The English Assassin

witnesses, no evidence.”
    The movie-star-handsome face of Ali Abdel Hamidi flashed in Gabriel’s memory. Within the corridors of King Saul Boulevard, the amorous Palestinian has been known as the Swordsman of Allah. Writer of plays that graced no stage, seducer and manipulator of foolish young women. Would you mind delivering this package to this address for me? You’re flying to Tel Aviv? Would you mind taking a package to a friend? The packages would inevitably be filled with explosives, and his lovers would be blown to bits along with anyone else who happened to be nearby. One night in Zurich, Hamidi met a university student named Trude in a bar in the Niederdorf section. When the girl suggested they go back to her flat, Hamidi agreed. Five minutes later, she led him into the narrow alley where Gabriel was waiting with a .22-caliber Beretta. Even now, Gabriel could hear the sound of bullets tearing into Hamidi’s body.
    “I suppose I should thank you for getting me out.”
    “A show of gratitude isn’t necessary. In fact, I’m afraid I owe you an apology.”
    “An apology? Whatever for?”
    “Because if it wasn’t for me, you would have never been at Augustus Rolfe’s villa in the first place.”
     
    RAMI, Shamron’s ever-present personal bodyguard, was behind the wheel of the car. Shamron told him to drive in circles at Kloten. For twenty minutes Gabriel watched the same parade of airline signs and departure gates marching past his window. In his mind he was seeing something else: flash frames of past operations, old colleagues and old enemies. His palms were damp, his heart was beating faster. Shamron. He had done it again.
    “Rolfe sent a message to us through our embassy,” Shamron began. “He wanted to meet with someone from the Office. He didn’t say why, but when a man like Augustus Rolfe wants to talk, we usually try to accommodate him. He wanted the meeting to be handled with discretion. I looked into Rolfe’s background and discovered he was an art collector. Naturally, I thought you were the perfect man for the job, so I arranged for you to be hired to clean one of his paintings. A Rubens, if I’m not mistaken.”
    “It was a Raphael.”

    Shamron pulled a face, as if to say such distinctions were of no interest to him. Art, music, literature, the theater—these things bored him. He was a man of the real world.
    “Did Isherwood know it was all a game?”
    “Julian? No, I’m afraid I deceived him as well.”
    “Why do it like this? Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”
    “Would you have done it?”
    “No.”
    A tilt of his bald head, another long pull from his Turkish cigarette— I rest my case. “I’m afraid the truth and I are somewhat estranged. I’m an old man, Gabriel. I’ve spent my entire life telling lies. To me, lies are more comfortable than the truth.”
    “Let me out of the car! I don’t want to hear any more!”
    “Let me finish.”
    “Shut up! I don’t want to hear your voice.”
    “Listen to me, Gabriel!” Shamron slammed his fist onto the console. “Augustus Rolfe, a Swiss banker, wanted to speak to us and for that he was murdered. I want to know what Rolfe was going to tell us, and I want to know who killed him for it!”
    “Find someone else, Ari. Investigating murder cases was never my specialty. Actually, thanks to you, I excelled at quite the other thing.”
    “Please, Gabriel, let’s not have this argument again.”
    “You and Peterson seem to be very tight. If you play the subservient Jew again, I’m sure he’d be willing to keep you abreast of all the developments in his investigation.”
    “Augustus Rolfe was killed because someone knew you were coming to Zurich—someone who didn’t want you to hear what Augustus Rolfe had to say. Someone who was willing to make it appear as though you were the killer.”
    “If that was their intention, they did a damned lousy job of it. I was on the train from Paris at the time Rolfe was killed.” Gabriel was calmer now. He was furious with Shamron for deceiving him, but at the same time he was intrigued. “What do you know about Augustus Rolfe?”
    “The Rolfe family has been stashing money beneath the Bahnhofstrasse for a couple of hundred years. They’re one of the most prominent banking families in Switzerland.”
    “Who would want him dead?”
    “A lot of dirty money has flowed through the numbered accounts of Rolfe’s bank. It’s safe to assume he’d made his fair share of