Gabriel Allon: Prince of Fire, the Messenger, the Secret Servant

  “Can you keep them away from the Vatican?”

  “We’re going to try.” The captain pointed out the window. “You see those barricades down there? Our plan is to herd them up the hill into the Janiculum Park. But we’re expecting two million protesters. If things get out of control…” He gave an Italianate shrug. “I’m glad I don’t do riot duty anymore. It could turn into a war zone down there.”

  The helicopter turned and banked toward the city-state. The dome of the Basilica, partially concealed behind the enormous tarpaulins of the work crews, shone in the bright sunlight, while the Pope’s plea for peace fluttered from the façade in the gentle morning breeze. They swept low over the Viale Vaticano, staying over Italian airspace for as long as possible, then slipped over the wall and set down on the papal helipad. Donati, dressed in a black cassock and magenta sash, was waiting there, a plainclothes Swiss Guard at this side. The tall priest’s expression was grim as they shook hands briefly and set out across the Vatican Gardens toward the Apostolic Palace.

  “How serious is it this time, Gabriel?”

  “Very.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  “The messenger,” said Gabriel. “The messenger.”

  GABRIEL WAITED until they were upstairs in Donati’s third-floor office before telling him any more. Donati understood he was being given only part of the story. He was too concerned about the safety of his master to protest.

  “I want you by his side until the president leaves the Vatican.”

  This time Gabriel did not argue.

  “You look like you’ve been through the wringer,” Donati said. “When’s the last time you slept?”

  “I honestly can’t remember.”

  “I’m afraid there’s no time for sleep now,” Donati said, “but we have to do something about your appearance. I don’t suppose you brought a suit with you?”

  “I wish I could explain to you just how ridiculous that question sounds.”

  “You’re going to need some proper clothes. The papal protection detail of the Swiss Guard wear suits and ties. I’m sure the commandant can get you reasonably attired.”

  “There’s something I need more than a blue suit, Luigi.”

  “What’s that?”

  Gabriel told him.

  “The Swiss Guard can get you one of those, too.”

  Donati picked up the phone and dialed.

  THE SAME Swiss Guard who had been at Donati’s side on the helipad was waiting for Gabriel in the San Damaso Courtyard ten minutes later. He was equal to Gabriel in height, with square shoulders that filled out his suit jacket and the dense muscular neck of a rugby player. His blond hair was cropped nearly to the scalp of his bullet-shaped head, so that the wire leading into his earpiece was clearly visible.

  “Have we met?” Gabriel asked the Guard in German as they set out down the Via Belvedere.

  “No, sir.”

  “You look familiar to me.”

  “I was one of the Guards who helped you get the Holy Father into the Apostolic Palace after the attack.”

  “I thought so,” said Gabriel. “What’s your name?”

  “Lance Corporal Erich Müller, sir.”

  “Which canton are you from, Lance Corporal?”

  “Nidwalden, sir. It’s a demi-canton next to—”

  “I know where it is,” Gabriel said.

  “You know Switzerland, sir.”

  “Very well.”

  Just before reaching St. Anne’s Gate, they turned right and entered the Swiss Guard barracks. In the reception area a duty officer sat primly behind a half-moon desk. Before him was a bank of closed-circuit television monitors. On the wall behind him hung a crucifix and a row of flags representing each of Switzerland’s twenty-six cantons. As Gabriel and Müller walked past, the duty officer made a notation in his logbook. “The Swiss Quarter is tightly controlled,” Müller said. “There are three different entry points, but this is the main one.”

  They left the reception area and turned right. A long dark corridor stretched before them, lined with tiny cell-like quarters for the halberdiers. At the end of the corridor was an archway, and beyond the archway an interior stone courtyard, where a drill sergeant was putting six novices through their paces with wooden rifles. They entered the building on the other side of the courtyard and descended a flight of stone steps to the indoor firing range. It was silent and unoccupied.

  “This is where we do our weapons training. The walls are supposed to be soundproof, but sometimes the neighbors complain about the noise.”

