The English Assassin

by Daniel Silva

  FORtwo days they watched him. It was not particularly difficult work; Müller, if he was a criminal, did not behave much like one. He arrived at the gallery each morning at nine forty-five, and by ten he was ready to receive customers. At one-thirty he would close the gallery and walk to the same restaurant on the rue de Rivoli, pausing once along the way to purchase newspapers from the same kiosk.

  On the first day, a blunt-headed watcher called Oded followed him. On the second it was a reedy boy called Mordecai, who huddled outside at a freezing table on the sidewalk. After lunch he followed Müller back to the gallery, then came upstairs to Gabriel’s hotel room for a debriefing.

  “Tell me something, Mordecai,” Gabriel said. “What did he have for lunch today?”

  The watcher pulled his thin face into a disapproving frown. “Shellfish. An enormous platter. It was a massacre.”

  “And what did you eat, Mordecai?”

  “Eggs andpommes frites. ”

  “How were they?”

  “Not bad.”

  In the evenings, another predictable routine. Müller would remain at the gallery until six-thirty. Before leaving, he would place a dark-green plastic rubbish bag at the curbside for the overnight pickup, then would walk through the crowds along the Champs-Élysées to Fouquet’s. On the first night it was Oded who collected the garbage and brought it to Gabriel’s room and Mordecai who followed the art dealer to Fouquet’s. On the second night, the two watchers reversed roles. As Müller sipped champagne with the film and literary crowd at Fouquet’s, Gabriel performed the unenviable task of sifting through the rubbish. It was as ordinary as Müller’s daily routine: discarded facsimiles in a half-dozen languages, unimportant mail, cigarette butts, soiled napkins, and coffee grounds.

  After Fouquet’s, Müller would stroll through the quiet side streets of the eighth arrondissement, have a light supper in a bistro, then head up to his apartment. After two nights of the same thing, Oded grew rebellious. “Maybe he’s just a Swiss art dealer who doesn’t deal much art. Perhaps you’re wasting your time—andours.”

  But Gabriel was not deterred by the protestations of Oded and the rest of his small team. Shortly after midnight, he watched from the window of his room at the Hôtel Laurens as an unmarked van pulled to the curb outside the gallery. The next sequence unfolded with the fluidity of a choreographed dance. Two men emerged from the van. Twenty seconds later they had broken into the gallery and disarmed the alarm system. The work inside took less than a minute. Then the two men slipped out of the gallery and climbed back into the van. The headlights flashed twice and the van drove off.

  Gabriel turned away from the window, picked up the telephone, and dialed the number for the gallery. After five rings, an answering machine picked up. Gabriel placed the receiver on the table next to the phone and turned up the volume on a small, handheld radio. A few seconds later he could hear the recording on the answering machine, the voice of Werner Müller explaining that his gallery would reopen for business at ten o’clock the following morning.Please telephone for an appointment.

  INthe lexicon of the Office, the bug that had been planted in the Müller Gallery was known as a “glass.” Concealed within the electronics of the telephone, it provided coverage of Müller’s calls as well as conversations taking place inside the room. Because it drew its power from the telephone, it didn’t require a battery and therefore could remain in place indefinitely.

  The next morning, Müller received no prospective buyers and no telephone calls. He made two calls himself, one to Lyons to inquire about the availability of a painting and one to his landlord to complain about the plumbing in his apartment.

  At noon, he listened to news on the radio. He ate lunch in the same restaurant, at the same time, and returned to the gallery late in the afternoon. At five o’clock, a telephone call: female, Scandinavian-accented English, looking for sketches by Picasso. Müller politely explained that his collection contained no Picasso sketches—or works by Picasso of any kind—and he was kind enough to give her the names and addresses of two competitors where she might have more luck.

  At six o’clock, Gabriel decided to place a telephone call of his own. He dialed the gallery and in rapid, boisterous French asked Herr Müller whether he had any floral still lifes by Cézanne.

