The Messenger Page 18

  “How much longer?” she asked.

  It was the same question Shamron had posed to him that windswept afternoon in October, when he had come to Narkiss Street to haul Gabriel out of exile. A year, he should have said to Shamron that day. And then he wouldn’t be here, in a safe house in Surrey, about to send a beautiful American girl into the heart of Jihad Incorporated.

  “I’ve removed the surface dirt and pressed the creases back into place with a warm, damp spatula,” Gabriel said. “Now I have to finish the inpainting and apply a light coat of varnish—just enough to bring out the warmth of Vincent’s original colors.”

  “I wasn’t talking about the painting.”

  He looked up from his palette. “I suppose that depends entirely on you.”

  “I’m ready when you are,” she said.

  “Not quite.”

  “What happens if Zizi doesn’t bite? What happens if he doesn’t like the painting—or me?”

  “No serious collector with money like Zizi is going to turn down a newly discovered van Gogh. And as for you, he won’t have much choice in the matter. We’re going to make you irresistible.”

  “How?”

  “There are some things it’s better you not know.”

  “Like what happens to Ahmed bin Shafiq if I see him?”

  He added pigment to a puddle of medium and mixed it with a brush. “You know what happens to Ahmed bin Shafiq. I made that very clear to you in Washington the night we met.”

  “Tell me everything,” she said. “I need to know.”

  Gabriel lowered his visor and lifted his brush to the canvas. When he spoke again, he spoke not to Sarah but to Marguerite. “We’ll watch him. We’ll listen to him if we can. We’ll take his photograph and get his voice on tape and send it to our experts for analysis.”

  “And if your experts determine it’s him?”

  “At a time and place of our choosing, we’ll put him down.”

  “Put him down?”

  “Assassinate him. Kill him. Liquidate him. You choose the word that makes you most comfortable, Sarah. I’ve never found one.”

  “How many times have you done this?”

  He put his face close to the painting and murmured, “Many times, Sarah.”

  “How many have you killed? Ten? Twenty? Has it solved the problem of terrorism? Or has it just made things worse? If you find Ahmed bin Shafiq and kill him, what will it accomplish? Will it end, or will another man step forward and take his place?”

  “Eventually another murderer will take his place. In the meantime, lives will be saved. And justice will be done.”

  “Is it really justice? Can justice really be done with a silenced pistol or a booby-trapped car?”

  He lifted the visor and turned around, his green eyes flashing in the glare of the lamps. “Are you enjoying this little debate about the moral relevancy of counterterrorism? Is it making you feel better? You can rest assured Ahmed bin Shafiq never wastes time wrestling with these questions of morality. You can be certain that if he ever manages to acquire a nuclear device, the only debate he’ll have is whether to use it against New York or Tel Aviv.”

  “Is it justice, Gabriel? Or only vengeance?”

  Again he saw himself and Shamron. This time the setting was not Gabriel’s flat in Narkiss Street but a warm afternoon in September 1972—the day Shamron first came for him. Gabriel had posed the same question.

  “It’s not too late, Sarah. You can get out if you want. We can find someone else to take your place.”

  “There is no one else like me. Besides, I don’t want out.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Permission to sleep at night.”

  “Sleep, Sarah. Sleep very well.”

  “And you?”

  “I have a painting to finish.”

  He turned around and lowered his visor again. Sarah was not done with him.

  “Was it true?” she asked. “All the things written about you in the newspapers after the Gare de Lyon attack?”

  “Most of it.”

  “You killed the Palestinians from Black September who carried out the Munich Massacre?”

  “Some of them.”

  “Would you do it again, knowing everything you know now?”

  He hesitated a moment. “Yes, Sarah, I would do it again. And I’ll tell you why. It wasn’t about vengeance. Black September was the most lethal terror group the world had ever seen, and it needed to be put out of business.”

  “But look at what it cost you. You lost your family.”