  “The neighbors?”

  “The Holy Father doesn’t seem to mind, but the cardinal secretary of state is not enamored with the sound of gunfire. We don’t shoot on Sundays or Catholic holy days.” Müller went over to a metal cabinet and opened the padlock. “Our standard-issue sidearm is a 9mm SIG-Sauer with a fifteen-shot magazine.” He glanced over his shoulder at Gabriel as he opened the doors of the cabinet. “It’s a Swiss-made weapon. Very accurate…and very powerful. Would you like to try it out?”

  Gabriel nodded. Müller removed a gun, an empty magazine, and a full box of ammunition and carried them over to the range. He started to load the gun, but Gabriel stopped him. “I’ll do that. Why don’t you see to the target.” The Swiss Guard clipped a target to the line and ran it out halfway over the range. “Farther,” Gabriel said. “All the way to the end, please.” Müller did as he was told. By the time the target had reached the distant wall of the range, Gabriel had loaded fifteen rounds into the magazine and inserted it into the butt of the pistol. “You’re quick,” Müller remarked. “You must have good hands.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  He offered Gabriel protection for his ears and eyes.

  “No thanks.”

  “Rules of the range, sir.”

  Gabriel turned without warning and opened fire. He kept firing until the gun was empty. Müller reeled in the target while Gabriel ejected the empty magazine and picked up his brass.

  “Jesus Christ.”

  All fifteen shots were grouped in the center of the target’s face.

  “Do you want to shoot again?” Müller asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “How about a shoulder holster?”

  “That’s what pants are for.”

  “Let me get you an extra magazine.”

  “Give me two, please. And an extra box of ammo.”

  HE COLLECTED a parcel of clothing from the commandant’s office, then hurried back to the Apostolic Palace. Upstairs on the third floor, Donati showed him to a small guest apartment with a private bathroom and shower. “I stole that razor from the Holy Father,” Donati said. “The towels are in the cabinet under the sink.”

  The president wasn’t due for another ninety minutes. Gabriel took his time shaving, then spent several minutes standing beneath the showerhead. The clothing that had been scrounged up by the Swiss Guard fit him surprisingly well, and by eleven o’clock he was walking down the frescoed corridor toward the Pope’s private apartment, looking as well as could be expected.

  He had made one additional request of Donati before going to the Swiss Guard barracks: a copy of the final report, prepared jointly by the Italian and Vatican security services, on the October attack. He read it over a cappuccino and cornetto in the Pope’s private dining room, then spent a few minutes flipping round the dial on the Pope’s television, looking for any word of eleven dead bodies found in a Swiss chalet. There was no mention on any of the international news channels. He supposed Carter’s team had completed its task.

  Donati came for him at 11:45. They walked to the Belvedere Palace and found an empty office with a good view of the Gardens. A moment later the trees began to twist and writhe, then two enormous twin-rotor helicopters came into view and descended toward the helipad in the far corner of the city-state. Gabriel felt a bit of tension drain from his body as he saw the first helicopter slip safely below the treetops. Five minutes later
they caught their first glimpse of the American president, striding confidently toward the palace, surrounded by several dozen heavily armed, nervous-looking Secret Service agents.

  “The agents will have to wait down in the Garden,” Donati said. “The Americans don’t like it, but those are the rules of protocol. Do you know they actually try to slip Secret Service agents into the official delegation?”

  “You don’t say.”

  Donati looked at Gabriel. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

  “Yes,” Gabriel said. “We should get back to the Apostolic Palace. I’d like to be there before the president arrives.”

  Donati turned and led the way.

  THEY REACHED the Sala Clementina, a soaring frescoed receiving room one floor below the Pope’s private apartments, five minutes before the president. The Holy Father had not yet arrived. There was a detachment of ceremonial Swiss Guard standing outside the wide entranceway and several more in plainclothes waiting inside. Two ornate chairs stood at one end of the long rectangular room; at the other was a pack of reporters, photographers, and cameramen. Their collective mood was more disagreeable than usual. The equipment searches and security checks conducted by the Swiss Guard and Secret Service had been far more invasive than usual, and three European camera crews were refused entry because of minor discrepancies concerning their credentials. The press would be allowed to record the first moments of the historic meeting and broadcast the images live to the world, then they would be shepherded out.