  Müller cleared his throat. “Unfortunately,monsieur, I don’t have any paintings by Cézanne.”

  “That’s strange. I was told by a reliable source that you had a number of works by Cézanne.”

  “Your reliable source was mistaken.Bonsoir, monsieur. ”

  The line went dead. Gabriel replaced the receiver and joined Oded in the window. A moment later, the art dealer stepped out into the gathering dusk and peered up and down the little street.

  “Did you see that, Oded?”

  “He’s definitely got a serious case of the nerves.”

  “Still think he’s just an art dealer who doesn’t sell many pictures?”

  “He looks dirty, but why set him on edge with a phone call like that?”

  Gabriel smiled and said nothing. Shamron called it slipping a stone into a man’s shoe. At first, it’s just an irritant, but before long it produces an open wound. Leave the stone there long enough, and the man has a shoe full of blood.

  Five minutes later, Werner Müller locked up his gallery for the night. Instead of leaving his garbage bag in its usual place, he dropped it next door, in front of the clothing boutique. As he started off toward Fouquet’s, he looked several times over his shoulder. He did not notice the whisper-thin frame of Mordecai, trailing after him on the opposite side of the street. Werner Müller had a festering wound, thought Gabriel. Soon, he would have a shoe full of blood.

  “Bring me his garbage, Oded.”

  MÜLLER’Sweekend was as predictable as his workweek. He owned a dog that barked incessantly. Oded, who was monitoring the bug from a van parked around the corner, suffered from a chronic headache. He asked Gabriel if he could borrow a Beretta to shoot the dog and be done with it. And when Müller took the dog for a walk along the river, Oded begged for authorization to toss the beast over the embankment.

  The monotony was broken Saturday evening by the arrival of a high-priced whore called Veronique. She slapped him. He cried and called her “Mama.” The barking of the dog reached a feverish pitch. After two hours Oded, who considered himself something of a man of the world, had to leave the surveillance van for a bit of fresh air and a drink at the brasserie on the opposite side of the street. “A fuck for the ages,” he told Gabriel afterward. “A clinic of depravity. It will be required listening for the boys in Psych Ops at King Saul Boulevard.”

  No one was more pleased than Oded when a gray and wet Monday dawned over Paris. Müller had one final quarrel with the dog before slamming the door of his apartment and heading into the street. Oded watched him through the blacked-out glass of the surveillance van, an expression of pure loathing on his face. Then he raised the radio to his lips to check in with Gabriel at the Hôtel Laurens. “Looks like Romeo’s heading to the gallery. He’s your problem now.”

  And then the dog started up again, a few intermittent barks, like the crack of sniper fire, then an all-out artillery barrage. Oded removed his headphones and cradled his head in his hands.

  16

  PARIS

  THEENGLISHMAN, like Gabriel Allon, came to Paris by way of the Côte d’Azur, having made the night passage from Corsica to the mainland on the Calvi-to-Nice ferry. Coincidentally, he also rented a car in Nice—not at the airport but on the boulevard Victor-Hugo, a few blocks from the water. It was a Ford Fiesta that pulled badly to the right, and it made his drive more challenging than he would have preferred.

  One hour from Paris, he pulled into a roadside café and gas station and entered the men’s room. There he changed his clothing, trading his cotton trousers and woolen sweater for a sleek black suit. He used stage makeup to turn his sand-colored hair to platinum and slipped on a pair of rose-tinted eyeg
lasses. When he was finished, even he did not recognize the man in the mirror. He removed a Canadian passport from his bag and looked at the photograph: Claude Devereaux, two years until expiration. He slipped the passport into his jacket pocket and walked to the car.

  It was late afternoon by the time he reached the outskirts of the city, the sky low and heavy, a half-hearted rain. He made his way to the fifth arrondissement, where he checked into a small hotel on the rue St-Jacques. He remained in his room throughout the early evening, had a brief nap, then went downstairs to the lobby, where he left his room key with the desk clerk and collected a stack of tourist maps and brochures. He smiled stupidly at the clerk—My first time in Paris.

