Gabriel Allon 01 - The Kill Artist Read online

  She turned her attention to the walls. There were posters of Bob Marley and Che Guevara, another of Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their gloved fists at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968. There was a black, green, and red Palestinian flag and a print of a painting depicting a village girl being bathed by other women on the night before her wedding. She recognized the painting as one of Ibrahim Ghannan’s. Everywhere there were books, some stacked, some in piles, as if they were awaiting gasoline and a match—volumes of Middle East history, histories of the Middle East wars, biographies of Arafat, Sadat, Ben-Gurion, Rabin.

  “You read a great deal,” Jacqueline said.

  “It’s an addiction of mine.”

  “Where are you from, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Palestine.”

  He came into the room from the kitchen and handed her a glass of red wine. Then he held out his hand. “Come with me.”

  Gabriel stood in his window. Karp’s laser microphone picked up snatches of their conversation, but it was like listening to a vinyl record album that skipped. When they moved to the bedroom to make love, Gabriel said, “Shut it off.”

  “But, Gabe, it’s just getting to the good part.”

  “I said, shut it off.”

  Karp lowered the microphone and switched off the power. “I’m hungry. I’m going for a walk.”

  “Go.”

  “You all right, Gabe?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Go.”

  One hour later Yusef climbed out of bed, walked to the window, and opened the curtains. The yellow street lamp had turned his olive skin the color of old newsprint. Jacqueline lay on her stomach. She placed her chin atop her hands and looked at him, eyes following the line from his square shoulders to his lean, muscular waist. She wondered if Gabriel was looking at him too.

  Yusef was watching the street—looking into parked cars, scanning the building opposite. He turned his body slightly, and she could see a wide, flat scar on his back, running between his right shoulder blade and the center of his ridged spine. She had felt it when they were making love. It was hard and coarse, like sandpaper. Like the skin of a shark.

  He had been a gentle lover, meticulous in his attempts to give her pleasure. When he was inside her, she had closed her eyes and imagined it was Gabriel, and when she felt the scar between his shoulder blades she imagined it was Gabriel’s scar, a relic from one of his secret missions, and she wished that she could pass her hand over it and make it go away.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked.

  Yusef turned around and folded his arms across his chest.

  “Have you ever slept with an Arab before, Dominique?”

  She thought: And you’re changing the subject. She said, “You’re my first. I may have to do it again sometime.”

  “Not while you’re sleeping with me.”

  “Are we sleeping together now?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “All right, we are now officially sleeping together.” She rolled onto her back, looked at the light from the street falling across her body, imagined it was Gabriel’s gaze. “Do you think we should get to know each other a little better, now that we’re officially sleeping together?”

  He smiled and said, “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know what happened to your back.”

  He turned and looked out the window.

  She studied the digital alarm clock on the bedside table.

  “There are some things about my past that you might find unpleasant,” he said.

  “Bad things you’ve done?”

  “No, Dominique. Bad things that were done to me.”

  “How did you get that scar on your back?”

  He turned and looked at her. “I grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon—the Shatila camp in south Beirut. Perhaps you’ve heard of Shatila, Dominique.”

  “Of course I’ve heard of Shatila.”

  “The PLO had offices in the Shatila camp, so when the Israelis invaded Lebanon in ’eighty-two, they shelled the camp day and night. A missile fired by an Israeli fighter jet hit the building where our family lived. The building collapsed on top of me, and a chunk of concrete tore away the skin of my back.”

  “Why were you in Lebanon?”

  “Because that’s where my family ended up after they were driven from their ancestral homes in Palestine by the Jews.”

  Jacqueline looked at the ceiling.

  Yusef said, “Why do you look away from me when I tell you that?”

  “I met some Israelis once in a nightclub in Paris. They were debating this issue with a group of French students. They said that the Jews didn’t have to expel the Arabs from Palestine because the Arabs left on their own.”

  Yusef laughed and shook his head. “I’m afraid you have fallen for the great Zionist myth, Dominique. The myth that the Palestinians would voluntarily trade the land where they had lived for centuries for exile and refugee camps. The myth that the Arab governments told the Palestinians to leave.”

  “It’s not true?”

  “Does it sound as though it could be true?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then trust your instincts, Dominique. If it doesn’t sound plausible, it probably isn’t. Do you want to know the truth about what the Jews did to my people? Do you want to know why my family ended up in a refugee camp in Beirut?”

  “I want to know about you.”

  “I’m a Palestinian. It’s impossible to separate me from the history of my people.”

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “By the way, which nightclub in Paris?”

  “What?”

  “The nightclub where you met the Israelis. Which one was it?”

  “I can’t remember. It was so long ago.”

  “Try to remember, please. It’s important.”

  “We call it al-Nakba. The Catastrophe.”

  He had pulled on a pair of loose-fitting cotton pajama bottoms and a London University sweatshirt, as if suddenly self-conscious about his nakedness. He gave Jacqueline a blue dress shirt. It was unspoken, but the implication was clear: one mustn’t discuss something as sacred as al-Nakba in a state of postcoital undress. Jacqueline sat in the middle of the bed, her long legs crossed before her, while Yusef paced.

