther Newberg of International Creative Management, and as always her friendship, encouragement, and editorial suggestions were invaluable. Her talented assistant, Andrea Barzvi, was always there when I needed her. Also, a heartfelt thanks to the unbelievable team of professionals at Pe
nguin Putnam: Carole Baron, Dan Harvey, Marilyn Ducksworth, and especially my editor, Neil Nyren, whose brilliant suggestions and steady hand made The Confessor a better book. His contribution was enormous, matched only by my gratitude.
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge my wife, Jamie, who listened patiently while I fleshed out my ideas, skillfully edited my early drafts, and helped me find the essence of the story when it eluded me. She made this one possible, and everything else for that matter.
Daniel Silva, The Confessor
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