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“W e really have to stop meeting like this, Holiness.”

“Forgive me, Gabriel. But it was the only place I could get a reservation on short notice.”

They were back at Lucrezia, the little osteria near the train station. Polizia di Stato officers outside, a Swiss Guard inside, the Vicar of Christ in a plaid sport jacket and an open-necked dress shirt.

“You’re not safe here,” said Gabriel.

Donati nudged a plate of arancini across the tabletop. “Have one of these. You’ll feel better.”

“I’ll feel better when you’re back in your bed at the Casa Santa Marta.”

“I’m safer in this restaurant than I am at the Casa.”

“All the more reason you should move across town to the Apostolic Palace. I hear there’s a lovely apartment available on the third floor.”

“I visit it each Sunday when I pray the Angelus.”

“Have you ever noticed her down there in the square?”

“Who?”

Gabriel made no reply.

“If you are referring to Veronica, I haven’t seen her. But then my crowds have been rather large of late. ”

“The travails of the rock star pope.”

“If you must know, I hate it when they call me that. It demeans the papacy.”

“Enjoy it while it lasts.”

Gabriel served himself one of the crispy arancini balls and ate it with a knife and fork. Donati, frowning, plucked one from the plate and popped it into his mouth.

“Venetians,” he muttered with dismay.

“Veronica made the same remark not long ago when I complained about her driving.”

“You should have seen the way she drove when she was young. She was an absolute madwoman behind the wheel of a car.”

“Nothing has changed.”

“But that’s not true, mio amico . A great deal has changed. A papal private secretary is allowed to maintain a friendship with a woman, but a supreme pontiff is not.”

“She knows that, Luigi.”

“Does she?”

“Yes, of course.”

“All I want is for her to be happy.”

“She is,” replied Gabriel. “Deliriously so.”

“Is she seeing someone?”

“A devastatingly handsome younger man. All of Rome is talking about nothing else.”

“It’s a sin, you know.”

“An affair with a younger man?”

“Lying to the pope.”

“If that’s the case,” said Gabriel, “the Substitute for General Affairs will be reciting Hail Marys for the remainder of his earthly life.”

The proprietor appeared with the pasta course, spinach ravioli with butter and sage for Gabriel and for His Holiness a mountain of cacio e pepe . He impaled the dish with a fork and twirled.

“Father Mark mentioned something about an ancient Roman city on the Bay of Naples that was buried under several meters of volcanic ash in 79 AD. Surely it’s not as bad as all that.”

“I regret to inform you that the Church of Rome will soon be engulfed in the worst financial scandal since Pope Leo the Tenth financed the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica with the sale of indulgences.”

“Cardinal Bertoli and Nico Ambrosi?”

Gabriel nodded.

“Can you prove it?”

“I have the cardinal’s emails and text messages. I also have geolocation data and telephone metadata.”

“Am I to understand that you hacked the personal cellular device of the third most powerful prelate in the Roman Catholic Church?”

“The prelate is a criminal who has been acting in league with other criminals.”

“Perhaps. But the cardinal is also a highly skilled creature of the Curia who was a brilliant Vatican diplomat before I appointed him to the post of sostituto . You can be sure he’ll have a perfectly innocent-sounding explanation for his actions.”

“But we’ll be able to prove he’s lying.”

“How?”

“ Sprezzatura ,” replied Gabriel. “It’s a studied nonchalance that the great painters of the Renaissance like Leonardo and Raphael used to great effect. You’re going to use it too. If you think you can pull it off, that is.”

“Are you asking the supreme pontiff of the Church of Rome to tell a lie?”

“A small one,” said Gabriel.

Donati’s expression darkened. “I’m ashamed to admit it, but I lied to you just a moment ago.”

“About what?”

“I have seen her in the square beneath my window. I see her every time she comes.”

***

In the immediate aftermath of his appointment to the powerful post of sostituto , Cardinal Matteo Bertoli allowed himself to entertain the notion that one day he might be a pope.

His hopes began to fade late in the turbulent papacy of Pietro Lucchesi when his name did not appear on anyone’s list of those deemed papabile .

And they were crushed entirely when the conclave shocked the world by placing the Ring of the Fisherman on the hand of Lucchesi’s liberal private secretary.

His Holiness Luigi Donati was no longer a young man, but he was in remarkably good health despite a lifelong addiction to cigarettes.

Bertoli had been privy to the results of the Holy Father’s most recent physical.

