The Kill Artist Page 16

  Julian Isherwood made his way across the wet bricks of Mason’s Yard. It was three-thirty, and he was just returning to the gallery from lunch. He was drunk. He hadn’t noticed that he was drunk until he stepped out the door of Green’s and took a few deep breaths of the freezing, damp air. The oxygen had resuscitated his brain, and his brain had alerted his body that once again he had poured too much wine into it. His lunch mate had been the tubby Oliver Dimbleby, and once again the topic of conversation had been Oliver’s proposal to buy out Isherwood Fine Arts. This time Isherwood had managed to maintain his composure and discuss the situation somewhat rationally—though not without the assistance of two bottles of superb Sancerre. When one is discussing the dismemberment of one’s business—one’s very soul, he thought—one is allowed to dull the pain with good French wine.

  He pulled his coat up around his ears. A blast of wet wind poured through the passageway from Duke Street. Isherwood found himself caught in a whirlpool of dead leaves and wet rubbish. He stumbled forward a few steps, hands shielding his face, until the maelstrom spun itself out. For Christ’s sake! Dreadful climate. Positively Siberian. He considered slipping into the pub for something to warm his bones but thought better of it. He’d done enough damage for one afternoon.

  He used his key to unlock the door on the ground floor, slowly climbed the stairs, thinking he really should do something about the carpet. On the landing was the entrance to a small travel agency. The walls were hung with posters of fiercely tanned amazons frolicking half naked in the sun. Perhaps this is the best thing for me, he thought, staring at a topless girl lying facedown in perfect white sand. Perhaps I should get out while I still have a few decent years left in me. Flee London, go someplace warm, lick my wounds.

  He shoved the key into the lock, pushed back the door, removed his coat, and hung it on the hook in the anteroom. Then he stepped into his office and flipped the light switch.

  “Hello, Julian.”

  Isherwood spun around and found himself face-to-face with Gabriel Allon. “You! How the bloody hell did you get in here?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “I suppose not,” said Isherwood. “What in God’s name are you doing here? And where have you been?”

  “I need a favor.”

  “You need a favor! You need a favor—from me! You ran out on me in the middle of a job. You left my Vecellio in a Cornish cottage with no security.”

  “Sometimes the best place to hide a priceless Vecellio is the last place anyone would think to look for it. If I had wanted to help myself to the contents of your vault downstairs, I could have done it quite easily.”

  “That’s because you’re a freak of nature!”

  “There’s no need to get personal, Julian.”

  “Oh, really. How’s this for personal?” He picked up a coffee mug from his desk and threw it directly at Gabriel’s head.

  Gabriel could see that Isherwood had been drinking, so he pulled him back outside to sober him. They circled the footpaths of Green Park until Isherwood grew tired and settled himself on a bench. Gabriel sat next to him and waited for a couple to pass by before he started to speak again.

  “Can she type?” Isherwood said. “Does she know how to answer the telephone? How to take a message?”

  “I don’t think she’s done an honest day’s work her entire life.”

  “Oh, how perfect. Absolutely stupendous.”

  “She’s a smart girl. I’m sure she’ll be able to help out around the office.”

  “That’s comforting. Am I allowed to ask why I’m supposed to hire this woman?”

  “Julian, please.”

  “Julian, please. Julian, mind your own business. Julian, shut up and do as we tell you. It’s always the same with you people. And all the while my business is going straight to hell. Oliver’s made me an offer. I’m going to take him up on it.”

  “Oliver doesn’t seem like your type.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers. I wouldn’t be in this position if you hadn’t run out on me.”

  “I didn’t run out on you.”

  “What do you call it, Gabriel?”

  “It’s just something I need to do. It’s just like the old days.”

  “In the old days that was part of the arrangement going in. But these aren’t the old days. This is business—straight fucking business, Gabriel—and you’ve given me the right royal shaft. What am I supposed to do about the Vecellio while you’re playing games with Ari?”

  “Wait for me,” Gabriel said. “This will be over soon, and I’ll work day and night on it until it’s finished.”

