The Order (Gabriel Allon #20) - Daniel Silva Page 0,6

you came to your senses and begged me to take you back. Do you remember, Gabriel? It was after the attack on the Vatican.”

“I’m not sure which was worse. The rocket-propelled grenades and the suicide bombers or the way you treated me.”

“You deserved it, you dolt. I should have never agreed to see you again.”

“And now our children are playing in the campo,” said Gabriel.

Chiara glanced at the carabinieri post. “Watched over by men with guns.”

The next day, Wednesday, Gabriel slipped from the apartment after his morning phone calls and with a varnished wooden case beneath his arm walked to the church of the Madonna dell’Orto. The nave was in semidarkness, and scaffolding concealed the double-framed pointed arches of the side aisles. The church had no transept, but in the rear was a five-sided apse that contained the grave of Jacopo Robusti, better known as Tintoretto. It was there that Gabriel found Francesco Tiepolo. He was an enormous, bearlike man with a tangled gray-and-black beard. As usual, he was dressed in a flowing white tunic with a scarf knotted rakishly around his neck.

He embraced Gabriel tightly. “I always knew you would come back.”

“I’m on holiday, Francesco. Let’s not get carried away.”

Tiepolo waved his hand as though he were trying to scare away the pigeons in the Piazza di San Marco. “Today you’re on holiday, but one day you’ll die in Venice.” He looked down at the grave. “I suppose we’ll have to bury you somewhere other than a church, won’t we?”

Tintoretto produced ten paintings for the church between 1552 and 1569, including Presentation of the Virgin Mary in the Temple, which hung on the right side of the nave. A massive canvas measuring 480 by 429 centimeters, it was among his masterworks. The first phase of the restoration, the removal of the discolored varnish, had been completed. All that remained was the inpainting, the retouching of those portions of the canvas lost to time and stress. It would be a monumental task. Gabriel reckoned it would take a single restorer a year, if not longer.

“What poor soul removed the varnish? Antonio Politi, I hope.”

“It was Paulina, the new girl. She was hoping to observe you while you worked.”

“I assume you disabused her of that notion.”

“In no uncertain terms. She said you could have any part of the painting you wanted, except for the Virgin.”

Gabriel lifted his gaze toward the upper reaches of the towering canvas. Miriam, the three-year-old daughter of Joachim and Anne, Jews from Nazareth, was hesitantly climbing the fifteen steps of the Temple of Jerusalem toward the high priest. A few steps below reclined a woman robed in brown silk. She was holding a young child, a boy or girl, it was impossible to tell.

“Her,” said Gabriel. “And the child.”

“Are you sure? They need a great deal of work.”

Gabriel smiled sadly, his eyes on the canvas. “It’s the least I can do for them.”

HE REMAINED IN THE CHURCH until two o’clock, longer than he had intended. That evening he and Chiara left the children with their grandparents and dined alone in a restaurant on the other side of the Grand Canal in San Polo. The next day, Thursday, he took the children on a gondola ride in the morning and worked on the Tintoretto from midday until five, when Tiepolo locked the church’s doors for the night.

Chiara decided to prepare dinner at the apartment. Afterward, Gabriel supervised the nightly running battle known as bath time before retreating to the shelter of the chuppah to deal with a minor crisis at home. It was nearly one by the time he crawled into bed. Chiara was reading a novel, oblivious to the television, which was muted. On the screen was a live shot of St. Peter’s Basilica. Gabriel raised the volume and learned that an old friend had died.

3

CANNAREGIO, VENICE

LATER THAT MORNING THE BODY of His Holiness Pope Paul VII was moved to the Sala Clementina on the second floor of the Apostolic Palace. It remained there until early the following afternoon, when it was transferred in solemn procession to St. Peter’s Basilica for two days of public viewing. Four Swiss Guards stood watch around the dead pontiff, halberds at the ready. The Vatican press corps made much of the fact that Archbishop Luigi Donati, the Holy Father’s closest aide and confidant, rarely left his master’s side.

Church tradition dictated that the funeral and burial of the pope occur four to six days after his death. Cardinal Camerlengo Domenico Albanese announced