The English Assassin

  When he turned and walked away, the car engine tried to turn over and hesitated, because the bomb Tariq had placed there was drawing its power from the battery. He turned and shouted for Leah to stop, but she must not have heard him, because she turned the key a second time.

  Some primeval instinct to protect the young made him rush to Dani first, but he was already dead, his body blown to pieces. So he went to Leah and pulled her from the flaming wreckage. She would survive, though it might have been better had she not. Now she lived in a psychiatric hospital in the south of England, afflicted with a combination of post-traumatic stress syndrome and psychotic depression. She had never spoken to Gabriel since that night in Vienna.

  This he didn’t tell Anna Rolfe.

  “ITmust have been difficult for you—being back in Vienna.”

  “It was the first time.”

  “Where did you meet her?”

  “At school.”

  “Was she an artist too?”

  “She was much better than I am.”

  “Was she beautiful?”

  “She was very beautiful. Now she has scars.”

  “We all have scars, Gabriel.”

  “Not like Leah.”

  “Why did the Palestinian plant the bomb beneath the car?”

  “Because I killed his brother.”

  Before she could ask another question, a Volvo truck pulled into the parking lot and flashed its lights. Gabriel started the car and followed it to the edge of a pine grove outside the town. The driver hopped down from the cab and quickly pulled open the rear door. Gabriel and Anna got out of their car, Anna holding the small safe-deposit box, Gabriel the one containing the paintings. He paused briefly to hurl the car keys deep into the trees.

  The container of the truck was filled with office furniture: desks, chairs, bookshelves, file cabinets. The driver said, “Go to the front of the cabin, lie down on the floor, and cover yourself with those extra freight blankets.”

  Gabriel went first, clambering over the furniture, the deposit box in his arms. Anna followed. At the front of the cabin, there was just enough room for them to sit with their knees beneath their chins. When Anna was in place, Gabriel covered them both with the blanket. The darkness was absolute.

  The truck teetered onto the road, and for several minutes they sped along the motorway. Gabriel could feel the tire spray on the undercarriage. Anna began to hum softly.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I always hum when I’m scared.”

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise,” he said. “So what were you humming?”

  “ ‘The Swan’ fromThe Carnival of Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns.”

  “Will you play it for me sometime?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I never play for my friends.”

  TENminutes later: the border. The truck joined a queue of vehicles waiting to make the crossing into Germany. It crept forward a few inches at a time: accelerate, brake, accelerate,brake. Their heads rolled back and forth like a pair of children’s toys. Each touch of the brake produced a deafening screech of protest; each press of the throttle another blast of poisonous diesel fumes. Anna leaned her cheek against his shoulder and whispered, “Now I thinkI’m going to be sick.” Gabriel squeezed her hand.

  ONthe other side of the border another car was waiting, a dark-blue Ford Fiesta with Munich registration. Ari Shamron’s truck driver dropped them and continued on his synthetic journey to nowhere. Gabriel loaded the safe-deposit boxes into the trunk and started driving—the E41 to Stuttgart, the E52 to Karlsruhe, the E35 to Frankfurt. Once during the night he stopped to telephone Tel Aviv on an emergency line, and he spoke briefly with Shamron.

  At 2A .M. they arrived in the Dutch market town of Delft, a few miles inland from the coast. Gabriel could drive no farther. His eyes burned, his ears were ringing with exhaustion. In eight hours, a ferry would leave from Hoek van Holland for the English port of Harwich, and Gabriel and Anna would be on it, but for now he needed a bed and a few hours of rest, so they drove through the streets of the old town looking for a hotel.

  He found one, on the Vondelstraat, within sight of the spire of the Nieuwe Kerk. Anna handled the formalities at the front desk while Gabriel waited in the tiny parlor with the two safe-deposit boxes. A moment later, they were escorted up a narrow staircase to an overheated room with a peaked ceiling and a gabled window, which Gabriel immediately opened.

