The English Girl: A Novel (7 page)

9

CORSICA

T
he man awaiting Gabriel in the villa was not a Corsican—at least he had not been born one. His real name was Christopher Keller, and he had been raised in a solidly upper-middle-class home in the posh London district of Kensington. On Corsica, however, only Don Orsati and a handful of his men were aware of these facts. To the rest of the island, Keller was known simply as the Englishman.

The story of Christopher Keller’s journey from Kensington to the island of Corsica was one of the more intriguing Gabriel had ever heard, which was saying something in itself. The only son of two Harley Street physicians, Keller had made it clear at an early age that he had no intention of following in his parents’ footsteps. Obsessed with history, especially military history, he wanted to become a soldier. His parents forbade him to enter the military, and for a time he acceded to their wishes. He enrolled at Cambridge and began reading history and Oriental languages. He was a brilliant student, but in his second year he grew restless and one night vanished without a trace. A few days later he surfaced at his father’s Kensington home, hair cut to the scalp, dressed in an olive-drab uniform. He had enlisted in the British army.

After completing his basic training, Keller joined an infantry unit, but his intellect, physical prowess, and lone-wolf attitude quickly captured the attention of the elite Special Air Service. Within days of his arrival at the Regiment’s headquarters at Hereford, it became clear Keller had found his true calling. His scores in the “killing house,” an infamous facility where recruits practice close-quarters combat and hostage rescue, were the highest ever recorded, while the instructors in the unarmed combat course wrote that they had never seen a man who possessed such an instinctual knack for the taking of human life. His training culminated with a forty-mile march across the windswept moorland known as the Brecon Beacons, an endurance test that had left men dead. Laden with a fifty-five-pound rucksack and a ten-pound assault rifle, Keller broke the course record by thirty minutes, a mark that stands to this day.

Initially, he was assigned to a Sabre squadron specializing in mobile desert warfare, but his career soon took another turn when a man from military intelligence came calling. The man was looking for a unique brand of soldier capable of performing close observation and other special tasks in Northern Ireland. He said he was impressed by Keller’s linguistic skills and his ability to improvise and think on his feet. Was Keller interested? That same night Keller packed his kit and moved from Hereford to a secret base in the Scottish Highlands.

During his training, Keller displayed yet another remarkable gift. For years the British security and intelligence forces had struggled with the myriad of accents in Northern Ireland. In Ulster the opposing communities could identify each other by the sound of a voice, and the way a man uttered a few simple phrases could mean the difference between life and an appalling death. Keller developed the ability to mimic the intonations perfectly. He could even shift accents at a moment’s notice—a Catholic from Armagh one minute, a Protestant from Belfast’s Shankill Road the next, then a Catholic from the Ballymurphy housing estates. He operated in Belfast for more than a year, tracking known members of the IRA, picking up bits of useful gossip from the surrounding community. The nature of his work meant that he would sometimes go several weeks without contacting his control officers.

His assignment in Northern Ireland came to an abrupt end late one night when he was kidnapped in West Belfast and driven to a remote farmhouse in County Armagh. There he was accused of being a British spy. Keller knew the situation was hopeless, so he decided to fight his way out. By the time he left the farmhouse, four hardened terrorists from the Provisional Irish Republican Army were dead. Two had been virtually cut to pieces.

Keller returned to Hereford for what he thought would be a long rest and a stint as an instructor. But his stay ended in August 1990, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Keller quickly rejoined his old Sabre unit and by January 1991 was in the western desert of Iraq, searching out the Scud missile launchers that were raining terror on Tel Aviv. On the night of January 28, Keller and his team located a launcher about one hundred miles northwest of Baghdad and radioed the coordinates to their commanders in Saudi Arabia. Ninety minutes later a formation of Coalition fighter-bombers streaked low over the desert. But in a disastrous case of friendly fire, the aircraft attacked the SAS squadron instead of the Scud site. British officials concluded the entire unit was lost, including Keller. His obituaries made no mention of his intelligence work in Northern Ireland, or of the four IRA fighters he had butchered in the farmhouse in County Armagh.

