The English Assassin (Gabriel Allon 02) Page 3

  The natural inclination when stabbing a man is to do it from behind, so that the killer and victim are never face-to-face, but the Englishman had been trained to kill with a knife from the front. In this case it meant the element of surprise was lost, but the Englishman was a creature of habit and believed in doing things by the book.

  He moved a few feet forward, so that he was standing behind the girl. Her hair spilled down a long,V - shaped back. His eye followed the line of her spinal column to the slender waist, to the rounded child-bearing hips and curved buttocks.

  Navarra opened his eyes. Frantically he tried to push the girl out of the way. The assassin did it for him, taking a handful of her hair and tossing her across the room, so that she skidded along the hardwood floor on her backside and toppled a standing lamp.

  Navarra, without taking his eyes from the intruder, reached backward across the rumpled sheets and beat his palm against a twisted pile of clothing. So, he had a gun. The Englishman stepped forward and took hold of the Basque’s throat with his left hand, squeezing his larynx to the breaking point. Then he pushed the man down onto the bed, settling atop him with one knee on his abdomen. Navarra writhed, struggling for air, the look on his face a combination of panic and utter resignation.

  The Englishman thrust the knife into the soft tissue beneath the Basque’s rib cage, angling upward toward the heart. The man’s eyes bulged and his body stiffened, then relaxed. Blood pumped over the blade of the knife.

  The Englishman removed the knife from the dead man’s chest and stood up. The girl scrambled to her feet. Then she stepped forward and slapped him hard across the face.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  The Englishman didn’t know quite what to make of this woman. She had just watched him stab her lover to death, but she was acting as if he had tracked mud across her clean floor.

  She hit him a second time. “I work for Aragón, you idiot! I’ve been seeing Navarra for a month. We were about to arrest him and take down the rest of his cell. Who sent you here? It wasn’t Aragón. He would have told me.”

  She stood there, awaiting his reply, seemingly unashamed of her nudity.

  “I work for Castillo.” He spoke calmly and in fluent Spanish. He didn’t know anyone called Castillo—it was just the first name that popped into his head. Where had he seen it? The bakery? Yes, that was it. The bakery across the street.

  She asked, “Who’s Castillo?”

  “The man I work for.”

  “Does Castillo work for Aragón?”

  “How should I know? Why don’t you call Aragón? He’ll call Castillo, and we’ll straighten this mess out.”

  “Fine.”

  “Call him on that telephone over there.”

  “I will, you fucking idiot!”

  “Just do it quietly, before you alert every tenant in the building that we’ve just killed a man.”

  She folded her arms across her breasts, as if she was aware of her nakedness for the first time. “What’s your name?”

  “I’m not telling you my name.”

  “Why not?”

  “How do I know you really work for Aragón? Maybe you work with lover boy here. Maybe you’re a member of his cell. Maybe you’re going to call some of his friends, and they’ll come here and kill me.”

  He raised the bloody knife and ran his thumb across the blade. The girl scowled. “Don’t even think about trying it! Fucking idiot!”

  “Get Aragón on the line. Then I’ll tell you my name.”

  “You’re going to be in big trouble.”

  “Just get Aragón on the phone, and I’ll explain everything.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, snatched up the receiver, and violently punched in the number. The Englishman moved a step closer and placed his finger on the cradle, severing the connection.

  “What do you think you’re doing? What’s your name?”

  The assassin brought the blade across her throat in a slashing movement. He stepped back to avoid the initial geyserlike burst of blood; then he knelt before her and watched the life draining out of her eyes. As she slipped away he leaned forward and whispered his name into her ear.

  THEEnglishman spent the rest of the day driving: the fast road from Vitoria to Barcelona, then the coast highway from Barcelona across the border to Marseilles. Late that evening he boarded a passenger ferry for the night crossing to Corsica.

  He was dressed like a typical Corsican man: loose-fitting cotton trousers, dusty leather sandals, a heavy sweater against the autumn chill. His dark brown hair was cropped short. The poplin suit and brimmed hat he’d worn in Vitoria were resting in the rubbish bin of a roadside café in Bordeaux. The silver wig had been tossed out the car window into a mountain gorge. The car itself, registered to a David Mandelson, one of his many false identities, had been returned to the rental agent in town.

  He went below deck to his cabin. It was private, with its own shower and toilet. He left his small leather grip on the berth and went up to the passenger deck. The ferry was nearly empty, a few people gathering in the bar for a drink and a bite to eat. He was tired after the long drive, but his strict sense of internal discipline would not permit him to sleep until he had scanned the faces of the passengers.

  He toured the deck, saw nothing alarming, then went into the bar, where he ordered a half-liter of red wine and fell into conversation with a Corsican named Matteo. Matteo lived in the northwest part of the island, like the Englishman, but two valleys to the south in the shadow of Monte d’Oro. It had been twenty years since he had been to the Englishman’s valley. Such was the rhythm of life on the island.

