Father Donati waved his Vatican ID badge at the Swiss Guard standing watch at St. Anne's Gate. Before the guard could question the identity of the man in the passenger seat, the priest pushed his foot to the floor and sped along the Via Belvedere toward the Apostolic Palace.

Father Donati left the car in the San Damaso Courtyard, hustled Gabriel around the security checkpoints, and headed upstairs toward the papal apartments. Gabriel's feet felt light on the marble floor, his pulse quickened. He thought of Shamron, standing in the half-light of the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, summoning him to find the men who had murdered Benjamin Stern. Now his search had brought him here, to the epicenter of the Roman Catholic Church.

At the entrance to the papal apartments, they slipped past a Swiss Guard and went inside. Father Donati led him into the study, where the Pope was seated at his desk, working through a stack of morning correspondence. He looked up at Gabriel as he entered the room and smiled warmly.

"Mr. Allon, so good of you to come." With the tip of his pen, he pointed toward the seating area next to the fireplace. "Please make yourself comfortable. Father Donati and I have a few things to attend to before we leave."

Gabriel did as the Pope instructed. He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and removed the photographs of the assassin known as the Leopard. Gabriel started from the beginning and worked his way forward. In each picture, the assassin looked remarkably different. Some of the changes had been achieved through plastic surgery, others through more prosaic means, such as hats, wigs, and eyewear.

Gabriel returned the photographs to his pocket and looked across the study toward the little man in white, hunched over a stack of papers at his desk. He felt his spirits sink. If the Leopard had come to Rome to kill the Pope, it would be almost impossible to stop him. And based on the photographs in his pocket, Gabriel was quite certain he would never see him coming.

Lange sanitized the flat while Katrine showered and dressed. With a wet cloth, he meticulously wiped down every surface that he had touched in the room. Doorknobs, the dresser top, bathroom fixtures, the electric ring, the coffee pot. Then he placed his extra clothing in a plastic rubbish bag, along with his toiletries. Satisfied that he had erased every trace of himself from the flat, he sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to touch anything.

Katrine came out of the bathroom. She wore blue jeans, lace-up leather boots, and a bomber-style jacket. Her hair was pulled back tightly against her scalp, her eyes covered by a pair of sunglasses. She looked very beautiful. The average carabiniere would find her terribly distracting. Lange was counting on that.

He stood up, slipped the Stechkin into his trousers, and buttoned his jacket. Then he pulled on a cheap black nylon raincoat, the kind worn by half the clerics in Rome, and picked up the bag of rubbish.

They walked downstairs. Lange held the rubbish bag in one hand, and with the other he drew the collar of his raincoat tight to conceal the clerical suit underneath.

 Outside, he mounted the motorcycle and started the engine. Katrine climbed on the back and wrapped her arms around his waist. He eased forward, turned the bike east toward the ancient center of Rome, and opened the throttle. Along the way he dropped the keys to the flat down a sewer. The bag of rubbish he handed to a garbage collector, who tossed it into the back of his truck and wished Lange a pleasant morning.

VATICAN CITY

THE POPE WAS SCHEDULED to begin his remarks at eleven a.m. At ten-thirty, he left the papal study, accompanied by Father Donati and Gabriel. In the hall outside the papal apartments, they encountered a detail of plainclothes Swiss Guard. The chief of the detail was a towering Helvetian named Karl Brunner. This was the moment Gabriel was dreading most, his first confrontation with the Swiss Catholic noblemen sworn to lay down their lives if necessary to protect the Pope.

When Brunner spotted Gabriel, his hand slipped inside the jacket of his blue suit and came out with a pistol. He rushed forward, pushing the Pope aside with a sweeping forearm, and seized Gabriel by the throat. Gabriel fought every survival instinct and allowed himself to be brought down by the Swiss Guard. Not that there was much he could do about it. Karl Brunner outweighed him by at least fifty pounds and was built like a rugby player. The hand around

 Gabriel's throat was like a steel vise. He landed on his back, with Brunner falling on his chest. He kept his hands in plain sight and allowed the security man to tear the Beretta from his shoulder holster. Brunner tossed the gun away and pointed his own weapon at Gabriel's face while two other members of the detail pinned Gabriel firmly to the floor.

The rest of the detail had formed a protective cocoon around the Pope and was hustling him down the corridor. He ordered them to release him, then hurried to Karl Brunner's side. Brunner pushed the Pope away and shouted at him to get back.

"Let him up, Karl," the Pope said.

Brunner got to his feet while his two men kept Gabriel pinned to the floor. He reached into his pocket and produced a copy of the security alert with Gabriel's photograph and held it up for the Pope to see.

"He's an assassin, Holiness. He's come here to kill you."

"He's a friend, and he's come here to protect me. It's all a misunderstanding. Father Donati will explain everything. Trust me, Karl. Let him up."

THE MOTORCADE sped through St. Anne's Gate, then turned into the Via della Conciliazione for the run to the river. The Pope closed his eyes. Gabriel looked at Father Donati, who leaned over and whispered into Gabriel's ear that His Holiness always passed the time in motorcades by praying.

A motorcycle outrider moved into position a few feet from the Pope's window. Gabriel looked carefully at his face, at the hinge of his jaw and the shape of the cheekbones showing beneath the visor. Mentally, he compared the features to those of the man in the photographs, as if he were authenticating a painting, comparing the brushstrokes of a master to those in a newly discovered work. The faces were similar enough to make Gabriel reach into his jacket and put his hand on the butt of his Beretta. Father Donati noticed this. The Pope, who was still praying with his eyes tightly closed, was oblivious.

As the motorcade turned onto the Lungotevere, the outrider dropped back a few meters. Gabriel felt his tension subside. The street had been cleared of traffic, and there were only a few knots of onlookers here and there along the river. Evidently, the sight of a papal motorcade in this part of Rome did not arouse much interest.

The journey passed quickly: three minutes by Gabriel's calculation. The dome of the synagogue appeared before them, and soon they were rushing past the mob of protesters. The motorcade stopped in the front courtyard. Gabriel stepped out of the car first, blocking the half-open door with his body. The chief rabbi stood on the steps of the synagogue, flanked by a delegation from Rome's Jewish community. Around the limousine stood the security men: Italian and Vatican, some plainclothes, some in uniform. To the right of the steps, the Vatican press corps strained against a yellow rope. The air was filled with the rumble of the motorcycles.

Gabriel scanned the faces of the security men, then the reporters and photographers. A dozen might have been the assassin in disguise. He poked his head into the back of the car and looked at Father Donati. "This is the part that worries me most. Let's be quick about it." When he stood upright, he found himself staring into the bluff face of Karl Brunner.