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G abriel prevailed upon Chiara to acquire accommodations for him at the luxurious Hotel Hassler, though he declined to provide an estimate as to the length of his stay or divulge the reason he was in need of Roman lodging in the first place.

Upstairs in his suite, he shaved and showered and changed into clean clothing.

He briefly considered locking the photographs and infrared images in his room safe but slipped them into his attaché case instead.

His dinner companion, a woman named Veronica Marchese, had a rather good eye for Italian Renaissance paintings—and a finely tuned ear for salacious art world gossip.

Gabriel had not seen her since the night their mutual friend stepped onto the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica as the new supreme pontiff.

He therefore feared a chilly reception. Priests were compelled by Catholic doctrine to forgive those who wronged them, but Veronica always struck Gabriel as the sort to hold a grudge.

They had met for the first time in the garden café of Italy’s National Etruscan Museum.

Veronica, one of the world’s foremost authorities on Etruscan civilization and antiquities, was then a senior curator and an occasional consultant to the Art Squad.

She was now the museum’s director and its largest private benefactor, having inherited a substantial fortune from her late husband, Carlo, a member of Rome’s Black Nobility.

Unbeknownst to Veronica, he was also the leader of an antiquities smuggling network with connections in violent corners of the Middle East. Gabriel, in his first collaboration with General Ferrari, had smashed the network to pieces.

Then, late one evening in St. Peter’s Basilica, he had done the same to Carlo Marchese.

But Veronica had kept a secret from her husband as well—that many years earlier, while working on an archaeological dig near the Umbrian village of Monte Cucco, she had fallen desperately in love with a wayward Jesuit priest who had lost his faith while serving as a missionary in the Morazán province of El Salvador.

Their affair had ended abruptly when the priest returned to the Church.

Twenty-five years later, after one of the shortest conclaves in modern history, he was elected pope.

Veronica had wept at the sight of the man she loved standing on the Loggia of the Blessings with his arms spread wide. They were not tears of joy.

The luxurious palazzo left to Veronica Marchese by her late husband was a pleasant five-minute walk from the Hassler.

Gabriel rang the bell at the stroke of eight o’clock, and a sultry voice over the intercom informed him that the door was unlocked.

It opened onto a long gallery hung with Italian School paintings.

Veronica, in a stunning emerald-green pantsuit, waited at the opposite end.

The second of her two baci sulla guancia lingered on his right cheek a moment longer than was customary in Roman social settings.

“I’ve missed you terribly, Gabriel Allon. Where on earth have you been?”

“In Venice.”

“A scant two hours by train. And yet never once have you come to see me. ”

“I wasn’t at all sure I would be welcome.”

Veronica drew away and regarded him playfully through a pair of fashionable cat-eyed glasses. “Whyever not?”

“Because I made a mess of your life.”

“Not for the first time,” she pointed out.

“And yet here I am.”

She smiled but said nothing.

“How did you know that I was in Rome?”

“Father Keegan mentioned it.”

“Do the two of you speak often?”

“Now and again,” she replied. “He told me that you dropped by the Vatican today to see the Holy Father and suggested I invite you to dinner.”

“Any particular reason?”

“He was merely concerned with your well-being.”

“He loathes me.”

“He resents the closeness of your relationship with his master, but he admires you greatly. And why shouldn’t he? If it wasn’t for you, he would be teaching history at a Jesuit high school somewhere in America.”

“What would be wrong with that?”

“For a cleric like Father Keegan, it would be intolerable. He wears his ambition on the sleeve of his black cassock, just like the rest of the Roman Curia. His one saving grace is that he is fiercely protective of the Holy Father.”

“We have that in common, he and I.”

“In that case, His Holiness has nothing to fear.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

Veronica arched an eyebrow. “What is it this time?”

“Another scandal, I’m afraid. ”

“Is there a woman involved?”

“How did you guess?”

“Not me, I hope.”

“No, Veronica. Not you.”

She led Gabriel into an elegantly furnished sitting room and lifted a bottle of vintage Krug champagne from a crystal bucket. “It’s the last bottle from Carlo’s collection. I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.” She filled two flutes, then raised hers in salutation. “To what shall we drink?”

“Old friends,” suggested Gabriel.

“Lately I’ve become allergic to the word old .

It springs to mind each time I look in the mirror.

You, however, haven’t aged a bit since I saw you last.” Veronica sat down and crossed one leg over the other.

“It was the day of the conclave, if I remember correctly. We watched the opening procession on television with the other Jesuits at their residence on the Borgo Santo Spirito. Then you and Luigi headed off to the Sistine Chapel, and he was gone forever.”

“Can you ever forgive me?”

“The Church took Luigi away from me many years ago, Gabriel. You merely placed him permanently beyond my reach.”

“You never see him?”

“The Vicar of Christ?”

