The English Assassin (36 page)

“Tell me about Werner Müller,” Gabriel said.

“He was the key to everything. If we were going to get at Rolfe’s secret collection, we needed Müller’s help. Müller was the one who designed the security system. So I had my men dig up as much dirt on Müller as we could find. Müller didn’t have clean hands, either. None of us really does, do we?” When Gabriel said nothing, Peterson continued. “I went to Paris to have a chat with Müller. Needless to say, he agreed to work for our cause.”

Peterson smoked the cigarette nearly to the filter, then morosely crushed it out in his empty soup bowl.

“The job was set for the next night. Rolfe was planning to go to Geneva and spend the night at his apartment there. The art restorer was scheduled to arrive the next morning. The team broke into the villa, and Müller guided them down to the viewing chamber.”

“Were you part of the team?”

“No, my job was to make sure the Zurich police didn’t show up in the middle of it, nothing more.”

“Go on.”

“Müller disarms the security system and shuts down the cameras. Then they go inside the vault, and guess what they find?”

“Augustus Rolfe.”

“In the flesh. Three o’clock in the morning, and the old man is sitting there with his fucking paintings. Müller panics. The burglars are strangers to Rolfe, but the old man and Müller are in business together. If the old man goes to the police, it’s Müller who’ll take the fall. He grabs a gun from one of the Council’s men, marches the old man upstairs to the drawing room, and puts a bullet in his brain.”

“Six hours later, I show up.”

Peterson nodded. “Rolfe’s body gave us an opportunity to test the veracity of the art restorer. If the art restorer discovers the body and telephones the police, chances are he’s just an art restorer. If he finds the body and tries to leave town—”

Peterson held up his hands as if to say no other explanation was necessary.

“So you arrange to have me arrested.”

“That’s right.”

“What about the first detective who interrogated me?”

“Baer? Baer knew nothing. To Baer you were just a suspect in the murder of a Swiss banker.”

“Why bother to arrest me? Why not just let me go?”

“I wanted to scare the shit out of you and make you think twice about ever coming back.”

“But it didn’t stop there.”

Peterson shook his head. “No, unfortunately, it was just the beginning.”

G
ABRIEL
knew most of the rest, because he had lived through it. Peterson’s rapid-fire account served only to reinforce his existing beliefs or to fill in gaps.

Just as Peterson suspected, Anna Rolfe does not report the theft of her father’s secret collection. Peterson immediately places her under surveillance. The job is handled by assets connected to the Council of Rütli and Swiss security-service officers loyal to Peterson. Peterson knew that Gabriel went to Portugal a week after Rolfe’s funeral to see Anna Rolfe, and he knew that they traveled to Zurich together and visited the Rolfe villa.

From that moment on, Gabriel is under surveillance: Rome, Paris, London, Lyons. The Council retains the
services of a professional assassin. In Paris, he kills Müller and destroys his gallery. In Lyons, he kills Emil Jacobi.

“Who were the men waiting for me that night at Rolfe’s villa?” Gabriel asked.

“They worked for the Council. We hired a professional to handle things outside our borders.” Peterson paused. “You killed them both, by the way. It was a very impressive performance. And then we lost track of you for thirty-six hours.”

Vienna,
thought Gabriel. His meeting with Lavon. His confrontation with Anna about her father’s past. Just as Gabriel had suspected, Peterson picks up their trail the next day on the Bahnhofstrasse. After discovering Anna Rolfe’s car abandoned at the German border, the Council presses the panic button. Gabriel Allon and Anna Rolfe are to be hunted down and murdered by the professional at the first opportunity. It was supposed to happen in Venice. . . .

P
ETERSON
’
S
head slumped toward the tabletop as the effects of the stimulants subsided. Peterson needed sleep—natural sleep, not the kind that came from a syringe. Gabriel had only one question left, and he needed an answer before Peterson could be carried off and handcuffed to a bed. By the time he asked it, Peterson had made a pillow of his hands and was resting, facedown, on the table. “The paintings,” Gabriel repeated softly. “Where are the paintings?” Peterson managed only two words before he slid into unconsciousness.

Otto Gessler.

MALLES VENOSTA, ITALY

O
NLY
G
ERHARDT
P
ETERSON
slept that night. Eli Lavon awakened his girl in Vienna and dispatched her on a 2
A
.
M
. run to his office in the Jewish Quarter to scour his dusty archives. One hour later, the results of her search rattled off the fax machine, so meager they could have been written on the back of a Viennese postcard. Research Section in Tel Aviv contributed its own slender and thoroughly unhelpful volume, while Oded roamed the dubious corners of the Internet in a search for cybergossip.

Otto Gessler was a ghost. A rumor. Finding the truth about him, said Lavon, was like trying to catch fog in a bottle. His age was anyone’s guess. His date of birth was unknown, as was the place. There were no photographs. He lived nowhere and everywhere, had no parents and no children. “He’ll probably never die,” Lavon said, rubbing his eyes with bewilderment. “One day, when his time comes, he’s just going to disappear.”

Of Gessler’s business affairs, little was known and much was suspected. He was thought to have a controlling interest in a number of private banks, trust companies, and industrial concerns. Which private banks, which trust companies, and which industrial concerns no one knew, because Otto Gessler operated only through front companies and corporate cutouts. When Otto Gessler did a deal, he left no physical evidence—no fingerprints, no footprints, no DNA—and his books were sealed tighter than a sarcophagus.

Over the years, his name had cropped up in connection with a number of money-laundering and trading scandals. He was rumored to have cornered commodities markets, sold guns and butter to dictators in violation of international sanctions, turned drug profits into respectable real-estate holdings. But the leather glove of law enforcement had never touched Otto Gessler. Thanks to a legion of lawyers spread from New York to London to Zurich, Otto Gessler had paid not one centime in fines and served not one day in jail.

