The English Assassin

back onto the motorway. Anna folded the letter, slipped it back into the envelope, then placed the envelope in the safe-deposit box. The box containing the paintings lay on the backseat. Gabriel switched on the wipers. Anna leaned her head against the window and watched the water streaking across the glass.
    “Who did you call?”
    “We’re going to need some help getting out of the country.”
    “Why? Who’s going to stop us?”
    “The same people who killed your father. And Müller. And Emil Jacobi.”

    “How will they find us?”
    “You entered the country on your own passport last night. Then you rented this car in your own name. It’s a small town. We should act on the assumption that they know we’re in the country and that someone saw us on the Bahnhofstrasse, despite your new appearance.”
    “Who’s they, Gabriel?”
    He thought of Rolfe’s letter. There are people in Switzerland who want the past to remain exactly where it is—entombed in the bank vaults of the Bahnhofstrasse—and they will stop at nothing to achieve that end.
    What the hell was he trying to say? People in Switzerland . . . Rolfe knew exactly who they were, but even in death, the secretive old Swiss banker couldn’t reveal too much. Still, the clues and the circumstantial evidence were there. Through the use of conjecture and educated guesses, Gabriel might be able to fill in the pieces the old man had left out.
    Instinctively, he approached the problem as though it were a painting in need of restoration—a painting that, unfortunately, had suffered significant losses over the centuries. He thought of a Tintoretto he had once restored, a version of The Baptism of Christ that the Venetian master had painted for a private chapel. It was Gabriel’s first job after the bombing in Vienna, and he had deliberately sought out something difficult in which to lose himself. The Tintoretto was just that. Vast portions of the original painting had been lost over the centuries. Indeed, there were more blank spots on the canvas than those covered with pigment. Gabriel effectively had to repaint the entire work, incorporating the small patches of the original. Perhaps he could do the same with this case: repaint the entire story around the few patches of fact that were known to him.
    Perhaps it went something like this . . .
    Augustus Rolfe, a prominent Zurich banker, decides to give up his collection of Impressionist paintings, a collection he knows contains works confiscated from Jews in France. In keeping with his character, Rolfe wishes to conduct this transaction quietly, so he contacts Israeli intelligence and asks for a representative to be sent to Zurich. Shamron suggests Gabriel meet with Rolfe at his villa, using the restoration of the Raphael as cover for the visit.
    Unfortunately, they became aware of my plans to relinquish the collection . . .
    Somewhere along the line, Rolfe makes a mistake, and his plan to hand over the paintings to Israel is discovered by someone who wishes to stand in his way.
    They think of themselves as patriots, as guardians of the Swiss ideal of neutrality and fierce independence. They are intensely hostile to outsiders, especially those that they regard as threats to their survival. . . .
    Who would feel threatened by the prospect of a Swiss banker handing over an ill-gotten collection of paintings to Israel? Other Swiss bankers with similar collections? Gabriel tried to look at it from their perspective—the perspective of those “guardians of the Swiss ideal of neutrality and fierce independence.” What would have happened if it became public knowledge that Augustus Rolfe possessed so many paintings thought to have been lost forever? The outcry would have been deafening. The world’s Jewish organizations would have descended on the Bahnhofstrasse, demanding that the bank vaults be opened. Nothing short of a nationwide systematic search would have been acceptable. If you were one of these so-called guardians of the Swiss ideal, it might have been easier to kill a man and steal his collection than face uncomfortable new questions about the past.
    They sent a man from the security services to frighten me. . . .
    Gabriel thought of the Silk Cut cigarettes he had found in the ashtray on the desk in Rolfe’s study.
    . . . a man from the security services . . .
    Gerhardt Peterson.
    They meet in the quiet of Rolfe’s Zurich study and discuss the situation like reasonable Swiss