The English Assassin

same man.
    The file concluded with two photographs. The first was the one Gabriel had taken of the man entering the gallery in Paris. The second showed a group of men on a deserted moorland. One of the faces was circled. Gabriel spent a long time comparing the two pictures. Then he picked up the telephone and called Shamron in Tel Aviv. “I have the strangest sensation I’ve actually met this man before,” Gabriel told him. He had expected Shamron to be surprised by the remark. Instead, the old man told him to stay near the fax machine, and then he rang off.
     
    IN1988, Gabriel Allon carried out one of the most celebrated operations in the history of Israeli intelligence: the assassination of the PLO’s second-in-command, Abu Jihad. He had conducted a long and dangerous surveillance operation on the Palestinian’s villa in Tunis, and he had trained the hit team at a mockup in the Negev desert. Then, one warm night in April, he led a team of Sayaret commandos into the house and shot Abu Jihad to death in front of his wife and children. Thinking about that night now, he could still see the look of pure hatred in their dark eyes.
    Eighteen months after the assassination, a team of British intelligence and SAS officers involved in the fight against IRA terror came to Tel Aviv to study the tactics of the Israelis. Ari Shamron summoned Gabriel to the Academy and compelled him to deliver a luncheon lecture on the Tunis operation. One of the men attending the lecture was an SAS lieutenant.
    The item that came across the fax machine was a photograph. It had been taken after the luncheon to commemorate the spirit of cooperation between the secret warriors of the two countries. Gabriel, eternally camera-shy, wore sunglasses and a sun hat to conceal his identity. The man next to him stared directly into the camera lens. Gabriel carefully examined the face.
    It was Christopher Keller.

24
    MUNICH
ZURICH
     
    T HE COURIER WAS WAITINGfor Gabriel at the gate in Munich. He had hair the color of caramel and carried a sign that saidMR .KRAMER —HELLER ENTERPRISES. Gabriel followed him through the terminal and across the carpark through blowing snow until they came to a dark-blue Mercedes sedan.
    “There’s a Beretta in the glove box and some brisket on the backseat.”
    “You bodlim think of everything.”
    “We live to serve.” He handed Gabriel the keys. “Bon voyage.”
    Gabriel climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. Ten minutes later he was speeding along the E54 motorway back to Zurich.
     
    THESwiss are an insular and tribal people, possessing an almost animal instinct to spot outsiders. Anything out of the ordinary is reported to the police, no matter how insignificant. Indeed, the Swiss citizenry is so vigilant that foreign intelligence agencies operating inside the country regard them as a second security service. With this fact in mind, Gabriel was careful to project an image of familiarity as he walked from his car to Augustus Rolfe’s villa.
    He thought of an Office operation a few years earlier. A team of agents had been sent to Switzerland to bug the flat of a suspected Arab terrorist living in a small town outside Bern. An old lady spotted the team outside the Arab’s apartment house and telephoned the police to report a group of suspicious men in her neighborhood. A few minutes later the team was in custody, and the fiasco was reported around the world.
    He climbed the slope of the Rosenbühlweg. The familiar silhouette of the Rolfe villa, with its turrets and its towering portico, rose above him. A car passed, leaving two ribbons of black in the fresh snow.
    He punched in the code to the keyless entry system. The buzzer howled, the dead bolt snapped back. He pushed open the gate and climbed the steps. Two minutes later he was inside Rolfe’s villa, padding across the dark entrance hall, a small flashlight in one hand, a Beretta in the other.
     
    ONthe second-floor corridor, the darkness was absolute. Gabriel moved forward through the pencil-width beam of his flashlight. The study would be on his left, Anna had said—overlooking the street, first door past the bust. Gabriel turned the knob. Locked. But of course. He removed a pair of small metal tools from his coat pocket. God, how long had it been? The Academy, a hundred years earlier. He had been a green recruit, and Shamron had stood over him the entire time, shouting abuse in his ear. “You have fifteen seconds. Your teammates are dead