  “I don’t want a crash job. I brought it to you because I knew you would take your time and do it right. If I wanted a crash job, I could have hired a hack to do it for a third of what I’m paying you.”

  “Give me some time. Keep your buyer at bay, and whatever you do, don’t sell out to Oliver Dimbleby. You’ll never forgive yourself.”

  Isherwood looked at his watch and stood up. “I have an appointment. Someone who actually wants to buy a picture.” He turned and started to walk away; then he stopped and said, “By the way, you left a brokenhearted little boy behind in Cornwall.”

  “Peel,” Gabriel said distantly.

  “It’s funny, Gabriel, but I never had you figured for the type that would hurt a child. Tell your girl to be at the gallery at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. And tell her not to be late.”

  “She’ll be there.”

  “What am I to call this secretary you’re sending me?”

  “You may call her Dominique.”

  “Good-looking?” Isherwood said, regaining a bit of his old humor.

  “Not bad.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Maida Vale, London

  Gabriel carried the suitcases in while Jacqueline surveyed her new home, a cramped bed-sit flat with a single window overlooking an inner courtyard. A foldout couch, a club chair of cracked leather, a small writing desk. Next to the window was a flaking radiator and next to the radiator a door leading to a kitchen scarcely larger than the galley on Gabriel’s ketch. Jacqueline went into the kitchen and began opening and closing cabinets, sadly, as if each was more repulsive than the last.

  “I had the bodel do a bit of shopping for you.”

  “Couldn’t you have found something a little bit nicer?”

  “Dominique Bonard is a girl from Paris who came to London in search of work. I didn’t think a three-bedroom maisonette in Mayfair was appropriate.”

  “Is that where you’re staying?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Stay for a few minutes. I find the thought of being alone here depressing.”

  “A few.”

  She filled the kettle with water, placed it on the stove, and switched on the burner. Gabriel found tea bags and a box of shelf milk. She prepared two mugs of tea and carried them into the sitting room. Gabriel was on the couch. Jacqueline removed her shoes and sat across from him, knees beneath her chin. “When do we start?”

  “Tomorrow night. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try the next night.”

  She lit a cigarette, threw back her head, blew smoke at the ceiling. Then she looked at Gabriel and narrowed her eyes. “Do you remember that night in Tunis?”

  “Which night?”

  “The night of the operation.”

  “Of course I remember it.”

  “I remember it as though it were yesterday.” She closed her eyes. “I especially remember the trip across the water back to the boat. I was so excited I couldn’t feel my body. I was flying. We had actually done it. We had walked right into that bastard’s house in the middle of a PLO compound and taken him out. I wanted to scream with joy. But I’ll never forget the look on your face. You were haunted. It was as if the dead men were sitting next to you in the boat.”

  “Very few people understand what it’s like to shoot a man at close range. Even fewer know what it’s like to place a gun against the side of
his head and pull the trigger. Killing on the secret battlefield is different from killing a man on the Golan or Sinai, even when it’s a murderous bastard like Abu Jihad.”

  “I understand that now. I felt like such a fool when we got back to Tel Aviv. I acted like you had just scored the winning goal, and all the while you were dying inside. I hope you can forgive me.”

  “You don’t need to apologize.”

  “But what I don’t understand is how Shamron enticed you back after all these years.”

  “It has nothing to do with Shamron. It’s about Tariq.”

  “What about Tariq?”

  Gabriel sat silently for a moment, then stood and walked to the window. In the courtyard a trio of boys kicked a ball in amber lamplight, old newspaper floating above them in the wet wind like cinder.

  “Tariq’s older brother, Mahmoud, was a member of Black September. Ari Shamron tracked him to Cologne, and he sent me to finish him off. I slipped into his flat while he was sleeping and pointed a gun at his face. Then I woke him up so that he wouldn’t die a peaceful death. I shot him in both eyes. Seventeen years later Tariq took his revenge by blowing up my wife and son right before my eyes.”