  The conversation turned to the arson fire that had ravaged the Englishman’s valley the previous dry season. “Did they ever find out who did it?” Matteo asked, helping himself to some of the Englishman’s wine. When the Englishman told him the authorities suspected the separatists from the FLNC, the Corsican lit a cigarette and spit smoke at the ceiling. “Young hotheads!” he growled, and the Englishman nodded slowly in agreement.

  After an hour he bid Matteo good night and returned to his cabin. In his suitcase was a small radio. He listened to the midnight newscast on a Marseilles station. After a few minutes of local news, there was a roundup of foreign stories. In the West Bank, there had been another day of fighting between Palestinian and Israeli forces. In Spain, two members of the Basque terror group ETA had been murdered in the town of Vitoria. And in Switzerland, a prominent banker named Augustus Rolfe had been found murdered in his home in an exclusive Zurich neighborhood. An unidentified man was in custody. The Englishman switched off the radio, closed his eyes, and was immediately asleep.

  3

  ZURICH

  THE HEADQUARTERSof the Stadtpolizei Zurich was located only a few hundred meters from the train station on the Zeughausstrasse, wedged between the smoke-colored Sihl River and a sprawling rail yard. Gabriel had been led across a stone central courtyard into the aluminum-and-glass annex which housed the murder squad. There he was placed in a windowless interrogation room furnished with a table of blond wood and a trio of mismatched chairs. His luggage had been seized, along with his paints, brushes, and chemicals. So had his wallet, his passport, and his mobile telephone. They had even taken his wristwatch. He supposed they were hoping he would become disoriented and confused. He was confident that he knew more about the techniques of interrogation than the Zurich police did.

  He had been questioned three times by three different officers: once briefly at the train station, before being taken into custody, and twice more in this room. Judging by clothing and age, the importance of his interrogators was getting progressively greater.

  The door opened and a single officer entered the room. He wore a tweed coat and no tie. He called himself Sergeant-Major Baer. He sat down opposite Gabriel, placed a file on the table, and stared at it as if it was a chessboard and he was contemplating his next move.

  “Tell me your name,” he blurted in Eng
lish.

  “It hasn’t changed since the last time I was asked.”

  “Tell me your name.”

  “My name is Mario Delvecchio.”

  “Where do you reside?”

  “Port Navas, Cornwall.”

  “England?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are an Italian, but you live in England?”

  “That’s not a crime the last time I checked.”

  “I didn’t say it was, but it is interesting, though. What do you do in Port Navas, England?”

  “I told the first three officers who questioned me.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “I’m an art restorer.”

  “Why are you in Zurich?”

  “I was hired to clean a painting.”

  “At the villa on the Zürichberg?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who hired you to clean this painting?Clean? Is that the word you used? Peculiar word: clean. One thinks of cleaning floors, cleaning cars or clothing. But not paintings. Is that a common expression in your line of work?”

  “Yes,” said Gabriel and the inspector seemed disappointed he did not elaborate.

  “Who hired you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it was never made clear to me. The arrangements were made by a lawyer in Zurich and an art dealer in London.”

  “Ah, yes—Julius Isherwood.”

  “Julian.”

  With a Germanic reverence for paperwork, the detective made a vast show of expunging the offending word and carefully penciling in the correction. When he had finished, he looked up triumphantly, as if awaiting applause. “Go on.”

  “I was simply told to go to the villa. I would be met there and shown inside.”

  “Met by whom?”

  “That was never made clear to me.”

  Isherwood’s fax was in the file. The detective slipped on a pair of half-moon glasses and held the fax up to the light. His lips moved as he read. “When did you arrive in Zurich?”

  “You have the stub of my train ticket. You know that I arrived this morning.”

  The detective pulled a frown that said he did not like suspects telling him what he did and didn’t know.

  “Where did you go after you arrived?”

  “Straight to the villa.”

  “You didn’t check into your hotel first?”

  “No, I didn’t know where I was staying yet.”

  “Wherewere you planning to stay?”

  “As you can see from the note that was left for me at the villa, arrangements had been made for me to stay at the Dolder Grand Hotel.”

  Baer overlooked this seeming misstep and carried on.

  “How did you get from Hauptbahnhof to the villa?”

  “By taxi.”

  “How much was the fare?”

  “About fifteen francs.”

  “What time did you arrive at the villa?”

  “Two minutes after nine o’clock.”

  “How can you be so certain of the time?”

  “Look at the fax from Julian Isherwood. I was told to arrive at precisely nine o’clock. I don’t make a habit of being late for appointments, Sergeant-Major Baer.”

  The detective smiled in admiration. He was a prompt man, and he appreciated punctuality and attention to detail in others, even if he suspected them of murder.

  “And when you arrived at the villa?”

  “I used the security phone, but no one answered. So I called Mr. Isherwood in London. He told me that the person who was supposed to meet me had been called out of town suddenly.”

  “Is that what he said? ‘Called out of town’?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And this Mr. Isherwood gave you the codes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who gave Mr. Isherwood the codes?”

  “I don’t know. The man’s lawyer, I suppose.”

  “Did you write the codes down?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It wasn’t necessary.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I memorized the codes.”