Oded
did
discover one interesting anecdote buried in a highly speculative American magazine profile. Several years after the war, Gessler acquired a company which had manufactured arms for the Wehrmacht. In a warehouse outside Lucerne, he had discovered five thousand artillery pieces that had been stranded in Switzerland after the collapse of the Third Reich. Unwilling to allow unsold inventory to remain on his books, Gessler went in search of a buyer. He found one in a rebellious corner of Asia. The Nazi artillery pieces helped topple a colonial ruler, and Gessler earned twice the profit the guns would have fetched in Berlin.

As the sun rose over the row of cypress trees bordering the garden, Lavon unearthed one redeeming
trait about Otto Gessler. It was suspected that each year Gessler gave millions of dollars to fund medical research.

“Which disease?” asked Gabriel.

“Greed?” suggested Oded, but Lavon shook his head in wonder. “It doesn’t say. The old bastard gives away millions of dollars a year, and he conceals even that. Otto Gessler is a secret. Otto Gessler is Switzerland incarnate.”

G
ERHARDT
Peterson slept until ten o’clock. Gabriel permitted him to bathe and groom at his leisure and to dress in the clothes he had been wearing at the time of his disappearance, now cleaned and pressed by Eli Lavon. Gabriel thought the cold mountain air would be good for Peterson’s appearance, so after breakfast they walked the grounds. The Swiss was a head taller and better dressed than his companions, which made him appear as though he was a landowner issuing instructions to a group of day laborers.

Peterson tried to fill in some of the bare canvas of their portrait of Otto Gessler, though it quickly became clear he knew little more than they did. He gave them the precise location of his mountain villa, the details of the security, and the circumstances of their conversations.

“So you’ve never actually seen his face?” asked Oded.

Peterson shook his head and looked away. He had never forgiven Oded for the ice-water showers in the cellar and refused to look at him now.

“You’re going to take me to him,” Gabriel said. “You’re going to help me get the paintings back.”

Peterson smiled; the cold, bloodless smile Gabriel had seen in the holding cell in Zurich after his arrest.
“Otto Gessler’s villa is like a fortress. You can’t walk in there and threaten him.”

“I’m not planning to threaten.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“I want to offer him a business deal. It’s the only language he speaks. Gessler will return the paintings in exchange for a substantial finder’s fee and an assurance from me that his role in this affair will never come to light.”

“Otto Gessler makes a habit of only dealing from a position of strength. He can’t be bullied, and the last thing he needs is more money. If you try this, you’ll walk out of there empty-handed, if you walk out at all.”

“Either way, I’ll walk out.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“I’ll walk out because it’s
your
responsibility to make sure nothing happens to me. We know where you live, we know where your children go to school, and we always know where to find you.”

Again, Peterson’s arrogant smile flashed across his lips.

“I wouldn’t think a man with your past would threaten another man’s family. But I suppose desperate times call for desperate measures. Isn’t that how the saying goes? Let’s get this over with, shall we? I want to get out of this fucking place.”

Peterson turned and started up the hill toward the villa, Oded silently at his heels. Eli Lavon laid a small hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe you shouldn’t go in.”

“He’ll get me out. Besides, at this point, Gessler gains nothing from killing me.”

“Like the man says: Desperate times call for desperate measures. Let’s go home.”

“I don’t want them to win, Eli.”

“People like Otto Gessler always win. Besides, where the hell are you planning on getting the money to buy back the paintings from him? Shamron? I can’t wait to see the look on the old man’s face when you file your expense report for this one!”

“I’m not getting the money from Shamron. I’m getting it from the man who stole the paintings in the first place.”

“Augustus Rolfe?”

“Of course.”

“Atonement, yes?”

“Sometimes, Eli, forgiveness comes at a heavy price.”

I
T
was midday before they left. Peterson seemed annoyed to find his Mercedes parked in the gravel forecourt next to the Volkswagen van they’d thrown him into after his kidnapping. He climbed into the front passenger seat and reluctantly allowed Oded to cuff his wrist to the armrest on the door. Gabriel got behind the wheel and gunned the engine a little too aggressively for Peterson’s taste. Oded sprawled in the backseat, his feet on the tan leather and a Beretta on his lap.

The Swiss border lay only fifteen miles from the villa. Gabriel led the way in the Mercedes, followed by Eli Lavon in the van. It was a quiet crossing; the wearied border guard waved them across after a cursory inspection of their passports. Gabriel had briefly removed Peterson’s handcuffs, but a mile past the border he pulled off the road and chained him to the door again.

From there it was northwest to Davos; then up to Reichenau; then west, into the heart of Inner Switzerland. In the Grimselpass it began to snow. Gabriel
eased off the throttle so Lavon could keep pace in his clunky Volkswagen van.

Peterson grew more restless as they drove farther north. He gave Gabriel directions as though he were leading him to a buried body. When he asked for the handcuffs to be removed, Gabriel refused.

“You’re lovers?” Peterson asked.

“Oded? He’s cute, but I’m afraid he’s not my type.”

“I meant Anna Rolfe.”

“I know what you meant. I thought a touch of humor might help to defuse the situation. Otherwise, I might be tempted to strike you very hard in the face.”

“Of course you’re lovers. Why else would you be involved in this affair? She’s had many lovers. I’m certain you won’t be the last. If you’d like to see her file, I’d be happy to show it to you—as a professional courtesy, of course.”

“Do you do anything for principle, Gerhardt, or do you do things only for money? For example, why do you work for the Council of Rütli? Do you do it only for the money, or do you do it because you believe in what they’re doing?”