“Luigi,” said Gabriel.

“I’ve been known to attend the Wednesday General Audience.

And on Sunday mornings I sometimes wander over to St. Peter’s Square to hear His Holiness pray the Angelus.

I believe he saw me standing beneath his window once, but I’ve had no contact with him other than the occasional phone call from his private secretary.

We engage in an elaborate pantomime. He asks how I’m getting on, and I assure him that I’ve never been better.

Today he told me that a dear friend had popped into Rome unexpectedly.

It was the best news I’ve had in a very long time. ”

“You should find someone else, Veronica.”

“I tried that once before. And look how that turned out.” She drank some of her late husband’s wine.

“Besides, I’m too old to lose my heart to another man.

I am, however, considering taking a lover.

Someone young and beautiful and wildly inappropriate.

The whole of Rome will be talking about nothing else. ”

“Have you anyone in mind?”

She waved a hand dismissively. “Enough about me, Gabriel. Tell me about the woman at the center of this brewing Vatican scandal.”

“There’s not much to tell, really.”

“Does she have a name?”

“I would assume so. But there’s no record of it.”

“She’s from Rome, this girl?”

“Milan, I’d say.”

“What does she look like?”

“Pale hair, large eyes, quite pretty.”

“Sounds like trouble. And how old is this fair-haired girl from Milan?”

Gabriel smiled. “Five centuries, at least.”

***

“It could be the work of one of his pupils or followers.”

“The Leonardeschi ?”

“Exactly.”

“Possible,” conceded Gabriel. “But the fact that it is now missing would suggest that someone thought it was a real Leonardo.”

“Why wasn’t it reported stolen? ”

“No one knew it had vanished.”

“An inside job?”

“Most museum thefts are.”

They were seated on opposite sides of the table in Veronica’s formal dining room, partaking of a first course of vitello tonnato . The photos and infrared images lay between them, along with Veronica’s copy of Giorgio Montefiore’s Leonardo monograph.

“Have I ever told you about my recurring nightmare?” she asked.

“Which one?”

“The one where I arrive at the Villa Giulia early one morning to find that the entire collection of the Museo Nazionale Etrusco has been stolen and all my security guards have fled the scene of the crime.”

“Talk about a scandal,” remarked Gabriel.

Veronica took up her knife and fork. “Let us say for argument’s sake that the missing painting is an actual Leonardo.”

“Let’s,” agreed Gabriel, and helped himself to more of the veal.

“What do you suppose the thieves intend to do with it?”

“That depends on the identity of the thieves.”

“Your point?”

“It’s possible the painting might end up in the hands of a wealthy collector who wants to possess the unpossessable. But the more likely scenario is that the thieves will attempt to cash in on their score by bringing the painting to market.”

“Can it be done?”

“Quite easily.”

“How?”

“The first thing they would need to do is remove the Madonna and Child and alter the appearance of the panel itself. If I were doing the work, I would adhere a second panel to the back of the original panel. Then I would restore the Leonardo and invent a convincing story to explain its reappearance.”

“Like the cover story of a spy?”

“The concept is rather the same.”

“And where do you suppose our girl will resurface?”

“Somewhere we least expect it.”

“The Salvator Mundi was discovered at a gallery in New Orleans.”

“A likely place for a Leonardo,” said Gabriel.

“And twelve years later it sold for four hundred and fifty million dollars at Christie’s.”

“Four hundred million plus fees and commissions. But who’s counting?”

“How much is your Leonardo worth?”

“The art historian Kenneth Clark described Head of a Young Woman as one of the most beautiful sketches in the world. If Leonardo in fact made an oil painting of the woman, it would be worth considerably more than the Salvator Mundi .”

“A half billion?”

“Easily.”

“But there’s just one problem,” said Veronica. “ Your Leonardo was stolen from the Vatican Museums.”

“Do you know how many versions of the Salvator Mundi there are? At least thirty. And there are scores of versions of the Mona Lisa . It would be quite easy to explain away two different versions of the same portrait. Besides, you know what they say about possession being nine-tenths of the law. That’s doubly true in the art world. ”

“Won’t serious collectors be reluctant to acquire it if they suspect it’s somehow tainted?”

“Surely you jest.”

A maid in a starched uniform appeared with the pasta course.

“ Amatriciana ,” explained Veronica. “I hope you like it hot.”

“The hotter, the better.”

Veronica filled his bowl. “It seems to me that we have no choice but to go public.”

“If we do, the Leonardo will vanish forever.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“We allow the thieves to think they’ve gotten away with the greatest art heist since the theft of the Mona Lisa .”

Veronica took a first bite of the pasta. “He was an Italian, you know.”

“Who?”

“The man who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.”

“It was an inside job.”

“They always are,” said Veronica. “But an inside job at the Vatican, well, that could be quite messy indeed.”