The English Girl: A Novel

where the exterior lights of the villa died and the darkness reclaimed the night. Directly opposite was a row of French doors leading from the garden to the sitting room. Through the shutters he could see the flickering light of the television and, he assumed, the faint shadow of a man.
    He looked at his watch. It was 2:37 a.m. Three hours of darkness left. After that, there could be no more trips to the garden for the man inside the villa. Surely he would step outside for one last breath of fresh air and one more glance at the sky, even if there was no moon or stars and not a breath of wind. Then, from the drainage ditch on the southern side of the villa, there would come a single shot. And then it would begin: a cot, handcuffs, a bucket for a toilet, a woman who was no longer herself.
    He glanced at his watch again, saw that only two minutes had passed, and shivered in the cold. Perhaps Keller was right; perhaps he was an indoor spy after all. To help pass the time he removed himself mentally from the thicket of briar and placed himself before a canvas. It was the painting he had left behind in Jerusalem—Susanna bathing in her garden, watched over by the village elders. Once again he cast Madeline in the role of Susanna, though now the wounds he healed were caused not by time but by captivity.
    He worked slowly but steadily, repairing the sores on her wrists, adding flesh to her atrophied shoulders and color to her hollow cheeks. And all the while he kept watch on the passing of the minutes, and on the villa, which appeared to him in the background of the painting. For two hours there was no movement. Then, as the first light appeared in the eastern sky, one of the French doors opened slowly and a man stepped into Madeline’s garden. He stretched his arms, looked left, then right, then left again. At Madeline’s request, Gabriel quickly completed the restoration. And when he saw a flash of light from the south, he rose from his knees, gun in hand, and started running.

19
    THE LUBÉRON, FRANCE
    B y the time Gabriel breached the outer limits of the light, he could see Keller charging hard and fast across the garden. The Englishman arrived at the open French door first and took up a position along the left side. Gabriel went to the right and looked briefly down at the man who, a few seconds earlier, had stepped into the garden for a breath of fresh air. There was no need to check for a pulse; the .45-caliber round fired by Keller’s gun had entered the skull cleanly and exited in a mess. The man had never known what had hit him and probably had been dead before he fell. It was a decent way to depart this world, thought Gabriel. For a criminal. For a soldier. For anyone.
    Gabriel looked at Keller. Their poses were identical: one shoulder against the exterior of the villa, two hands on the gun, the barrel pointed at the ground. After a few seconds Keller gave a terse nod. Then, raising the HK to eye level, he rotated silently inside. Gabriel followed and covered the right side of the room while Keller saw to the left. There was no movement and no sound other than the television, where Jimmy Stewart was pulling Kim Novak from the waters of San Francisco Bay. The room smelled of spoiled food, stale tobacco, and spilled wine. Empty cardboard containers littered every surface. A month in Provence, thought Gabriel, Marseilles underworld style.
    Keller inched forward through the flickering light of the television, the HK extended, sweeping back and forth in a ninety-degree arc. Gabriel hovered a half step behind, his gun pointed in the opposite direction but moving in the same arc. They came to an archway separating the sitting room from the dining room. Gabriel pivoted inside, swiveled the gun in all directions, and then pivoted back to Keller’s side. At the entrance to the kitchen, he quickly repeated the movement. Both rooms were unoccupied, but both were piled high with soiled plates and cutlery. The squalor of the place made the back of Gabriel’s neck burn with anger. As a rule, captors who lived like pigs did not treat their hostages well.
    At last they came to the entrance hall. It was the one place in the villa that still bore any resemblance to the photographs Gabriel had seen at the offices of L’Immobiliere du Lubéron. The heavy timbered door with iron studs. The small decorative table. The two flights of limestone steps, one rising to the second level of the house, the other sinking into the basement.