The Mark of the Assassin (16 page)
The men were jealous of him. The older ones were jealous of the beautiful women who came to the cottage one by one, stayed for a time, and then quietly left. The boys were jealous of the custom-built Italian racing bike that he rode like a demon each morning along the narrow back roads of the Finistère. The women, even the young girls and the old women, thought he was beautiful—the short-cropped hair flecked with gray, the white skin, the eyes of brilliant blue, the straight nose that might have been chiseled by Michelangelo.
He was not a tall man, well under six feet, but he carried himself like one as he moved about the village each afternoon, doing his marketing. At the boulangerie, Mademoiselle Trevaunce sought vainly to engage him in conversation each time he came into the shop, but he would just smile and politely select his bread and croissants. At the wineshop he was regarded as a knowledgeable but frugal customer. When Monsieur Rodin would suggest a more expensive bottle, he would raise his eyebrows to show it was beyond his reach and carefully hand it back.
At the outdoor market he would choose his vegetables, meat, and seafood with the fussiness of the chefs from the restaurants and resorts. Some days he would bring his current woman—always an outsider, never a local Breton girl—some days he would come alone. Some days he would be invited to join the men who passed the afternoon with red wine, goat cheese, and cards. But the loner would always gesture helplessly toward his watch—as if he had pressing matters elsewhere—and pile his things into his battered tan Mercedes station wagon for the journey back to his bunker by the sea.
As if time matters in Brélés, Didier would say, lips pulled down in his customary smirk. It is the wind, he would add. The wind has made him mad.
The November morning was clear and bright, wind gusting from the sea, as Delaroche cycled along the narrow coast road. He was riding west from Brest toward the Pointe-de-Saint-Mathieu. He wore snug fleece pants over his cycling britches and a turtleneck sweater beneath a neon green anorak—tight enough to avoid flapping in the wind, loose enough to conceal the bulky Glock 9mm automatic beneath his left armpit. Despite the layers of clothing, the salt-scented air cut through him like a knife. Delaroche put his head down and pedaled hard down to the point.
The road flattened out for a time as he passed the crumbled, wind-battered ruins of a sixth-century Benedictine monastery. Then he rode north for several miles into a stiff wind from the sea, the road rising and falling rhythmically beneath him. The lightweight Italian bike handled the challenging terrain and conditions well. A steep hill stood before him. He changed gears and pedaled faster. He breasted the hill and entered the fishing village of Lanildut.
In a café he purchased two croissants and filled his bottles, one with orange juice and the second with steaming café au lait. Delaroche devoured the croissants as he cycled. He passed the Presqu’Ile de Sainte-Marguerite, a rocky finger of land jutting into the sea, blessed with some of the most magnificent seascapes in all Europe. Next came the Côte des Abers, the coast of estuaries—a long flat run over a series of rivers running from the highland of the Finistère down to the sea.
He felt the first signs of leg weariness as he entered the village of Brignogan-Plage. Beyond the village, down a narrow path, lay a beach of sand so white it might have been snow. An ancient upright stone, known in Brittany as a menhir, stood like a sentinel over the entrance. Delaroche dismounted and pushed his bicycle along the pathway, sipping the remains of the café au lait as he walked. On the beach he leaned the bike against a large rock and walked along the tidal line, smoking a cigarette.
The signal site was a large outcropping of rock about two hundred meters from the place where he left the bike. He walked slowly, aimlessly, watching the sea rushing against the sand. A large wave broke over the beach. Delaroche deftly sidestepped to avoid the frigid water. He smoked the last of the cigarette, tossed the butt a few feet ahead of him, and ground it into the white sand with the toe of his cycling shoe.
He stopped walking and crouched at the base of the rock. The mark was there, two bone-white strips of medical tape, fashioned into an X. Any professional would have guessed that the person who had left the mark was trained in the tradecraft of the KGB, which indeed he was.
Delaroche tore the tape from the stone, wadded it into a tight ball, and tossed it into the gorse bordering the beach. He walked back to the bike and pedaled home to Brélés through the brilliant sun.
