The Cellist by Daniel Silva

31Rosenbühlweg, Zurich

The villas lining the Rosenbühlweg were big and old and huddled closely together. One, however, stood atop its own promontory and was surrounded by a formidable iron fence. Gabriel arrived at the appointed hour, half past seven p.m., to find the security gate locked. Pelted by fat balls of rain, a flat cap pulled low over his brow, he laid his thumb on the call button of the intercom and endured a wait of nearly a minute for a response. He supposed he had it coming. The dissolution of their brief and tumultuous relationship had hardly ranked among his finest hours.

“May I help you?” a female voice asked at last.

“I certainly hope so.”

“Poor you. Let me see if I can figure out how to let you in. Otherwise, you’ll catch your death.”

Another long moment passed before the automatic lock finally snapped open. Drenched, Gabriel scaled a flight of steps to the soaring portico. The front door yielded to his touch. The entrance hall had not changed since his last visit; the same large glass bowl stood atop the same carved wooden table. He peered into the formal drawing room and in his memory glimpsed a well-dressed man of advancing years and obvious wealth lying in a pool of his own blood. His socks, Gabriel remembered suddenly, had been mismatched. One of the suede loafers, the right, had a thickened sole and heel.

“Hello?” he called out, but there was no reply other than a silken G-minor arpeggio. He climbed the stairs to the second floor of the villa and followed the sound to the music room, where Anna had spent much of her unhappy childhood. She appeared unaware of his arrival. She was lost to the simple arpeggio.

Tonic, third, fifth . . .

Gabriel removed his sodden cap and, wandering the perimeter of the room, scrutinized the outsize framed photographs adorning the walls. Anna with Claudio Abbado. Anna with Daniel Barenboim. Anna with Herbert von Karajan. Anna with Martha Argerich. In only one of the photographs was she alone. The setting was the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice, where she had just completed an electrifying performance of her signature piece—Giuseppe Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata. Gabriel had been standing not ten feet away, beneath Tintoretto’s Temptation of Christ. At the conclusion of the recital, he had accompanied the soloist to her dressing room, where she had found a Corsican talisman hidden in her violin case, along with a brief note written by the man who had been contracted to kill her that night.

Tell Gabriel he owes me one . . .

The violin fell silent. At length, Anna said, “I never played the Devil’s Trill better than I did that night.”

“Why do you suppose that was?”

“Fear, I imagine. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I was falling in love.” She played the sonata’s languid opening passage, then stopped abruptly. “Were you ever able to find him?”

“Who?”

“The Englishman, of course.”

Gabriel hesitated, then said, “No.”

Anna eyed him down the barrel of the violin’s neck. “Why are you lying to me?”

“Because if I told you the truth, you wouldn’t believe me.” He looked at the violin. “What happened? Did you get tired of the Stradivarius and the Guarneri?”

“This one isn’t mine. It’s an early-eighteenth-century Klotz on loan from the estate of its original owner.”

“Who was that?”

“Mozart.” She displayed the violin vertically. “He abandoned it in Salzburg when he came to Vienna. I’m going to use it to record his five violin concertos the minute it’s safe to go back into the studio. Unlike most older violins, it was never upgraded in the nineteenth century. Its sound is very smooth and veiled.” She offered it to Gabriel. “Would you like to hold it?”

He declined.

“What’s wrong? Are you afraid you’re going to drop it?”

“Yes.”

“But you touch priceless objects all the time.”

“A Titian, I can repair. But not that.”

She placed the violin beneath her chin and played an arresting, dissonant double-stop from Tartini’s sonata. “You’re dripping on my floor.”

“That’s because you intentionally made me stand in the rain.”

“You should have brought an umbrella.”

“I never carry umbrellas.”

“Yes,” she said distantly. “It’s one of the things I remember most about you, along with the fact that you always slept with a gun on the bedside table.” She placed the violin carefully in its case and folded her arms beneath her breasts. “What does one do in a situation like this? Shake hands or exchange a passionless kiss?”

“One uses the excuse of the pandemic to keep one’s distance.”

“What a shame. I was hoping for a passionless kiss.” She laid her hand atop the Bechstein Sterling grand piano. “I have been involved with many men in my life—”

“Many,” agreed Gabriel.

