The English Assassin

Prince of Wales is going to make time to attend, but you’re too busy.”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll never understand why you insist on allowing beautiful, talented women to slip through your fingers.”
    “Who said I was going to do that?”
    “You think she’s going to wait forever?”
    “No, just until the swelling goes down.”
    Shamron gave a dismissive wave of his thick hand. “You’re using your face as a convenient excuse not to see her. But I know the real reason. Life is for the living, Gabriel, and this pleasant little prison you’ve made for yourself is no life. It’s time for you to stop blaming yourself for what happened in Vienna. If you have to blame someone, blame me.”

    “I’m not going to London looking like this.”
    “If you won’t go to London, will you permit me to make another suggestion?”
    Gabriel let out a long, exasperated breath. He had lost the will to resist him any longer.
    “I’m listening,” he said.

49
    CORSICA
     
    T HAT SAME AFTERNOON, the Englishman invited Anton Orsati up to his villa for lunch. It was gusty and cold—too cold to be outside on the terrace—so they ate at the kitchen table and discussed some mildly pressing matters concerning the company. Don Orsati had just won a contract to supply oil to a chain of two dozen bistros stretching from Nice to Normandy. Now an American import-export company wanted to introduce the oil to specialty shops in the United States. Demand was beginning to outpace supply. Orsati needed more land and more trees. But would the fruit stand up to his exacting standards? Would quality suffer with expansion? That was the question they debated throughout the meal.
    After lunch, they settled next to the fire in the living room and drank red wine from an earthen pitcher. It was then that the Englishman confessed that he had acted with dishonor during the Rolfe affair.

    Orsati poured himself some more of the wine and smiled. “When the signadora told me you came home from Venice without your talisman, I knew something out of the ordinary had taken place. What happened to it, by the way?”
    “I gave it to Anna Rolfe.”
    “How?”
    The Englishman told him.
    Orsati was impressed. “I’d say you won that confrontation on points. How did you get the blazer?”
    “I borrowed it from a security guard at the scuola. ”
    “What happened to him?”
    The Englishman looked into the fire.
    Orsati murmured, “Poor devil.”
    “I asked nicely once.”
    “The question is, why? Why did you betray me, Christopher? Haven’t I been good to you?”
    The Englishman played the tape he’d taken from Emil Jacobi in Lyons. Then he gave Orsati the dossier he had prepared based on his own investigation and went into the kitchen to clean up the dishes from lunch. The Corsican was a notoriously slow reader.
    When he returned, Orsati was finishing the dossier. He closed the file, and his dark gaze settled on the Englishman. “Professor Jacobi was a very good man, but we are paid to kill people. If we spent all our time wrestling with questions of right and wrong, no work would ever get done.”
    “Is that the way your father conducted his business? And his father? And his?”
    Orsati pointed his thick forefinger like a gun at the Englishman’s face. “My family is none of your affair, Christopher. You work for me. Don’t ever forget that.”

    It was the first time Orsati had spoken to him in anger.
    “I meant no disrespect, Don Orsati.”
    The Corsican lowered his finger. “None taken.”
    “Do you know the story of the signadora and what happened to her husband?”
    “You know much about the history of this place, but not everything. How do you think the signadora keeps a roof over her head? Do you think she survives on the money she makes chasing away evil spirits with her magic oil and holy water?”
    “You take care of her?”
    Orsati gave a slow nod.
    “She told me that sometimes a taddunaghiu can dispense justice as well as vengeance.”
    “This is true. Don Tomasi certainly deserved to die.”
    “I know a man who deserves to die.”
    “The man in your dossier?”
    “Yes.”
    “It sounds as though he’s very well protected.”
    “I’m better than any of them.”
    Orsati held his glass up to the fire and watched the light dancing in the ruby-colored wine. “You’re very good, but killing a man like that will not be easy. You’ll need my help.”
    “You?”
    Orsati swallowed the last of his wine. “Who do you think