  Jacqueline covered her mouth with her hands. Gabriel was still staring out the window, but she could tell it was Vienna that he saw now and not the boys playing in the courtyard.

  “For a long time I thought Tariq had made a mistake,” Gabriel said. “But he never makes mistakes like that. He’s careful, deliberate. He’s the perfect predator. He went after my family for a reason. He went after them to punish me for killing his brother. He knew it would be worse than death.” He turned to face her. “From one professional to another, it was an exquisite piece of work.”

  “And now you’re going to kill him in return?”

  He looked away and said nothing.

  “I always blamed myself for what happened in Vienna,” Jacqueline said. “If we hadn’t—”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Gabriel said, cutting her off. “It was my fault, not yours. I should have known better. I behaved foolishly. But it’s over now.”

  The coldness of his voice felt like a knife in her chest. She took a long time crushing out her cigarette, then looked up at him. “Why did you tell Leah about us?”

  He stood in the window for a moment, saying nothing. Jacqueline feared she had taken it too far. She tried to think of some way to defuse the situation and change the subject, but she desperately wanted to know the answer. If Gabriel hadn’t confessed the affair, Leah and Dani would never have been with him on assignment in Vienna.

  “I told her because I didn’t want to lie to her. My entire life was a lie. Shamron had convinced me I was perfect, but I wasn’t perfect. For the first time in my life I had behaved with a bit of human frailty and weakness. I suppose I needed to share it with her. I suppose I needed someone to forgive me.”

  He picked up his coat. His face was twisted. He was angry, not with her but with himself. “You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow.” His voice was all business now. “Get settled and try to get some rest. Julian’s expecting you at nine o’clock.”

  And then he went out.

  For a few minutes she was distracted by the ritual of unpacking. Then the pain crept up on her, like the delayed sting of a slap. She collapsed onto the couch and began to cry. She lit another cigarette and looked around at the dreary little flat. What in the hell am I doing here? She had agreed to come back for one reason—because she thought she could make Gabriel love her—but he had dismissed their affair in Tunis as a moment of weakness. Still, why had he come back after all these years to kill Tariq? Was it simply revenge? An eye for an eye? No, she thought—Gabriel’s motives ran far deeper and were more complex than pure revenge. Perhaps he needed to kill Tariq in order to forgive himself for what happened to Leah and finally move on with his life. But will he ever be able to forgive me? Perhaps the only way to earn his forgiveness was to help him kill Tariq. And the only way I can help him kill Tariq is to make another man fall for me and take him to bed. She closed her eyes and thought of Yusef al-Tawfiki.

  Gabriel had left his car on the Ashworth Road. He made a show of dropping his keys on the curb and groping in the darkness as if he were trying to find them. In reality he was searching the undercarriage of the car, looking for something that shouldn’t be there—a mass, a loose wire. The car looked clean, so he climbed in, started the motor, drove in circles for a half hour through Maida Vale and Notting Hill, making certain he was not being followed.

  He was annoyed with himself. He had been taught—first by his father, then by Ari Shamron—that men who could not keep secrets were weak and inferior. His father had survived Auschwitz but refused ever to speak of it. He struck Gabriel only once—when Gabriel demanded that his father tell him what had happened at the camp. If it hadn’t been for the numbers tattooed on his right forearm, Gabriel might never have known that his father had suffered.

  Indeed, Israel was a place filled with damaged people—mothers who buried sons killed in wars, children who buried siblings killed by terrorists. After Vienna, Gabriel leaned on the lessons of his father: Sometimes people die too soon. Mourn for them in private. Don’t wear your suffering on your sleeve like the Arabs. And when you’re finished mourning, get back on your feet and get on with life.

  It was the last part—getting on with life—that had given Gabriel the most trouble. He blamed himself for what had happened in Vienna, not only because of his affair with Jacqueline but because of the way he had killed Tariq’s brother. He had wanted the satisfaction of knowing that Mahmoud was aware of his death—that he had been terrified at the moment Gabriel’s Beretta quietly dispatched the first scorching bullet into his brain. Shamron had told him to terrorize the terrorists—to think like them and behave like them. Gabriel believed he had been punished for allowing himself to become like his enemy.

