The Mark of the Assassin

simple palette--Winsor red, Winsor blue, Hooker's green,
    Winsor yellow, raw sienna--on heavy paper stretched over a plywood
    backing. Nearly an hour passed before the message on the beach at
    Brignogan-Plage intruded on his thoughts. It was a summons, telling him
    that he was to meet Arbatov on the seawall in Roscoff tomorrow
    afternoon. Arbatov had been Delaroche's case officer when he worked for
    the KGB. For twenty years De-laroche had worked with Arbatov and no one
    else. Once, when Arbatov was beginning to slow, Moscow Center tried to
    replace him with a younger man named Karpov. Delaroche refused to work
    with Karpov and threatened to send him back to Moscow in a box unless
    Arbatov was reinstated as his handler. One week later in Salzburg,
    Arbatov and Delaroche reunited. To punish the grunts at Moscow Center
    they had a celebratory feast of Austrian veal washed down by three
    costly bottles of Bordeaux. Delaroche did not stand up for Arbatov out
    of love or loyalty; he loved no one and was loyal to nothing but his art
    and his profession. He wanted Arbatov back on the job because he trusted
    no one else. He had survived twenty years without being arrested or
    killed because Arbatov had done his job well. As he painted the idyllic
    scene, he thought very hard about ignoring Arbatov's summons. Arbatov
    and Delaroche no longer worked for the KGB because there was no KGB, and
    men in their line of work were not absorbed by its more presentable
    successor, the Foreign Intelligence Service. When the Soviet Union
    collapsed and the KGB was abolished, Delaroche and Arbatov were set
    adrift. They remained in the West--Arbatov in Paris and Delaroche in
    Breles--and entered private practice together. Arbatov served, in
    effect, as Delaroche's agent. If someone wanted a job done they came to
    Arbatov. If Arbatov approved he would put it to Delaroche. For his
    services, Arba-tov was paid a percentage of the substantial fee
    Delaroche commanded on the open market. Delaroche had earned enough
    money to consider getting out of the game. It had been more than a month
    since his last job, and for the first time he was not bored and restless
    with inactivity. The last job had paid him a million dollars, enough to
    live comfortably in Breles for many years, but it had also taken
    something out of him. During his long career as an assassin--first for
    the KGB, then as a freelance professional--Delaroche had only one rule:
    He did not kill innocent people. The attack on the airliner off Long
    Island had violated that rule. He had not actually fired the missile,
    but he had been a key player in the operation. His job was to get the
    Palestinian in place, kill him when it was done, and scuttle the motor
    yacht before being extracted by helicopter at sea. He had carried out
    his assignment perfectly, and for that he was rewarded with one million
    dollars. But at night, when he was alone in the cottage with nothing but
    the sound of the sea, he saw the burning jet-liner tumbling toward the
    Atlantic. He imagined the screams of the passengers as they waited to
    die. In all his previous jobs he knew the targets intimately. They were
    evil people involved in evil things who knew the risks of the game they
    played. And he had killed each of them face-to-face. Blowing up a
    civilian jet-liner had violated his rule. He would keep his date with
    Arbatov and listen to the offer. If it was good, and lucrative, he would
    consider taking it., If not, he would retire and paint the Breton
    countryside and drink wine in his stone cottage by the sea and never
    speak to another person again. One hour later he finished the painting.
    It was good, he thought, but he could make it better. The sun was
    setting, and a scarlet twilight settled over the farm. With the sun
    gone, the air turned suddenly cold, fragrant with wood smoke and frying
    garlic. He smeared pat on a hunk of bread and drank beer while he packed
    away his things. The Polaroids and sketches he placed in his pocket; he
    would use them to produce another version of the work, a better one, in
    his studio. He left the wineglass, the half-empty plate, and the
    still-damp watercolor at the door of the cottage and silently walked
    back to the Mercedes.
    The three-legged dog yelped at him as he drove away, then devoured the
    last of the sausage.
    A HEAVY RAIN was falling the following morning as Delaroche drove from
    Breles to Roscoff. He arrived at the seawall at precisely ten o'clock
    and