  He placed the boxes in the closet; then he pulled off his shoes and stretched out on the bed. Anna slipped into the bathroom, and a moment later Gabriel heard the comforting sound of water splashing against enamel. The cold night air blew through the open window. Scented with the North Sea, it caressed his face. He permitted himself to close his eyes.

  A few minutes later Anna came out of the bathroom. A burst of light announced her arrival; then she reached out and threw the wall switch, and the room was in darkness again, except for the weak glow of streetlamps seeping through the window.

  “Are you awake?”

  “No.”

  “Aren’t you going to sleep on the floor, the way you did in Vienna?”

  “I can’t move.”

  She lifted the blanket and crawled into bed next to him.

  Gabriel said, “How did you know the password was ‘adagio’?”

  “Albinoni’s “Adagio” was one of the first pieces I learned to play. For some reason, it remained my father’s favorite.” Her lighter flared in the darkness. “My father wanted forgiveness for his sins. He wanted absolution. He was willing to turn to you for that but not to me. Why didn’t my father ask me for forgiveness?”

  “He probably didn’t think you’d give it to him.”

  “It sounds as though you speak from experience. Has your wife ever forgiven you?”

  “No, I don’t think she has.”

  “And what about you? Have you ever forgiven yourself?”

  “I wouldn’t call it forgiveness.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Accommodation. I’ve reached accommodation with myself.”

  “My father died without absolution. He probably deserved that. But I want to finish what he set out to do. I want to get those paintings back and send them to Israel.”

  “So do I.”

  “How?”

  “Go to sleep, Anna.”

  Which she did. Gabriel lay awake, waiting for the dawn, listening to the gulls on the canal and the steady rhythm of Anna’s breathing. No demons tonight, no nightmares—the guiltless sleep of a child. Gabriel did not join her. He wasn’t ready to sleep yet. When the paintings were locked away in Julian Isherwood’s vault—then he would sleep.

  Part Three

  32

  NIDWALDEN, SWITZERLAND

  ON THE EVEof the Second World War, General Henri Guisan, the commander in chief of Switzerland’s armed forces, announced a desperate plan to deal with an invasion by the overwhelmingly superior forces of Nazi Germany. If the Germans come, Guisan said, the Swiss Army would withdraw to the natural fortress of the Alpine Redoubt and blow up the tunnels. And there they would fight, in the deep valleys and on the high mountain ice fields, to the last man. It had not come to that, of course. Hitler realized early in the war that a neutral Switzerland would be more valuable to him than a Switzerland in chains and under occupation. Still, the general’s heroic strategy for dealing with the threat of invasion lives on in the imagination of the Swiss.

  Indeed, it was on Gerhardt Peterson’s mind the following afternoon as he skirted Lucerne and the Alps loomed before him, shrouded in cloud. Peterson could feel his heart beat faster as he pressed the accelerator and his big Mercedes roared up the first mountain pass. Peterson came from Inner Switzerland, and he could trace his lineage back to the tribesmen of the Forest Cantons. He took a certain comfort in the knowledge that people with his bl
ood had roamed these mountain valleys at the same time a young man called Jesus of Nazareth was stirring up trouble at the other end of the Roman Empire. He became uneasy whenever he ventured too far from the security of his Alpine Redoubt. He remembered an official visit to Russia he had made a few years earlier. The limitless quality of the countryside had played havoc with his senses. In his Moscow hotel room, he had suffered his first and only bout of insomnia. When he returned home, he went straight to his country house and spent a day hiking along the mountain trails above Lake Lucerne. That night he slept.

  But his sudden trip into the Alps that afternoon had nothing to do with pleasure. It had been precipitated by two pieces of bad news. The first was the discovery of an abandoned Audi A8 on a road near the town of Bargen, a few miles from the German border. A check of the registration revealed that the car had been rented the previous evening in Zurich by Anna Rolfe. The second was a report from an informant on the Bahnhofstrasse. The affair was spinning out of control; Peterson could feel it slipping away.