  “Everyone who engages in this fight loses something. Take your country, for example. You were innocent, a shining beacon of freedom and decency. Now you have blood on your hands and men in secret prisons. We don’t do this sort of work because we enjoy it. We do it because we have to. We do it because we have no choice. You think I have a choice? You think Dina Sarid has a choice? We don’t. And neither do you.” He looked at her for a moment. “Unless you’d like me to find someone else to go in your place.”

  “There is no one else like me,” she repeated. “When will I be ready?”

  Gabriel turned and lifted his brush to the painting. Soon, he thought. One or two days more of inpainting. Then a coat of varnish. Then she would be ready.

  ALL THAT REMAINED was her field training. Lavon and Uzi Navot put her through her paces. For three days and nights they took her into the streets of London and drilled her on the basic tenets of tradecraft. They taught her how to make a clandestine meeting and how to determine if a site was compromised. They taught her how to spot physical surveillance and simple techniques for shaking it. They taught her how to make a dead drop and how to hand material to a live courier. They taught her how to dial the Office emergency lines on ordinary pay telephones and how to signal them with her body if she were blown and required extraction. Lavon would later describe her as the finest natural amateur field agent he had ever trained. He could have completed the course in two days, but Gabriel, if only for his own peace of mind, insisted on a third. When Lavon finally returned to Surrey that afternoon he found Gabriel standing morosely at the edge of the stock pond, with a rod in one hand and his eyes trained on the surface of the water as though willing a fish to rise. “She’s ready,” Lavon said. “The question is, are you?” Gabriel slowly reeled in his line and followed Lavon back to the house.

  LATER THAT SAME evening the lights went dark in the melancholy little travel agency in Mason’s Yard. Miss Archer, clutching a batch of old files, paused for a moment on the landing and peered through the sparkling glass entrance of Isherwood Fine Arts. Seated behind the receptionist desk was Elena, Mr. Isherwood’s scandalously pretty Italian secretary. She glanced up from her computer screen and blew Miss Archer an elaborate farewell kiss, then looked down again and resumed her work.

  Miss Archer smiled sadly and headed down the stairway. There were no tears in her eyes. She’d done her crying in private, the way she did most things. Nor was there hesitation in her step. For twenty-seven years she’d been coming to this office five mornings a week. Saturdays, too, if there was housekeeping to be done. She was looking forward to retirement, even if it had come a bit earlier than expected. Maybe she’d take a long holiday. Or maybe she’d take a cottage in the countryside. She’d had her eye on a little place in the Chilterns for some time. She was certain of only one thing: She wasn’t sorry to be leaving. Mason’s Yard would never be the same again, not with the flashy Miss Bancroft in residence. It wasn’t that Miss Archer had anything against Americans personally. She just wasn’t terribly interested in living next door to one.

  As she neared the bottom of the stairs a buzzer groaned, and the automatic locks on the outer door snapped open. Thank you, Elena, she thought as she stepped outside into the chill evening air. Can’t get off your shapely little backside to give a proper good-bye, and now you’re practically shoving me out the door. She was tempted to violate Mr. Isherwood’s long-standing edict about waiting for
the door to lock again, but, professional to the end, she stayed ten more seconds, until the dull thump of the deadbolts sent her shuffling slowly toward the passageway.

  She did not know that her departure was being monitored by a three-man neviot team waiting in a van parked on the opposite side of Duke Street. The team remained in their van for another hour, just to make certain she hadn’t forgotten anything. Then, shortly before eight, they slipped through the passageway and made their way slowly across the bricks of the old yard toward the gallery. To Julian Isherwood, who watched their unhurried approach from the window of his office, they seemed like gravediggers with a long night ahead.

  19.

  London

  THE OPERATION BEGAN IN earnest late the following morning, when Julian Isherwood, London art dealer of some repute, placed a discreet telephone call to the Knightsbridge residence of Andrew Malone, exclusive art adviser to Zizi al-Bakari. It was answered by a drowsy woman who informed Isherwood that Malone was out of the country.

  “A fugitive from justice?” he asked, trying to make light of an awkward situation.

