“Maybe a little less”—Charlotte raised an eyebrow disapprovingly toward Rosencrantz—“the way he’s driving.”
The Englishman took a long look over his shoulder.
“Are they still behind us?” asked Charlotte.
“Who?”
Charlotte knew better than to ask again. Her pill was making her drowsy, as was the gentle rise and fall of the speeding car over the rolling terrain, and the warm sun on the side of her face. She leaned her head against the rest and closed her eyes. A part of her was actually looking forward to it. It had been a long time since she had been to Seville.
She awoke to the sight of La Giralda, the minaret turned bell tower of the Seville Cathedral, rising above the Barrio de Santa Cruz, the city’s ancient Jewish quarter. They had stopped on a narrow side street, outside an American coffeehouse. Charlotte frowned at the ubiquitous green-and-white sign.
“They’re everywhere,” said the Englishman, noting her reaction.
“Not in Zahara. We have a hill town’s mentality.”
The Englishman smiled, as if he were familiar with such thinking. “I’m afraid this is as far as we can drive. Are you capable of walking a short distance?”
“Capable?” Charlotte was tempted to tell him that she walked more than a mile each day. In fact, she could have told him the precise number of her daily steps, but she didn’t want him to think her a madwoman. “Yes, I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve always liked walking in Seville.”
The little man with unkempt hair was now standing at her door with the attentiveness of a bellman. Charlotte accepted his hand. It was firm and dry, as though he spent a great deal of time digging in parched earth.
“What about my groceries?” she asked. “They’ll spoil if you leave them in the trunk.”
The little man stared at her silently. He was a watcher, she thought, not a talker. The Englishman raised a hand toward La Giralda and said, “This way, please.”
His solicitous manners were beginning to grate on her almost as much as his friend’s tapping. All the smiles and charm in the world couldn’t conceal the fact they were taking her into custody. If he said “please” one more time, she thought, she would show him a flash of her legendary temper. It had frightened even Kim.
They followed a succession of narrow alleyways deeper into the quarter until at last they came to a Moorish passageway. It gave onto an arcaded courtyard, shadowed and fragranced by the scent of Seville oranges. A man waited there alone, contemplating the water splashing in the fountain. He looked up with a start, as though surprised by her arrival, and stared at her with unconcealed curiosity. Charlotte did the same, for she recognized him at once. His eyes betrayed him. He was the Israeli who had been blamed for the murder of that Russian intelligence officer in Vienna.
“I thought it would be you,” she said after a moment.
He smiled broadly.
“Did I say something funny?”
“Those were the same words Kim Philby spoke when Nicholas Elliott came to Beirut to accuse him of being a spy.”
“Yes, I know,” said Charlotte. “Kim told me all about it.”
48
Seville
The room into which Gabriel led Charlotte Bettencourt was somber and paneled and hung with many paintings of questionable provenance that were darkened by time and neglect. Leather-bound editions of great books lined the heavy wooden shelves, and on the seventeenth-century credenza was an ormolu clock set to the wrong time. One object looked slightly out of place, an antique Victorian strongbox, wooden, its varnish faded and cracked, resting on the low center table.
Charlotte Bettencourt had yet to notice it; she was surveying her surroundings with evident disapproval. Or perhaps, thought Gabriel, it was familiarity. Her name suggested an aristocratic lineage. So, too, did her posture. Even in old age, it was very erect, like a dancer’s. Mentally, he retouched her lined and sun-spotted face, restoring her to the age of approximately twenty-four, when she had traveled to Beirut to take up the craft of journalism. There, for reasons Gabriel could not yet fathom, she had given herself to the likes of Kim Philby. Love was one possible explanation for the attraction. The other was politics. Or perhaps it was a combination of the two, which would make her a very formidable opponent indeed.
“Is it yours?” she asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“This house.”
“I’m afraid,” said Gabriel, “I am oftentimes forced to rely on the kindness of strangers.”
“We have that in common.”
Gabriel smiled in spite of himself.
