Rossetti stood and shuffled across the floor toward an ancient strongbox. He worked the tumbler, then pulled open the heavy doors. He removed an attaché case, placed it on the desk, and sat down again. Opening the case, he removed two weapons, each bound in felt rags, and placed them on the desk. He unwrapped the first and handed it over: a Tanfolglio S Model nine-millimeter with a jet-black barrel and walnut grip. It smelled of clean gun oil. The assassin pulled the slide, felt the weight and balance of the weapon, and peered down the barrel through the sights.
“It has a fifteen-shot magazine, and the longer barrel makes it very accurate,” Rossetti said. “Your seat for the concert is in the second-to-last row. I’m afraid it’s the best I could do. But even from there, a man of your training should have no trouble making the shot with the Tanfolglio.”
“I’ll take it. And an extra magazine.”
“Of course.”
“And the second gun?”
Rossetti unwrapped it and handed it to the assassin. It was an Austrian-made tactical machine pistol. The Englishman picked up the weapon and looked it over carefully.
“I specifically asked for a Heckler and Koch MP-Five,” the Englishman said.
“Yes, I know, but I couldn’t secure one on such short notice. I’m sure you’ll find the Steyr-Mannlicher to your liking. It’s lightweight and easy to conceal. Besides, itis a last resort.”
“I suppose it will have to do.”
“You have a special affection for the Heckler and Koch?”
The Englishman did. It was the weapon he had used when he was in the SAS, but he wasn’t about to share that piece of information with Rossetti. He wrapped both weapons in their original cloth covers and placed them carefully in his briefcase, along with the extra magazines and boxes of ammunition.
“Will you require anything else?”
When the assassin shook his head, Rossetti took his pencil to a small scratch pad and began calculating the tab: weapons, ticket for the performance, personal services. Arriving at a total in lira, he slid it across the desk for the assassin to see. The assassin looked at the bill, then at Rossetti.
“Do you mind if I pay in dollars?”
Rossetti smiled and converted the lira sum into dollars, using that day’s exchange rate. The Englishman counted out the sum in crisp fifty-dollar bills and added five hundred dollars in gratuity. Signore Rossetti shrugged his shoulder, as if to say a gratuity was not necessary, but the assassin insisted and Rossetti slipped the money discreetly into his pocket.
Downstairs, Rossetti and the Englishman walked out together, Rossetti locking the door behind them. A torrent of rain greeted them, great curtains of water that pounded the little alley and ran toward the storm drains like a swollen mountain stream. The Italian had pulled on a pair of knee-length rubber boots; the Englishman was reduced to hopping and skipping through the puddles in his suede loafers. This amused the Venetian jeweler.
“Your first time in Venice?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“It’s been like this every day for a week, and still the tourists come. We need them-God knows, I’d have no business without them-but sometimes even I tire of their presence.”
At a vaporetto stop, they shook hands.
“I have to say that I find this a most distasteful business, but I suppose you must do what you are paid to do. A violinist”-he raised his hands in a thoroughly Italian gesture-“A violinist can be replaced. But the Tintorettos… the Tintorettos are irreplaceable. Please, I will never forgive myself if I played any role in their destruction.”
“I assure you, Signore Rossetti, that I will make every effort to avoid damaging them.”
The Italian smiled. “I trust that you will. Besides, can you imagine the curse that would befall a man who put a bullet hole through the Savior or the Virgin?”
The little jeweler made the sign of the cross, then turned and melted into the alley.
37
GABRIEL’S TEAM gathered that afternoon in the sitting room of Anna Rolfe’s hotel suite. They had come to Venice by different routes, with the passports of different countries and with different cover stories. In keeping with Office doctrine, they all posed as couples. The operation had been conceived and set into motion so hastily that it had never been given a proper code name. Anna’s hotel room was called the Giorgione Suite, and from that moment on Gabriel’s Venetian field unit took the name as their own.
There were Shimon and Ilana. Playing the parts of French newlyweds, they had driven to Venice from the Cote d’Azur. They were dark-eyed and olive-skinned, equal in height and nearly equal in physical beauty. They had trained together at the Academy, and their relationship was strained when Ilana bested Shimon on the shooting range and broke his collarbone during a session on the foam-rubber mats in the gymnasium.
There were Yitzhak and Moshe. In an accommodation to the realities of relationships in the modern world, they posed as a gay couple from Notting Hill, even though both were quite the other thing, Yitzhak aggressively so.
There was Deborah from the Ottawa station. Gabriel had worked with her on the Tariq operation and was so impressed with her performance that he had insisted she be a part of the Venice team. Shamron had balked at first, but when Gabriel refused to back down, he put her on the next plane from Ottawa and concocted a compelling lie for her section chief.
Seated next to her on the sofa, his leg hanging suggestively over the armrest, was Jonathan. Taciturn and bored, he had the air of a man kept waiting in a doctor’s office for a routine physical he did not need. He was a younger version of Gabriel-Gabriel before Vienna perhaps. “He takes his killing seriously,” Shamron had said. “But he’s no gunslinger. He has a conscience, like you. When it’s over, and everyone’s safe, he’ll find a nice quiet toilet where he can throw up his guts.” Gabriel found this element of Jonathan’s character reassuring, as Shamron knew he would.
The session lasted one hour and fifteen minutes, though why Gabriel made a note of this fact he did not know. He had chosen to conduct that day’s run in Castello, the sestiere which lay just to the east of the Basilica San Marco and the Doge’s Palace. He had lived in Castello when he was serving his apprenticeship and knew the tangled streets well. Using a hotel pencil as a pointer, he plotted his route and choreographed the movements of the team.
To cover the sound of his instructions, he played a recording of German dances by Mozart. This seemed to darken Jonathan’s mood. Jonathan reviled all things German. Indeed, the only people he hated more than the Germans were the Swiss. During the war, his grandfather had tried to preserve his money and heirlooms by entrusting them to a Swiss banker. Fifty years later, Jonathan had tried to gain access to the account but was told by an officious clerk that the bank first required proof that Jonathan’s grandfather was indeed dead. Jonathan explained that his grandfather had been murdered at Treblinka-with gas manufactured by a Swiss chemical company, he had been tempted to say-and that the Nazis, while sticklers for paperwork, had not been thoughtful enough to provide a death certificate. Sorry, the clerk had said. No death certificate, no money.
When Gabriel finished his instructions, he opened a large stainless-steel suitcase and gave a secure cell phone and a nine-millimeter Beretta to each member of the team. When the guns were out of sight again, he walked upstairs, collected Anna from the bedroom, and brought her down to meet Team Giorgione for the first time. Shimon and Ilana stood and applauded quietly. Slipping into character, Yitzhak and Moshe commented on the cut of her fashionable leather boots. Deborah eyed her jealously. Only Jonathan seemed to have no interest in her, but Jonathan was to be forgiven, for by then he had eyes only for the assassin known as the Englishman.