  Outside it was raining heavily. The Englishman dropped the maps and the brochures into a rubbish bin and made his way through the wet streets of the seventh to the Seine. And by nine o’clock he was sheltering beneath a dripping plane tree on the Quai d’Orleans, waiting for Pascal Debré.

  A barge moved slowly past him, warm light glowing in the wheelhouse and the cabin. A short distance down the pier, three men were drinking wine from a bottle and night fishing by the light of a streetlamp. He pulled up the sleeve of his jacket and looked at the luminous face of his wristwatch. A few minutes past midnight. Where the hell was Debré? The rain picked up, slapping against the stone pier. He touched his hair. The platinum color was beginning to run.

  Five minutes later he heard footsteps on the quay. He turned and saw a man walking toward him: polyester trousers, cheap boots, a waist-length leather jacket shiny with rain. He joined the Englishman beneath the tree and held out his hand. The last two fingers were missing.

  “You picked a damned lousy spot to meet on a night like this, Pascal. What the hell took you so long?”

  “I didn’t select it for the view, my friend.” He spokepatois with the accent of a southerner. With his two remaining fingers he pointed toward the three men drinking wine down the pier. “You see those boys? They work for me. And the barge that went past a moment ago? He works for me, too. We wanted to make sure you weren’t being followed.”

  Debré shoved his hands into his pockets. The Englishman looked him over.

  “Where’s the package?”

  “At the warehouse.”

  “You were supposed to bring it here.”

  “The Paris police have been running spot checks all night. Something about a bomb threat. One of the Arab groups. Algerian, I think. It wasn’t safe to bring it with me now.”

  The Englishman hadn’t seen any spot checks. “If there are spot checks, how am I going to get the package back into the city?”

  “That’s your problem, my friend.”

  “Where’s the warehouse?”

  “The docks, a few miles down the river.” He cocked his head in the direction of the Latin Quarter. “I have a car.”

  The Englishman didn’t like changes in plan, but he had no choice. He nodded and followed Debré up the stone steps, then across the Pont St-Louis. Above them Notre Dame burned with floodlight. Debré looked at the Englishman’s hair and turned down his lips into a very Gallic look of disapproval. “You look ridiculous, but it’s quite effective, I must say. I nearly didn’t recognize you.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “Nice clothes too. Very fashionable. You should be careful where you go dressed like that. Some of the boys might get the wrong idea about you.”

  “Where’s the damned car?”

  “Be patient, my friend.”

  It stood on the Quai de Montebello, engine running. A big man sat behind the wheel smoking a cigarette. Debré said, “Sit up front. You’ll be more comfortable.”

  “Actually, I prefer the backseat, and if you ask me to sit in the front again, I’ll be convinced that you’re leading me into a trap. And the last thing you want is for me to feel trapped, Pascal.”

  “Suit yourself. Sit in the back if you like. I was just trying to be polite.Jesus Christ! ”

  THEYdrove for twenty minutes, wipers working steadily against the rain, heater roaring. The lights of central Paris faded, and soon they were in a gloomy industrial quarter bathed in yellow sodium lamps. Debré sang along with the American music on the radio. The Englishman had a headache. He lowered his window and the damp air sawed at his cheek.

  He wished Debré would shut up. The Englishman knew all about Pascal Debré. He was a man who had failed to live up to his own expectations of himself. He had wanted to be an assassin, like the Englishman, but he had botched an important hit on a member of a rival criminal group. The mistake cost him two fingers and seriously impacted the course of his career. He was exiled to the extortion side of the business, where he was known for his crude but effective pitch—Give us money, or we will burn down your business. If you try to get the police involved, we’ll rape your daughter and then cut her into a hundred pieces.

  They passed through a gate in a chain-link fence, then entered a soot-stained brick warehouse. The air was heavy with the stench of oil and the river. Debré led the way into a small office and switched on a light. A moment later he emerged, a large suitcase hanging from his good hand.