  “When the United Nations presented the plan to partition Palestine into two states, the Jews realized they had a serious problem. The Zionists had come to Palestine to build a Jewish state, but nearly half of the people in the new partition state were to be Arabs. The Jews accepted the partition plan, knowing full well that it would be unacceptable to the Arabs. And why should the Arabs accept it? The Jews owned seven percent of Palestine, but they were being handed fifty percent of the country, including the most fertile land along the coastal plain and the Upper Galilee. Are you listening, Dominique?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “The Jews devised a plan to remove the Arabs from the land designated for the Jewish state. They even had a name for it: Plan Dalet. And they put it into effect the moment the Arabs attacked. Their plan was to expel the Arabs, to drive them out, as Ben-Gurion put it. To cleanse Jewish Palestine of Arabs. Yes, cleanse. I don’t use that word lightly, Dominique. It’s not my word. It’s the very word the Zionists used to describe their plan to expel my people from Palestine.”

  “It sounds as though they behaved like the Serbs.”

  “They did. Have you ever heard of a place called Deir Yassin?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Your view of the conflict in the Middle East has been shaped by the Zionists, so it’s hardly surprising to me that you have never heard of Deir Yassin.”

  “Tell me about Deir Yassin.”

  “It was an Arab village outside Jerusalem on the road to the coast and Tel Aviv. It isn’t there anymore. There’s a Jewish town where Deir Yassin used to be. It’s called Kfar Sha’ul.”

  Yusef clo
sed his eyes for a moment, as if the next part was too painful even to speak about. When he resumed he spoke with the flat calm of a survivor recounting the last mundane events of a loved one’s life.

  “The village elders had reached an accommodation with the Zionists, so the four hundred Arabs who lived in Deir Yassin felt they were safe. They had been promised by the Zionists that the village would not be attacked. But at four o’clock one April morning, the members of the Irgun and the Stern Gang came to Deir Yassin. By noon, two thirds of the villagers had been slaughtered. The Jews rounded up the men and the boys, stood them against a wall, and started shooting. They went house to house and murdered the women and the children. They dynamited the homes. They shot a woman who was nine months pregnant, then they cut open her womb and ripped out the child. A woman rushed forward to try to save the baby’s life. A Jew shot the woman and killed her.”

  “I don’t believe things like that happened in Palestine.”

  “Of course they did, Dominique. After the massacre word spread through the Arab villages like wildfire. The Jews took full advantage of the situation. They mounted loudspeakers on trucks and broadcast warnings. They told the Arabs to get out, or there would be another Deir Yassin. They concocted stories about outbreaks of typhus and cholera. They made clandestine radio broadcasts in Arabic, masquerading as Arab leaders, and urged the Palestinians to take flight to avoid a bloodbath. This is the real reason the Palestinians left.”

  “I had no idea,” she said.

  “My own family came from the village of Lydda. Lydda, like Deir Yassin, no longer exists. It is now Lod. It’s where the Zionists put their fucking airport. After a battle with the Arab defenders, the Jews entered Lydda. There was complete panic. Two hundred fifty Arab villagers were killed in the crossfire. After the town was captured, the commanders asked Ben-Gurion what should be done with the Arabs. He said, ‘Drive them out!’ The actual expulsion orders were signed by Yitzhak Rabin. My family was given ten minutes to pack a few belongings, as much as they could carry in a single bag, and told to get out. They started walking. The Jews laughed at them. Spat at them. That’s the truth about what happened in Palestine. That’s who I am. That’s why I hate them.”

  Jacqueline, however, was thinking not of the Arabs of Lydda but of the Jews of Marseilles—of Maurice and Rachel Halévy and the night the Vichy gendarmes came for them.

  “You’re shaking,” he said.

  “Your story upset me. Come back to bed. I want to hold you.”

  He crawled back into bed, spread his body gently over hers, and kissed her mouth. “End of lecture,” he said. “We’ll resume tomorrow, if you’re interested.”

  “I’m interested—very interested, in fact.”

  “Do you believe the things I’ve told you, or do you think I’m just another fanatical Arab who wants to see the Jews driven into the sea?”

  “I believe you, Yusef.”

  “Do you like poetry?”

  “I love poetry.”

  “Poetry is very important to the Palestinian people. Our poetry allows us to express our suffering. It gives us the courage to face our past. A poet named Mu’in Basisu is one of my favorites.”

  He kissed her again and began to recite:

  And after the flood none was left of this people

  This land, but a rope and a pole

  None but bare bodies floating on mires

  Leavings of kin and child

  None but swelled bodies

  Their numbers unknown

  Here wreckage, here death, here drowned in deep

  waters

  Scraps of bread loaf still clasped in my hand.

  She said, “It’s beautiful.”

  “It sounds better in Arabic.” He paused for a moment, then said, “Do you speak any Arabic, Dominique?”

