Page 37 of The Collector
The man said nothing.
Gabriel placed the barrel of the Beretta against the side of the man’s knee and fired another shot.
The man screamed in agony.
“The painting,” said Gabriel. “Tell me where I can find it.”
“Gone,” was all the man managed to say.
“Gone where?”
“The collector.”
“What’s his name?”
“The collector,” the man repeated.
“His name,” shouted Gabriel. “Tell me his name.”
“The collector,” said the man a final time, and then he died.
Part Two
The Conspiracy
21
Ben Gurion Airport
By rights, Gabriel should have phoned the Danish police, gone on the record, and washed his hands of the whole affair. Instead, he rang Lars Mortensen, the longtime director of the PET, Denmark’s Security and Intelligence Service. He told Mortensen that an assassin on a motorcycle had just taken a couple of shots at him in Kandestederne. He indicated that the fellow was no longer alive. Mortensen knew he was getting about ten percent of the story, if that.
“What were you doing all the way up there at this time of year?”
“Painting,” answered Gabriel, with at least a grain of truth.
“You’re sure he’s dead?”
“As a doornail.”
“Any idea who he was?”
“The tattoo on his chest suggests he might have been a Russian. He’s lying outside the cottage at the end of Dødningebakken. You can’t miss him.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Quietly, Lars.”
“Is there any other way? But please do me a favor, and get the hell out of the country.”
Gabriel killed the call, then dredged up a deceptively labeled entry in his contacts. He hesitated before dialing the number, for it rang in an anonymous building on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. His break with the Office had thus far been remarkably clean; he was all but forgotten. It was his abiding wish to avoid the pitfalls of rediscovery, but the Russian assassin lying dead at his feet had irrevocably altered the nature of his inquiry.
He brought down his thumb on the screen, and after a delay of several seconds a phone rang. He recognized the voice of the woman who answered, and doubtless she recognized his.
“Are you wounded?” she asked.
He said he was not.
“Do you have transport?”
