The Marching Season

later, face perplexed, and said, "Can I help you?"
    "Yes," Delaroche said, and he punched Leroux in the throat with a knifelike fist. The blow left Leroux doubled over in agony, speechless, gasping for air. Delaroche closed the door.
    "Who are you?" Leroux rasped. "What do you want?"
    "I'm the one whose face you took a hammer to."
    He realized it was Delaroche.
    272 Daniel Silva
    "Dear God/' he whispered.
    Delaroche removed the silenced Beretta pistol from his coat.
    Leroux began to tremble violently. "I can be trusted/' he said. "I've done many men like you."
    "No, you haven't," Delaroche said, and he shot him twice through the heart.
    Delaroche arrived back in Amsterdam early the following afternoon. He returned to his flat by taxi and packed a blue nylon backpack with his painting kit: two small canvases, paints, a Polaroid camera, a portable easel, and the Beretta pistol. He rode his mountain bike along the cobblestone streets to a spot on the Keizersgracht where there was a good bridge with lights on the arches that came on after dark.
    He locked his bike and walked around the bridge for some time until he found a perspective he liked, with houseboats in the foreground and a trio of magnificent gabled houses in the background. He removed his camera from the backpack and made several Polaroid photographs of the scene, first in black and white, so he could see the essential forms and lines of the setting, then in color.
    He set to work, painting quickly, instinctively, racing to capture the fleeting twilight before darkness took hold. When the lights flickered to life on the bridge he set down his brush and simply watched. He studied the reflection of the lights on the smooth surface of the canal for a long time. He waited for the painting to cast its spell—waited for the image of Maurice Leroux's dead eyes to evaporate from his mind—but neither happened.
    A long water taxi slid past, and the reflection of the bridge
    The Marching Season 273
    lights dissolved in its wake. Delaroche packed away his things. He rode along the Keizergracht, gingerly holding the canvas in his right hand. In any other city he might have drawn stares with such a pose, but not in Amsterdam.
    Delaroche crossed the Keizergracht at Ree Straat, then pedaled slowly along the Prinsengracht, until the old houseboat appeared before him. He chained his bicycle to a lamppost, leaned the canvas against the front tire, and hopped onto the deck.
    The Krista was forty-five feet long, with a wheelhouse aft, a slender prow, and a row of portholes along the gunwale. The green and white paint was flaking with neglect. The hatch at the top of the companionway was secured with a heavy padlock. Delaroche still had the key. He unlocked the hatch and stepped down the companionway into the salon, which was dark except for the soft glow of the yellow streetlamps leaking through the dirty skylights.
    The boat had been Astrid Vogel's. They had lived here together the previous winter, after Delaroche had hired her to assist him with a series of particularly difficult assassinations. He could imagine her now, her long body bumping about in the cramped spaces of the houseboat. He looked at the bed and thought of making love to her with rain drumming on the skylight. Astrid had nightmares; she used to pummel him in her sleep. Once, she awakened after a bad dream, surprised to find Delaroche in her bed. She nearly shot him before he could wrench the gun from her hand.
    Delaroche had not been back to the Krista since then. He spent several minutes rifling cabinets and drawers, looking for any trace of himself he might have left behind. He found
    274 Daniel Silva
    nothing. There was nothing of Astrid either, just some appalling clothing and a few well-thumbed books. Astrid was used to living in hiding. She had been a member of the Red Army Faction and had spent many years in places like Beirut and Tripoli and Damascus. She knew how to come and go without leaving tracks.
    Delaroche's obsessive independence made him incapable of loving another, but he had cared for Astrid and, more important, he had trusted her. She was the only woman who knew the truth about him. He could relax around her. They had planned to go to the Caribbean when the job was done—to live together in something approaching a marriage—but Michael Osbourne's wife had killed her on Shelter Island.
    Delaroche climbed the companionway and locked the hatch behind him. He mounted his bike and pedaled