  “Try his mobile,” the woman said before slamming down the phone.

  Fortunately, Isherwood had the number. He immediately dialed it and, as instructed, left a brief message. The better part of the day elapsed before Malone bothered to call him back.

  “I’m in Rome,” he said sotto voce. “Something big. Very big.”

  “Hardly surprising, Andrew. You only do big.”

  Malone batted away Isherwood’s attempt at flattery. “I’m afraid I only have a moment,” he said. “What can I do for you, Julie?”

  “I think I might have something for you. Something for your client, actually.”

  “My client doesn’t do the Old Masters.”

  “The something I have for your client isn’t Old Master. It’s Impressionist. And not just any Impressionist, if you’re getting my drift. It’s special, Andrew. It’s the sort of thing that only a handful of collectors in the world can even dream about owning, and your man happens to be one of them. I’m offering you a first look, Andrew—an exclusive first look. Any interest, or shall I take my business elsewhere?”

  “Do tell more, Julie.”

  “Sorry, darling, but it’s not the sort of thing one discusses over the telephone. How about lunch tomorrow? I’m buying.”

  “I’m going to Tokyo tomorrow. There’s a collector there who has a Monet my man wants.”

  “How about the day after tomorrow then?”

  “That’s my jet-lag day. Let’s make it Thursday, shall we?”

  “You won’t regret this, Andrew.”

  “Regrets are what sustain us. Ciao, Julie.”

  Isherwood hung up the telephone and looked at the heavy-shouldered man with strawberry-blond hair seated on the opposite side of the desk. “Nicely done,” said Uzi Navot. “But next time let Zizi buy lunch.”

  IT CAME as no surprise to Gabriel that Andrew Malone was in Rome, because he had been under electronic and physical surveillance for nearly a week. He had gone to the Eternal City to acquire a certain Degas sculpture that Zizi had had his eye on for quite some time but left empty-handed on Monday night and proceeded to Tokyo. The anonymous collector whom Malone hoped to relieve of a Monet was none other than the famed industrialist Morito Watanabe. Based on the defeatist expression on Malone’s face as he was leaving Watanabe’s apartment, Gabriel concluded the negotiations had not gone well. That evening Malone phoned Isherwood to say he was staying in Tokyo a day longer than expected. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to postpone our little get-together,” he said. “Can we do it next week?” Gabriel, who was anxious to get under way, instructed Isherwood to hold fast, and the meeting was pushed back just one day, from the Thursday to the Friday, though Isherwood did agree to make it a late lunch so that Malone could catch a few hours of sleep in his own bed. Malone did in fact remain in Tokyo for an additional day, but Tokyo Station detected no further contact between him and Watanabe or any of Watanabe’s agents. He returned to London late Thursday evening, looking, according to Eli Lavon, like a cadaver in a Savile Row suit. At three-thirty the next afternoon, the cadaver crept through the doorway of Green’s restaurant in Duke Street and made his way to the quiet corner table, where Isherwood was already waiting. Isherwood poured him a very large glass of white burgundy. “All right, Julie,” said Malone. “Let’s cut the bullshit, shall we? What have you got up your sleeve? And who the fuck put it there? Cheers.”

  CHIARA WAS WAITING at the top of the landing ninety minutes later when Isherwood, fortified by two bottles of excellent white burgundy at Gabriel’s expense, came teetering up the newly carpeted stairs. She directed him to the left, into the former premises of Archer Travel, where he was met by one of Gabriel’s neviot listeners. He removed his coat and unbuttoned his shirt, revealing the small digital recording device secured to his chest by an elastic cummerbund.

  “I don’t usually do this sort of thing on the first date,” he said.

  The neviot man removed the recorder and smiled. “How was the lobster?”

  “Bit chewy but otherwise fine.”

  “You did well, Mr. Isherwood. Very well.”

  “It’s my last deal, I suspect. Now let’s hope I don’t go out with a bang.”

