“I’ve had quite enough.”
“I can see that.”
“How was your trip?”
“The travel was hell,” said Keller, “but everything else went smoothly.”
“Who was he?”
Keller drank some of his wine without answering and asked Gabriel where he had been. When Gabriel told him that he had been to see the signadora, Keller smiled.
“We’ll make a Corsican of you yet.”
“It wasn’t my idea,” explained Gabriel.
“What did she want to tell you?”
“It was nothing,” said Gabriel. “Just the usual hocus-pocus about the wind in the willows.”
“Then why are you so pale?”
Gabriel made no response other than to place Keller’s gun carefully on the countertop.
“From what I hear,” Keller said, “you’re going to need that.”
“What do you hear?”
“I hear you’re going on a hunting trip.”
“Are you willing to help me?”
“Frankly,” said Keller, raising his wineglass to the light, “I expected you a long time ago.”
“I had a painting to finish.”
“By whom?”
“Bassano.”
“Studio of Bassano or Bassano Bassano?”
“A little of both.”
“Nice,” said Keller.
“How quickly can you be ready to move?”
“I have to check my calendar, but I suspect I’ll be ready to go first thing in the morning. But you should know,” he added, “that Marseilles is crawling with flics at the moment. And half of them are looking for us.”
“Which is why we’re not going anywhere near Marseilles, at least for now.”
“So where are we going?”
Gabriel smiled. “We’re going home.”
32
CORSICA–LONDON
They had dinner in the village, then Gabriel settled into a guest suite on the lower level of the villa. The walls were white, the bedding was white, the armchair and ottoman were covered in sailcloth. The room’s lack of color disturbed his sleep. That night, when he ran to Madeline in his dreams, he ran across an endless field of snow. And when she scratched at the back of her hand, the blood that flowed from the wound was the color of heavy cream.
In the morning they caught the first flight to Paris and then flew on to Heathrow. Keller cleared customs on a French passport, which Gabriel, who was waiting for him in the arrivals hall, thought was a most ignoble way for an Englishman to return to the land of his birth. They made their way outside and waited twenty minutes for a taxi. It crawled into central London through heavy traffic and rain.
“Now you know why I don’t live here any longer,” Keller said quietly in French as he stared out his rain-spattered window at the gray London suburbs.
“The moisture will do wonders for your skin,” Gabriel replied in the same language. “You look like a piece of leather.”
The taxi delivered them to Marble Arch. Gabriel and Keller walked a short distance along Bayswater Road, to the apartment house overlooking Hyde Park. The flat was precisely as he had left it the morning he had driven to France with the ransom money; in fact, Chiara’s breakfast dishes were still in the sink. Gabriel dropped his bag in the main bedroom and took a gun from the floor safe. When he emerged, he found Keller standing in the window of the sitting room.
“Can you manage for a few hours on your own?” Gabriel asked.
“I’ll be fine.”
“Any plans?”
“I think I’ll take a boat ride on the Serpentine and then pop over to Covent Garden for a bit of shopping.”
“It might be better if you stayed here. You never know who you might bump into.”
“I’m Regiment, luv.”
Keller said nothing more; he didn’t need to. He was SAS, which meant that, if he wanted, he could walk through a room of close friends and no one would know his name.
Gabriel headed down to the street and hailed a passing taxi. Twenty minutes later he was walking past the gated entrance of Downing Street, toward the Houses of Parliament. In his pocket was a single entry from his dossier, a lengthy article from London’s Daily Telegraph. The headline read MADELINE HART—THE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS.