Daniel Silva - The English Assassin

Anna tore the end off the loaf of Dinkelbrot . “Who’s ‘they’?” she repeated.

Gabriel wondered how long he had been silent, how many miles he had driven.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “But perhaps it went something like this.”

“DOyou really think it’s possible, Gabriel?”

“Actually, it’s the only logical explanation.”

“My God, I think I’m going to be sick. I want to get out of this country.”

“So do I.”

“So if your theory is correct, there’s still one more question to be answered.”

“What’s that?”

“Where are the paintings now?”

“The same place they’ve always been.”

“Where, Gabriel?”

“Here in Switzerland.”

THREE MILES from the German border, at the end of a narrow valley dotted with logging villages, stands drab little Bargen, famous in Switzerland if for no other reason than that it is the northernmost town in the country. Just off the motorway is a gas station and a market with a gravel parking lot. Gabriel shut down the car engine, and there they waited in the steel afternoon light.

“How long before they get here?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have to pee.”

“You have to hold it.”

“I always wondered how I would react in a situation like this, and now I have my answer. Faced with danger, a life-and-death situation, I’m overcome by an uncontrollable need to urinate.”

“You have incredible powers of concentration. Use them.”

“Is that what you would do?”

“I never urinate.”

She swatted his arm, gently, so as not to hurt his damaged hand.

“I heard you in the bathroom in Vienna. I heard you throwing up. You act as though nothing bothers you. But you’re human after all, Gabriel Allon.”

“Why don’t you smoke a cigarette? Maybe that will help you think of something else.”

“How did it feel to kill those men in my father’s house?”

Gabriel thought of Eli Lavon. “I didn’t have much time to consider the morality or the consequences of my actions. If I hadn’t killed them, they would have killed me.”

“I suppose it’s possible they were the ones who killed my father.”

“Yes, it’s possible.”

“Then I’m glad you killed them. Is that wrong for me to think that way?”

“No, it’s perfectly natural.”

She took his advice and lit a cigarette. “So now you know all the dirty secrets of my family. But today I realized that I really don’t know a thing about you.”

“You know more about me than most people do.”

“I know a little about what you do -but nothing about you. ”

“That’s as it should be.”

“Oh, come on, Gabriel. Are you really as cold and distant as you pretend to be?”

“I’ve been told I have a problem with preoccupation.”

“ Ah! That’s a start. Tell me something else.”

“What do you want to know?”

“You wear a wedding ring. Are you married?”

“Yes.”

“Do you live in Israel?”

“I live in England.”

“Do you have children?”

“We had a son, but he was killed by a terrorist’s bomb.” He looked at her coldly. “Is there anything else you’d like to know about me, Anna?”

HE supposed he did owe her something, after everything she had surrendered about herself and her father. But there was something else. He suddenly found that he actually wanted her to know. And so he told her about a night in Vienna, ten years earlier, when his enemy, a Palestinian terrorist named Tariq al-Hourani, planted a bomb beneath his car-a bomb that was meant to destroy his family because the Palestinian knew it would hurt Gabriel much more than killing him.

It had happened after dinner. Leah had been edgy throughout the meal, because the television above the bar was showing pictures of Scud missiles raining down on Tel Aviv. Leah was a good Israeli girl; she couldn’t stand the thought of eating pasta in a pleasant little Italian restaurant in Vienna while her mother was sitting in her flat in Tel Aviv with packing tape on the windows and a gas mask over her face.

After dinner they walked through drifting snow to Gabriel’s car. He strapped Dani into his safety seat, then kissed his wife and told her that he would be working late. It was a job for Shamron: an Iraqi intelligence officer who was plotting to kill Jews. This he didn’t tell Anna Rolfe.

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.

“IT must 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’ from The 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.”

TEN minutes 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 think I’m going to be sick.” Gabriel squeezed her hand.