  It began to snow, big downy flakes that turned the afternoon to white. Peterson switched on his amber fog lamps and kept his foot down. One hour later, he was rolling through the town of Stans. By the time he reached the gates of the Gessler estate, three inches of new snow covered the ground.

  As he slipped the car into park, a pair of Gessler’s security men appeared, dressed in dark-blue ski jackets and woolen caps. A moment later, the formalities of identification and scrutiny behind him, Peterson was rolling up the drive toward Gessler’s chateau. There, another man waited, tossing bits of raw meat to a ravenous Alsatian bitch.

  ONthe shores of Lake Lucerne, not far from Otto Gessler’s mountain home, is the legendary birthplace of the Swiss Confederation. In 1291, the leaders of the three so-called Forest Cantons—Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden—are said to have gathered in the Rütli Meadow and formed a defensive alliance against anyone who “may plot evil against their persons or goods.” The event is sacred to the Swiss. A mural of the Rütli Meadow adorns the wall of the Swiss National Council chamber, and each August the meeting on the meadow is remembered with a national day of celebration.

  Seven hundred years later, a similar defensive alliance was formed by a group of the country’s richest and most powerful private bankers and industrialists. In 1291, the enemy had been an outsider: the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf I of the Hapsburg dynasty, who was trying to assert his feudal rights in Switzerland. Today, once again, the enemies were outsiders, but now they were scattered and more numerous. They were the Jews who were trying to pry open the bank vaults of Switzerland to look for money and whatever else they could lay their hands on. They were the governments demanding that Switzerland pay billions of dollars for accepting Nazi gold during the Second World War. And the journalists and historians who were trying to paint the Swiss as willing allies of Germany—Hitler’s money men and arms suppliers who prolonged the war at the cost of millions of lives. And the reformers inside Switzerland who were demanding an end to the sacred laws of banking secrecy.

  This new alliance took its inspiration from the fiercely independent forest dwellers who gathered along Lake Lucerne in 1291. Like their ancestors, they swore to fight anyone who “may plot evil against their persons or goods.” They saw the events raging beyond their Alpine Redoubt as a gathering storm that could wipe away the institutions that had given Switzerland, a tiny, landlocked country with few natural resources, the second-highest standard of living in the world. They called themselves the Council of Rütli, and their leader was Otto Gessler.

  PETERSONhad expected to be shown, as usual, to Otto Gessler’s makeshift television studio. Instead, the guard escorted him along a lamplit footpath to a single-level wing of the chateau. Passing through an unusually heavy set of French doors, Peterson was greeted by a sweltering tropical heat and an opaque cloud of vapor that reeked of chlorine. Ornate lamps glowed through the mist like storm lanterns, and turquoise water made wavelike patterns on the soaring open-beamed ceiling. The room was quiet except for the ripple of Otto Gessler’s laborious crawl. Peterson removed his overcoat and scarf and waited for Gessler to complete his lap. The snow that had collected on his leather city loafers quickly melted, soaking his socks.

  “Gerhardt?” A pause for air, another stroke. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, Herr Gessler.”

  “I hope—the snow—didn’t make—your drive—too difficult.”

  “Not at all, Herr Gessler.”

  Peterson hoped the old man would take a break; otherwise they were going to be at it all night. A bodyguard appeared at the edge of the pool, then receded behind a veil of mist.

  “You wished to speak to me about the Rolfe case, Gerhardt?”

  “Yes, Herr Gessler. I’m afraid we may have a problem.”

  “I’m listening.”

  For the next ten minutes, Peterson brought Gessler up to date on the case. Gessler swam while Peterson spoke. Splash, silence, splash,silence . . .

  “What conclusion do you draw from these developments?”

  “That they know more about what happened to Augustus Rolfe and the collection than we would wish.”

  “An obstinate people, don’t you agree, Gerhardt?”

  “The Jews?”

  “Never can seem to leave well enough alone. Always looking for trouble. I won’t be beaten by them, Gerhardt.”

