The English Girl: A Novel (Gabriel Allon) Page 20

  He spent the rest of the morning preparing a detailed dossier. Then he packed an overnight bag with two changes of clothing and two changes of identity. That evening he flew from Ben Gurion to Paris, and by noon the following day he was once again on the island of Corsica. He needed one more thing before he could begin his search. He needed an accomplice. Someone extremely capable, utterly ruthless, and without a shred of conscience.

  He needed Christopher Keller.

  31

  CORSICA

  The island had been transformed since Gabriel’s last visit. The beaches were deserted, there were good tables to be had in the better restaurants, and the outdoor markets were free of the half-naked mainlanders who gawked admiringly but rarely reached into their wallets. Corsica was once again in the possession of the Corsicans. And for that, even the gloomiest of the island’s residents were grateful.

  There were many other things, however, that remained unchanged. The same intoxicating scent of the macchia greeted Gabriel as he turned inland from the coast; the same old woman pointed at him with her index and little fingers as he drove through the isolated hill town; and the same two guards nodded menacingly as he sped past the entrance of Don Anton Orsati’s estate.

  He followed the road until it turned to dirt, and then he followed it a little farther. And when he rounded the sharp left-hand bend near the three ancient olive trees, Don Casabianca’s wretched palomino goat was there to block his path. Upon seeing Gabriel, its expression darkened, as though it recalled the circumstances of their last encounter and now planned to return the favor. Through the open car window, Gabriel politely asked the goat to give way. And when the beast lifted its chin defiantly, Gabriel climbed out of the car, leaned close to the goat’s tattered old ear, and whispered a threat much like the one he had issued to the kidnappers of Madeline Hart. Instantly, the goat turned and beat a hasty retreat into the macchia. He was a coward, as most tyrants were.

  Gabriel climbed back into the car and drove the rest of the way to Keller’s villa. He parked in the drive, in the shade of a laricio pine tree, and called up a greeting to the terrace that went unanswered. The door was unlocked; Gabriel walked from one beautiful white room to the next but found each of them unoccupied. Then he went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. No milk, no meat, no eggs, nothing that might spoil. Only some beer, a container of Dijon mustard, and a bottle of rather good Sancerre. Gabriel opened the Sancerre and phoned Don Orsati.

  Keller was away on business. Mainland Europe, a country other than France—that was as far as the don would go. If all went according to plan, Keller would be back on Corsica that evening, the following morning at the latest. The don told Gabriel to stay at Keller’s villa and to make himself at home. He said he was sorry about what had happened “up in the north.” Keller had obviously given him a full account.

  “So what brings you back to Corsica?” asked the don.

  “I paid someone a large sum of money, and they didn’t deliver the merchandise as promised.”

  “A very large sum,” the don agreed.

  “What would you do if you were in my position?”

  “I would have never agreed to help a man like Jonathan Lancaster in the first place.”

  “It’s a complicated world, Don Orsati.”

  “Indeed,” said the don philosophically. “As for your business problem, you have two choices. You can do your best to forget what happened to the English girl, or you can punish those responsible.”

  “What would you do?”

  “Here on Corsica we have an old proverb: a Christian forgives, an idiot forgets.”

  “I’m not an idiot.”

  “Nor a Christian,” said Orsati, “but I won’t hold that against you.”

  The don asked Gabriel to stay on the line while he dealt with a minor crisis. It seemed a large shipment of oil to a restaurant in Zurich had gone missing. Gabriel could hear the don shouting at an underling in the Corsican dialect. Find the oil, he was saying, or heads will roll. At any other enterprise, the threat might have been dismissed as managerial bluster. But not at the Orsati Olive Oil Company.

  “Where were we?” asked the don.

  “You were saying something about Christians and idiots. And you were about to extract a steep price for the privilege of borrowing Keller.”

  “He is my most valuable employee.”

  “For obvious reasons.”

  The don was silent for a moment. Gabriel could hear him slurping coffee.

  “It is important that this be about more than just blood,” he said after a moment. “You have to recover the money as well.”

  “And if I’m able to?”

  “A small payment of tribute to your Corsican godfather would be in order.”

  “How small?”

  “One million should be sufficient.”

  “That’s rather steep, Don Orsati.”

  “I was going to ask for five.”

  Gabriel thought about it for a moment and then accepted the terms. “But only if I can find the money,” he stipulated. “Otherwise, I’m free to use Keller as I see fit, at no charge.”

  “Done,” said Orsati. “But make sure you bring him home in one piece. Remember, money doesn’t come from singing.”

  Gabriel settled in on the terrace with the Sancerre and the thick dossier on the inner workings of Downing Street under Jonathan Lancaster. But within an hour he was restless, so he called Don Orsati again and asked for permission to walk. The don gave his blessing and told Gabriel where he could find one of Keller’s guns. A chunky HK 9mm, it was located in the drawer of a pretty French antique writing desk, directly beneath the Cézanne. “But be careful,” the don cautioned. “Christopher sets his trigger pressure very light. He’s a sensitive soul.”