  “Really? You must have a very good memory, Signore Delvecchio.”

  THEdetective left the room for fifteen minutes. When he returned, he had a cup of coffee for himself and nothing for Gabriel. He sat down and resumed where he had left off.

  “These arrangements seem peculiar to me, Signore Delvecchio. Is it customary that you are kept unaware of the artist until you arrive to begin work on a restoration?”

  “No, it isn’t customary. In fact, it’s unusual.”

  “Indeed.” He sat back and folded his arms, as though this admission were tantamount to a signed confession. “Is it also customary that you are not given the name of the owner of a painting you are restoring?”

  “It’s not unheard of.”

  “Rolfe.” He looked at Gabriel to see if the name produced any reaction, which it did not. “The person who owns the painting is named Augustus Rolfe. He is also the man you murdered in the villa.”

  “I didn’t murder anyone, and you know it. He was killed long before I arrived in Zurich. I was still on the train when he was murdered. A hundred people can place me on that train.”

  The detective seemed unmoved by Gabriel’s argument. He sipped his coffee. “Tell me what happened after you entered the villa.”

  Gabriel recounted the chain of events in a dull monotone: the dark entrance hall, groping for the light switch, the unsigned letter in the bowl on the table, the strange odor in the air as he entered the drawing room, the discovery of the body.

  “Did you see the painting?”

  “Yes.”

  “Before you saw the body or after?”

  “After.”

  “And how long did you look at it?”

  “I don’t know. A minute or so.”

  “You’ve just discovered a dead body, but you stop to look at a painting.” The detective didn’t seem to know what to make of this piece of information. “Tell me about this painter”—he looked down at his notes—“Raphael. I’m afraid I know little of art.”

  Gabriel could tell he was lying but decided to play along. For the next fifteen minutes, he delivered a detailed lecture on the life and work of Raphael: his training and his influences, the innovations of his technique, the lasting relevance of his major works. By the time he had finished, the policeman was staring into the remains of his coffee, a beaten man.

  “Would you like me to go on?”

  “No, thank you. That was very helpful. If you did not kill Augustus Rolfe, why did you leave the villa without telephoning the police? Why did you try to flee Zurich?”

  “I knew the circumstances would appear suspicious, so I panicked.”

  The detective looked him over skeptically, as if he did not quite believe Mario Delvecchio was a man given to panic. “How did you get from the Zürichberg to the Hauptbahnhof?”

  “I took the tram.”

  Baer made a careful inspection of Gabriel’s seized possessions. “I don’t see a tram ticket among your things. Surely you purchased a ticket before you boarded the streetcar?”

  Gabriel shook his head: guilty as charged. Baer’s eyebrows shot up. The notion that Gabriel had boarded a tram ticketless seemed more horrifying to him than the possibility that he had shot an old man in the head.

  “That’s a very serious offense, Signore Delvecchio! I’m afraid you’re going to be fined fifty francs!”

  “I’m deeply sorry.”

  “Have you been to Zurich before?”

  “No, never.”

  “Then how did you know which tram would take you to the Hauptbahnhof?”

  “It was a lucky guess, I suppose. It was heading in the right direction, so I got on.”

  “Tell me one more thing, Signore Delvecchio. Did you make any purchases while you were in Zurich?”

  “Purchases?”

  “D
id you buy anything? Did you do any shopping?”

  “I bought a pair of shoes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because while I was waiting to get into the villa, my shoes became soaked in the rain.”

  “You were panicked. You were afraid to go to the police, desperate to get out of Zurich, but you took time to get new shoes because your feet were wet?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned back in his chair and knocked on the door. It opened, and an arm appeared, holding an evidence bag containing Gabriel’s shoes.

  “We found these in a toilet at the Hauptbanhof, buried in a rubbish bin. I suspect they’re yours. I also suspect that they will match the set of bloody footprints we found in the entrance hall and the walkway of the villa.”

  “I’ve already told you I was there. The footprints, if they do match those shoes, prove nothing.”

  “Rather nice shoes to simply toss away in the toilet of a rail station. And they don’t look that wet to me.” He looked up at Gabriel and smiled briefly. “But then, I’ve heard it said that people who panic easily often have sensitive feet.”

  ITwas three hours before Baer entered the room again. For the first time he was not alone. It was obvious to Gabriel that the new man represented higher authority. It was also obvious that he was not an ordinary detective from the Zurich murder squad. Gabriel could see it in the small ways that Baer deferred to him physically, the way his heels clicked together when, like a headwaiter, he seated the new man at the interrogation table and moved unobtrusively into the background.

  The man called himself Peterson. He provided no first name and no professional information. He wore an immaculately pressed suit of charcoal gray and a banker’s tie. His hair was nearly white and neatly trimmed. His hands, folded on the table in front of him, were the hands of a pianist. On his left wrist was a thick silver watch, Swiss-made of course, with a dark blue face, an instrument that could withstand the pressure of great depths. He studied Gabriel for a moment with slow, humorless eyes. He had the natural arrogance of a man who knows secrets and keeps files.