  “Of course not. Why do you ask?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  In the morning Yusef brought her coffee in bed. Jacqueline sat up and drank it very quickly. She needed the jolt of caffeine to help her think. She hadn’t slept. Several times she had considered slipping out of bed, but Yusef was a restless sleeper and she feared he might awaken. If he discovered her making imprints of his keys with a special device disguised as a mascara case, there would be no way to explain. He would assume she was an Israeli agent. He might very well kill her. It would be better to leave his flat without the imprints than to be caught. She wanted to do it right—for Gabriel’s sake and her own.

  She looked at her watch. It was nearly nine o’clock.

  “I’m sorry I let you sleep so long,” Yusef said.

  “That’s all right. I was tired.”

  “It was a good tired, yes?”

  She kissed him and said, “It was a very good tired.”

  “Call your boss and tell him you’re going to take the day off and make love to a Palestinian named Yusef al-Tawfiki.”

  “I don’t think he’ll see the humor in that.”

  “This man has never wanted to spend the day making love to a woman?”

  “I’m not sure, actually.”

  “I’m going to take a shower. You’re welcome to join me.”

  “I’ll never get to work that way.”

  “That was my intention.”

  “Get in the shower. Is there any more coffee?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  Yusef stepped into the bathroom and closed the door halfway. Jacqueline lay in bed until she heard him step into the shower; then she slipped from beneath the blankets and padded into the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee and walked into the sitting room. She placed the coffee on the table next to Yusef’s keys and sat down. The shower was still running.

  She reached into her bag and withdrew her mascara case. She popped it open and glanced inside. It was filled with a soft ceramic material. All she had to do was place a key against the material and squeeze the lid closed. The ersatz case would produce a perfect imprint.

  Her hands were trembling. She picked up the keys carefully, to prevent them from making any sound, and singled out the first: the Yale model he had used for the street entrance. She placed it inside the case, closed the lid, and squeezed. She opened the case and removed the key. The imprint was flawless. She repeated the process two more times, once with the second Yale key, then with the skeleton. She had three perfect imprints.

  She closed the lid, placed the keys exactly where Yusef had left them, then returned the mascara case to her purse.

  “What are you doing there?”

  She looked up, startled, and quickly regained her composure. Yusef was standing in the center of the floor, his wet body wrapped in a beige bath towel. How long had he been standing there? How much had he seen? Damn it, Jacqueline! Why weren’t you watching the door!

  She said, “I’m looking for my cigarettes. Have you seen them?”

  He pointed toward the bedroom. “You left them in there.”

  “Oh, yes. God, sometimes I think I’m losing my mind.”

  “That’s all you were doing? Just looking for cigarettes?”

  “What else would I be doing?” She spread her arms to indicate the spartan squalor of his sitting room. “You think I’m trying to make off with your valuables?”

  She stood and picked up her handbag. “Are you finished in the bathroom?”

  “Yes, but why are you bringing your purse to the bathroom?”

  She thought: He suspects something. Suddenly she wanted to get out of the flat as quickly as possible. Then she thought: I should be offended by questions like that.

  “I think I may be getting my period,” she said icily. “I don’t think I like the way you’re acting. Is this the way all Arab men treat their lovers the morning after?”

  She brushed past him and entered the bedroom. She was surprised at how convincing she had managed to sound. Her hands were shaking as she collected her clothing and entered the bathroom. She ran water in the sink while she dressed. Then she opened the door and
went out. Yusef was in the sitting room. He wore faded jeans, a sweater, loafers with no socks.

  He said, “I’ll call you a cab.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll find my own way home.”

  “Let me walk you down.”

  “I’ll see myself out, thank you.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Why are you acting this way?”

  “Because I don’t like the way you were talking to me. I had a nice time, until now. Maybe I’ll see you around sometime.”

  She opened the door and stepped into the hallway. Yusef followed her. She walked quickly down the stairs, then across the lobby.

  At the front entrance he grabbed her arm. “I’m sorry, Dominique. I’m just a little paranoid sometimes. You’d be paranoid too if you’d lived my life. I didn’t mean anything by it. How can I make it up to you?”

  She managed to smile, even though her heart was pounding against the inside of her ribs. She had no idea what to do. She had the imprints, but there was a chance that he had seen her making them—or at least that he suspected she had done something. If she were guilty, the natural impulse would be to reject his invitation. She decided to accept his offer. If Gabriel believed it was a mistake, she could make up an excuse to cancel it.

  She said, “You may take me out for a proper dinner.”

  “What time?”

  “Meet me at the gallery at six-thirty.”

  “Perfect.”

  “And don’t be late. I can’t stand men who are late.”

  Then she kissed him and went out.

  24

  MAIDA VALE, LONDON

  When Jacqueline arrived back at her flat, Gabriel was seated on the couch drinking coffee. “How did it go?”

  “It was lovely. Bring me some of that coffee, will you?”

  She went into the bathroom, closed the door, and began filling the tub. Then she stripped off her clothing and slipped beneath the warm water. A moment later Gabriel knocked on the door.