House of Spies (Gabriel Allon #17)(13)
The technician who took Keller’s photograph for MI6 had been unnerved by his subject too and consequently had worked with unusual haste. The session took place not at Vauxhall Cross—Keller’s exposure to the building was to be strictly limited—but in a basement in Bloomsbury. The finished product showed an unsmiling man of perhaps fifty who looked as though he had recently returned from a long holiday in the sun. His name, according to the passport in which the photo was eventually placed, was Nicholas Evans, and he was not fifty years old but forty-eight. MI6 provided Keller with a British driver’s permit in the same name, along with three credit cards and an attaché case stuffed with files related to his cover, which had something to do with sales and marketing. Keller also took possession of an MI6 mobile phone, which would allow him to communicate securely with Vauxhall Cross while in the field. He assumed, rightly, that Vauxhall Cross could in turn use the phone to monitor his movements and, if necessary, eavesdrop on his conversations. Therefore, he planned to part company with the device at the first opportunity.
He left London the following morning on the 5:40 Eurostar to Paris. It arrived at a quarter past nine, leaving Keller the better part of two hours to determine whether he was being watched. Using the techniques taught to him by Mayhew and Quill at the Fort—and a few others he had picked up on the streets of West Belfast—he established beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not.
His next train, the TGV to Marseilles, departed the Gare de Lyon at half past eleven. He passed the journey working diligently on his laptop for the sake of his cover while beyond his window the Cézanne colors of the south—chrome yellow, burnt sienna, viridian, ultramarine—flashed through his peripheral vision like a pleasant memory from childhood. He arrived in Marseilles at two and spent the next hour wandering the grimy, familiar streets of the city center until certain his arrival had gone unnoticed. Finally, in the Place de la Joliette, he entered a Société Générale private bank, where Monsieur Laval, his account manager, granted him access to his safe-deposit box. From it he took his false French passport, along with five thousand euros in cash. In it he placed his MI6 phone, passport, driver’s permit, credit cards, and laptop computer.
Outside, he walked a short distance along the Quai du Lazaret to the ferry terminal, where he purchased a ticket for the overnight crossing to Corsica, with first-class accommodations. The man at the counter thought nothing of the fact he paid in cash. This was Marseilles, after all, and the ferry was bound for Ajaccio. In a nearby café he ordered a bottle of Bandol rosé and drank it halfway down the label while reading Le Figaro, content for the first time in many months. An hour later, alert but pleasantly inebriated, he was standing at the prow of the ferry as it carved its way southward into the Mediterranean, the words of an ancient proverb running through his thoughts. He who has two women loses his soul. But he who has two homes loses his mind.
Shortly before dawn, Keller woke to the smell of rosemary and lavender drifting through the half-open window of his cabin. Rising, he dressed in his gray-and-white English clothing and, twenty minutes later, filed off the ferry in the company of a family of lumpy Corsicans, who were more ill tempered than usual due to the earliness of the hour. In a bar across the street from the terminal, he asked if he could use the telephone to place a local call. Under normal circumstances, the proprietor might have shrugged his shoulders in dismay at such a request from a foreigner. Or, if so moved, he might have explained that the telephone had been out of order since the last sirocco. But Keller delivered his request flawlessly in the dialect of the island. And the proprietor was so shocked he actually smiled while placing the phone atop the bar. Then, unsolicited, he prepared for Keller a cup of strong coffee and a small glass of cognac, for it was very cold that morning and a man couldn’t face such weather without a little something to fortify the blood.
The number Keller dialed was unknown to all but a few residents of the island and, more important, to the French authorities. The man who answered seemed pleased by the sound of Keller’s voice and, curiously, not at all surprised. He instructed Keller to remain at the café; he would dispatch a car to collect him. It arrived an hour later, driven by a young man named Giancomo. Keller had known him since he was a boy. It was Giancomo’s wish to be a taddunaghiu like Keller, whom he idolized. For now, he was an errand boy for the don. On Corsica there were worse things for a young man of twenty-five to be.
“The don said you were never coming back.”
“Even the don,” said Keller philosophically, “is wrong on occasion.”
Giancomo scowled, as though Keller had uttered a heresy. “The don is like the Holy Father. He is infallible.”
“Now and forever,” said Keller quietly.
They were driving along the island’s western coast. At the town of Porto, they headed inland along a road lined with olive groves and laricio pine, and began the long, winding climb into the mountains. Keller lowered his window. There it was again, rosemary and lavender, the smell of the macchia. It covered Corsica from west to east, stem to stern, a dense and tangled carpet of undergrowth that defined the very identity of the island. The Corsicans seasoned their foods with the macchia, heated their homes with it in winter, and took refuge in it in times of war and vendetta. According to Corsican legend, a hunted man could take to the macchia and, if he wished, remain there undetected forever. Keller knew this to be true.