JК
The English Assassin :: Silva Daniel
Страница: 159 из 209”
“Thereare some things you don’t need to know.”
“He may very well try to kill me tomorrow night. I have a right to know something about him.”
Gabriel could not argue with this, and so he told her everything he knew.
“Is he really out there?”
“We have to assume he is.”
“Rather interesting, don’t you think?”
“What’s that?”
“He can change his voice and appearance at will and he vanished amid fire and blood in the desert of Iraq. He sounds like the Devil to me.”
“He is a devil.”
“So, I’ll play his sonata for him. Then you can send him back to Hell.”
38
VENICE
LATE THE FOLLOWING afternoon, the Englishman drifted along Calle della Passion, the soaring Gothic campanile of the Frari church rising ahead of him. He sliced through a knot of tourists, adroitly shifting the position of his head to avoid their umbrellas, which bobbed like jellyfish adrift on the tide. In the square was a café. He ordered coffee and spread his guidebooks and maps over the little table. If anyone was watching, they would assume he was just another tourist, which was fine with the Englishman.
He had been working since early that morning. Shortly after breakfast, he had set out from his hotel in Santa Croce, maps and guidebooks in hand, and spent several hours wandering San Marco and San Polo, memorizing their streets and bridges and squares-the way he’d done before, in another lifetime, in West Belfast. He’d paid particular attention to the streets and canals around the Frari church and the Scuola Grande di San Rocco-had played a game with himself, wandering in circles in San Polo until, quite intentionally, he would find himself lost. Then he would navigate his way back to the Frari church, testing himself on the street names as he went. Inside the scuola, he spent a few minutes in the ground-floor hall, pretending to gaze upon the massive Tintorettos, but in reality he was more interested in the relationship of the main entrance to the staircase. Then he went upstairs and stood in the upper hall, locating the approximate position on the floor where he expected to find himself seated during the recital. Rossetti had been right; even from the back of the room, it would be no problem for a professional to kill the violinist with the Tanfolglio.
He looked at his watch: a few minutes after five o’clock. The recital was scheduled to begin at eight-thirty. He had one final piece of business to conduct before then.
“Thereare some things you don’t need to know.”
“He may very well try to kill me tomorrow night. I have a right to know something about him.”
Gabriel could not argue with this, and so he told her everything he knew.
“Is he really out there?”
“We have to assume he is.”
“Rather interesting, don’t you think?”
“What’s that?”
“He can change his voice and appearance at will and he vanished amid fire and blood in the desert of Iraq. He sounds like the Devil to me.”
“He is a devil.”
“So, I’ll play his sonata for him. Then you can send him back to Hell.”
38
VENICE
LATE THE FOLLOWING afternoon, the Englishman drifted along Calle della Passion, the soaring Gothic campanile of the Frari church rising ahead of him. He sliced through a knot of tourists, adroitly shifting the position of his head to avoid their umbrellas, which bobbed like jellyfish adrift on the tide. In the square was a café. He ordered coffee and spread his guidebooks and maps over the little table. If anyone was watching, they would assume he was just another tourist, which was fine with the Englishman.
He had been working since early that morning. Shortly after breakfast, he had set out from his hotel in Santa Croce, maps and guidebooks in hand, and spent several hours wandering San Marco and San Polo, memorizing their streets and bridges and squares-the way he’d done before, in another lifetime, in West Belfast. He’d paid particular attention to the streets and canals around the Frari church and the Scuola Grande di San Rocco-had played a game with himself, wandering in circles in San Polo until, quite intentionally, he would find himself lost. Then he would navigate his way back to the Frari church, testing himself on the street names as he went. Inside the scuola, he spent a few minutes in the ground-floor hall, pretending to gaze upon the massive Tintorettos, but in reality he was more interested in the relationship of the main entrance to the staircase. Then he went upstairs and stood in the upper hall, locating the approximate position on the floor where he expected to find himself seated during the recital. Rossetti had been right; even from the back of the room, it would be no problem for a professional to kill the violinist with the Tanfolglio.
He looked at his watch: a few minutes after five o’clock. The recital was scheduled to begin at eight-thirty. He had one final piece of business to conduct before then.