Page 56

I t was Luca Rossetti who lifted Veronica from the blood-soaked paving stones of St. Peter’s Square and Gabriel who frantically fought to clear a path through the panicked crowd.

Five long minutes elapsed before they managed to reach the ambulance parked just beyond the border barrier.

Two EMTs, after placing Veronica on a stretcher, immediately attempted to restart her heart.

Gabriel lifted his eyes briefly toward the third-floor window on the eastern corner of the Apostolic Palace. Once again it was closed tight.

Another ten critical minutes would slide by before the ambulance reached the Agostino Gemelli University Policlinic, the renowned Rome teaching hospital located five kilometers northwest of Vatican City.

By the time Gabriel and Luca Rossetti arrived—in a commandeered Carabinieri cruiser with blue lights flashing—Veronica was on the operating table.

She would remain there until four o’clock that afternoon.

Doctors described her condition as guarded, though for reasons never made clear they withheld her name from their public statement.

The chief surgeon said the next twelve hours would likely determine whether she lived or died.

Of more immediate concern to the news media and a billion Roman Catholics around the world was the exact condition of His Holiness Luigi Donati.

Videos of the incident, recorded by professional photojournalists and thousands of faithful gathered in the square, left little doubt that he had been struck by at least one projectile, perhaps two.

And yet for six long hours after the incident, the Vatican Press Office inexplicably had nothing to say about what had transpired in St. Peter’s Square.

Clearly, said the well-sourced American correspondent from a prominent Catholic news service, the Holy See was hiding something.

A flurry of dubiously sourced stories and social media posts only added to the confusion.

A usually reliable German publication was the first to report that His Holiness had been killed in the attack.

Minutes later a New York tabloid quoted “a Vatican insider” as saying the Holy Father’s body was stretched out in the Sala Clementina with a rosary in its hands.

An American cable news network played somber music while reporting that cardinals from around the world had been summoned to Rome for the Holy Father’s funeral.

A London betting parlor declared Cardinal Matteo Bertoli, the Substitute for General Affairs of the Secretariat of State, to be the odds-on favorite to emerge from the forthcoming conclave dressed in white.

By five o’clock that afternoon, even Gabriel feared that Donati might well be dead, for all attempts to reach Father Keegan or Colonel Alois Metzler had proven fruitless.

Alone in a VIP waiting room at the Gemelli, he watched the live coverage on Italian television and scoured the Internet for reliable sources of information.

CNN had obtained a cell phone video of Luca Rossetti killing the black-clad assassin.

It was clear the gunman had been aiming his weapon at someone in the square.

Someone who would now be dead, thought Gabriel, had Rossetti not fired his weapon first.

The Press Office bollettino , when it finally appeared, was notable for its lack of detail, stating only that the Holy Father was resting comfortably and praying for the woman who had been wounded in the incident.

Shortly after 9:00 p.m., she was moved from the postsurgical critical care unit to a suite of rooms on the Gemelli’s eleventh floor—rooms that were reserved for the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.

Gabriel arrived twenty minutes later to find His Holiness Luigi Donati kneeling on a simple wooden prie-dieu at the foot of her bed.

There were two bullet holes in the front of his white cassock. And he was still very much alive.

***

“Body armor?” asked Gabriel.

“A lightweight vest. It’s perfect for the busy pontiff on the go.”

“How often do you wear it?”

“When there are specific and credible threats against my life. When I was in the United States, I never set foot in public without it.”

“But you weren’t wearing it yesterday in Lampedusa or Palermo.”

“You noticed?”

“My hand was on your back while you were working the crowds.”

“Which is why I didn’t feel the need to wear the vest. You were at my side. I knew that nothing was going to happen to me.”

They were alone in a small, comfortably furnished sitting room.

There was a papal seal on the door and a crucifix on the wall.

From the adjoining room came the occasional bleep of a respirator and the hushed voices of nurses.

The muted television seemed to be playing the same thirty seconds of video on a loop.

A pope under fire as he stood in an open window of the Apostolic Palace.

Mayhem and bloodshed in the square below.

“What made you put on the vest today?” asked Gabriel.

“An important part of my job is to lead a life of prayer and meditation. I spend several hours a day talking to God. And on occasion God speaks to me.”

“He gave you a warning?”

“A vision.”

“And when the bullets hit you?”

“I felt as though I had stepped in front of a speeding train. For a minute or two, I could scarcely breathe or speak. I remained in the appartamento for the remainder of the afternoon until we were certain the Vatican was secure. During that time I received only one member of the Roman Curia.”

“His Eminence Cardinal Bertoli?”

Donati nodded. “As you might imagine, he expressed profound relief that I had suffered only minor injuries. But I was left with the nagging sense that he was rather disappointed I was still alive.”

“Was he behind it?”

“I believe the plot against me was hatched on Friday evening after our confrontation with Cardinal Bertoli. It was Don Lorenzo Di Falco of the Camorra who ordered my assassination.”

“That would explain why I was the second target. Bertoli told them that I was the one who switched the paintings.”

“And stole their money?”

“Rerouted it, Holiness.”

“Powerful circumstantial evidence of the cardinal’s guilt,” said Donati. “Even so, the charges that I will soon level against Bertoli will not include conspiracy to murder a pope. There is some laundry that is far too dirty to air in public. The world must never know what really happened today.”

“An act of madness by a lone gunman?”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s all going to come out, Luigi. Sooner rather than later.”

“And what happens when the press discovers the name of the woman who tried to disarm the gunman? Or that many years ago she had a passionate affair with the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church?”

“You will ignore the story and carry on with your important work.”

“Leaving her to face the scandal alone?” Donati shook his head slowly. “I couldn’t possibly do that. After all, I was the one who invited her to attend the Angelus today. I’m the reason she’s lying in that bed.”

“It’s my fault, Luigi. I lost track of her when the shooting started. And when I saw her again, she was trying to take the gun out of the assassin’s hands.”

“What could have possessed her to do something like that?”

“Do you really need me to answer that question?”

Donati directed his gaze toward the television screen. A pope under fire, mayhem in the square below. “It’s much different than it was in my vision.”

“How?”

“There was a different pope in the window. An old man with snow-white hair.” Donati rose to his feet. “How long are you planning to stay?”

“Until I’m sure she’s going to make it.”

“Would you like some company?”

“I would advise His Holiness to return to the Vatican.”

He went into the next room instead and knelt on the wooden prie-dieu at the foot of Veronica’s bed. She had been wrong about the ending of the story, thought Gabriel. If the girl died tonight, she would not die alone.

***

He remained there, hour after hour, as doctors came and went, and Veronica’s vital signs steadily improved.

And at half past six the next morning, when her eyes finally opened, the first face she saw was his.

She stared at him as though wondering whether he was real or a dream, then began to weep.

Donati wiped the tears from her cheek, and she slid once more beneath the veil of unconsciousness.

At 8:00 a.m. the doctors upgraded her condition from guarded to critical and expressed confidence that, barring an unforeseen complication, the wound to her chest would not prove fatal.

Donati left the Gemelli at nine o’clock and returned to the Vatican, but Gabriel remained at Veronica’s bedside until five that afternoon.

He left the hospital in the back of a Carabinieri cruiser, with Luca Rossetti at his side.

They stopped at the Hassler long enough for Gabriel to collect his bag, then boarded an evening train for Venice.