The English Girl: A Novel

the isolated hill town; and the same two guards nodded menacingly as he sped past the entrance of Don Anton Orsati’s estate.
    He followed the road until it turned to dirt, and then he followed it a little farther. And when he rounded the sharp left-hand bend near the three ancient olive trees, Don Casabianca’s wretched palomino goat was there to block his path. Upon seeing Gabriel, its expression darkened, as though it recalled the circumstances of their last encounter and now planned to return the favor. Through the open car window, Gabriel politely asked the goat to give way. And when the beast lifted its chin defiantly, Gabriel climbed out of the car, leaned close to the goat’s tattered old ear, and whispered a threat much like the one he had issued to the kidnappers of Madeline Hart. Instantly, the goat turned and beat a hasty retreat into the macchia . He was a coward, as most tyrants were.
    Gabriel climbed back into the car and drove the rest of the way to Keller’s villa. He parked in the drive, in the shade of a laricio pine tree, and called up a greeting to the terrace that went unanswered. The door was unlocked; Gabriel walked from one beautiful white room to the next but found each of them unoccupied. Then he went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. No milk, no meat, no eggs, nothing that might spoil. Only some beer, a container of Dijon mustard, and a bottle of rather good Sancerre. Gabriel opened the Sancerre and phoned Don Orsati.
    K eller was away on business. Mainland Europe, a country other than France—that was as far as the don would go. If all went according to plan, Keller would be back on Corsica that evening, the following morning at the latest. The don told Gabriel to stay at Keller’s villa and to make himself at home. He said he was sorry about what had happened “up in the north.” Keller had obviously given him a full account.
    “So what brings you back to Corsica?” asked the don.
    “I paid someone a large sum of money, and they didn’t deliver the merchandise as promised.”
    “A very large sum,” the don agreed.
    “What would you do if you were in my position?”
    “I would have never agreed to help a man like Jonathan Lancaster in the first place.”
    “It’s a complicated world, Don Orsati.”
    “Indeed,” said the don philosophically. “As for your business problem, you have two choices. You can do your best to forget what happened to the English girl, or you can punish those responsible.”
    “What would you do?”
    “Here on Corsica we have an old proverb: a Christian forgives, an idiot forgets.”
    “I’m not an idiot.”
    “Nor a Christian,” said Orsati, “but I won’t hold that against you.”
    The don asked Gabriel to stay on the line while he dealt with a minor crisis. It seemed a large shipment of oil to a restaurant in Zurich had gone missing. Gabriel could hear the don shouting at an underling in the Corsican dialect. Find the oil, he was saying, or heads will roll. At any other enterprise, the threat might have been dismissed as managerial bluster. But not at the Orsati Olive Oil Company.
    “Where were we?” asked the don.
    “You were saying something about Christians and idiots. And you were about to extract a steep price for the privilege of borrowing Keller.”
    “He is my most valuable employee.”
    “For obvious reasons.”
    The don was silent for a moment. Gabriel could hear him slurping coffee.
    “It is important that this be about more than just blood,” he said after a moment. “You have to recover the money as well.”
    “And if I’m able to?”
    “A small payment of tribute to your Corsican godfather would be in order.”
    “How small?”
    “One million should be sufficient.”
    “That’s rather steep, Don Orsati.”
    “I was going to ask for five.”
    Gabriel thought about it for a moment and then accepted the terms. “But only if I can find the money,” he stipulated. “Otherwise, I’m free to use Keller as I see fit, at no charge.”
    “Done,” said Orsati. “But make sure you bring him home in one piece. Remember, money doesn’t come from singing.”
    G abriel settled in on the terrace with the Sancerre and the thick dossier on the inner workings of Downing Street under Jonathan Lancaster. But within an hour he was restless, so he called Don Orsati again and asked for permission to walk. The don gave his blessing and told Gabriel where he could find one of Keller’s guns. A chunky HK 9mm, it