For fifteen minutes their positions remained unchanged: the woman in her café, Gabriel in his, Keller behind the wheel of the Citroën. The woman stared into her mobile phone while she drank her coffee and appeared to make at least one call. Then, at half past nine, she slipped the phone into her handbag and went into the street again. She walked south toward the river for several paces before stopping abruptly and waving down a taxi headed in the opposite direction. Gabriel quickly left the café and climbed into the passenger seat of the Citroën. Keller swung a U-turn and put his foot to the floor.

Thirty seconds elapsed before they were able to reestablish contact with the taxi. It plunged northward through the morning traffic, slicing in and out of the trucks, the buses, the shiny German-made sedans of the newly rich and the wheezing rattletraps of Lisbon’s less fortunate. Gabriel had operated infrequently in Lisbon, and his knowledge of the city’s geography was rudimentary. Even so, he had an idea of where the taxi was headed. The route it was following pointed toward Lisbon Airport like the needle of a compass.

They entered a modern quarter of the city and flowed in a river of traffic to a large circle at the edge of a green park. From there they tacked to the northeast to another circle, which spat them onto the Avenida da República. Near the end of the avenue they began to see the first signs for the airport. The taxi followed each one and eventually braked to a halt outside the departure level of Terminal 1. The woman stepped out and headed quickly toward the entrance, as though she were running late for her flight. Gabriel instructed Keller to ditch the Citroën in short-term parking with the gun in the trunk and the keys in the magnetic caddy above the left rear wheel. Then he climbed out and followed the woman into the terminal.

She paused briefly inside the doors to take her bearings and scrutinize the large departure board hanging above the gleaming modern hall. Then she headed directly to the British Airways counter and joined the short queue at first class. It was a piece of good fortune; British Airways flew to only a single destination from Lisbon. Flight 501 departed in an hour. The next flight wasn’t until seven that evening.