The English Girl: A Novel

“Threats insult my intelligence.”
    “One hour,” responded the voice, and the connection went dead.
    G abriel removed a straight-backed chair from his barricade and placed it in the room’s arrow-slit of a window. And there he sat for the next sixty-seven minutes watching the street below. Forty minutes into his vigil, a man hurried past the hotel beneath an umbrella, pausing only long enough to pull at the latch of the Passat’s front passenger-side door. After that, there were no more cars or pedestrians, only the gulls circling overhead, and a gang of street cats that feasted on the rubbish from the seafood restaurant next door. The waiting, he thought. Always the waiting.
    When sixty minutes elapsed with no sign of her, Gabriel felt a stab of panic—a panic that worsened with each passing minute. Then, finally, a BMW wagon nosed into the empty space next to his. The door opened and a stylish boot emerged, followed in short order by a long, blue-jeaned leg. The leg belonged to a woman with coal-black hair that fell about her shoulders and shielded her face from Gabriel’s view. He watched as she came across the street through the rain, watched the rhythm of her stride, the bend of her knees. It was a curious thing, the gait; it was like a fingerprint or a retina scan. A face could be easily changed, but even professional intelligence officers struggled to change the way they walked. Gabriel realized he had seen the walk before. She was the woman from the ferry.
    He was certain of it.

25
    GRAND-FORT-PHILIPPE, FRANCE
    I t took her less than a minute to make her way from the street to the third floor of the hotel. Gabriel used the interval to remove the barricade of furniture from the entrance hall. Then he placed his ear against the door and listened to the tack-hammer clatter of her heels along the uncarpeted hall. It was a good door, solid and thick, enough to slow a bullet but not to stop one. The woman knocked lightly upon it, as though she suspected children were sleeping within.
    “Are you alone?” asked Gabriel in French.
    “Yes,” she replied.
    “Do you have a gun?”
    “No.”
    “Do you know what will happen if I find a gun on you?”
    “The deal is off.”
    Gabriel opened the door a few inches with the chain still in place. “Put your hand through,” he said.
    The woman hesitated for a moment and then obeyed. Her hand was long and pale. She wore a single ring, a band of woven silver, and there was a small tattoo of the sun on the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. Gabriel seized hold of the wrist and twisted it painfully. On the underside were the long-healed scars of a youthful suicide attempt.
    “If you ever want to use this hand again,” he said, “you’ll do exactly as I tell you. Do you understand?”
    “Yes,” gasped the woman.
    “Drop your handbag to the floor and push it to me with your foot.”
    Again, the woman obeyed. With his left hand still wrapped around her wrist, Gabriel reached down and emptied the contents of the handbag onto the floor. It was the usual detritus one would expect to find in the purse of a French female, with two notable exceptions: a jeweler’s loupe and a handheld infrared lamp. Gabriel removed the chain from the door and, twisting the wrist to the point of breaking, drew the woman inside. With his foot, he closed the door. Then he pushed her face-first against the wall and, as promised, searched her thoroughly, confident in the belief he was going where many men had gone before.
    “Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked.
    “Yes,” Gabriel said dully. “In fact, I haven’t had this much fun since the last time I had a bullet removed.”
    “I hope it hurt.”
    He removed the dark wig and ran his hand through the woman’s boyishly short blond hair.
    “Finished?” she asked.
    “Turn around.”
    She did, facing him for the first time. She was tall and thin, with the long limbs and small breasts of a Degas dancer. Her heart-shaped face was impish and innocent, and on her lips was the faintest trace of an ironic smile. The Office loved faces like hers. Gabriel wondered how many fortunes had been lost to it.
    “How are we going to do this?” she asked.
    “The usual way,” answered Gabriel. “You’re going to examine the money, and I’m going to hold a gun to your head. And if you do anything to make me nervous, I’m going to blow your brains out.”
    “Are you always this charming?”
    “Only with girls I really