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television.
    “Good.”
    6 ROME
    To call it a safe flat was no longer accurate. Indeed, Gabriel had spent so much time in the pleasant
    apartment near the top of the Spanish Steps that the lords of Housekeeping, the division of the Office that
    handled secure accommodations, referred to it as his Rome address. There were two bedrooms, a large,
    light-filled sitting room, and a spacious terrace that looked west toward the Piazza di Spagna and St.
    Peter’s Basilica. Two years earlier, Gabriel had been standing in the shadow of Michelangelo’s dome, at
    the side of His Holiness Pope Paul VII, when the Vatican was attacked by Islamic terrorists. More than
    seven hundred people were killed that October afternoon, and the dome of the Basilica had nearly been
    toppled. At the behest of the CIA and the American president, Gabriel had hunted down and killed the two
    Saudis who masterminded and financed the operation. The pope’s powerful private secretary, Monsignor
    Luigi Donati, knew of Gabriel’s involvement in the killings and tacitly approved. So, too, Gabriel
    suspected, did the Holy Father himself.
    The flat had been fitted with a system capable of recording the time and duration of unwanted entries
    and intrusions. Even so, Gabriel inserted an old-fashioned telltale between the door and the jamb as he let
    himself out. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the geniuses in the Office’s Technical division; he was simply a
    man of the sixteenth century at heart and clung to antiquated ways when it came to matters of tradecraft
    and security. Computerized telltales were wonderful devices, but a scrap of paper never failed, and it
    didn’t require an engineer with a Ph.D. from MIT to keep it running.
    It had rained during the night, and the pavements of the Via Gregoriana were still damp as Gabriel
    stepped from the foyer. He turned to the right, toward the Church of the Trinità dei Monti, and descended
    the Spanish Steps to the piazza, where he drank his first cappuccino of the day. After deciding that his
    return to Rome had gone unnoticed by the Italian security services, he hiked back up the Spanish Steps and
    climbed aboard a Piaggio motorbike. Its little four-stroke engine buzzed like an insect as he sped down
    the graceful sweep of the Via Veneto.
    The Excelsior Hotel stood near the end of the street, near the Villa Borghese. Gabriel parked on the
    Corso d’Italia and locked his helmet in the rear storage compartment. Then he put on a pair of dark
    wraparound sunglasses and a ball cap and headed back to the Via Veneto on foot. He walked nearly the
    length of the boulevard to the Piazza Barberini, then crossed over to the opposite side and headed back
    toward the Villa Borghese. Along the way, he spotted four men he assumed to be plainclothes American
    security-the U.S. Embassy stood at Via Veneto 121-but no one who appeared to be an agent of Russian
    intelligence.
    The waiters at Doney were setting the sidewalk tables for lunch. Gabriel went inside and drank a
    second cappuccino while standing at the bar. Then he walked next door to the Excelsior and lifted the
    receiver of a house phone near the elevators. When the operator came on the line, he asked to speak to a
    guest named Boris Ostrovsky and was connected to his room right away. Three rings later, the phone was
    answered by a man speaking English with a pronounced Russian accent. When Gabriel asked to speak to
    someone named “Mr. Donaldson, ” the Russian-speaking man said there was no one there by that name
    and immediately hung up.
    Gabriel left the connection open for a few seconds and listened for the sound of a transmitter on the
    line. Hearing nothing suspicious, he hung up and walked to the Galleria Borghese. He spent an hour
    looking at paintings and checking his tail for signs of surveillance. Then, at 11:45, he climbed aboard the
    Piaggio motorbike again and set off toward a quiet square at the edge of the old ghetto. The filetti and
    Frascati were