The English Girl: A Novel

dug a few coins from his pocket and fingered them one by one through the slot. The sound seemed to echo in the dome long after he had retaken his seat.
    “Spend much time in Catholic churches?” he asked.
    “More than you might imagine.”
    Keller resumed his pose of penitential reflection. The red glass of the votive candles lent a pink cast to his face.
    “Let us stipulate,” he said after a moment, “that it is possible the girl is somewhere else. But let us also stipulate that all the evidence suggests that isn’t the case. Otherwise, Brossard wouldn’t be here. He’d be back in Marseilles, working on his next score.”
    “At the moment, he’s probably trying to figure out why Marcel Lacroix didn’t come to Aix to collect his money. And when he tells Paul what happened, Paul is going to get nervous.”
    “You don’t spend much time with criminals, do you?”
    “More than you might imagine,” Gabriel said again.
    “Brossard isn’t going to say a word to Paul about what happened in Aix today. He’ll tell him everything went down as planned. And then he’ll keep the money for himself. Well, not all of it,” Keller added. “I suppose he’ll have to give some to the woman.”
    Gabriel nodded slowly in agreement, as though Keller had spoken words of great spiritual insight. Then he turned his head slightly to watch a woman walking up the center of the nave. She had dark hair combed straight back from a high forehead and wore a belted raincoat of synthetic material. Her footfalls, like the sound of Keller’s coins, echoed in the quiet of the large church. Pausing before the main altar, she genuflected and made the sign of the cross, deliberately, forehead to heart, left shoulder to right. Then she sat on the opposite side of the nave and stared straight ahead.
    “The only way we can determine whether she’s there,” Gabriel said after a moment, “is to watch the villa for an extended length of time. And there’s no way we can do that without a proper fixed observation post.”
    Keller frowned in disapproval. “Spoken like a true indoor spy,” he said.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means that you and your ilk can’t function in the field without safe flats and five-star hotels.”
    “Jews don’t camp, Keller. The last time the Jews went camping, they spent forty years wandering in the desert.”
    “Moses would have found the Promised Land much more quickly if he’d had a couple of lads from the Regiment to guide him.”
    Gabriel looked at the woman in the raincoat; she was still staring straight ahead, her face expressionless. Then he looked at Keller and asked, “How would we do it?”
    “Not we,” answered Keller. “I’ll do it alone, the way I used to in Northern Ireland. One man in a hide with a pair of binoculars and a bag for his waste. Old school.”
    “And what happens if a farmer spots you while he’s working one of those fields?”
    “A farmer could walk over the top of an SAS man in his hide and never see him.” Keller watched the candles for a moment. “I once spent two weeks in an attic in Londonderry observing a suspected IRA terrorist who lived across the street. The Catholic family below me never knew I was in the house. And when it came time for me to leave, they never heard me go.”
    “What happened to the terrorist?”
    “He had an accident. A pity, really. He was a true pillar of his community.”
    Gabriel heard footfalls and, turning, saw the woman exiting the church.
    “How long can you stay in that valley?” he asked.
    “With enough food and water, I could stay for a month. But forty-eight hours should be more than enough time to tell whether she’s there or not.”
    “That’s forty-eight hours we’ll never get back again.”
    “But they’ll be well spent.”
    “What do you need from me?”
    “A ride would be nice. But once I’m in place, you can forget about me.”
    “Then you won’t mind if I go to Paris for a few hours?”
    “Why the hell do you need to go to Paris?”
    “It’s probably time I had a word with Graham Seymour.”
    Keller made no reply.
    “Something bothering you, Christopher?”
    “I’m just wondering why I have to sit in the mud for two days and you get to go to Paris.”
    “Would you prefer that I sit in the mud and you go to see Graham?”
    “No,” said Keller, patting Gabriel’s shoulder. “You go to Paris. It’s a good place for an indoor spy.”
    I t had been a long time since they had