The Order (Gabriel Allon #20) - Daniel Silva Page 0,106

of their lives.” He seemed to relish the thought. “Come with me to the balcony. It’s not something you should miss.”

He went into the Sala Regia and, followed by much of the conclave, set off along the Hall of Blessings toward the front of the basilica. Unlike his master, Pietro Lucchesi, he did not need to be shown the way. In the antechamber behind the balcony, he solemnly made the sign of the cross as the doors were opened. The roar of the multitude in the square was deafening. He smiled at Gabriel one final time as the senior cardinal deacon declared, “Habemus papam!” We have a pope! Then he stepped into a corona of blinding white light and was gone.

ALONE WITH THE CARDINALS, GABRIEL felt suddenly out of place. The man once known as Luigi Donati belonged to them now, not him. Unescorted, he made his way back to the Sistine Chapel. Then he headed downstairs to the Bronze Doors of the Apostolic Palace.

Outside, St. Peter’s Square was ablaze with candles and mobile phones. It looked as though a galaxy of stars had fallen to earth. Gabriel tried Chiara’s number, but there was not a cellular connection to be had. He picked his way through Bernini’s Colonnade. The crowd was delirious. Donati’s election was an earthquake.

Gabriel finally emerged from the Colonnade into the Piazza Papa Pio XII. To reach the Jesuit Curia, he had to somehow make his way to the other side. He soon gave up. A sea of humanity stretched from Donati’s feet to the banks of the Tiber. There was nowhere for Gabriel to go.

He realized suddenly that Chiara and the children were calling his name. It took a moment to find them. Elated, the children were pointing toward the basilica, as though their father were unaware of the fact that his friend was standing on the balcony. Chiara’s arms were wrapped around Veronica Marchese, who was weeping uncontrollably.

Gabriel tried to reach them, but it was no good. The crowd was impenetrable. Turning, he saw a man in white floating above a key-shaped carpet of golden light. It was a masterwork, he thought. His Holiness, oil on canvas, artist unknown …

PART FOUR

HABEMUS PAPAM

61

CANNAREGIO, VENICE

IT WAS CHIARA WHO SECRETLY informed the prime minister that her husband would not be at his desk at King Saul Boulevard on Monday morning. While purportedly on holiday, he had prevented a massive bombing in Cologne, dealt a severe blow to the ambitions of the European far right, and watched his close friend become the supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. He needed a few days to recuperate.

He spent the first three largely confined to the apartment overlooking the Rio della Misericordia, for God in his infinite wisdom had inflicted upon Venice a deluge of biblical magnitude. When combined with gale-force winds and an unusually high tide in the lagoon, the results were disastrous. All six of the city’s historic sestieri suffered catastrophic flooding, including San Marco, where the crypt of the basilica flooded for only the sixth time in twelve centuries. In Cannaregio the water rose a historic six and a half feet in a span of just three hours. Particularly hard hit was the small island to which the city’s Jews were confined in 1516 by the order of Venice’s ruling council. The museum in the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo was inundated, as was the ground floor of the Casa Israelitica di Riposo. Waves lapped against the bas-relief Holocaust memorial, leaving the carabinieri no choice but to abandon their bulletproof kiosk.

Like nearly everyone else in the city, the Allon family huddled behind barricades and sandbags and made the best of it. Raphael and Irene looked upon their watery internment as a great adventure; Gabriel, as a blessing. For three waterlogged days, they read books aloud, played board games, undertook art projects, and watched every DVD in the apartment’s modest library, most twice. It was a glimpse of their future. In retirement, Gabriel would be an expatriate again, a Diaspora Jew. He would work when it suited him and devote every spare minute to his children. The clock would slow, his many wounds would heal. This is where his story would end, in the sinking city of churches and paintings at the northern end of the Adriatic.

He checked in with Uzi Navot early each morning and late each afternoon. And, of course, he followed the news from Rome, where Donati wasted little time upsetting the curial applecart. For a start,