  Gabriel slipped the weapon into the waistband of his jeans and set out along the narrow track, toward the three ancient olive trees. Thankfully, the goat had yet to return to its sentry post, which meant Gabriel was able to proceed into the village unmolested. It was the uncertain hour between late afternoon and evening. The houses were shuttered and the streets had been abandoned to cats and children. They watched Gabriel with great interest as he made his way to the main square. On three sides there were shops and cafés, and on the fourth was the church. Gabriel purchased a scarf for Chiara in one of the shops and then took a table at the least forbidding-looking of the cafés. He drank strong coffee to counter the effects of the Sancerre; then, as the sky darkened softly and the breeze turned chill, he drank rough Corsican red wine to counter the effects of the coffee. The doors of the church hung ajar. From inside came the murmur of prayer.

  Gradually, the square began to fill with townspeople. Teenage boys sat astride their mopeds outside the ice cream parlor; a group of men started up a hard-fought game of boules in the center of the dusty esplanade. Shortly after six, about twenty people, old women mainly, came filing down the steps of the church. Among them was the signadora. Her gaze settled briefly on Gabriel, the unbeliever; then she disappeared through the doorway of her crooked little house. Soon after, two women came calling on her—an old widow dressed head to toe in black and a distraught-looking girl in her mid-twenties who, doubtless, was suffering the ill effects of the occhju.

  A half hour later the two women reappeared, along with a boy, about ten years old, with long curly hair. The women made for the ice cream parlor, but the boy, after pausing a moment to watch the game of boules, came over to the café where Gabriel was sitting. In his hand was a slip of paper, pale blue and folded in quarters. He placed it on the table before Gabriel and then scurried off as though he feared he might catch something. Gabriel unfolded the slip of paper and in the fading light read the single line that had been written there:

  I must see you at once.

  Gabriel inserted the note into his coat pocket and sat there for several minutes debatin
g what to do. Then he left a few coins on the table and headed across the square.

  When he knocked on her door, a reedy voice invited him to enter. She was seated sleepily in a faded wing chair, her head lolling to one side, as though she were still suffering from the exertion of absorbing the evil that infected her previous visitors. Despite Gabriel’s protests, she insisted on rising to greet him. This time there was no hostility in her expression, only concern. She touched Gabriel’s cheek without speaking and stared directly into his eyes.

  “Your eyes are so very green. You have your mother’s eyes, yes?”

  “Yes,” said Gabriel.

  “She suffered during the war, did she not?”

  “Did Keller tell you that?”

  “I’ve never spoken to Christopher about your mother.”

  “Yes,” said Gabriel after a moment, “terrible things happened to my mother during the war.”

  “In Poland?”

  “Yes, in Poland.”

  The signadora took one of Gabriel’s hands in hers. “You’re warm to the touch. Do you have fever?”

  “No,” said Gabriel.

  She closed her eyes. “Your mother was a painter like you?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was in the camps? The one that was named for the trees?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “I see a road, snow, a long line of women in gray clothing, a man with a gun.”

  Gabriel withdrew his hand quickly. The old woman’s eyes opened with a start.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “Why did you want to see me?”

  “I know why you came back here.”

  “And?”

  “I want to help you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is important that nothing happens to you in the days to come. The old man needs you. So does your wife.”

  “I’m not married,” Gabriel lied.

  “Her name is Clara, is it not?”

  “No,” said Gabriel, smiling. “Her name is Chiara.”

  “She is an Italian?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will keep you in my prayers.” She nodded toward her table where a plate of water and a vessel of olive oil stood next to a pair of burning candles. “Won’t you sit down?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “You still don’t believe?”

  “I believe,” he said.

  “Then why won’t you sit? Surely you’re not afraid. Your mother named you Gabriel for a reason. You have the strength of God.”

  Gabriel felt as though a stone had been laid over his heart. He wanted to leave at once but curiosity made him stay. After helping the old woman into her chair, he sat opposite her and dipped his finger into the oil. Upon striking the surface of the water, the three drops shattered into a thousand before disappearing. The old woman nodded gravely, as if the test had confirmed her darkest fears. Then, for the second time, she took Gabriel’s hand in hers.

  “You’re burning,” she said. “Are you sure you’re not unwell?”

  “I was in the sun.”

  “At Christopher’s house,” she said knowingly. “You drank his wine. You have his gun on your hip.”

  “Go on.”

  “You’re looking for a man, the man who killed the English girl.”

  “Do you know who he is?”

  “No,” she said. “But I know where he is. He’s hiding in the east, in the city of heretics. You must never set foot there. If you do,” she said firmly, “you will die.”

  She closed her eyes, and after a moment began to weep softly, a sign that the evil had flowed from Gabriel’s body into hers. Then, with a nod, she instructed Gabriel to repeat the test of the oil and the water. This time the oil coalesced into a single drop. The old woman smiled in a way that Gabriel had never seen before.

  “What do you see?” asked Gabriel.

  “Are you sure you want to know?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I see a child,” she replied without hesitation.

  “Whose child?”

