stepped out of the carriage with the air of a man who was not looking forward to returning to the loneliness of yet another hotel room. A single member of the housekeeping staff gave him a drowsy nod, but otherwise the corridor was empty. The cardkey was now in the breast pocket of his overcoat. He removed it as he approached Room 518 and inserted it into the slot. The green light shone, the electronic lock disengaged. The Gambian would live another day.
The room had been recently serviced. Even so, the stench of the Libyan’s appalling cologne persisted. Keller moved to the window and looked into the street. The Libyan and his two companions were still at their table at the café, though the woman appeared restless. In the time since Keller had seen them last, their plates had been cleared and coffee had been served. Ten minutes, he reckoned. Maybe less.
He turned from the window and calmly surveyed the room. The Kempinski thought it superior, but it was really quite ordinary: a double bed, a writing desk, a television console, a royal-blue armchair. The walls were thick enough to smother all sound from the adjoining rooms, though not thick enough to withstand a normal bullet, even a bullet that had penetrated a human body. As a result, Keller’s HK was loaded with 124-grain hollow-point rounds that would expand on impact. Any round that struck the intended target would remain there. And in the unlikely event Keller somehow missed, the round would lodge harmlessly in the wall with a dull thud.
He returned to the window and saw that the Libyan and his two companions were on their feet. The man of perhaps sixty was shaking the Libyan’s hand; the once-beautiful woman with coal-black hair was gazing longingly at the parade of exclusive shops lining the Ku-Damm. Keller drew the heavy curtains, sat down in the royal-blue armchair, and removed the HK from his briefcase. From the corridor came the squeak of a housekeeper’s trolley. Then all was silent. He glanced at his wristwatch and marked the time. Five minutes, he thought. Maybe less.
A benevolent sun shone brightly upon the island of Corsica as the overnight ferry from Marseilles eased into the port of Ajaccio. Keller filed off the vessel with the other passengers and made his way to the car park, where he had left his battered old Renault station wagon. A powdery dust covered the windows and the hood. Keller thought the dust a bad omen. In all likelihood the sirocco had carried it from North Africa. Instinctively, he touched the small red coral hand hanging around his neck by a strand of leather. The Corsicans believed the talisman had the power to ward off the occhju, the evil eye. Keller believed it, too, though the presence of North African dust on his car the morning after he had killed a Libyan suggested the talisman had failed to protect him. There was an old woman in his village, a signadora, who had the power to draw the evil from his body. Keller was not looking forward to seeing her, for the old woman also had the power to glimpse both the past and the future. She was one of the few people on the island who knew the truth about him. She knew his long litany of sins and misdeeds, and even claimed to know the time and circumstances of his death. It was the one thing she refused to tell him. “It is not my place,” she would whisper to him in her candlelit parlor. “Besides, to know how life ends would only ruin the story.”
Keller climbed behind the wheel of the Renault and set out down the island’s rugged western coastline, the turquoise-blue sea to his right, the high peaks of the interior to his left. To pass the time he listened to the news on the radio. There was nothing about a dead Libyan at a luxury hotel in Berlin. Keller doubted the body had even been discovered yet. He had committed the act in silence and upon leaving the room had hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the latch. Eventually, the Kempinski’s management would take it upon themselves to knock on the door. And upon receiving no response, management would enter the room and find a valued guest with two bullet holes over his heart and a third in the center of his forehead. Management would immediately telephone the police, of course, and a hasty search would commence for the dark-haired, mustachioed man seen entering the room. They would manage to track his movements immediately after the killing, but the trail would go cold in the wooded gloom of the Tiergarten. The police would never establish his identity. Some would suspect him of being a Libyan like his victim, but a few of the wiser veterans would speculate that he was the same high-priced professional who had been killing in Europe for years. And then they would wash their hands of it, for they knew that murders carried out by professional assassins were rarely solved.
Keller followed the coastline to the town of Porto and then turned inland. It was a Sunday; the roads were quiet, and in the hill towns church bells tolled. In the center of the island, near its highest point, was the small village of the Orsatis. It had been there, or so it was said, since the time of the Vandals, when people from the coasts took to the hills for safety. Time seemed to have stopped there. Children played in the streets at all hours because there were no predators. Nor were there any illegal narcotics, for no dealer would risk the wrath of the Orsatis by peddling drugs in their village. Nothing much happened there, and sometimes there was not enough work to be done. But it was clean and beautiful and safe, and the people who lived there seemed content to eat well, drink their wine, and enjoy time with their children and their elders. Keller always missed them when he was away from Corsica for long. He dressed like them, he spoke the Corsican dialect like them, and in the evening, when he played boules with the men in the village square, he gave the same disgusted shake of his head whenever someone spoke of the French or, heaven forbid, the Italians. Once the people of the village had called him “the Englishman.” Now he was merely Christopher. He was one of them.
The historic estate of the Orsati clan lay just beyond the village, in a small valley of olive trees that produced the island’s finest oil. Two armed guards stood watch at the entrance; they touched their Corsican flat caps respectfully as Keller turned through the gate and started up the long drive toward the villa. Laricio pine shaded the forecourt, but in the walled garden bright sunlight shone upon the long table that had been laid for the family’s traditional Sunday lunch. For now, the table was unoccupied. The clan was still at Mass, and the don, who no longer set foot in church, was upstairs in his office. He was seated at a large oaken table, peering into an open leather-bound ledger, when Keller entered. At his elbow was a decorative bottle of Orsati olive oil—olive oil being the legitimate business through which the don laundered the profits of death.
“How was Berlin?” he asked without looking up.
“Cold,” said Keller. “But productive.”
“Any complications?”
“No.”
Orsati smiled. The only thing he disliked more than complications were the French. He closed the ledger and settled his dark eyes on Keller’s face. As usual, Don Orsati was dressed in a crisp white shirt, loose-fitting trousers of pale cotton, and leather sandals that looked as though they had been purchased at the local outdoor market, which was indeed the case. His heavy mustache had been trimmed, and his head of bristly gray-black hair glistened with tonic. The don always took inordinate care with his grooming on Sunday. He no longer believed in God but insisted on keeping the Sabbath sacred. He refrained from foul language on the Lord’s Day, he tried to think good thoughts, and, most important, he forbade his taddunaghiu from fulfilling contracts. Even Keller, who had been raised an Anglican and was therefore considered a heretic, was bound by the don’s edicts. Recently, he had been forced to spend an additional night in Warsaw because Don Orsati would not grant him dispensation to kill the target, a Russian mobster, on the day of rest.
“You’ll stay for lunch,” the don was saying.
“Thank you, Don Orsati,” Keller said formally, “but I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“You? Impose?” The Corsican waved his hand dismissively.
“I’m tired,” said Keller. “It was a rough crossing.”
“You didn’t