  Donati went back into the corridor to wait for the Holy Father. Gabriel looked around a moment longer, then went to the front of the room and positioned himself a few feet from the chair reserved for the Pope. For the next two minutes his eyes roamed over the pack of journalists, looking for any signs of agitation or a face that seemed in any way out of place. Then he did the same to the delegation of Curial prelates standing to his left.

  Shortly before noon the white-cassocked figure of the Holy Father entered the room, accompanied by Donati, his cardinal secretary of state, and four plainclothes Swiss Guards. Erich Müller, the Guard who had given Gabriel his weapon, was among them. His eyes settled briefly on Gabriel, whom he acknowledged with a quick nod. The Pope walked the length of the room and stopped in front of his ornate chair. Donati, tall and striking in his tailored black cassock and magenta sash, stood at his master’s side. He looked briefly at Gabriel, then lifted his gaze toward the entranceway as the president of the United States strode through.

  Gabriel quickly scrutinized the president’s official delegation. Four Secret Service agents were among them, he reckoned, maybe two or three more. Then his gaze began to sweep the room like a searchlight: the reporters, the Curial prelates, the Swiss Guards, the president and the Holy Father. They were shaking hands now, smiling warmly at each other in the blinding white light of the flashing cameras.

  The swiftness of it caught even Gabriel by surprise. Indeed were it not for Donati, he thought later, he might never have seen it coming. Donati’s eyes widened suddenly, then he made a sudden lateral movement toward the president. Gabriel turned and saw the gun. The weapon was a SIG-Sauer 9mm—and the hand holding it belonged to Lance Corporal Erich Müller.

  Gabriel drew his own gun and started firing, but not before Müller managed to squeeze off two shots. He did not hear the screaming or notice the flashing of the camera lights. He just kept firing until the Swiss Guard lay dead on the marble floor. The Secret Service agents concealed within the American delegation seized the president and hustled him toward the door. Pietro Lucchesi, Bishop of Rome, Pontifex Maximus, and successor to St. Peter, fell to his knees and began to pray over the fallen body of a tall priest in a black cassock.

  38.

  Rome

  THERE ARE ROOMS ON the eleventh floor of the Gemelli Clinic that few people know. Spare and spartan, they are the rooms of a priest. In one there is a hospital bed. In another there are couches and chairs. The third contains a private chapel. In the hallway outside the entrance is a desk for the guards. Someone stands watch always, even when the rooms are empty.

  Though the hospital bed is reserved for the leader of the world’s one billion Roman Catholics, on that evening it was occupied by the leader’s trusted private secretary. The street below his window was filled with thousands of faithful. At nine o’clock they had fallen silent to listen to the first bollettino from the Vatican Press Office. Monsignor Luigi Donati, it said, had undergone seven hours of surgery to repair the damage inflicted by two 9mm rounds. The monsignor’s condition was described as “extremely grave,” and the bollettino made clear that his survival was very much in doubt. It concluded by saying that the Holy Father was at his side and planned to remain there for the foreseeable future. It did not mention the fact that Gabriel was there, too.

  They were seated together on a couch in the sitting room. On the other side of an open connecting door lay Donati, pale and unconscious. A team of doctors and nurses stood round him, their expressions grim. The Holy Father’s eyes were closed and he was working the beads of a rosary. A broad smear of blood stained the front of his white cassock. He had refused to change out of it. Gabriel, looking at him now, thought of Shamron and his torn leather jacket. He hoped the Holy Father didn’t blame himself for what had happened today.

