bills, the source of which he refused to specify. Gabriel placed the attaché case on the passenger seat of his own car and drove away without another word. By the time he reached the fringes of San Remo, he had completed the first preparatory sketches of his operation to recover the lost Caravaggio. He had funding and access to the world’s most successful art thief. All he needed now was someone to take a stolen painting to market. An amateur wouldn’t do. He needed an experienced operative who had been trained in the black arts of deception. Someone who was comfortable in the presence of criminals. Someone who could take care of himself if things got rough. Gabriel knew of just such a man across the water, on the island of Corsica. He was a bit like Maurice Durand, an old adversary who was now an accomplice, but there the similarities ended.
14
CORSICA
I T WAS APPROACHING MIDNIGHT WHEN the ferry drew into the port of Calvi, hardly the time to be making a social call in Corsica, so Gabriel checked into a hotel near the terminal and slept. In the morning he had breakfast at a small café along the waterfront; then he climbed into his car and set out along the rugged western coastline. For a time the rain persisted, but gradually the clouds thinned and the sea turned from granite to turquoise. Gabriel stopped in the town of Porto to purchase two bottles of chilled Corsican rosé and then headed inland along a narrow road lined with olive groves and stands of laricio pine. The air smelled of macchia —the dense undergrowth of rosemary, rockrose, and lavender that covered much of the island—and in the villages he saw many women cloaked in the black of widowhood, a sign they had lost male kin to the vendetta. Once the women might have pointed at him in the Corsican way in order to ward off the effects of the occhju , the evil eye, but now they avoided gazing at him for long. They knew he was a friend of Don Anton Orsati, and friends of the don could travel anywhere in Corsica without fear of reprisal.
For more than two centuries, the Orsati clan had been associated with two things on the island of Corsica: olive oil and death. The oil came from the groves that thrived on their large estates; the death came at the hands of their assassins. The Orsatis killed on behalf of those who could not kill for themselves: notables who were too squeamish to get their hands dirty; women who had no male kin to do the deed on their behalf. No one knew how many Corsicans had died at the hands of Orsati assassins, least of all the Orsatis themselves, but local lore placed the number in the thousands. It might have been significantly higher were it not for the clan’s rigorous vetting process. The Orsatis operated by a strict code. They refused to carry out a killing unless satisfied the party before them had indeed been wronged, and blood vengeance was required.
That changed, however, with Don Anton Orsati. By the time he gained control of the family, the French authorities had eradicated feuding and the vendetta in all but the most isolated pockets of the island, leaving few Corsicans with the need for the services of his taddunaghiu . With local demand in steep decline, Orsati had been left with no choice but to look for opportunities elsewhere—namely, across the water in mainland Europe. He now accepted almost every offer that crossed his desk, no matter how distasteful, and his killers were regarded as the most reliable and professional on the Continent. In fact, Gabriel was one of only two people ever to survive an Orsati family contract.
Don Anton Orsati lived in the mountains at the center of the island, surrounded by walls of macchia and rings of bodyguards. Two stood watch at his gate. Upon seeing Gabriel, they stepped aside and invited him to enter. A dirt road bore him through a grove of van Gogh olive trees and, eventually, to the gravel forecourt of the don’s immense villa. More bodyguards waited outside. They gave
14
CORSICA
I T WAS APPROACHING MIDNIGHT WHEN the ferry drew into the port of Calvi, hardly the time to be making a social call in Corsica, so Gabriel checked into a hotel near the terminal and slept. In the morning he had breakfast at a small café along the waterfront; then he climbed into his car and set out along the rugged western coastline. For a time the rain persisted, but gradually the clouds thinned and the sea turned from granite to turquoise. Gabriel stopped in the town of Porto to purchase two bottles of chilled Corsican rosé and then headed inland along a narrow road lined with olive groves and stands of laricio pine. The air smelled of macchia —the dense undergrowth of rosemary, rockrose, and lavender that covered much of the island—and in the villages he saw many women cloaked in the black of widowhood, a sign they had lost male kin to the vendetta. Once the women might have pointed at him in the Corsican way in order to ward off the effects of the occhju , the evil eye, but now they avoided gazing at him for long. They knew he was a friend of Don Anton Orsati, and friends of the don could travel anywhere in Corsica without fear of reprisal.
For more than two centuries, the Orsati clan had been associated with two things on the island of Corsica: olive oil and death. The oil came from the groves that thrived on their large estates; the death came at the hands of their assassins. The Orsatis killed on behalf of those who could not kill for themselves: notables who were too squeamish to get their hands dirty; women who had no male kin to do the deed on their behalf. No one knew how many Corsicans had died at the hands of Orsati assassins, least of all the Orsatis themselves, but local lore placed the number in the thousands. It might have been significantly higher were it not for the clan’s rigorous vetting process. The Orsatis operated by a strict code. They refused to carry out a killing unless satisfied the party before them had indeed been wronged, and blood vengeance was required.
That changed, however, with Don Anton Orsati. By the time he gained control of the family, the French authorities had eradicated feuding and the vendetta in all but the most isolated pockets of the island, leaving few Corsicans with the need for the services of his taddunaghiu . With local demand in steep decline, Orsati had been left with no choice but to look for opportunities elsewhere—namely, across the water in mainland Europe. He now accepted almost every offer that crossed his desk, no matter how distasteful, and his killers were regarded as the most reliable and professional on the Continent. In fact, Gabriel was one of only two people ever to survive an Orsati family contract.
Don Anton Orsati lived in the mountains at the center of the island, surrounded by walls of macchia and rings of bodyguards. Two stood watch at his gate. Upon seeing Gabriel, they stepped aside and invited him to enter. A dirt road bore him through a grove of van Gogh olive trees and, eventually, to the gravel forecourt of the don’s immense villa. More bodyguards waited outside. They gave
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