The English Girl: A Novel

involved in secret work and that it had something to do with Munich. But I never told her that I was the one who did the actual killing.”
    “She must have been curious.”
    “She wasn’t.”
    “Why not?”
    “Munich was a trauma for the entire country,” Gabriel responded, “but it was especially hard on people like my mother—German Jews who had survived the camps. She could barely look at the newspapers or watch the funerals on television. She locked herself in her studio and painted.”
    “And when you came home after Wrath of God?”
    “She could see the death in my eyes.” He paused, then added, “She knew what it looked like.”
    “But you never talked about it?”
    “Never,” said Gabriel, shaking his head slowly. “She never told me what happened to her during the Holocaust, and I never told her what I had done while I was in Europe for three years.”
    “Do you think she would have approved?”
    “It didn’t matter to me what she thought.”
    “Of course it did, Gabriel. You’re really not as fatalistic as all that. If you were, you wouldn’t have gone to Keller’s old house in the middle of the night to stare at his father through the window.”
    Gabriel said nothing. Chiara placed a bundle of fettuccine in the boiling water and stirred it once with a wooden spoon.
    “What’s he like?” she asked.
    “Keller?”
    She nodded.
    “Extremely capable, utterly ruthless, and without a shred of conscience.”
    “He sounds like the perfect person to deliver ten million euros in ransom money to the kidnappers of Madeline Hart.”
    “Her Majesty’s government is under the impression he’s dead. Besides,” Gabriel added, “the kidnappers specifically asked for me to deliver the money.”
    “Which is precisely the reason you have no business doing it.”
    Gabriel made no reply.
    “How did they even know you were involved?”
    “They must have spotted me in Marseilles or Aix.”
    “So why would they want a professional like you to deliver the money? Why not a flunky from Downing Street who they can manipulate?”
    “I suppose they’re entertaining thoughts of killing me. But that’s going to be rather hard to do.”
    “Why?”
    “Because I’ll be in possession of ten million euros that they want very badly, which means we call the shots.”
    “We?”
    “You don’t think I’m going to do this alone, do you? I’m going to have someone watching my back.”
    “Who?”
    “Someone extremely capable, utterly ruthless, and without a shred of conscience.”
    “I thought he was back in Corsica.”
    “He is,” said Gabriel. “But he’s about to get a wake-up call.”
    “What about me?”
    “Go back to the house in Cherbourg. I’ll bring Madeline there after paying the ransom. When she’s ready to be moved, we’ll bring her back to Britain. And then we’ll go home.”
    Chiara was silent for a moment. “You make it sound so simple,” she said at last.
    “If they play by my rules, it will be.”
    Chiara placed a bowl of steaming fettuccine and mushrooms in the center of the table and sat down opposite Gabriel.
    “No more questions?” he asked.
    “Just one,” she said. “What did the old woman in Corsica see when you dropped the oil into the water?”
    B y the time they finished the dishes, it was nearly four in the morning, which meant it was nearly five on Corsica. Even so, Keller sounded awake and alert when he took Gabriel’s call. Using carefully coded language, Gabriel explained what had transpired at Downing Street and what was to happen later that day.
    “Can you make the first flight to Orly?” he asked.
    “No problem.”
    “Pick up a car at the airport and get up to the coast. I’ll call you when I know something.”
    “No problem.”
    After severing the connection, Gabriel stretched out on the bed next to Chiara and tried to sleep, but it was no use. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw the face of the woman who had died in his arms in the Lubéron, in the valley with three villas. So he lay very still, listening to the sound of Chiara’s breathing and the hiss of the traffic on Bayswater Road, as the gray light of a London dawn crept slowly into the room.
    He woke Chiara with fresh coffee at nine o’clock and showered. When he emerged from the bathroom, Jonathan Lancaster was on the television discussing his costly new initiative to repair Britain’s troubled families. Gabriel couldn’t help but marvel at the prime minister’s performance.