  She patted Gabriel’s hand. “Go back to the villa,” she said. “Your friend Christopher has returned to Corsica.”

  When Gabriel arrived at the villa, he found Keller standing before the open refrigerator. He wore a dark gray suit, wrinkled from travel, and a white dress shirt open at the neck. He withdrew the half-drunk bottle of Sancerre, gave it a demonstrative shake, and then dumped several inches of the wine into a glass.

  “Rough day at the office, honey?” asked Gabriel.

  “Brutal.” He held up the bottle. “You?”

  “I’ve had quite enough.”

  “I can see that.”

  “How was your trip?”

  “The travel was hell,” said Keller, “but everything else went smoothly.”

  “Who was he?”

  Keller drank some of his wine without answering and asked Gabriel where he had been. When Gabriel told him that he had been to see the signadora, Keller smiled.

  “We’ll make a Corsican of you yet.”

  “It wasn’t my idea,” explained Gabriel.

  “What did she want to tell you?”

  “It was nothing,” said Gabriel. “Just the usual hocus-pocus about the wind in the willows.”

  “Then why are you so pale?”

  Gabriel made no response other than to place Keller’s gun carefully on the countertop.

  “From what I hear,” Keller said, “you’re going to need that.”

  “What do you hear?”

  “I hear you’re going on a hunting trip.”

  “Are you willing to help me?”

  “Frankly,” said Keller, raising his wineglass to the light, “I expected you a long time ago.”

  “I had a painting to finish.”

  “By whom?”

  “Bassano.”

  “Studio of Bassano or Bassano Bassano?”

  “A little of both.”

  “Nice,” said Keller.

  “How quickly can you be ready to move?”

  “I have to check my calendar, but I suspect I’ll be ready to go first thing in the morning. But you should know,” he added, “that Marseilles is crawling with flics at the moment. And half of them are looking for us.”

  “Which is why we’re not going anywhere near Marseilles, at least for now.”

  “So where are we going?”

  Gabriel smiled. “We’re going home.”

  32

  CORSICA–LONDON

  They had dinner in the village, then Gabriel settled into a guest suite on the lower level of the villa. The walls were white, the bedding was white, the armchair and ottoman were covered in sailcloth. The room’s lack of color disturbed his sleep. That night, when he ran to Madeline in his dreams, he ran across an endless field of snow. And when she scratched at the back of her hand, the blood that flowed from the wound was the color of heavy cream.

  In the morning they caught the first flight to Paris and then flew on to Heathrow. Keller cleared customs on a French passport, which Gabriel, who was waiting for him in the arrivals hall, thought was a most ignoble way for an Englishman to return to the land of his birth. They made their way outside and waited twenty minutes for a taxi. It crawled into central London through heavy traffic and rain.

  “Now you know why I don’t live here any longer,” Keller said quietly in French as he stared out his rain-spattered window at the gray London suburbs.

  “The moisture will do wonders for your skin,” Gabriel replied in the same language. “You look like a piece of leather.”

  The taxi delivered them to Marble Arch. Gabriel and Keller walked a short distance along Bayswater Road, to the apartment house overlooking Hyde
Park. The flat was precisely as he had left it the morning he had driven to France with the ransom money; in fact, Chiara’s breakfast dishes were still in the sink. Gabriel dropped his bag in the main bedroom and took a gun from the floor safe. When he emerged, he found Keller standing in the window of the sitting room.

  “Can you manage for a few hours on your own?” Gabriel asked.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Any plans?”

  “I think I’ll take a boat ride on the Serpentine and then pop over to Covent Garden for a bit of shopping.”

  “It might be better if you stayed here. You never know who you might bump into.”

  “I’m Regiment, luv.”

  Keller said nothing more; he didn’t need to. He was SAS, which meant that, if he wanted, he could walk through a room of close friends and no one would know his name.

  Gabriel headed down to the street and hailed a passing taxi. Twenty minutes later he was walking past the gated entrance of Downing Street, toward the Houses of Parliament. In his pocket was a single entry from his dossier, a lengthy article from London’s Daily Telegraph. The headline read MADELINE HART—THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS.

  The article had been written by Samantha Cooke, the Telegraph’s chief Whitehall correspondent and one of Britain’s most highly regarded journalists. She had been covering Jonathan Lancaster from the time he was a lowly backbencher and had chronicled his rise in a biography called The Path to Power. Despite the book’s somewhat pretentious title, it had been well received, even by her competitors who were jealous of the advance paid by her London publisher. Samantha Cooke was the kind of reporter who knew much more than she could ever put into print, which is why Gabriel wanted to talk to her.

  He rang the Telegraph’s switchboard and asked to be connected to her extension. The operator put him through without delay, and after a few seconds Samantha Cooke picked up. Gabriel suspected she was on a mobile phone because he could hear footsteps and the echo of baritone voices in a high-ceilinged room—perhaps the lobby of Parliament, which was just across the street from the café where Gabriel was sitting. He said he needed a few minutes of her time. He promised he would make it well worth her while. He never mentioned a name.