It had
never taken much to spark a blood feud on the island of Corsica. An insult. An
accusation of cheating in the marketplace. The dissolution of an engagement. The
pregnancy of an unmarried woman. After the initial spark, unrest inevitably
followed. An ox would be killed, a prized olive tree would topple, a cottage
would burn. Then the murders would start. And on it would go, sometimes for a
generation or more, until the aggrieved parties had settled their differences or
given up the fight in exhaustion.
Most Corsican men were more than willing to do
their killing themselves. But there were some who needed others to do their
blood work for them: notables who were too squeamish to get their hands dirty,
or who were unwilling to risk arrest or exile; women who could not kill for
themselves or had no male kin to do the deed on their behalf. People like these
relied on professional killers known as taddunaghiu.
Usually, they turned to the Orsati clan.
The Orsatis had fine land with many olive trees,
and their oil was regarded as the sweetest in all of Corsica. But they did more
than produce olive oil. No one knew how many Corsicans had died at the hands of
Orsati assassins down through the ages, least of all the Orsatis themselves, but
local lore placed the number in the thousands. It might have been significantly
higher were it not for the clan’s rigorous vetting process. The Orsatis operated
by a strict code. They refused to carry out a killing unless satisfied the party
before them had indeed been wronged and blood vengeance was required.
That changed, however, with Don Anton Orsati. By
the time he gained control of the family, the French authorities had managed to
eradicate feuding and the vendetta in all but the most isolated pockets of the
island, leaving few Corsicans with the need for the services of his taddunaghiu. With local demand in steep decline,
Orsati had been left with no choice but to look for opportunities elsewhere,
namely, across the water in mainland Europe. He now accepted almost every job
offer that crossed his desk, no matter how distasteful, and his killers were
regarded as the most reliable and professional on the Continent. In fact,
Gabriel was one of only two people ever to survive an Orsati family
contract.
Though Orsati descended from a family of Corsican
notables, in appearance he was indistinguishable from the paesanu who guarded the entrance to his estate. Entering the don’s
large office, Gabriel found him seated at his desk wearing a bleached white
shirt, loose-fitting trousers of pale cotton, and a pair of dusty sandals that
looked as though they had been purchased at the local outdoor market. He was
staring down at an old-fashioned ledger, his heavy face set in a frown. Gabriel
could only wonder at the source of the don’s displeasure. Long ago, Orsati had
merged his two businesses into a single seamless enterprise. His modern-day
taddunaghiu were all employees of the Orsati
Olive Oil Company, and the murders they carried out were booked as orders for
product.
Rising, Orsati extended a granite hand toward
Gabriel without a trace of apprehension. “It is an honor to meet you, Monsieur
Allon,” he said in French. “Frankly, I expected to see you long ago. You have a
reputation for dealing harshly with your enemies.”
“My enemies were the Swiss bankers who hired you to
kill me, Don Orsati. Besides,” Gabriel added, “instead of giving me a bullet in
the head, your assassin gave me that.”
Gabriel nodded toward the talisman, which was lying
on Orsati’s desk next to the ledger. The don frowned. Then he picked up the
charm by the leather strand and allowed the red coral hand to sway back and
forth like the weight of a clock.
“It was a reckless thing to do,” the don said at
last.
“Leaving the talisman behind or letting me
live?”
Orsati smiled noncommittally. “We have an old
saying here in Corsica. I solda un vènini micca
cantendu: Money doesn’t come from singing. It comes from work. And
around here, work means fulfilling contracts, even when they are taken out on
famous violinists and Israeli intelligence officers.”
“So you returned the money to the men who retained
you?”
“They were Swiss bankers. Money was the last thing
they needed.” Orsati closed the ledger and laid the talisman on the cover. “As
you might expect, I’ve been keeping a close eye on you over the years. You’ve
been a very busy man since our paths crossed. In fact, some of your best work
has been done on my turf.”
“This is my first visit to Corsica,” Gabriel
demurred.
“I was referring to the south of France,” Orsati
replied. “You killed that Saudi terrorist Zizi al-Bakari in the Old Port of
Cannes. And then there was that bit of unpleasantness with Ivan Kharkov in
Saint-Tropez a few years ago.”
“It was my understanding Ivan was killed by other
Russians,” Gabriel said evasively.