“But never has one vanished so thoroughly as you.”

“I was trained by the best.”

“Do you remember how long you stayed at my villa in Portugal?”

“Six months.”

“Six months and fourteen days, actually. And yet I’ve received not a single phone call or email in all these years.”

“I’m not a normal person, Anna.”

“Neither am I.”

Gabriel surveyed the photographs lining the walls. “No,” he said after a moment. “You most certainly are not.”

She was, by any objective standard, the finest violinist of her generation—technically brilliant, passionate and fiery, with a matchless liquid tone that she pulled from her instrument by the sheer force of her indomitable will. She was also prone to immense swings of mood and episodes of personal recklessness, including a hiking accident that had left her with a career-threatening injury to her famous left hand. In Gabriel she had seen a stabilizing force. For a brief time, they were one of those endlessly fascinating couples one reads about in novels, the violinist and the art restorer sharing a villa on the Costa de Prata. Never mind that Gabriel was living under a false identity, or that he had the blood of a dozen men on his hands, or that she was never, under any circumstances, allowed to point a camera in his direction. Were it not for a few Swiss surveillance photos, there would be no proof that Gabriel Allon had ever made the acquaintance of the world’s most famous violinist.

To the best of his knowledge, she had kept him a secret as well. Indeed, a part of Gabriel was surprised she remembered him at all; her love life since their parting had been as tempestuous as her playing. She had been linked romantically to an assortment of moguls, musicians, conductors, artists, actors, and filmmakers. Twice she had married, and twice she had been spectacularly divorced. For better or worse, neither union had produced offspring. She had told a recent interviewer that she was through with love, that she planned to spend the final years of her career in search of perfection. The pandemic had played havoc with her plans. She had not set foot in a studio or on a stage since her appearance at Zurich’s Tonhalle with Martha Argerich. Not surprisingly, she was desperate to perform in public again. The adulation of a crowd was for Anna like oxygen. Without it, she would slowly die.

She looked at the ring on his finger. “Still married?”

“Remarried, actually.”

“Did your first wife—”

“No.”

“Kids?”

“Two.”

“She’s Jewish, your wife?”

“A rabbi’s daughter.”

“Is that why you left me?”

“Actually, I found your constant practicing unbearable.” Gabriel smiled. “I couldn’t concentrate on my work.”

“The smell of your solvents was atrocious.”

“Obviously,” said Gabriel archly, “we were doomed from the start.”

“I suppose we’re lucky it ended before someone got hurt.” Anna smiled sadly. “Well, that about covers it. Except, of course, why you showed up at my door after all these years.”

“I’d like to hire you for a recital.”

“You can’t afford me.”

“I’m not paying.”

“Who is?”

“Martin Landesmann.”

“His Holiness? I saw Saint Martin on the television just the other day warning about the end of democracy.”

“He does have a point.”

“But he’s an imperfect messenger, to say the least.” Anna moved to the window, which overlooked the villa’s rear garden. “When I was a child, Walter Landesmann was a frequent visitor to this house. I know exactly where Martin got the money to form that private equity firm of his.”

“You don’t know the half of it. But he’s agreed to help me with a matter of some urgency.”

“Will I be in any danger?”

“None whatsoever.”

“How disappointing.” She turned to face him. “And where will this performance be?”

“The Kunsthaus.”

“An art museum? What’s the occasion?”

Gabriel explained.

“The date?”

“Mid-October.”

“Which will give me more than enough time to shake off the coronavirus cobwebs.” She retrieved Mozart’s violin from the case. “Any requests?”

“Beethoven and Brahms, if you don’t mind.”

“Never. Which Beethoven?”

“The F Major sonata.”

“A delight. And the Brahms?”

“The D Minor.”

She raised an eyebrow. “The key of repressed passion.”

“Anna . . .”

“I performed the D Minor that night in Venice. I believe it goes something like this.” She closed her eyes and played the haunting opening theme from the sonata’s second movement. “It sounds better on the Guarneri, don’t you think?”

“If you say so.”

Anna lowered the violin. “Is that all you need from me? Two little sonatas?”

“You seem disappointed.”

“To be honest, I was hoping for something a bit more . . .”

“What?”

“Adventurous.”

“Good,” said Gabriel. “Because there’s one more thing.”