What British military officials did not realize, however, was that Keller had survived the incident without a scratch. His first instinct was to radio his base and request an extraction. Instead, enraged by the incompetence of his superiors, he started walking. Concealed beneath the robe and headdress of a desert Arab, and highly trained in the art of clandestine movement, Keller made his way through the Coalition forces and slipped undetected into Syria. From there, he hiked westward across Turkey, Greece, and Italy until he finally washed ashore in Corsica, where he fell into the waiting arms of Don Orsati. The don gave Keller a villa and a woman to help heal his many wounds. Then, when Keller was rested, the don gave him work. With his northern European looks and SAS training, Keller was able to fulfill contracts that were far beyond the capabilities of Orsati’s Corsican-born
taddunaghiu
. One such contract had borne the names Anna Rolfe and Gabriel Allon. For reasons of conscience, Keller had been unable to carry it out, but professional pride had compelled him to leave behind the talisman—the talisman that Gabriel now held in the palm of his hand.

Remarkably, the two men had met once before, many years earlier, when Keller and several other SAS officers had come to Israel for training in the techniques of counterterrorism. On the final day of their stay, Gabriel had reluctantly agreed to deliver a classified lecture on one of his most daring operations—the 1988 assassination of Abu Jihad, the PLO’s second-in-command, at his villa in Tunis. Keller had sat in the front row, hanging on Gabriel’s every word; and afterward, during a group photo session, he had positioned himself at Gabriel’s side. Gabriel had worn sunglasses and a hat to shield his identity, but Keller had stared directly into the camera. It was one of the last photographs ever taken of him.

Now, as Gabriel alighted from his rented car, the man who had once spared his life was standing in the open doorway of his Corsican hideaway. He was taller than Gabriel by a chiseled head and much thicker through the chest and shoulders. Twenty years in the Corsican sun had done much to alter his appearance. His skin was now the color of saddle leather, and his cropped hair was bleached from the sea. Only his blue eyes seemed to have remained unchanged. They were the same eyes that had watched Gabriel so intently as he had recounted the death of Abu Jihad. And the same eyes that had once granted him mercy on a rainy night in Venice, in another lifetime.

“I’d offer you lunch,” Keller said in his clipped English accent, “but I hear you’ve already dined at Chez Orsati.”

When Keller extended his hand toward Gabriel, the muscles of his arm coiled and bunched beneath his white pullover. Gabriel hesitated for an instant before finally grasping it. Everything about Christopher Keller, from his hatchet-like hands to his powerful spring-loaded legs, seemed to have been expressly designed for the purpose of killing.

“How much did the don tell you?” asked Gabriel.

“Enough to know that you have no business approaching a man like Marcel Lacroix without backup.”

“I take it you know him?”

“He gave me a ride once.”

“Before or after?”

“Both,” said Keller. “Lacroix did a stretch in the French army. He’s also spent time in some of the toughest prisons in the country.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“ ‘If you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.’ ”

“Sun Tzu,” said Gabriel.

“You cited that passage during your lecture in Tel Aviv.”

“So you were listening after all.”

Gabriel slipped past Keller and entered the large great room of the villa. The furnishings were rustic and, like Keller, covered in white fabric. Piles of books stood on every flat surface, and on the walls hung several quality paintings, including lesser works by Cézanne, Matisse, and Monet.

“No security system?” asked Gabriel, looking around the room.

“None needed.”

Gabriel walked over to the Cézanne, a landscape painted in the hills near Aix-en-Provence, and ran his fingertip gently over the surface.

“You’ve done very well for yourself, Keller.”

“It pays the bills.”

Gabriel said nothing.

“You disapprove of the way I earn my living?”

“You kill people for money.”

“So do you.”

“I kill for my country,” replied Gabriel. “And only as a last resort.”

“Is that why you blew Ivan Kharkov’s brains all over that street in Saint-Tropez? For your country?”