  “No, of course not, Herr Gessler.”

  Through the curtain of mist, Peterson glimpsed Gessler rising slowly up the steps of the shallow end of the pool; a pale figure, shockingly frail. A bodyguard covered his shoulders in a toweling robe. Then the curtain of mist closed once more, and Gessler was gone.

  “She needs to be eliminated,” came the dry, disembodied voice. “So does the Israeli.”

  Peterson frowned. “There will be consequences. Anna Rolfe is a national treasure. If she is murdered so soon after her father, there are bound to be uncomfortable questions, especially in the press.”

  “You may rest assured that there will be no outpouring of national grief if Anna Rolfe is killed. She refuses even to live in Switzerland, and she’s almost done herself in any number of times. And as for the press, they can ask all the questions they want. Without facts, their stories will read like conspiratorial gossip. I only care whether the authorities ask questions. And that’s what we pay you for, Gerhardt—to make certain the authorities don’t ask questions.”

  “I should also warn you that the Israeli secret service does not play by the usual rules. If we target one of their agents for assassination, they’ll come after us.”

  “I’m not afraid of the Jews, Gerhardt, and you shouldn’t be, either. Contact Anton Orsati right away. I’ll move some additional funds into your operational account, as well as something extra into your personal account. Consider it an incentive to make certain that this affair is resolved quickly and quietly.”

  “That’s not necessary, Herr Gessler.”

  “I know it’s not necessary, but you’ve earned it.”

  Peterson hastily changed the subject. He didn’t like to think about the money too much. It made him feel like a whore. “I really should be getting back to Zurich, Herr Gessler. The weather.”

  “You’re welcome to spend the night here.”

  “No, I really should be getting back.”

  “Suit yourself, Gerhardt.”

  “May I ask you a question, Herr Gessler?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Did you know Herr Rolfe?”

  “Yes, I knew him well. He and I were quite close once. In fact, I was there the morning his wife committed suicide. She dug her own grave and shot herself. It was young Anna who discovered the body. A terrible thing. Herr Rolfe’s death was unfortunate but necessary. It wasn’t personal, it was business. Youdo understand the difference, don’t you, Gerhardt?”

  33

  LONDON

  JULIANISHERWOODwas seated at his desk, leafing through a stack of paperwork, when he
heard the sound of a delivery truck rumbling across the bricks of Mason’s Yard. He walked to his window and peered out. A man in blue coveralls was climbing out the front passenger side and making his way to the door. A moment later came the howl of the buzzer.

  “Irina? Did you schedule any deliveries for today?”

  “No, Mr. Isherwood.”

  Oh, Christ,thought Isherwood.Not again.

  “Irina?”

  “Yes, Mr. Isherwood?”

  “I’m feeling a bit hungry, petal. Would you be a love and bring me a panini from that marvelous shop in Piccadilly?”

  “I’d like nothing better, Mr. Isherwood. May I perform any other meaningless and degrading tasks for you?”

  “No need to be snotty, Irina. Cuppa tea as well. And take your time.”

  THEREwas something about the man in blue coveralls that reminded Isherwood of the fellow who had searched his house for termites. He wore rubber-soled shoes and worked with the quiet efficiency of a night nurse. In one hand was a device about the size of a cigar box with meters and dials; in the other was a long wand, like a flyswatter. He began in the basement storerooms, then moved to Irina’s office, then Isherwood’s, then the exposition room. Lastly, he tore apart the telephones, the computers, and the fax machine. After forty-five minutes, he returned to Isherwood’s office and laid two tiny objects on the desk.

  “You had bugs,” he said. “Now they’re dead.”

  “Who in God’s name put them in here?”

  “That’s not my job. I’m just the exterminator.” He smiled. “There’s someone downstairs who’d like a word with you.”

  Isherwood led the way through the cluttered storerooms to the loading bay. He opened the outer door, and the delivery truck pulled inside.

  “Close the door,” said the man in the blue coveralls.