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W hen Gabriel’s briefing reached its end, Donati rose and went slowly to one of the windows.

It should have been the window in the study of the appartamento pontificio , the same window where each Sunday at noon he prayed the Angelus to the multitude gathered below in St. Peter’s Square.

But this was not the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, it was a humble little room in the Casa Santa Marta, and Gabriel thought his old friend had never looked so alone.

He addressed his first words to the dome of the Basilica. “Do you know what will happen after your friend General Ferrari reveals the identity of that woman?”

“In point of fact, the announcement will be made by a certain Colonel Baggio in Venice.”

“How long do we have?”

“Colonel Baggio is at this moment making contact with his counterparts at the Metropolitan Police in London. It will take some time for the formalities to play out.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Seventy-two hours. Perhaps a bit more.”

“Or a bit less?”

“Could be,” admitted Gabriel.

“Does this Colonel Baggio know where the deceased was working?”

“He does now.”

“Will he tell the British authorities?”

“Actually he intends to let the British tell him .”

Donati shot Gabriel a glance of papal reproach. “That doesn’t sound terribly ethical to me.”

“With good reason. But it will buy the Vatican some much-needed time.”

“To get our story straight?”

“To gather the facts.”

“The first thing I’d like to know,” said Donati, “is why no one at the conservation lab informed the police that she was missing.”

“I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation.”

“Well, there’s certainly one way to find out.” Donati went to his desk and lifted the receiver of the telephone.

“May I ask what you’re doing?” inquired Gabriel.

“Gathering facts.”

“Put the phone down, Holiness.”

Frowning, Donati returned the receiver to its cradle. “You are a member of a very small club, Gabriel Allon.”

“The only non-Catholic to have witnessed the election of a pope?”

“Or to have addressed one in so insolent a manner,” added Donati.

“It was for his own good.”

“Was it really?”

“It is essential that you play no role in this matter whatsoever, Luigi. Otherwise you will expose yourself to criticism if there are credible allegations of wrongdoing by someone associated with the Vatican.”

“Plausible deniability? ”

“ Ignorantia affectata .”

“Aquinas? You’re beginning to sound like a member of the Roman Curia, mio amico .

But all the willful ignorance in the world won’t protect me if there is yet another Vatican scandal.

Especially a scandal involving a dead young woman.

” Donati lowered himself dejectedly onto the couch.

“By the time the press is finished, I’ll be accused of personally ordering her murder. I must know the facts.”

“Allow me to gather them for you.”

“What could she have found?”

“At the Vatican? You can’t be serious, Luigi.”

“Point taken,” he replied. “In fact, I have fond memories of the morning we made a rather startling discovery in the Secret Archives. You were wearing an ill-fitting clerical suit, as I recall. I’m afraid the name on your Vatican ID badge escapes me.”

“I believe it was Father Benedetti. And I never breathed a word to anyone about what we found that day.”

“Or what really happened to my predecessor.” Donati was silent for a moment. “If you must know, it’s the real reason why I live here rather than the Apostolic Palace. As far as I’m concerned, the appartamento will always be Lucchesi’s home.”

“You needn’t punish yourself for what happened, Luigi. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it? If I had been there that night...” Donati changed the subject. “In case you were wondering, the last thing I need before my first trip to America as pope is a messy scandal.”

“There won’t be one if I can help it.”

“Where do you intend to start?”

“I was thinking about paying a visit to my old friends in the conservation lab.”

“Father Keegan will escort you.”

“That won’t be necessary, Holiness. I believe I remember the way.”

“A very small club, indeed,” said Donati, and showed Gabriel to the door.

***

He slipped past the Swiss Guard standing outside the Casa Santa Marta and made his way around the back of the Basilica to a small courtyard at the foot of a rather ordinary-looking structure with walls the color of dun.

The door, as was frequently the case, was unlocked and unattended.

Inside, he scaled a flight of narrow stairs to the Sala Regia, the glorious antechamber of the Sistine Chapel.

During his last visit to the Sistina, it had been occupied by 116 cardinal-electors, and white smoke was pouring from the chimney, much to the delight of the enormous crowd waiting anxiously in St.Peter’s Square.

Now the chapel was filled with tourists, necks craned, eyes on Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes.

Gabriel briefly joined a group of Latin American pilgrims gathered beneath The Creation of Adam , then set off along a treasure-laden loggia overlooking the Belvedere Courtyard.

When he finally reached the Picture Gallery, he spent a few minutes communing with the paintings in Room XII, three of which he had restored, before making his way downstairs to the conservation lab.

This time the door he encountered was locked tight.

The numerical passcode he entered into the keypad was no longer valid, so he laid a thumb on the intercom button.

He recognized the voice that answered. It belonged to Donatella Ricci, an Early Renaissance expert who whispered soothingly to the paintings in her care.

“Who goes there?” she demanded to know.

“It’s me, Donatella. ”

“Me who?”

“Gabriel.”

“The only Gabriel I know never bothers to knock on a door, even if the door happens to be locked.” A buzzer sounded and the dead bolt opened with a thud. “Welcome home.”

