“What’s the routine at night?”
“Someone is always awake. They watch television in the sitting room or hang out in the garden.”
“How can you tell they’re watching television?”
“I can see it flickering through the shutters. By the way,” he added, “the shutters are never open. Never.”
“Any other lights on at night?”
“Not inside,” said Keller. “But the outside is lit up like a Christmas tree.”
Gabriel frowned. Keller suppressed a yawn and asked about Paris.
“It was cold.”
“Paris or the meeting?”
“Both,” replied Gabriel. “Especially when I suggested letting the French handle the rescue.”
“Why on earth would we do that?”
“That was Graham’s reaction, too.”
“What a shock.”
“You seem to have your finger on the pulse of Downing Street.”
Keller allowed the remark to pass without a response. Gabriel contemplated the flickering votive candles for a moment before telling Keller about the rest of his meeting with Graham Seymour: the Office safe house in Cherbourg, the Office reception committee, the quiet return to England on a forged Office passport. But it was all predicated on one thing. They had to get Madeline out of the villa quickly and quietly. No shootouts. No car chases.
“Shootouts are for cowboys,” said Keller, “and car chases only happen in the movies.”
“How do we get through the lights without being seen by the guards?”
“We don’t.”
“Explain.”
Keller did.
“And if Brossard or one of the others comes downstairs?”
“It’s possible they might get hurt.”
“Permanently,” added Gabriel. He looked at Keller seriously for a moment. “Do you know what’s going to happen when the police find those bodies? They’ll start asking questions in town. And before long they’ll have a composite sketch of a former SAS man who was supposed to have died in Iraq. Hotel surveillance photographs, too.”
“That’s what the macchia is for.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ll go to ground in Corsica and wait it out.”
“It might be a long time before you’ll be able to ply your trade again,” Gabriel said. “A very long time.”
“It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.”
“For queen and country?”
“For the girl.”
Gabriel regarded Keller in silence for a moment. “I take it you have a problem with men who harm innocent women?”
Keller nodded his head slowly.
“Anything you want to tell me?”
“You might find this hard to believe,” said Keller, “but I’m really not in the mood to take a stroll down memory lane with you.”
Gabriel smiled. “There’s hope for you after all, Keller.”
“A little,” the Englishman replied.
Gabriel heard footfalls in the church and, turning, saw the woman in the belted raincoat coming slowly up the nave. Once again she paused before the main altar and made the sign of the cross with great care, forehead to heart, left shoulder to right.
“The deadline is tomorrow,” said Gabriel. “Which means we have to go in tonight.”
“The sooner the better.”
“We need more people to do this the right way,” Gabriel said gloomily.
“Yes, I know.”
“A hundred things could go wrong.”
“Yes, I know.”
“She might not be able to walk.”
“So we’ll carry her,” said Keller. “It won’t be the first time I’ve carried someone off the battlefield.”
Gabriel looked at the woman in the tan raincoat staring into space, then at the flickering light of the votive candles.
“Who do you suppose he is?” he asked after a moment.
“Who?”
“Paul.”
“I don’t know,” said Keller, rising. “But if I ever see him, he’s dead.”
After leaving the church, Gabriel returned to the hotel and informed management he would be checking out. It was nothing serious, he assured them—a small crisis at home that only he, the peerless Herr Johannes Klemp of Munich, could disentangle. Management smiled regretfully but privately was pleased to see him go. The chambermaids had unanimously declared him the most annoying guest of the season, and Mafuz, the chief bellman, secretly wished him dead.