  He had punished himself in return. One by one he had closed the doors and barred the windows that had once given him access to life’s pleasures. He drifted though time and space the way he imagined a damned spirit might visit the place where he had lived: able to see loved ones and possessions but unable to communicate or taste or touch or feel. He experienced beauty only in art and only by repairing damage inflicted by uncaring owners and by the corrosive passage of time. Shamron had made him the destroyer. Gabriel had turned himself back into the healer. Unfortunately, he was not capable of healing himself.

  So why tell his secrets to Jacqueline? Why answer her damned questions? The simple answer was he wanted to. He had felt it the moment he walked into her villa in Valbonne, a prosaic need to share secrets and reveal past pain and disappointment. But there was something more important: he didn’t have to explain himself to her. He thought of his silly fantasy about Peel’s mother, how it had ended when he had told her the truth about himself. The scenario reflected one of Gabriel’s deep-seated fears—the dread of telling another woman he was a professional killer. Jacqueline already knew his secrets.

  Maybe Jacqueline had been right about one thing, he thought—maybe he should have asked Shamron for another girl. Jacqueline was his bat leveyha, and tomorrow he was going to send her into the bed of another man.

  He parked around the corner from his flat and walked quickly along the pavement toward the entrance of the block. He looked up toward his window and murmured, “Good evening, Mr. Karp.” And he pictured Karp, peering through the sight of his parabolic microphone, saying, “Welcome home, Gabe. Long time, no hear from.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Maida Vale, London

  Jacqueline felt a peculiar exhilaration the following morning as she walked along Elgin Avenue toward the Maida Vale tube station. She had lived a life of hedonistic excess—too much money, too many men, fine things taken for granted. It felt reassuring to be doing something so ordinary as taking the Underground to work, even if it was only a cover job.

  She bought a copy of The Times from the newsstand
on the street, then entered the station and followed the stairs down to the ticket lobby. The previous evening she had studied street maps and memorized the Underground lines. They had such curious names: Jubilee, Circle, District, Victoria. To get to the gallery in St. James’s, she would take the Bakerloo Line from Maida Vale to Piccadilly Circus. She purchased a ticket from an automated dispenser, then passed through the turnstile and headed down the escalator to the platform. So far, so good, she thought. Just another working girl in London.

  Her notion of relaxing for a few minutes with the newspaper dissolved when the train arrived at the station. The carriages were hopelessly crowded, the passengers crushed against the glass. Jacqueline, who was always protective of her personal space, considered waiting to see if the next train was any better. She looked at her watch, saw she had no time to waste. When the doors opened, only a handful of people got off. There seemed to be no place for her to stand. What would a Londoner do? Push her way in. She held her handbag across her breasts and stepped aboard.

  The train lurched forward. The man next to her was breathing last night’s beer into her face. She stretched her long frame, tilted her head back, closed her eyes, found a draft of fresh air leaking through the crack in the doors.

  A few moments later the train arrived at Piccadilly Circus. Outside, the mist had turned to light rain. Jacqueline pulled an umbrella from her handbag. She walked quickly, keeping pace with the office workers around her, making subtle alterations in course to avoid oncoming traffic.

  Turning into Duke Street, she glanced over her shoulder. Walking a few feet behind her, wearing black jeans and a leather jacket, was Gabriel. She moved south along Duke Street until she arrived at the entrance of Mason’s Yard.

  Gabriel bumped her elbow as he passed. “You’re clean. Give my love to Julian.”

  The gallery was exactly as Gabriel had described it: wedged between the shipping company office and the pub. Next to the door was a panel, and on the panel were two buttons and two corresponding names: LOCUS TRAVEL and ISHER OO FINE AR S. She pressed the button, waited, pressed it again, waited, glanced at her watch, pressed it again. Nothing.