The English Assassin

She removed the violin from its case and placed it against her neck, so that the button pressed against the familiar spot a few inches above the base of her shoulder. Her dress was strapless; she didn’t like anything between her body and her instrument. At first the violin felt cool against her skin, but soon the heat of her body suffused its wood. She placed the bow on the G string and pulled. The violin responded with a thick, resonant tone. Her tone. A

She permitted herself to look once at her hand. The scars were so ugly. She wished there was something she could do to hide them. Then she pushed the thought from her mind. Her hand did not play the violin; it was her head that played. Her fingers would obey her brain.

She switched off the lights and closed her eyes, then laid the bow across the strings and pulled slowly, coaxing sound from the violin. She executed no scales, performed no exercises, played no portion of the compositions she would perform that evening. There was nothing she could do now to prepare further. The pieces were so imbedded in her cells that she would play them not from memory but from instinct. Now she simply drew sound from the violin and allowed the sound to flow through her body. It’s just you and me, fiddle, she thought. Just you and me.

She could hear the murmur of a conversation beyond her closed door. She threw a switch in her mind, and it was gone. Through the walls seeped the low din of the upper hall begi

It’s just you and me, fiddle. Just you and me…

She thought of the man in Gabriel’s photographs, the assassin known as the Englishman. It had been a long time since she had been able to put her trust in a man. She supposed her father’s betrayal-the lies he had told her about the reasons for her mother’s suicide-had spoiled her for all men. But tonight she would place her life in the hands of Gabriel Allon. Her father had set in motion a plan to try to atone for terrible sins he had committed. He was murdered before he was able to finish what he started. Gabriel would have to finish it for him. And A

The bubble began to close around her, to enfold her. There was no assassin, no photograph of her father with Adolf Hitler, no Gabriel Allon. Just her and the violin.

There was a faint tapping at the door. Instantly, A

“Five minutes, Miss Rolfe.”

“Thank you.”

The bow slid along the string once more. The sound flowed through her body. The violin turned to fire against her skin. The bubble closed around her. She was lost. Soon the door was open and she was floating toward the upper hall. As she entered the room she assumed there was applause-she knew this only from experience, not from any information she was receiving from her senses. She could not see the audience, nor could she hear it.

She dipped her head and waited an instant before lifting the violin above her shoulder and pressing it to her neck. Then she laid the bow on the strings, hesitated, and began to play.

GABRIEL established his watch post beneath Tintoretto’s Temptation of Christ. Slowly, his eyes swept the room. Person by person, face by face, he searched the chamber for the man in the photograph. If the assassin was there, Gabriel did not see him.

He checked the disposition of his team. Yitzhak stood directly across the hall from Gabriel. A few feet away, at the top of the staircase, stood Moshe. Shimon and Ilana roamed the back of the hall, and a few feet to Gabriel’s right was Jonathan, arms folded, chin on his chest, his dark gaze up.

For a moment he allowed himself to look at A

A

He watched her now as an admirer-and vaguely, he thought, as a restorer. He had helped her to discover the truth about her father and to come to terms with her family’s past. The damage was still there, he thought, but it was concealed, invisible to the naked eye, like in a perfect restoration.

She executed the treacherous chromatic descent at the end of the first movement. Pausing for a moment, she began the second movement. Mischievous and faster-paced, it was full of demanding string crossings that required her hand to move repeatedly from the first position to the fifth and from the E string to the G. Eighteen minutes later, when the third movement dissolved into a final arpeggiated G-minor chord, the audience exploded into applause.

A

39

A STEADY RAIN was falling on the Campo San Rocco. The miserable weather did nothing to dampen the spirits of the large crowd that lingered there after the recital, hoping for one last glimpse of A

A

Gabriel was standing a few feet away, watching her carefully. A

“Word travels fast, my dear. You’re going to have a busy winter. Paris, Brussels, Stockholm, and Berlin. And that’s just the first week.”

“I’m not sure I’m really ready to get back on the merry-go-round again, Fiona.”

Zaccaria Cordoni laid a hand on her shoulder. “If I may be presumptuous, you are definitely ready. Your performance tonight was inspired. You played like a woman possessed.”

“Maybe I am possessed,” she said mischievously.

Fiona smiled and glanced toward Gabriel. “You want to tell us about your mysterious Frenchman-the handsome Monsieur Dumont?”

“Actually, what I’d like to do is spend a few minutes alone.”

She walked across the room and took Gabriel’s hand. Fiona and Cordoni watched them walk down the corridor to the dressing room. Fiona frowned.

“Whoever Monsieur Dumont is, I hope he doesn’t break her heart like the others. She’s like fine crystal: beautiful but easily broken. And if that bastard breaks her, I’ll kill him.”