Daniel Silva - The English Assassin

She could hear the murmur of a conversation beyond her closed door. She threw a switch in her mind, and it was gone. Through the walls seeped the low din of the upper hall beginning to fill with members of the audience. She threw the switch, and it too was gone.

It’s just you and me, fiddle. Just you and me…

She thought of the man in Gabriel’s photographs, the assassin known as the Englishman. It had been a long time since she had been able to put her trust in a man. She supposed her father’s betrayal-the lies he had told her about the reasons for her mother’s suicide-had spoiled her for all men. But tonight she would place her life in the hands of Gabriel Allon. Her father had set in motion a plan to try to atone for terrible sins he had committed. He was murdered before he was able to finish what he started. Gabriel would have to finish it for him. And Anna would help him the only way she knew how-by playing her violin. Beautifully.

The bubble began to close around her, to enfold her. There was no assassin, no photograph of her father with Adolf Hitler, no Gabriel Allon. Just her and the violin.

There was a faint tapping at the door. Instantly, Anna’s bow stopped.

“Five minutes, Miss Rolfe.”

“Thank you.”

The bow slid along the string once more. The sound flowed through her body. The violin turned to fire against her skin. The bubble closed around her. She was lost. Soon the door was open and she was floating toward the upper hall. As she entered the room she assumed there was applause-she knew this only from experience, not from any information she was receiving from her senses. She could not see the audience, nor could she hear it.

She dipped her head and waited an instant before lifting the violin above her shoulder and pressing it to her neck. Then she laid the bow on the strings, hesitated, and began to play.

GABRIEL established his watch post beneath Tintoretto’s Temptation of Christ. Slowly, his eyes swept the room. Person by person, face by face, he searched the chamber for the man in the photograph. If the assassin was there, Gabriel did not see him.

He checked the disposition of his team. Yitzhak stood directly across the hall from Gabriel. A few feet away, at the top of the staircase, stood Moshe. Shimon and Ilana roamed the back of the hall, and a few feet to Gabriel’s right was Jonathan, arms folded, chin on his chest, his dark gaze up.

For a moment he allowed himself to look at Anna. She performed “The Devil’s Trill” unaccompanied, as Tartini had intended. The first movement was spellbinding-the floating and distant snatches of simple melody, the hints of Baroque ornamentation; the repeated intrusion of the unsettling double-stop of E-flat and G. The Devil’s chord.

Anna played with her eyes closed, her body swaying slightly, as if she were physically drawing sound from her instrument. She was no more than ten feet away from him, but for now Gabriel knew she was lost to him. She belonged to the music now, and whatever bond that had existed between them was broken.

He watched her now as an admirer-and vaguely, he thought, as a restorer. He had helped her to discover the truth about her father and to come to terms with her family’s past. The damage was still there, he thought, but it was concealed, invisible to the naked eye, like in a perfect restoration.

She executed the treacherous chromatic descent at the end of the first movement. Pausing for a moment, she began the second movement. Mischievous and faster-paced, it was full of demanding string crossings that required her hand to move repeatedly from the first position to the fifth and from the E string to the G. Eighteen minutes later, when the third movement dissolved into a final arpeggiated G-minor chord, the audience exploded into applause.

Anna lowered the violin and drew several deep breaths. Only then did she open her eyes. She acknowledged the applause with a slight bow. If she ever looked at Gabriel, he did not know it, because by then he had turned his back to her and was scanning the room, looking for a man with a gun.

A STEADY RAIN was falling on the Campo San Rocco. The miserable weather did nothing to dampen the spirits of the large crowd that lingered there after the recital, hoping for one last glimpse of Anna Rolfe. The atmosphere was electrically charged. After performing “The Devil’s Trill,” Anna had been joined onstage by her longtime accompanist, Nadine Rosenberg, for Brahms’s Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano in D Minor and Pablo Sarasate’s Zigeunerweisen. The evening’s final piece, Paganini’s demonic solo Caprice No. 24, had brought the audience to its feet.

Anna Rolfe was unaware of the crowd outside. At that moment she was standing in the gallery behind the stage with Zaccaria Cordoni and Fiona Richardson. Fiona was conducting an animated conversation in German on her mobile telephone. Anna was smoking a much-deserved Gitane, trying to come down off the high of the performance. She was still holding the violin. The old Guarneri had been good to her tonight. She wanted it near her a little longer.

Gabriel was standing a few feet away, watching her carefully. Anna caught his eye briefly and smiled. She mouthed the words thank you and discreetly blew him a kiss. Fiona ended her conversation and slipped the telephone into her pocketbook.

“Word travels fast, my dear. You’re going to have a busy winter. Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, and Berlin. And that’s just the first week.”

“I’m not sure I’m really ready to get back on the merry-go-round again, Fiona.”

Zaccaria Cordoni laid a hand on her shoulder. “If I may be presumptuous, you are definitely ready. Your performance tonight was inspired. You played like a woman possessed.”

“Maybe I am possessed,” she said mischievously.

Fiona smiled and glanced toward Gabriel. “You want to tell us about your mysterious Frenchman-the handsome Monsieur Dumont?”

“Actually, what I’d like to do is spend a few minutes alone.”

She walked across the room and took Gabriel’s hand. Fiona and Cordoni watched them walk down the corridor to the dressing room. Fiona frowned.

“Whoever Monsieur Dumont is, I hope he doesn’t break her heart like the others. She’s like fine crystal: beautiful but easily broken. And if that bastard breaks her, I’ll kill him.”

ANNA closed the door of her dressing room and collapsed into Gabriel’s arms.

“You were amazing tonight.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I just watched over you to make sure nothing happened. You’re the one who made magic.”

“I wish we could celebrate.”

“You’re getting on a plane out of here. And I have a job to do.”

“Was he here tonight?”

“The assassin?”

She nodded, her head pressed against his chest.

“I don’t know, Anna.”

She sat down, suddenly exhausted. On the coffee table in front of her was the case for the Guarneri. She undid the latches and lifted the lid. Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded in half, with Anna written on it.

She looked up at Gabriel. “Did you leave this for me?”

“Leave what?”

“This note in my violin case. It wasn’t here when I left the room to go onstage.”

She reached into the case and picked it up. When she did, an object slipped out. It was a narrow length of leather, and hanging from the end of it was a piece of red coral, shaped like a hand.

GABRIEL reached into the case and removed the pendant, his heart pounding against his ribs. “What does the note say?”

“ ‘You need this more than I do. Tell Gabriel he owes me one. With compliments.’ ”