The English Assassin

course and took his business across the water. Now, his band of assassins was regarded as the most reliable and professional in Europe. They roamed the continent, killing on behalf of wealthy men, criminals, insurance cheats, and sometimes even governments. Most of the men they killed deserved to die, but competition and the exigencies of the modern age had required Anton Orsati to forsake the old code of his ancestors. Every job offer that crossed his desk was accepted, no matter how distasteful, as long as it did not place the life of one of his assassins in unreasonable danger.
    Orsati always found it slightly amusing that his most skilled employee was not a Corsican but an Englishman from Highgate in North London. Only Orsati knew the truth about him. That he had served in the famed Special Air Service. That he had killed men in Northern Ireland and Iraq. That his former masters believed him to be dead. Once, the Englishman showed Orsati a clipping from a London newspaper. His obituary. A very useful thing in this line of work, thought Orsati. People don’t often look for a dead man.
    He may have been born an Englishman, but Orsati always thought he had been given the restless soul of a Corsican. He spoke the dialect as well as Orsati, mistrusted outsiders, and despised all authority. At night he would sit in the village square with the old men, scowling at the boys on their skateboards and grumbling about how the young had no respect for the old ways. He was a man of honor—sometimes too much honor for Orsati’s taste. Still, he was a superb assassin, the finest Orsati had ever known. He had been trained by the most efficient killers on the planet, and Orsati had learned much from him. He was also perfectly suited to certain assignments on the continent, which is why Anton Orsati came calling on the Englishman’s villa that afternoon with an armful of groceries.
     
    ORSATIwas a descendant of a family of notables, but in dress and appetite he was not much different than the paesanu working his patch down the valley road. He wore a bleached white shirt, unbuttoned to the center of his barrel chest, and dusty leather sandals. The “lunch” that he brought with him consisted of a loaf of coarse bread, a flask of olive oil, a chunk of aromatic Corsican ham, and a lump of strong cheese. The Englishman provided the wine. The afternoon was warm, so they ate outside on the terrace overlooking the cul-de-sac valley, in the dappled shade of a pair of towering Corsican pines.
    Orsati handed the Englishman a check bearing the imprint of Orsati Olive Oil. All of Orsati’s assassins were officially employees of the company. The Englishman was a vice president for marketing, whatever that meant. “Your share of the fee for the Spain assignment.” Orsati swirled a piece of the bread in oil and shoved it into his mouth. “Any problems?”
    “The girl was working for the Spanish security service.”
    “Which girl?”
    “The girl Navarra was seeing.”
    “Oh, shit. What did you do?”
    “She saw my face.”
    Orsati contemplated this news while he sawed off a slice of the ham and placed it on the Englishman’s plate. Neither man liked collateral casualties. They were usually bad for business.

    “How are you feeling?”
    “I’m tired.”
    “Still not sleeping well?”
    “Not while I’m in a foreign country killing a man.”
    “And here?”
    “Better.”
    “You should try to get some rest tonight instead of sitting up all hours with the old ones in the village.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I have another job for you.”
    “I just finished a job. Give it to one of the others.”
    “It’s too sensitive.”
    “You have a dossier?”
    Orsati finished his lunch and swam lazy laps in the pool while the Englishman read. When he finished, he looked up. “What has this man done to deserve to die?”
    “Apparently, he stole something quite valuable.”
    The Englishman closed the file. He had no compunction about killing someone who stole for a living. In the Englishman’s opinion, a thief was earth’s lowest life-form.
    “So why does this job require me?”
    “Because the contractors would like the target dead and his business destroyed. The men who trained you at Hereford taught you how to use explosives. My men are comfortable with more conventional weapons.”
    “Where am I going to get a bomb?”
    Orsati climbed out of the pool and vigorously toweled his thick silver hair. “Do you know Pascal