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giving off an aura of absolute unavailability. He also wears a long black skirt and sleeps next door to the pope.”
    Chiara smiled and plucked a bruschetta from the tray. “There is at least one fringe benefit to accepting the case,” she said thoughtfully. “It would give us a chance to take a look at the Church’s private collection of antiquities. God only knows what they really have locked away in their storerooms.”
    “God and the popes,” said Gabriel. “But it’s far too much material for me to review on my own. I’m going to need help from someone who knows a thing or two about antiquities.”
    “Me?”
    “If the Office hadn’t got its hooks into you, you’d be a professor at an important Italian university.”
    “That’s true,” she said. “But I studied the history of the Roman Empire.”
    “Anyone who studies the Romans knows something about their artifacts. And your knowledge of Greek and Etruscan civilization is far superior to mine.”
    “I’m afraid that’s not saying much, darling.”
    Chiara arched one eyebrow before raising the glass of wine to her lips. Her appearance had changed noticeably since their arrival in Rome. Seated as she was now, with her hair tumbling about her shoulders and her olive skin aglow, she looked remarkably like the intoxicating young Italian woman Gabriel had encountered for the first time, ten years earlier, in the ancient ghetto of Venice. It was almost as if the toll of the many long and dangerous operations had been erased. Only the faint shadow of loss fell across her face. It had been left there by the child she had miscarried while being held as ransom by the Russian oligarch and arms dealer Ivan Kharkov. They had not been able to conceive since. Privately, Chiara had resigned herself to the prospect that she and Gabriel might never have a child.
    “There is one other possibility,” she suggested.
    “What’s that?”
    “That Dr. Claudia Andreatti climbed to the top of the Basilica in a state of emotional turmoil and threw herself to her death.”
    “When I saw her last night, she didn’t look like a woman in turmoil. In fact . . .” Gabriel’s voice trailed off.
    “What?”
    “I got the sense she wanted to tell me something.”
    Chiara was silent for a moment. “How long will it take for Donati to get us her files?” she asked finally.
    “A day or two.”
    “So what do we do in the meantime?”
    “I think we should get to know her a little better.”
    “How?”
    Gabriel held up the ring of keys.
     
     
    She lived on the opposite side of the river in Trastevere, in a faded old palazzo that had been converted into a faded old apartment house. Gabriel and Chiara strolled past the doorway twice while determining that their usual complement of Italian watchers had decided to take the night off. Then, on the third pass, Gabriel approached the door with the easy confidence of a man who had business within the premises and ushered Chiara inside. They found the foyer in semi-darkness and Claudia’s mailbox bulging with what appeared to be several days’ worth of uncollected post. Gabriel removed the items and placed them into Chiara’s handbag. Then he led her to the base of the wide central staircase and together they started to climb.
    It did not take long for Gabriel to feel a familiar sensation spreading over him. Shamron, his mentor, called it “the operational buzz.” It caused him to walk on the balls of his feet with a slight forward tilt and to draw his breath with the evenness of a ventilator. And it compelled him to instinctively assume the worst, that behind every door, around every darkened corner, lurked an old enemy with a gun and an unpaid debt to collect. His eyes flickered restlessly, and his sense of hearing, suddenly acute, locked onto every sound, no matter how faint or trivial—the splash of water in a basin, the diminishment of a violin concerto, the wail of an inconsolable child.
    It was this sound, the sound of a