Page 61 of The Order

“Father Jordan. He knows more about the Gospel of Pilate than he told us.”

“You can tell when someone is lying?”

“Always.”

“How do you go through life that way?”

“It isn’t easy,” said Gabriel.

“He was telling the truth about at least one thing.”

“What’s that?”

Donati looked up from his phone. “There’s no one named Father Joshua who works at the Secret Archives.”

30

Via della Paglia, Rome

Alessandro Ricci livedat the quiet end of the Via della Paglia, in a small rose-colored apartment building. His name did not appear on the intercom panel. Ricci’s work had earned him a long list of enemies, some of whom wanted him dead.

Donati pressed the correct button, and they were admitted at once. Ricci was waiting on the second-floor landing, dressed entirely in black. His fashionable spectacles were black, too. They were propped on his bald head, which was polished to a high gloss. His gaze was fixed not on the tall, handsome man wearing the cassock of an archbishop but on the leather-jacketed figure of medium height standing next to him.

“Dear God, it’s you! The great Gabriel Allon, savior ofIl Papa.”

He drew them into the apartment. No one would have mistaken it for the home of anyone but a writer, and a divorced oneat that. There wasn’t a single flat surface that wasn’t piled with books and papers. Ricci apologized for the clutter. He had spent much of the day on the BBC, where his elegantly accented English was much in demand. He had to be back at the Vatican in two hours for an appearance on CNN. He hadn’t much time to talk.

“Too bad,” he added with a glance at Gabriel. “I have a few questions I’d like to ask you.”

Ricci cleared a couple of chairs and immediately dug a crumpled pack of Marlboros from the breast pocket of his jacket. Donati in turn produced his elegant gold cigarette case. There followed the familiar rituals of the tobacco addicted—the stroke of a lighter, the offer of a flame, a moment or two of small talk. Ricci expressed his condolences over the death of Lucchesi. Donati asked about Ricci’s mother, who had been unwell.

“The letter from the Holy Father meant the world to her, Excellency.”

“It didn’t stop you from writing a rather nasty piece about how much money the Vatican was spending renovating the apartments of certain curial cardinals.”

“Did I make any mistakes?”

“Not one.”

The conversation turned to the coming conclave. Ricci mined Donati for a nugget of gold, something he might reveal to his American audience later that evening. It didn’t need to be earth-shattering, he said. A juicy piece of curial gossip would suffice. Donati failed to oblige him. He claimed he had been too busy putting his affairs in order to give much thought to theselection of Lucchesi’s successor. At this, Ricci smiled. It was the smile of a reporter who knew something.

“Is that why you went to Florence last Thursday to find the missing Swiss Guard?”

Donati didn’t bother with a denial. “How did you know?”

“The Polizia have pictures of you on the Ponte Vecchio.” Ricci looked at Gabriel. “You, too.”

“Why haven’t they tried to contact me?” asked Donati.

“The Vatican asked them not to. And for some reason, the Polizia agreed to keep you out of it.”

Donati stabbed out his cigarette. “What else do you know?”

“I know that you were having dinner with Veronica Marchese the night the Holy Father died.”

“Wherever did you hear a thing like that?”

“Come on, Archbishop Donati. You know I can’t divulge—”