Page 32 of The Order

“Ten minutes ago, I had my doubts. Not anymore.” Gabriel stared at the Ponte Vecchio. It was ablaze with flashing blue lights. “Were you able to make out what he was whispering before he died?”

“He was speaking in Aramaic.Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?It means—”

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Donati nodded slowly. “They were the last words Jesus cried out before dying on the cross.”

“Why would he say such a thing?”

“Maybe the other guards were right,” said Donati. “Maybe Niklaus was a saint after all.”

15

Venice-Fribourg, Swizterland

They returned to Venice, collected two sleeping children from a house in the ancient ghetto, and carried them across the city’s only iron bridge to an apartment on the Rio della Misericordia. There they passed a largely sleepless night, Donati in the spare room. At breakfast the following morning he could scarcely take his eyes off Raphael, who bore a striking resemblance to his famous father. The child had even been cursed with Gabriel’s unnaturally green eyes. Irene looked like Gabriel’s mother, never more so than when she was annoyed with him.

“It will only be a day or two,” he assured her.

“That’s what you always say, Abba.”

They said their goodbyes downstairs on the Fondamenta dei Ormesini. Chiara’s final kiss was decorous. “Do try not to getyourself killed,” she whispered into Gabriel’s ear. “Your children need you. And so do I.”

Gabriel and Donati settled into the aft seating compartment of a waitingmotoscafoand skimmed across the gray-green waters of the lagoon to Marco Polo Airport. In the crowded concourse, passengers were gathered beneath the television monitors. Another bomb had exploded in Germany. This time the target was a market in the northern city of Hamburg. A claim of responsibility had appeared on social media, along with a professionally edited video from the purported mastermind. In perfect colloquial German, his face concealed behind an Arab headdress, he promised the bombings would continue until the black flag of the Islamic State flew over the Bundestag. Having suffered two terrorist attacks in just forty-eight hours, Germany was now on high alert.

The bombing immediately snarled air travel across Europe, but somehow the late-morning Alitalia flight to Geneva departed on time. Despite the increased security at Switzerland’s second-busiest airport, Gabriel and Donati cleared passport control with no delay. Transport had left a BMW sedan in the short-term car park, with the key taped beneath the front bumper. In the glove box, wrapped in a protective cloth, was a 9mm Beretta.

“It must be nice,” remarked Donati. “I always have to pick up my gun at the counter.”

“Membership has its privileges.”

Gabriel followed the airport exit ramp to the E62 and headed northwest along the shore of the lake. Donati took note of the fact he was driving without the aid of a navigation device.

“Come to Switzerland often?”

“You might say that.”

“They say it’s going to be another bad year for snow.”

“The state of Switzerland’s winter tourism industry is the least of my concerns.”

“You don’t ski?”

“Do I look like a skier to you?”

“I never saw the point of it.” Donati pondered the mountain peaks rising above the opposite shore of the lake. “Any fool can slide down a mountain, but it takes someone of character and discipline to walk up one.”

“I prefer to walk along the sea.”

“It’s rising, you know. Apparently, Venice will soon be uninhabitable.”

“At least it will discourage the tourists.”

Gabriel switched on the radio in time to catch the hourly newscast on SFR 1. The death toll in Hamburg stood at four, with another twenty-five wounded, several critically. There was no mention of a Swiss citizen having been murdered the previous evening on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.

“What are the Polizia di Stato waiting for?” asked Donati.

“If I had to guess, they’re giving the Vatican a chance to get its story straight.”