Gabriel turned from the Cézanne and stared directly into Keller’s eyes. Any other man would have wilted under the intensity of Gabriel’s gaze, but not Keller. His powerful arms were folded casually across his chest, and one corner of his mouth was lifted into a half smile.

“Maybe this isn’t such a good idea after all,” said Gabriel.

“I know the players and I know the terrain. You’d be a fool not to use me.”

Gabriel made no reply. Keller was right; he was the perfect guide to the French criminal underground. And his physical and tactical skills would surely prove valuable before this affair was over.

“I can’t pay you,” said Gabriel.

“I don’t need money,” replied Keller, looking around the beautiful villa. “But I do need you to answer a few questions before we leave.”

“We have five days to find her, or she dies.”

“Five days is an eternity for men like us.”

“I’m listening.”

“Who are you working for?”

“The British prime minister.”

“I didn’t realize you were on speaking terms.”

“I was retained by someone inside British intelligence.”

“On the prime minister’s behalf?”

Gabriel nodded.

“What’s the prime minister’s connection to this girl?”

“Use your imagination.”

“My goodness.”

“Goodness has very little to do with this.”

“Who’s the prime minister’s friend inside British intelligence?”

Gabriel hesitated and then answered the question truthfully. Keller smiled.

“You know him?” asked Gabriel.

“I worked with Graham in Northern Ireland. He’s a pro’s pro. But like everyone else in England,” Keller added quickly, “Graham Seymour thinks I’m dead. Which means he can never know that I’m working with you.”

“You have my word.”

“There’s something else I want.”

Keller held out his hand. Gabriel surrendered the talisman.

“I’m surprised you kept it,” Keller said.

“It has sentimental value.”

Keller slipped the talisman around his neck. “Let’s go,” he said, smiling. “I know where we can get you another.”

T
he
signadora
lived in a crooked house in the center of the village, not far from the church. Keller arrived without an appointment, but the old woman did not seem surprised to see him. She wore a black frock and a black scarf over her tinder-dry hair. With a worried smile, she touched Keller’s cheek softly. Then, fingering the heavy cross around her neck, she turned her gaze toward Gabriel. Her task was to care for those afflicted with the evil eye. It was obvious she feared Keller had brought the very incarnation of the evil one into her home.

“Who is this man?” she asked.

“A friend,” replied Keller.

“Is he a believer?”

“Not like us.”

“Tell me his name, Christopher—his
real
name.”

“His name is Gabriel.”

“Like the archangel?”

“Yes,” said Keller.

She studied Gabriel’s face carefully. “He is an Israelite, yes?”

When Keller nodded his head, the old woman gave a mild frown of disapproval. Doctrinally, she regarded the Jews as heretics, but personally she had no quarrel with them. She opened the front of Keller’s shirt and touched the talisman hanging around his neck.

“Isn’t this the one you lost several years ago?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you find it?”

“In the bottom of a very crowded drawer.”

The
signadora
shook her head reproachfully. “You’re lying to me, Christopher,” she said. “When will you learn that I can always tell when you’re lying?”

Keller smiled but said nothing. The old woman released her hold on the talisman and again touched Keller’s cheek.

“You’re leaving the island, Christopher?”

“Tonight.”

The
signadora
did not ask why; she knew exactly what Keller did for a living. In fact, she had once hired a young
taddunaghiu
named Anton Orsati to avenge the murder of her husband.

With a movement of her hand, she invited Keller and Gabriel to sit at the small wooden table in her parlor. Before them she placed a plate filled with water and a vessel of olive oil. Keller dipped his forefinger in the oil; then he held it over the plate and allowed three drops to fall onto the water. By the laws of physics, the oil should have gathered into a single gobbet. Instead, it shattered into a thousand droplets and soon there was no trace of it.

“The evil has returned, Christopher.”

“I’m afraid it’s an occupational hazard.”

“Don’t make jokes, my dearest. The danger is very real.”

“What do you see?”

She gazed intently into the liquid, as if in a trance. After a moment she asked quietly, “Are you looking for the English girl?”