dealt in the past. But based on the Englishman’s observations thus far, Felipe Navarra seemed a rather free- spirited agent. He walked directly toward the girl’s flat, taking no security precautions or countersurveillance measures. It was a miracle he’d managed to kill the Guardia Civil officer and escape. The Englishman thought he was probably doing ETA a favor by eliminating such an incompetent agent.
Navarra entered an apartment building. The Englishman walked across the street to a bakery, where he consumed two sugared pastries and drank another
Crossing the quiet street, he had an amusing thought. If he telephoned Navarra’s wife, a redhead with a fiery Basque temper, she would probably do the job for him. But, strictly speaking, that would be a breach of contract. Besides, he wanted to do it himself. The Englishman was happy in his work.
He entered the cool, dark foyer. Directly in front of him was the entrance to a shaded courtyard. To his right was a row of post boxes. He mounted the stairs quickly to the door of the girl’s flat on the fourth floor.
A television was playing, a senseless game show on Antena 3. It helped to cover the minimal sound the Englishman made while picking the lock. He entered the flat, closed the door, and locked it again. Then he padded into the bedroom.
Navarra was seated at the end of the bed. The woman was kneeling on the floor, her head moving rhythmically between his legs. Navarra’s fingers were entwined in her hair, and his eyes were closed, so he was unaware of the new presence in the room. The Englishman wondered why they were making love to a game show.
The Englishman crossed the room quickly in three powerful strides, his footfalls covered by the sound of the television. A knife slipped from a sheath on his right forearm and fell into his palm. It was the weapon of a soldier, a heavy serrated blade, with a thick leather-bound grip. He held it the way he had been trained at the headquarters of his old regiment on a windswept moorland in the Midlands of England.
The natural inclination when stabbing a man is to do it from behind, so that the killer and victim are never face-to-face, but the Englishman had been trained to kill with a knife from the front. In this case it meant the element of surprise was lost, but the Englishman was a creature of habit and believed in doing things by the book.
He moved a few feet forward, so that he was standing behind the girl. Her hair spilled down a long,V – shaped back. His eye followed the line of her spinal column to the slender waist, to the rounded child-bearing hips and curved buttocks.
Navarra opened his eyes. Frantically he tried to push the girl out of the way. The assassin did it for him, taking a handful of her hair and tossing her across the room, so that she skidded along the hardwood floor on her backside and toppled a standing lamp.
Navarra, without taking his eyes from the intruder, reached backward across the rumpled sheets and beat his palm against a twisted pile of clothing. So, he had a gun. The Englishman stepped forward and took hold of the Basque’s throat with his left hand, squeezing his larynx to the breaking point. Then he pushed the man down onto the bed, settling atop him with one knee on his abdomen. Navarra writhed, struggling for air, the look on his face a combination of panic and utter resignation.
The Englishman thrust the knife into the soft tissue beneath the Basque’s rib cage, angling upward toward the heart. The man’s eyes bulged and his body stiffened, then relaxed. Blood pumped over the blade of the knife.
The Englishman removed the knife from the dead man’s chest and stood up. The girl scrambled to her feet. Then she stepped forward and slapped him hard across the face.
“Who the hell do you think you are?”
The Englishman didn’t know quite what to make of this woman. She had just watched him stab her lover to death, but she was acting as if he had tracked mud across her clean floor.
She hit him a second time. “I work for Aragon, you idiot! I’ve been seeing Navarra for a month. We were about to arrest him and take down the rest of his cell. Who sent you here? It wasn’t Aragon. He would have told me.”
She stood there, awaiting his reply, seemingly unashamed of her nudity.
“I work for Castillo.” He spoke calmly and in fluent Spanish. He didn’t know anyone called Castillo-it was just the first name that popped into his head. Where had he seen it? The bakery? Yes, that was it. The bakery across the street.
She asked, “Who’s Castillo?”
“The man I work for.”
“Does Castillo work for Aragon?”
“How should I know? Why don’t you call Aragon? He’ll call Castillo, and we’ll straighten this mess out.”
“Fine.”
“Call him on that telephone over there.”
“I will, you fucking idiot!”
“Just do it quietly, before you alert every tenant in the building that we’ve just killed a man.”
She folded her arms across her breasts, as if she was aware of her nakedness for the first time. “What’s your name?”
“I’m not telling you my name.”
“Why not?”
“How do I know you really work for Aragon? Maybe you work with lover boy here. Maybe you’re a member of his cell. Maybe you’re going to call some of his friends, and they’ll come here and kill me.”
He raised the bloody knife and ran his thumb across the blade. The girl scowled. “Don’t even think about trying it! Fucking idiot!”
“Get Aragon on the line. Then I’ll tell you my name.”
“You’re going to be in big trouble.”
“Just get Aragon on the phone, and I’ll explain everything.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed, snatched up the receiver, and violently punched in the number. The Englishman moved a step closer and placed his finger on the cradle, severing the connection.
“What do you think you’re doing? What’s your name?”
The assassin brought the blade across her throat in a slashing movement. He stepped back to avoid the initial geyserlike burst of blood; then he knelt before her and watched the life draining out of her eyes. As she slipped away he leaned forward and whispered his name into her ear.
THE Englishman spent the rest of the day driving: the fast road from Vitoria to Barcelona, then the coast highway from Barcelona across the border to Marseilles. Late that evening he boarded a passenger ferry for the night crossing to Corsica.
He was dressed like a typical Corsican man: loose-fitting cotton trousers, dusty leather sandals, a heavy sweater against the autumn chill. His dark brown hair was cropped short. The poplin suit and brimmed hat he’d worn in Vitoria were resting in the rubbish bin of a roadside cafe in Bordeaux. The silver wig had been tossed out the car window into a mountain gorge. The car itself, registered to a David Mandelson, one of his many false identities, had been returned to the rental agent in town.
He went below deck to his cabin. It was private, with its own shower and toilet. He left his small leather grip on the berth and went up to the passenger deck. The ferry was nearly
