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year.”
    â€œActually, it’s miserable. But that’s beside the point. I’m too busy to leave Rome.”
    â€œSo I’ve heard. I’ve also heard that your friend the monsignor asked you to have a look at the suicide in the Basilica while the body was still in situ.”
    â€œVery impressive, Shimon. How did you know I was there?”
    â€œBecause Lorenzo Vitale told one of his old friends in the Guardia di Finanza. And that friend told one of his friends in the Italian security service. And the friend from the Italian security service told me. He also told me that if you step out of line, he’ll put you on the first plane out of town.”
    â€œTell him I’m living up to the letter and spirit of our agreement.”
    â€œIs that why Donati’s assistant invited you to coffee this afternoon?”
    â€œI see you’re monitoring my mobile phone again.”
    â€œWhat makes you think I ever stopped?” Pazner walked in silence for a moment. “I don’t suppose that woman actually threw herself from the dome of the Basilica, did she?”
    â€œNo, Shimon, she didn’t.”
    â€œAny idea why she was killed?”
    â€œI have a theory, but I can’t pursue it without help.”
    â€œWhat kind of help?”
    â€œForensic help,” replied Gabriel. “I need Unit 8200 to have a look under her fingernails.”
    Unit 8200 was Israel’s signals intelligence service, the equivalent of the National Security Agency in the United States. Though formally under the command of the military chief of staff, it carried out tasks for all the Israeli intelligence and security agencies, including the Office. Its alumni included some of the most successful entrepreneurs in Israel’s thriving high-tech industry.
    â€œLet me see if I understand this correctly,” Pazner said. “The State of Israel is currently facing existential threats too numerous to count, and you would like the Unit to expend valuable time and effort data-mining a dead Italian woman?”
    Gabriel said nothing. Pazner exhaled heavily.
    â€œHow far back do you need them to go?”
    â€œSix months. E-mails, browsing histories, data searches.”
    Pazner ignited another cigarette and blew smoke at the moon. “If I had an ounce of common sense, I’d drop this down a very deep hole, and you with it. But now you owe me one, Gabriel. And I never forget a debt.”
    â€œHow can I ever possibly repay you, Shimon?”
    â€œYou can start by telling your wife to stop dropping my watchers when she’s running her errands. I put them there for her own good.”
    â€œI’ll see what I can do. Anything else?”
    â€œIf you happen to spot a team of Hezbollah operatives walking around Rome, give me a call. But do me a favor, and leave your gun in your pocket. I have enough problems.”

8
    PIAZZA DI SPAGNA, ROME
    T HEY APPROACHED THE CASE THE way they did most things in life, with the alert, operational calm of a covert team working in a hostile land. Their target was the killer of Claudia Andreatti. And now, with the arrival of her files from the Vatican, they had the means to begin their search. Still, they braced themselves for the prospect of disappointment. The files were a bit like intelligence. And Gabriel and Chiara knew that intelligence was often incomplete, contradictory, misleading, or a combination of all three.
    They worked under the assumption that others were watching their every move, and conducted themselves accordingly. Gabriel in particular had no choice but to maintain his busy daily routine. He was a man of many faces and many different missions. To the youthful Swiss Guards who greeted him each morning at St. Anne’s Gate, he was a fellow soldier, a secret sentinel, and a sometime ally. To his colleagues in the restoration lab, he was the gifted but melancholic loner who spent his days behind his black curtain, alone with