  THE RECORDING could have been sent by secure transmission, but Gabriel, like Adrian Carter, was still old-fashioned about some things, and he insisted that it be downloaded onto a disk and hand-carried to the Surrey safe house. As a result it was after eight by the time it finally arrived. He loaded the disk into a computer in the drawing room and clicked the Play icon. Dina was sprawled on the couch. Yaakov was seated in an armchair with his chin in his hands and elbows on his knees, hunched forward as though he were awaiting word from the front. It was Rimona’s night to cook. As Andrew Malone began to speak, she shouted at Gabriel from the kitchen to turn up the volume so she could hear it, too.

  “DO YOU take me for a fool, Julian?”

  “It’s the real thing, Andrew. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

  “Do you have a photograph?”

  “I wasn’t allowed.”

  “Who’s the owner?”

  “The owner wishes to remain anonymous.”

  “Yes, of course, but who the hell is it, Julian?”

  “I cannot divulge the name of the owner. Period. End of discussion. She’s entrusted me as her representative in this matter, and that’s as far as it goes.”

  “She? So the owner is a woman?”

  “The painting has been in the same family for three generations. Currently, it is in the hands of a woman.”

  “What sort of family, Julian? Give me a tickle.”

  “A French family, Andrew. And that’s all you’re getting from me.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to work, Julian. You have to give me something I can hang my hat on. I can’t go to Zizi empty-handed. Zizi gets annoyed when that happens. If you want Zizi in the game, you’ll have to play by Zizi’s rules.”

  “I won’t be bullied, Andrew. I came to you as a favor. Frankly I don’t give a shit about Zizi’s rules. Frankly, I don’t need Zizi at all. If I put the word on the street that I’m sitting on an undiscovered van Gogh, every major collector and museum in the world will be beating down my door and throwing money at me. Do please try to keep that in mind.”

  “Forgive me, Julie. It’s been a long week. Let’s start over, shall we?”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  “May I pose a few harmless questions?”

  “Depends on how harmless.”

  “Let’s start with an easy one. Where’s the painting now? France or England?”

  “It’s here in London.”

  “In your gallery?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What sort of painting are we talking about? Landscape? Still life? Portrait?”

  “Portrait.”

  “Self?”

  “No.”

  “
Male or female.”

  “Female.”

  “Dreamy. Early or late?”

  “Very late.”

  “Saint-Rémy? Auvers?”

  “The latter, Andrew. It was painted during the final days of his life in Auvers.”

  “You’re not sitting on an undiscovered portrait of Marguerite Gachet, are you, Julian?”

  “Maybe we should have a glance at the menu.”

  “Fuck the menu, Julian. Answer the question: Are you sitting on an undiscovered portrait of Marguerite?”

  “I’ve gone as far as I can in terms of the content, Andrew. And that’s final. If you want to know what it is, you’ll have to take a look at it for yourself.”

  “You’re offering me a look?”

  “I’m offering your man a look, not you.”

  “Easier said than done. Running the world keeps my man busy.”

  “I’m prepared to offer you and Zizi exclusivity for seventy-two hours. After that, I’ll have to open it up to other collectors.”

  “Bad form, Julian. My man doesn’t like ultimatums.”

  “It’s not an ultimatum. It’s just business. He understands that.”

  “What kind of price tag are we talking about?”

  “Eighty-five million.”

  “Eighty-five million? Then you do indeed need Zizi. You see, money’s a bit tight at the moment, isn’t it? Can’t remember the last time someone’s laid down eighty-five million for something. Can you, Julie?”

  “This painting is worth every penny.”

  “If it’s what you say it is, and if it’s in perfect condition, I’ll get you your eighty-five million in very short order. You see, my man has been looking for something splashy like this for a very long time. But then you knew that, didn’t you, Julie? That’s why you brought it to me first. You knew we could get the deal done in an afternoon. No auctions. No press. No nagging questions about your quiet little French woman who wants to remain anonymous. I’m the goose that lays the golden egg as far as you’re concerned, and you’re going to have to give the goose his due.”