“Because he just returned to London, and I was planning to spend the next several days doing unspeakable things to his body.”
“I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”
She sighed. “Where are you this time?”
“Back in Switzerland.”
“You’re not planning to rob another Mafia-controlled bank, are you?”
“Something better.”
“Hard to imagine.”
“Just tell that husband of yours to get to Bern as quickly as possible,” said Gabriel before ringing off. “I promise he won’t be disappointed. And neither will his friends from the Firm.”
The Firm was how insiders sometimes referred to His Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. Sarah’s husband was known there, and everywhere else in the overt world, as Peter Marlowe. She had never cared for the name—it sounded like something invented by a novelist—and privately she referred to him only by the name bestowed upon him at birth, which was Christopher. His surname was Keller, a remnant of his family’s German roots. Sarah, though she was an American by birth, was English to the core—more English than her British husband. His superiors at SIS, who were never thrilled with his decision to wed a retired officer from another service, evena friendly one, were of the opinion that Sarah should make it official and acquire a UK passport. For now, at least, she intended to remain exclusively an American.
The maisonette they shared was located in Queen’s Gate Terrace in Kensington. Sarah arrived there at half past six to find Christopher taking down a bottle of Johnnie Walker from the kitchen cabinet. He wore an elegant gray suit by Richard Green of Savile Row and a shirt and tie by Turnbull & Asser. His hair was sun-bleached, his skin was taut and dark, his eyes were bright blue. The notch in the center of his chin looked as though it had been cleaved with a chisel. His mouth seemed permanently fixed in an ironic half smile.
He loosened the cap on the bottle and poured three fingers of the whisky into a cut-glass Baccarat tumbler, a wedding gift from an old friend on the island of Corsica. His packet of Marlboro cigarettes was lying on the countertop. Sarah pinched one, then told her husband about her phone conversation with their mutual friend Gabriel Allon.
“I wonder what it could be this time.”
“Knowing Gabriel,” replied Sarah, “it could be anything.”
“What’s he been up to lately?”
“He’s supposed to be restoring a Bellotto for me.”
“Riveting stuff.” Christopher returned the bottle of whisky to the cabinet. “Anything else?”
Having spent the better part of the summer in eastern Ukraine, Christopher was in desperate need of a few days of down time in London. But after hearing his wife’s answer, he reserved a seat on the morning’s first flight from Heathrow to Geneva. From there it was a pleasant two hours by train to Bern. Gabriel was waiting outside the station in a Mitsubishi SUV. Christopher dropped into the passenger seat and ignited a cigarette.
“Must you?” asked Gabriel.
“I’m afraid so, old love.”
“This is a nonsmoking car.”
“Not anymore, it isn’t.”
Gabriel lowered his window to vent the smoke and pulled away from the station.
“Mind telling me where we’re going?” asked Christopher.
“The Bernese Oberland.”
“I wish you would have told me. I would have packed some kit.”
Despite a lifelong addiction to tobacco, Christopher was a world-class climber who had already bagged most of Switzerland’s toughest mountains, including the Matterhorn and the North Face of the Eiger. The first mountain he ever climbed was the Pen y Fan in South Wales. He had done so while carrying a fifty-five-pound rucksack and a ten-pound assault rifle provided to him by his instructors at the Special Air Service, Britain’s elite commando regiment. He had come to the Secret Intelligence Service later in life than most, and with a closet full of skeletons that would have sunk an ordinary recruit. It was Gabriel who had vouched for him.
“How much did Sarah tell you?” he asked.
“Not much. But then you weren’t terribly forthcoming when you spoke to her.”
“I said as much as I could over an insecure phone.”
“Who were you worried about?”
