“Like what?”
“This,” said Gabriel, and swerved onto the D44. It was a narrow, treacherous road that snaked its way through the sparsely inhabited hills north of Saint-Tropez. There was no centerline on the tarmac, and no verge or guardrails. On the right side of the road rose a rocky and unstable ridge. A deep ravine fell away to the left.
Gabriel drove dangerously fast, his grip light upon the wheel, his foot never once touching the brake. Ingrid and Lambert kept watch on the man on the motorcycle. He had no trouble matching Gabriel’s speed.
They flashed past a hotel and the entrance of a winery, then scaled the slope of a hill and raced along the rim of a small valley of vineyards and olive groves. The bike accelerated and closed to within thirty meters of the car’s rear bumper.
“It looks as though he’s making his move,” said Ingrid.
Gabriel glanced into the rearview. For the moment, at least, the assassin had both hands on the controls. “It’s not so easily done, you know.”
“What’s that?”
“Firing a handgun while driving a motorcycle at an excessive rate of speed.”
“Ever tried it?”
“The assassin never does the driving. Only the shooting.”
“Office doctrine?”
“Absolutely.”
“And what does it say about a situation like this?”
“Tell me the instant he reaches his right hand into the front of his jacket.”
“Now!” shouted Ingrid.
Gabriel slammed on the brakes and expertly sent the car into a 180-degree spin. The man on the motorcycle managed to avoid a collision only by veering to the left. Airborne, he plunged into the valley below.
Gabriel eased the car into park and looked at Ingrid. “He must not have noticed my turn signal.”
“Perhaps you should check on him.”
Gabriel climbed out of the car and clambered down the slope of the steep hill. The mangled bike was lying in a coppice of oak trees along with a Heckler & Koch VP9 tactical pistol. Gabriel slid the weapon into the waistband of his trousers, then walked over to the assassin. His shattered body had come to rest in the shade of an olive tree. There were, thought Gabriel, worse places to die.
He removed the dead man’s helmet. The now-lifeless face was instantly familiar. So was the name on the German passport that Gabriel found in his jacket pocket. His phone was of the disposable variety. It showed several missed calls, all from the same number.
Gabriel tossed the dead man’s helmet into a tangle of brush and hurried up the slope of the hill to the car. A moment later he was speeding in the opposite direction on the D44. He gave the phone to Ingrid and the passport to Lambert.
“Do you recognize him?”
“Oui.”
“Is Klaus Müller his real name?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“What do you know, Philippe?”
“He occasionally works for Monsieur Robinson.”
“Who’s Robinson?”
Lambert returned the passport. “Take me somewhere he can’t find me, Monsieur Allon. Then I’ll tell you everything.”
32
Marseilles
Gabriel returned to the Autoroute and once again headed west. As they were approaching Marseilles, the dead man’s phone shivered with an incoming text message. Ingrid looked down at the screen.
“He wants to know whether the flowers have been delivered.”
“That would explain the HK nine-millimeter.”
“You should have left it at the scene.”
“I took it for safety reasons only.”
“Whose?”
“Mine, of course. Only a fool would come to Marseilles without a gun.”
They plunged into the Prado-Carénage Tunnel and emerged a moment later at the bustling port. It was much larger than its counterpart in Cannes and had a well-deserved reputation for criminality, which was the reason Gabriel had come there. He slid the car into an illegal parking space on the Quai de Rive Neuve and turned to face Philippe Lambert.
“I need some cash.”