Indeed, he had retained a copy of the doctor’s report for his personal files.

It suggested that, barring some unforeseen health emergency, Pope Donati would sit atop the throne of St.Peter for many years to come.

There had been a round of Curial bloodletting in the days following the conclave, but His Holiness had left the Secretariat of State, the central governing bureaucracy of the Vatican, largely untouched.

He regarded the Substitute for General Affairs as a trusted ally, and Bertoli had given His Holiness no reason to question his allegiance.

Quietly, though, he had aligned himself with elements of the Curia who had grown weary of the Holy Father’s sanctimonious quest to rid the Vatican of corruption and upend the lives of privilege led by many of the Church’s most senior figures.

Cardinal Bertoli himself had come under withering criticism over the size and opulence of his penthouse apartment in the Palazzo San Carlo—and the money he had accepted from benefactors to pay for its renovation.

He had adopted the time-tested Vatican strategy of silence when dealing with inquiries from the press.

Had he chosen candor instead, he might have said that it was not his fault that Pope Francis of Assisi had forsaken the appartamento in the Apostolic Palace in favor of a hotel suite the size of a broom closet.

It was, in Bertoli’s estimation, an affront to the majesty of the papacy itself.

If there was one consolation to the Holy Father’s unorthodox living arrangements, it was that the Casa Santa Marta was located directly adjacent to the Palazzo San Carlo—which allowed Bertoli, from the comfort of his private study, to keep a close eye on the man he so faithlessly served.

At present there were lights burning behind the drawn curtains of Room 201, but Bertoli knew for certain that the Holy Father was not at home.

He had once again slipped the bonds of the Vatican with the help of Colonel Alois Metzler, the commandant of the Swiss Guard.

As sostituto , Bertoli was responsible for planning all papal travel, including brief excursions across the border separating the city-state from the Republic of Italy.

He did not approve of the Holy Father’s clandestine forays outside the walls and had made his views known.

Still, he could hardly blame His Saintliness for wanting a decent meal now and again.

The nightly fare in the dining hall of the Casa Santa Marta was most uninspired.

Bertoli’s cook had managed to outdo herself that evening.

He had dined alone, with only a recording of Schubert’s piano trios for company, and then retired to his office.

A pile of Curial paperwork awaited him, including the final itinerary for the Holy Father’s weekend visit to the distant Italian island of Lampedusa, where he intended to once again virtue-signal his support for the rights of the wretched of the earth to seek sanctuary and employment in the land of their choice.

On the way home, he would stop in Palermo to celebrate an open-air mass with Cardinal Vincenzo Cordero, the leftist liberation theologian whom he had recently appointed the city’s archbishop.

Afterward he would process through the streets of Palermo to the cathedral, where he intended to pray at the tomb of Father Pino Puglisi, the anti-Mafia priest who was murdered by the Cosa Nostra in 1993.

The visit to Lampedusa was certain to generate controversy, for it would be viewed, with some justification, as a direct criticism of Italy’s current anti-immigration government.

Bertoli, if left to his own devices, would have preferred to spend his Saturday relaxing in his penthouse apartment.

But protocol dictated that he be at the Holy Father’s side, nodding approvingly at his every utterance, no matter how objectionable he found them.

Such was his calling, to serve as cupbearer to His Holiness Pope Che Guevara.

His contempt for the Holy Father notwithstanding, Bertoli offered a small prayer of thanks when, at twenty minutes past ten, a Mercedes saloon car braked to a halt at a side entrance of the Casa Santa Marta.

His Holiness, in a jacket and trousers, climbed out of the car and disappeared through the doorway.

The lights in Room 201 burned until 11:00 p.m., then were extinguished.

Bertoli worked for another ninety minutes before retiring himself.

He slept dreadfully as usual and by seven the next morning, having bathed and dressed and celebrated mass in his private chapel, was back at his desk.

He remained there until 8:50 a.m., when, Curial briefcase in hand, he walked next door to the Casa Santa Marta for his regularly scheduled morning meeting with the Holy Father.

His Saintliness was standing in the lobby, bidding farewell to a group of homeless Romans whom he had invited to breakfast in the dining hall.

Bertoli followed him into a waiting elevator, along with two plainclothes Swiss Guards.

It was the Holy Father who pressed the call button for the second floor.

“What do you have for me today, Eminence?”

“Nothing terribly pressing, Holiness.”

“Good,” he said, clapping Bertoli on the shoulder. “Because I have something that I think you’re going to find very interesting.”