He went inside the laboratory, and the door locked automatically behind him. He found Donatella perched atop a tall stool, palette in one hand, brush in the other. Secured to her studio easel was Bellini’s Lament over the Dead Christ . Gabriel felt an unwelcome tug of professional envy.

“How dare you touch my Bellini,” he murmured.

“It’s not yours, Gabriel. It belongs to me now.” Donatella swiveled round on her stool and regarded him through a pair of magnifying visors. “Is that really you?”

“Who else would it be?”

“A rather delicious-looking Italian gentleman of a certain age who resides in an enormous palazzo in Venice with one of the world’s most beautiful women.”

“Only that last part is true.”

“The lovely Chiara hasn’t thrown you out yet?”

“I’m hanging by a thread.” Gabriel plucked the brush from Donatella’s hand. “May I?”

“Absolutely not.”

He loaded the brush and then retouched a small abrasion on the left cheek of the Magdalene.

“Not bad, Gabriel.” Donatella reclaimed her brush. “What brings you to the Vatican?”

“I’m looking for someone.”

“Who is it this time? A terrorist or a Russian assassin?”

“One of your apprentices, actually. A young Englishwoman named Penelope Radcliff. ”

“Penny,” said Donatella. “She hates to be called Penelope.”

Gabriel took note of Donatella’s use of the present tense. “Is she around?”

“She completed her apprenticeship about a month ago. Last I heard, she was looking for work.”

“Where?”

“Why all the questions, Gabriel?”

“I might be interested in hiring her,” he lied, though not without considerable regret. He had always been fond of Donatella Ricci.

“You could do worse,” she answered.

“The director of the Courtauld tells me she’s a superstar.”

“She’s very talented. But she has a lot to learn.”

“Was there a problem?”

“Define the word problem .”

“A question raised for inquiry, consideration, or solution. A source of perplexity, distress, or vexation.”

“You should probably talk to Antonio,” said Donatella, and loaded her brush.

***

Antonio Calvesi, the Vatican’s chief conservator, was relaxing in his office, having just returned to the lab from Da Fortunato, where he lunched at least three times a week, nearly always at the expense of others.

“What are you doing here?” he asked when Gabriel strode unannounced through the door.

“I’m well, Antonio. How are you?”

“That depends on why you’re back at the Vatican.”

Gabriel thought it was best to continue with the fiction he had spun for Donatella—that the Tiepolo Restoration Company of Venice was looking to expand its stable of staff conservators. Penelope Radcliff, he said, had come highly recommended.

“How did you hear about her?”

“Geoffrey Holland was raving about her the last time I was in London.”

“She needs another year or two of training. But, yes, she’s quite gifted.”

“No problems?”

“A bit of intrigue,” said Calvesi. “But no problems.”

“What kind of intrigue?”

Calvesi nibbled thoughtfully on the stem of his eyeglasses before answering. “I took her under my wing when she arrived, and she made an extraordinary amount of progress.”

Gabriel decided to add a touch of false flattery to his fiction. “I’m not surprised, Antonio. I learned a great deal from you.”

“If memory serves, you rejected every suggestion I ever gave you. As for Signorina Radcliff, she was a far more receptive student. So much so that I agreed to let her carry out a restoration of her own.”

“On what?”

“A painting, Gabriel. What else?”

“Not a painting from the main collection?”

“Goodness, no. We found something down in the storerooms for her to work on. A Madonna and Child with John the Baptist.”

“Italian?”

“Florentine School.”

“Support?”

“Walnut panel.”

“Unusual for Florence,” Gabriel pointed out.

“Quite.”

“And the attribution?”

Calvesi gave a noncommittal shrug. “Manner of Raphael.”

It was one of the weakest of all possible attributions, implying that the work had been made in the style of a prominent artist sometime after the artist had passed from the scene. In the case of Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, that would have been in 1520.

“When was it painted?”

“Probably sometime in the eighteenth century.”

Two centuries after Raphael’s death. “Probably?” asked Gabriel.

“The provenance is rather thin. In fact, we’re not quite certain how the painting even ended up in the papal collection. If it were put up for auction in London, it would be lucky to fetch a thousand pounds.”

“Which made it the perfect picture for a novice conservator to take out for a test drive.”

“With me sitting in the passenger seat,” added Calvesi.

“How did it go?”

“After successfully calibrating the strength of her solvent, she began to remove the dirty varnish. That was when she discovered the pentimento.”

Pentimento was the reappearance of imagery or discarded material that the artist had painted over—a different version of a hand, for example.

“Was the pentimento from the Madonna and Child?”

“We thought so until we examined it with infrared.”

“And?”

“It was an entirely different painting. And a rather good one at that.”

“How good?”

“My young apprentice was convinced that she had made one of the greatest artistic discoveries in history. ”

And then Gabriel understood.

LDV14521519 . . .

Penny Radcliff, twenty-seven years old, graduate of Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute of Art, was convinced she had found a lost Leonardo.