The English Assassin

“We need to keep your bandages dry,” she said, a note of concern creeping into her voice. She dug a wrinkled nylon anorak from the pocket of the rucksack and held it over their heads, and there they huddled for the next twenty minutes like a pair of refugees, Rami’s watchers standing silently on either side of them like andirons. While they waited for the weather to break, Anna told Gabriel the security codes for the villa and the location of the provenance in her father’s files. When finally the rain moved off, Anna bound Gabriel’s hands in the anorak, and they proceeded carefully down the wet track to the villa. At the front gate, Gabriel relinquished her into the custody of Rami and climbed into his car. As he drove away, he took one last look over his shoulder and saw Anna Rolfe chasing Rami across the drive, shouting, “Bang, bang, Rami! You’re dead!”

23
    LISBON
     
    M OTZKIN LIKED ITin Lisbon. He’d done the glamour postings. He’d done London. He’d done Paris and Brussels. He’d spent a nail-biting year in Cairo posing as a journalist from a newspaper in Ottawa. It was quiet in Lisbon these days, and that was fine with Motzkin. The odd surveillance job, a bit of liaison work. Just enough to keep him from going stir crazy. He had time for his books and his stamps and for long siestas with his girl in the Alfama.
    He had just returned from her flat when the telephone on his desk rattled softly. Motzkin lifted the receiver and brought it cautiously to his ear. This was the time Ari Shamron usually chose to poke his head out of his foxhole and make life miserable for his katsas. But thankfully it wasn’t Shamron—just the guard down in the lobby. It seemed there was a visitor, a man who knew Motzkin’s name.
    Motzkin rang off and punched up the lobby surveillance camera on his computer monitor. The station regularly fielded walk-ins of all shapes and sizes. Usually a quick once-over could determine whether the person should be seen or frog-marched to the gate.
    As the image appeared on his screen, Motzkin murmured: “I’ll be damned.” Imagine, the living legend, walking into the embassy, looking like something the proverbial cat dragged in. Last Motzkin had heard, he was holed up in some English cottage with his paintings and his demons. “I’ll be damned,” he repeated as he clambered down the stairs. “Is it really you?”
     
    INthe communications room, Motzkin established a secure link with Shamron’s office at King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. Then he closed the soundproof door and watched Gabriel through the glass. It was an unpleasant conversation; that much Motzkin could tell. But then there were few people inside the Office who hadn’t crossed swords with the old man at one time or another, and the battles between Shamron and the great Gabriel Allon were the stuff of Office lore. Twenty minutes later, when Gabriel slammed down the telephone and stepped out of the room, his face was ashen.
    “The old man is sending a report through in thirty minutes. I need a few things.”
    Motzkin took Gabriel upstairs to the station and allowed him to shower and change into clean clothing. Then he arranged airline tickets and a car and gave him two thousand dollars from the petty-cash box.
    By the time they returned to the communications room, the report was sliding off the secure fax machine. It had been compiled by Research Section at King Saul Boulevard and was based on information shared through standing agreements with British and French intelligence.
    The subject was a man named Christopher Keller.
    Gabriel scooped the pages from the tray, sat down at the table, and started to read.
     
    BORNin London, the only son of two successful Harley Street physicians, Christopher Keller made it clear at an early age that he had no intention of following in the footsteps of his parents. Obsessed with history, especially military history, he wanted to become a soldier. His parents forbade him to enter the military, and he acceded to their wishes, at least for a time. He entered Cambridge and began reading history and Oriental languages. He was a brilliant student, but in his second year he grew restless and one night vanished without a trace. A few days later he surfaced at his father’s Kensington home, hair cut to the scalp, dressed in an olive-drab uniform. Keller had enlisted in the British Army.
    After basic training, he joined his infantry regiment, but his intellect, physical prowess,