  He swung the bag onto the hood of the car and popped the latches. “It’s a simple device,” Debré said, using his maimed hand as a pointer. “Here’s the timer. You can set it for one minute, one hour, one week. Whatever you want. Here’s the detonator, here’s the small explosive charge. These canisters contain the fuel. The bag is completely untraceable. Even if it happens to survive the fire—which is extremely unlikely—there’s nothing about it that will lead the police to you or to us.”

  Debré closed the lid. The Englishman pulled out an envelope filled with francs and dropped it on the car next to the bag. He reached for the suitcase, but Debré put the two-fingered hand on his arm.

  “I’m afraid the price has gone up, my friend.”

  “Why?”

  “Blame it on an unforeseeable market fluctuation.” Debré took out a gun and pointed it at the Englishman’s chest. The driver moved into position behind him. The Englishman assumed he had drawn his weapon too.

  Debré smiled. “You know how these things go, my friend.”

  “No, I don’t, actually. Why don’t you explain it to me?”

  “After we spoke, I started to think.”

  “That must have been a new experience for you.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth!”

  “Excuse me for interrupting, Pascal. Please continue.”

  “I asked myself a simple question. Why does a man like my friend need a device like this? He always kills with a knife. Sometimes a pistol but usually a knife. Then the answer came to me. He needs a device like this because his employers have requested it. If I raise my price, it will make no difference to him, because he will simply pass the cost on to his employer.”

  “How much do you want?”

  “Two hundred.”

  “We had a deal at one hundred.”

  “The deal changed.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “You’ll have to get your package somewhere else. If you do that, I might be tempted to call one of our friends on the police force, one of the ones we keep in wine and whores. I might tell this friend that you’re in town working.”

  “Fine, I’ll pay your new price, but after I use this device, I’m going to place an anonymous call to the Paris police and tell them who gave it to me. Thanks to your stupidity, I’ll even be able to tell them where I got it. They’ll raid the place, you’ll be arrested, and your employers will take the rest of your fingers.”

  Debré was nervous now, eyes wide, licking his lips, the gun trembling in his left hand. He was used to people reacting with fear when he made threats. He didn’t often deal with someone like the Englishman.

  “All right, you win,” said Debré. “We go back to the original price. One hundred thousand francs. Take the damned thing and get out of here.”

  The Englishman decided to push him some more. “
How will I get back to Paris?”

  “That’s your problem.”

  “It’s a long ride. The taxi fare will be expensive.” He reached out and picked up the envelope. “Probably about one hundred thousand francs.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m taking the device and my money. If you try to stop me, I’ll tell the police about your warehouse, and this time your boss in Marseilles certainly won’t stop with your hand.”

  Debré raised the gun. The Englishman had let the game go on long enough. Time to end things. His training took over. He grabbed Debré’s arm in a lightning-fast movement that caught the Frenchman off-guard. He twisted the arm violently, breaking it in several places. Debré screamed in agony, and the gun clattered to the warehouse floor.

  Debré’s partner made his move. The Englishman calculated he wouldn’t fire his weapon because of Debré’s proximity, which left only one option: to try to disable the Englishman with a blow to the back of the head. The Englishman ducked, and the punch sailed over his head. Then he grabbed Debré’s gun and came up firing. Two shots struck the big man in the chest. He fell to the floor, blood pumping between his fingers. The Englishman fired two more rounds into his skull.

  Debré was leaning against the hood of the car, clutching his arm, utterly defeated. “Take the damned money! Take the package! Just leave here!”

  “You shouldn’t have tried to cross me, Pascal.”

  “You’re right. Just take everything and leave.”

  “You were right about one thing,” the Englishman said as the heavy trench knife with the serrated blade slipped from his forearm sheath into his palm. A moment later Pascal Debré was lying on the floor next to his partner, his face white as a sheet, his throat slashed nearly to the spine.