The English Assassin

gentlemen, Rolfe smoking his Benson & Hedges, Peterson his Silk Cuts. “Why hand over the paintings now, Herr Rolfe? So many years have gone by. There’s nothing that can be done now to change the past.” But Rolfe doesn’t budge, so Peterson arranges with Werner Müller to steal the paintings.
    Rolfe knows that Gabriel is coming the next day, but he’s concerned enough to write a letter and leave it in his secret account. He tries to throw off a false trail. Using a telephone he knows is tapped, he makes an appointment to be in Geneva the next morning. Then he makes arrangements for Gabriel to let himself into the villa and he waits.
    But at 3A .M., the security system at the villa suddenly goes down. Peterson’s team enters the house. Rolfe is killed, the paintings are taken. Six hours later, Gabriel arrives at the villa and discovers Rolfe’s body. During the interrogation, Peterson realizes how the old man planned to surrender his collection. He also realizes that Rolfe’s plan had progressed further than he ever imagined. He releases Gabriel, warns him never to set foot on Swiss soil again, and puts him under surveillance. Perhaps he places Anna under surveillance too. When Gabriel begins his investigation, Peterson knows it. He launches a cleanup operation. Werner Müller is killed in Paris and his gallery destroyed. Gabriel is seen meeting with Emil Jacobi in Lyons, and three days later Jacobi is murdered.
    Anna tore the end off the loaf of Dinkelbrot . “Who’s ‘they’?” she repeated.
    Gabriel wondered how long he had been silent, how many miles he had driven.
    “I’m not sure,” he said. “But perhaps it went something like this.”
     
    “DOyou really think it’s possible, Gabriel?”
    “Actually, it’s the only logical explanation.”
    “My God, I think I’m going to be sick. I want to get out of this country.”
    “So do I.”
    “So if your theory is correct, there’s still one more question to be answered.”
    “What’s that?”
    “Where are the paintings now?”
    “The same place they’ve always been.”
    “Where, Gabriel?”
    “Here in Switzerland.”

31
    BARGEN, SWITZERLAND
     
    T HREE MILESfrom the German border, at the end of a narrow valley dotted with logging villages, stands drab little Bargen, famous in Switzerland if for no other reason than that it is the northernmost town in the country. Just off the motorway is a gas station and a market with a gravel parking lot. Gabriel shut down the car engine, and there they waited in the steel afternoon light.
    “How long before they get here?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I have to pee.”
    “You have to hold it.”
    “I always wondered how I would react in a situation like this, and now I have my answer. Faced with danger, a life-and-death situation, I’m overcome by an uncontrollable need to urinate.”
    “You have incredible powers of concentration. Use them.”

    “Is that what you would do?”
    “I never urinate.”
    She swatted his arm, gently, so as not to hurt his damaged hand.
    “I heard you in the bathroom in Vienna. I heard you throwing up. You act as though nothing bothers you. But you’re human after all, Gabriel Allon.”
    “Why don’t you smoke a cigarette? Maybe that will help you think of something else.”
    “How did it feel to kill those men in my father’s house?”
    Gabriel thought of Eli Lavon. “I didn’t have much time to consider the morality or the consequences of my actions. If I hadn’t killed them, they would have killed me.”
    “I suppose it’s possible they were the ones who killed my father.”
    “Yes, it’s possible.”
    “Then I’m glad you killed them. Is that wrong for me to think that way?”
    “No, it’s perfectly natural.”
    She took his advice and lit a cigarette. “So now you know all the dirty secrets of my family. But today I realized that I really don’t know a thing about you.”
    “You know more about me than most people do.”
    “I know a little about what you do —but nothing about you. ”
    “That’s as it should be.”
    “Oh, come on, Gabriel. Are you really as cold and distant as you pretend to be?”
    “I’ve been told I have a problem with preoccupation.”
    “ Ah! That’s a start. Tell me something else.”
    “What do you want to know?”

    “You wear a wedding ring. Are you married?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you live in Israel?”
    “I live in England.”
    “Do you have children?”
    “We had a son, but he was killed by a