By midday the weather was still good, so Delaroche decided to paint. He dressed in jeans and a heavy fisherman’s sweater and loaded his things into the back of the Mercedes: his easel, a Polaroid camera, his box of paint and brushes. He went back inside the cottage, made coffee, and poured it into a shiny metal thermos bottle. From the refrigerator he took two large bottles of Beck’s and went back out. He drove into the village and parked outside the charcuterie. Inside he purchased ham, cheese, and a lump of local Breton pâté while Mademoiselle Plauché flirted with him shamelessly. He left the shop, accompanied by the tinkle of the little bell attached to the doorway, and went next door to the boulangerie for a baguette.
He drove inland, the harsh rocky terrain of the coastline giving way to soft wooded hills as he moved deeper into the Finistère. He turned off onto a small unmarked side road and followed it two miles until it turned to a pitted track. The Mercedes bucked wildly, but after a few minutes he arrived at his destination, a quaint stone farmhouse—seventeenth century, he guessed—set against a stand of splendid trees with leaves of ruby and gold.
Delaroche did most things slowly and carefully, and preparing to paint was no exception. He methodically unpacked his supplies from the back of the Mercedes while taking in the view of the farmhouse. The autumn light brought out sharp contrasts in the stonework of the house and in the trees beyond. Capturing the quality of the light on paper would be a challenge.
Delaroche ate a sandwich and drank some of the beer while he studied the scene from several different perspectives. He found the spot he liked the best and made a half dozen photographs with his camera, three in color, three black-and-white. The owner of the house emerged, a stout little figure with a black-and-white dog racing in circles at his feet. Delaroche called out that he was an artist, and the man waved enthusiastically. Five minutes later he came bearing a glass of wine and a plate piled with cheese and thick slices of spicy sausage. He wore a patched jacket that looked as though it had been purchased before the war. The dog, which had just three legs, begged Delaroche for food.
When they were gone, Delaroche settled in behind his easel. He studied the photos, first the black-and-white, to see essential form and lines within the image, then the color. For twenty minutes he made sketches with a charcoal pencil until the composition of the work felt right. He worked with a 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 Delaroche 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 Brélés—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, Arbatov 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 Brélés 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 jetliner 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 jetliner 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 pâté 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 Brélés to Roscoff. He arrived at the seawall at precisely ten o’clock and found Arbatov, a picture of misery, pacing in the downpour. Delaroche parked the car and watched for a moment before making his approach.
Mikhail Arbatov looked more like an aging professor than a KGB spymaster, and, as always, Delaroche found it hard to imagine he had presided over countless murders. Obviously, life in Paris was treating him well, because he was fatter than Delaroche remembered, and his cheeks had a deceptive healthy glow about them from too much wine and cognac. He wore his customary black rollneck sweater and army-style mackintosh coat, which looked as if it belonged to a taller, thinner man. On his head he wore a waterproof brimmed hat typical of retired men everywhere. His spectacles were steel-rimmed goggles and always seemed to do more harm than good. Now they were fogged with the rain and slipping down the steep slope of his pugilist’s nose.
Delaroche climbed out of the car and approached him from behind. Arbatov, the consummate professional, did not flinch as Delaroche fell into step next to him. They walked in silence for a time, Delaroche struggling to keep cadence with Arbatov’s teetering waddle. Arbatov seemed forever on the verge of capsizing, and several times Delaroche resisted the impulse to reach out and steady him.
Arbatov stopped walking and turned to face Delaroche. He studied him with a straight, slightly bemused gaze, gray eyes magnified by the immense spectacles. “Jesus Christ, but I’m too old for this streetcraft bullshit,” he said, in his impeccable, accentless French. “Too old and too tired. Take me someplace warm with good food.”
Delaroche drove him to a good café on the waterfront. Arbatov complained about the paint mess in the Mercedes the entire way. Five minutes later they were tucking into Gruyère and mushroom omelets and mugs of café au lait. Arbatov devoured his food and lit a wretched Gauloise before Delaroche had finished his second bite. Complaining of the cold, Arbatov ordered a cognac. He drank it in two gulps and had another cigarette, blowing slender streams of smoke at the dark-stained wood of the beamed ceiling. The two men sat in silence. A stranger might have mistaken them for a father and son who had breakfast together daily, which suited Delaroche fine.
“They want you back again,” Arbatov said, when Delaroche finished eating. Delaroche did not have to ask who
they
were; they were the men who had hired him for the airliner operation.
they
were; they were the men who had hired him for the airliner operation.
“What’s the job?”
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