  Gabriel looked at the television. Video of the attack, one of the most dramatic moments ever broadcast live, was flickering on the screen. It had been playing nonstop. Gabriel had watched it at least a dozen times, and he watched again now. He saw Müller lunge from the knot of Swiss Guards, the gun in his outstretched hands. He saw himself, drawing his own gun from the inside of his jacket, and Donati, throwing his long body in front of the president of the United States as Müller opened fire. A fraction of a second, he thought. If he’d seen Müller a fraction of a second earlier, he might have been able to fire first. And Donati wouldn’t be lying near death on the eleventh floor of the Gemelli Clinic. Gabriel looked at the Pope. His eyes were no longer closed but were fixed on the screen of the television.

  “How did he know to step in front of the president instead of me?”

  “I suppose he understood that Müller could have killed you countless times if he’d wanted to. Müller was going for the president first, and Luigi understood that.”

  “In the blink of an eye.”

  “He’s one of the smartest men I’ve ever met, Holiness.” Gabriel looked at Donati. “He saved the president of the United States, and he probably isn’t even aware of it.”

  “Luigi just stopped the bullets,” the Pope said, “but you’re the one who saved him. If it wasn’t for you, we would have never been on alert for something like this. How did you know, Gabriel? How did you know they were going to hit us again today?”

  “We’ll have to talk about this at a later date. A much later date.”

  “You’re in the middle of an operation, aren’t you?”

  Gabriel was silent.

  “Erich Müller, a member of my palace guard…” The Pope’s voice trailed off. “I still can’t believe it. How did they do it, Gabriel? How did they get an assassin into the Swiss Guard?”

  “The details are sketchy, Holiness, but it appears Müller was recruited sometime after he left the Swiss army. He didn’t have a job waiting for him, so he spent about a year and half traveling around Europe and the Mediterranean. He spent several months in Hamburg, and several more in Amsterdam. He was known to be a frequent participant in anti-American, anti-Israel demonstrations. He may have actually converted to Islam. We believe he was recruited into the terrorist network by a man named Professor Ali Massoudi.”

  “Massoudi? Really? Good God, Gabriel, but I think Professor Massoudi submitted some of his writings to my special commission on improving ties between Islam and the West. I think he may have actually visited the Vatican at some point.”

  “Improving ties between Islam and the Church was not part of Professor Massoudi’s real agenda, Holiness.”


  “Obviously,” said the Pope. “I suppose we now know who opened the Door of Death for the suicide bombers in October. It was Müller, wasn’t it?”

  Gabriel nodded and looked at the television as the video of the attack began again.

  “I wonder how many people have seen this image today,” the Pope said.

  “Billions, Holiness.”

  “Something tells me your days as a secret agent are over. Welcome back to the real world, Gabriel.”

  “It’s not a world in which I’m comfortable.”

  “What are your plans?”

  “I have to return to Israel.”

  “And then?”

  “My future is somewhat uncertain.”

  “As usual,” the Pope said. “Francesco Tiepolo tells me you and Chiara have reunited.”

  “Yes, Holiness. She’s in Israel now.”

  “What are your plans?”

  “I have to marry her before she leaves me again.”

  “Wise man. And then?”

  “One step at a time, Holiness.”

  “Will you allow me to give you one more piece of advice?”

  “Of course.”

  “As of this moment, you are the most famous man in Italy. A national hero. Something tells me the country would welcome you back with open arms. And this time not as Mario Delvecchio.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “If I were you, I’d make it a bridge back to Venice.”

  The Pope gazed silently for a moment through the open door. “I don’t know what I’ll do if God takes him from me. I can’t run the Roman Catholic Church without Luigi Donati.”

  “I remember the day he came to Jerusalem to see me,” Gabriel said. “When we were walking through the Old City, I foolishly described him as a faithless man at the side of a man of great faith. But it took a great deal of faith to step in front of those bullets.”

  “Luigi Donati is a man of extraordinary faith. He just doesn’t realize it sometimes. Now I have to have faith. I have to believe that God will see fit to let me have him a little longer—and that He will now see fit to end this madness.”