Home > The Cellist (Gabriel Allon #21)(7)

The Cellist (Gabriel Allon #21)(7)
Author: Daniel Silva

“Is that why you always look under our car before we get in?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love Dani more than you love us?”

“Of course not. But we must never forget him.”

“Where’s Leah?”

“She lives in a special hospital not far from us in Jerusalem.”

“Has she ever met us?”

“Only Raphael.”

“Why?”

Because God, in his infinite wisdom, had created in Raphael a duplicate of Gabriel’s dead son. This, too, he withheld from his children, for their sake and his. That night, as Chiara slept contentedly at his side, he relived the bombing in Vienna in his dreams and awoke to find his half of the bed drenched with sweat. It was perhaps fitting, then, that when he reached for the phone on the bedside table, he learned that an old friend had been murdered in London.

He dressed in darkness and climbed into his SUV for the drive to King Saul Boulevard. After submitting to a temperature check and a rapid Covid test, he rode in his private elevator to his sanitized office on the top floor. Two hours later, after watching the British prime minister’s evasive appearance before reporters outside Number Ten, he rang Graham Seymour on the secure hotline. Graham volunteered no additional information about the murder, save for the identity of the woman who had stumbled upon the body. Gabriel responded with the same question the prime minister had posed the previous evening.

“What in God’s name was she doing in Viktor Orlov’s house?”

 

If there was a bright spot in Gabriel’s post-Covid existence, it was the Gulfstream jet. A G550 of astounding comfort and murky registry, it touched down at London City Airport at half past four that afternoon. The passport Gabriel displayed to the immigration authorities was Israeli, diplomatic, and pseudonymous. It fooled no one.

Nevertheless, after passing yet another rapid Covid test, he was granted provisional admittance to the United Kingdom. A waiting embassy sedan delivered him to 18 Queen’s Gate Terrace in Kensington. According to the list of names on the intercom panel, the occupant of the lower maisonette was someone called Peter Marlowe. The bell rang unanswered, so Gabriel descended a flight of wrought-iron steps to the lower entrance and drew the thin metal tool he carried habitually in his jacket pocket. Neither of the two high-quality locks put up much of a fight.

Inside, an alarm chirped in protest. Gabriel entered the correct eight-digit code into the keypad and switched on the overhead lights, illuminating a large designer kitchen. The stonework was Corsican, as was the bottle of rosé he unearthed from the well-provisioned Sub-Zero refrigerator. He removed the cork and switched on the Bose radio resting on the granite countertop.

The Russian government has denied any role in Mr. Orlov’s death . . .

The BBC news presenter made an awkward transition from Orlov’s assassination to the latest pandemic news. Gabriel switched off the radio and drank some of the Corsican wine. Finally, at twenty minutes past six, a Bentley Continental pulled up in the street, and a well-dressed man emerged. A moment later he was standing in the open door of the kitchen, a Walther PPK in his outstretched hands.

“Hello, Christopher,” said Gabriel as he raised the wineglass in greeting. “Do me a favor and put down that damn gun. Otherwise, one of us might get hurt.”

 

 

6

Queen’s Gate Terrace, Kensington


Christopher Keller was a member of an exceedingly small club—the brotherhood of terrorists, assassins, spies, arms dealers, art thieves, and fallen priests who had undertaken to kill Gabriel Allon and were still walking the face of the earth. Christopher’s motives for accepting the challenge had been financial rather than political. He was employed at the time by a certain Don Anton Orsati, leader of a Corsican crime family that specialized in murder for hire. Unlike many of the fools who had gone before him, Christopher was an altogether worthy opponent, a former member of the elite SAS who had served under deep cover in Northern Ireland during one of the nastier periods of the Troubles. Gabriel had survived the contract only because Christopher, out of professional courtesy, declined to pull the trigger when presented with the shot. Some years later Gabriel repaid the favor by convincing Graham Seymour to give Christopher a job at MI6.

As part of his repatriation agreement, Christopher had been allowed to keep the substantial fortune he had amassed while working for Don Orsati. He had invested a portion of the money—eight million pounds, to be precise—in the maisonette in Queen’s Gate Terrace. When Gabriel last dropped in unannounced, the rooms had been largely unfurnished. Now they were tastefully decorated in patterned silk and chintz, and there was a faint but unmistakable whiff of fresh paint in the air. Clearly, Christopher had given Sarah free rein and unlimited resources. Gabriel had reluctantly blessed their relationship, secure in his belief it would be both brief and disastrous. He had even arranged for Sarah to work at Julian’s gallery despite concerns about her security. He had to admit, the exposure to a Russian nerve agent notwithstanding, she looked happier than she had in many years. If anyone had earned the right to be happy, thought Gabriel, it was Sarah Bancroft.

Barefoot, she was draped across an overstuffed armchair in the upstairs drawing room, wineglass in hand. Her blue eyes were fixed on Christopher, who occupied a matching chair to her right. Gabriel had settled in a distant corner where he was safe from their microbes and they from his. Sarah had greeted him with pleasant surprise but without so much as a kiss on the cheek or a fleeting embrace. Such were the social customs of the brave new Covid world; everyone was an untouchable. Or perhaps, thought Gabriel, Sarah was merely trying to keep him at arm’s length. She had never made any secret of the fact she was desperately in love with him, even when asking for his approval of her decision to leave New York and move to London. It seemed that Christopher had finally broken the spell. Gabriel suspected he had intruded on an intimate moment. He had one or two things he wanted to clear up before taking his leave.

“And you’re certain about the attribution?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t have offered it to Viktor if I wasn’t. It wouldn’t have been ethical.”

“Since when do ethics have anything to do with being an art dealer?”

“Or an intelligence officer,” replied Sarah.

“But Italian Old Masters aren’t exactly your area of expertise, are they? In fact, if I recall correctly, you wrote your dissertation at Harvard on the German Expressionists.”

“At the tender age of twenty-eight.” She moved a stray lock of blond hair from her face using only her middle finger. “And before that, as you well know, I earned my MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute here in London.”

“Did you seek a second opinion?”

“Niles Dunham. He offered me eight hundred thousand on the spot.”

“For an Artemisia? Outrageous.”

“I told him so.”

“Still, all things considered, you would have been wise to take it.”

“Trust me, I intend to call him first thing in the morning.”

“Please don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because one never knows when one might need a newly discovered painting by Artemisia Gentileschi.”

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