The English Assassin

original price. One hundred thousand francs. Take the damned thing and get out of here.”
    The Englishman decided to push him some more. “How will I get back to Paris?”
    “That’s your problem.”

    “It’s a long ride. The taxi fare will be expensive.” He reached out and picked up the envelope. “Probably about one hundred thousand francs.”
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    “I’m taking the device and my money. If you try to stop me, I’ll tell the police about your warehouse, and this time your boss in Marseilles certainly won’t stop with your hand.”
    Debré raised the gun. The Englishman had let the game go on long enough. Time to end things. His training took over. He grabbed Debré’s arm in a lightning-fast movement that caught the Frenchman off-guard. He twisted the arm violently, breaking it in several places. Debré screamed in agony, and the gun clattered to the warehouse floor.
    Debré’s partner made his move. The Englishman calculated he wouldn’t fire his weapon because of Debré’s proximity, which left only one option: to try to disable the Englishman with a blow to the back of the head. The Englishman ducked, and the punch sailed over his head. Then he grabbed Debré’s gun and came up firing. Two shots struck the big man in the chest. He fell to the floor, blood pumping between his fingers. The Englishman fired two more rounds into his skull.
    Debré was leaning against the hood of the car, clutching his arm, utterly defeated. “Take the damned money! Take the package! Just leave here!”
    “You shouldn’t have tried to cross me, Pascal.”
    “You’re right. Just take everything and leave.”
    “You were right about one thing,” the Englishman said as the heavy trench knife with the serrated blade slipped from his forearm sheath into his palm. A moment later Pascal Debré was lying on the floor next to his partner, his face white as a sheet, his throat slashed nearly to the spine.
     
    THEkeys to Debré’s car were still in the ignition. The Englishman used them to open the trunk. Inside was another suitcase. He lifted the lid. A second bomb, a duplicate of the one resting on the hood of the car. He supposed the Frenchman had scheduled another job later that night. The Englishman had probably saved someone’s shop. He closed the lid of the suitcase, then softly lowered the trunk.
    The floor was covered in blood. The Englishman walked around the corpses and stood over the hood of the car. He opened the suitcase and set the time for three minutes, then closed the lid and placed the case between the bodies.
    He walked deliberately across the warehouse and opened the door. Then he went back to the car and climbed behind the wheel. When he turned the key, the engine coughed and died. Dear God, no—Pascal’s revenge. He turned it a second time, and the engine roared into life.
    He backed out, turned around in the drive, and sped through the gate in the chain-link fence. When the bomb went off, the flash in his rearview mirror was so bright that for a moment he was blinded. He followed the river road back toward Paris, purple spots floating in his vision.
    Ten minutes later, he parked Debré’s car in a tow zone near a Métro stop and got out. He removed the suitcase from the trunk and dropped the keys into a rubbish bin. Then he walked downstairs and boarded a train.
    He thought about the old signadora back in his village on Corsica—her warning abut the mysterious man whom he should avoid. He wondered if Pascal Debré had been that man.
    He got out at the Luxembourg stop and walked through the wet streets of the fifth, back to his hotel on the rue St-Jacques. Upstairs in his room it occurred to him that he hadn’t seen a single policeman during the trip home. Debré had definitely been lying about the checkpoints.

17
    PARIS
     
    G ABRIEL DECIDEDit was time to talk to Werner Müller. The next morning, he rang the gallery.
    “Müller. Bonjour. ”
    “Do you speak German?”
    “Ja.”
    Gabriel switched from French to German.
    “I saw a painting in the window of your gallery over the weekend that I’m interested in.”
    “Which one was that?”
    “The flower arrangement by Jean-Georges Hirn.”
    “Yes, lovely, isn’t it?”
    “Indeed, it is. I was wondering if I might be able to see it sometime today.”
    “I’m afraid I’m rather busy today.”
    “Oh, really?”
    Gabriel had been monitoring all calls to the gallery for seventy-two