Gabriel Allon 01 - Kill Artist Read online

  Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris

  Yusef slipped his hand into Jacqueline’s and guided her through the crowded terminal. She was exhausted. She had slept miserably and shortly before dawn had been awakened by a nightmare in which Gabriel assassinated Yusef while Yusef was making love to her. Her ears were ringing, and there was a flickering in the periphery of her vision, like flash-bulbs popping on a runway. They passed through the transit lounge, cleared a security check, and entered the depar-ture terminal. Yusef released her hand, then kissed her cheek and placed his lips close to her ear. When he spoke, it reminded her of the way Gabriel had spoken to her the previous night in the gallery—softly, as if he were telling her a bedtime story.

  “You’re to wait in that café. You’re to order a cup of coffee and read the newspaper that I’ve slipped into the flap of your bag. You’re not to leave the café for any reason. He’ll come for you unless he thinks there’s a problem. If he doesn’t appear within an hour—”

  “—Get on the next available flight for London, and don’t try to contact you when I arrive,” Jacqueline said, finishing his sentence for him. “I remember everything you’ve told me.”

  Another kiss, this time on her other cheek. “You have a spy’s memory, Dominique.”

  “Actually, I have my mother’s memory.”

  “Remember, you have nothing to fear from this man and nothing to fear from the authorities. You’re doing nothing wrong. He’s a kind man. I think you’re going to enjoy his company. Have a safe trip, and I’ll see you when you get back.”

  He kissed her forehead and gave her a gentle nudge in the direction of the café, as if she were a toy boat adrift on a pond. She walked a few steps, then stopped and turned to have one last look at him, but he had already melted into the crowd.

  It was a small airport restaurant, a few wrought-iron tables spilling into the terminal to create the illusion of a Parisian café. Jacqueline sat down and ordered a café au lait from the waiter. She was suddenly conscious of her appearance and felt an absurd desire to make a good first impression. She wore black jeans and an ash-colored cashmere pullover. Her face had no makeup, and she had done nothing with her hair except pull it back. When the waiter brought her coffee, Jacqueline lifted the spoon and looked at the distorted reflection of her eyes. They were red-rimmed and raw.

  She stirred sugar into her coffee and looked around her. At the table behind her a young American couple were quietly quarreling. At the next table were a pair of German businessmen studying a performance chart on the screen of a laptop computer.

  Jacqueline suddenly remembered she was supposed to be reading the newspaper. She removed the Times that Yusef had left in her bag and unfolded it. A British Airways cocktail napkin fell out onto the table. Jacqueline picked it up and turned it over. On the back was a note, penned in Yusef’s chaotic hand: I’ll miss you. With love and fond memories, Yusef.

  She crumpled it and left it next to her coffee. Sounds like a farewell note. She picked up the newspaper and leafed through the front section. She paused to scan the news from the Middle East: U.S. PRESIDENT APPLAUDS INTERIM AGREEMENT REACHED BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS… SIGNING CEREMONY NEXT WEEK AT UNITED NATIONS. She licked the tip of her finger and turned another page.

  Boarding announcements blared from the public address system. She had a terrible headache. She reached into her purse, removed a bottle of aspirin, washed down two tablets with the coffee. She looked for Gabriel. Nothing. Damn it, where the hell are you, Gabriel Allon? Tell me you haven’t left me here alone with them… She placed the cup carefully in the saucer and returned the aspirin bottle to her purse.

  She was about to resume reading when a stunningly attractive woman with lustrous black hair and wide brown eyes appeared at the table. “Do you mind if I join you?” the woman said in French.

  “Actually, I’m meeting someone.”

  “You’re meeting Lucien Daveau. I’m Lucien’s friend.” She pulled out the chair and sat down. “Lucien asked me to collect you and take you to your flight.”

  “I was told that Lucien himself would meet me here.”

  “I understand, but I’m afraid there’s been a slight change in plan.” She smiled a radiant, seductive smile. “You have nothing to be afraid of. Lucien asked me to take good care of you.”

  Jacqueline had no idea what to do. They had violated the terms of the agreement. She had every right to stand up and walk off and be done with it. But then what? Tariq would slip away and continue his campaign of terror. More innocent Jews would die. The peace process would be placed in jeopardy. And Gabriel would go on blaming himself for what had happened to Leah and his son in Vienna.

  “I don’t like this, but I’ll do it.”

  “Good, because they’ve just called our flight.”

  Jacqueline stood up, picked up her bag, and followed the woman out of the café. “Our flight?” she asked.

  “That’s right. I’m going to be traveling with you for the first leg of your journey. Lucien will join you later.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll find out in a moment.”

  “Since we’re going to be traveling together, do you think you could tell me your name?”

  The girl smiled again. “If you feel you must call me something, you may call me Leila.”

  Gabriel stood in a duty-free shop one hundred feet away, pretending to look at cologne, while he watched Jacqueline at the café. Shamron was aboard Benjamin Stone’s private plane. All they needed was Tariq.

  Suddenly, he realized that he was excited by the prospect of finally seeing Tariq. The photographs in Shamron’s file were useless—too old, too grainy. Three of them were only presumed to be pictures of Tariq. The truth was no one inside the Office really knew what he looked like. Gabriel was about to get the first good look at him in years. Was he tall or short? Was he handsome or ordinary-looking? Did he look like a ruthless killer? Of course not, Gabriel thought. He’ll be someone who blends naturally into his surroundings.

  He’ll be like me. Then he thought: Or am I like him?

  When the attractive, raven-haired girl sat down at Jacqueline’s table, he thought for a moment that it was just one of those horrid accidents that sometimes sends operations into a tailspin—girl needs a seat, girl assumes Jacqueline’s alone, girl helps herself to the empty chair. Then he realized it was part of Tariq’s game. He had survived all these years because he was unpredictable. He made plans and changed plans constantly—told different stories to different members of his organization. Never let the left hand know what the right was doing.

  The two women stood up and started walking. Gabriel waited for a moment, then trailed them from a safe distance. He felt dejected. The game had barely begun and already Tariq had bested him. He wondered whether he was really ready to do battle with a man like Tariq. He had been out of the game too long. Perhaps his reactions had slowed, his instincts for survival waned. He thought of the night he’d planted the bugs in Yusef’s flat, how he had nearly been caught because he had lost his concentration for a few seconds.

  He felt the sickening rush of adrenaline all over again. For a moment he considered rushing forward and pulling her out. He forced himself to calm down and think clearly. She was just getting on an airplane. She would be safe while they were in the air, and Shamron would have a team waiting at the other end. Tariq had won the first round, but Gabriel decided to let the game continue.

  The girl led Jacqueline into a glass-enclosed gate area. Gabriel watched as they passed through a final security check and handed over their tickets to a gate attendant. Then they headed into the Jetway and were gone. Gabriel glanced up at the monitor one last time to make certain he had seen it right: Air France flight 382, destination Montreal.

  A few moments after takeoff Shamron hung up the secure telephone in the office of Benjamin Stone’s private jet and joined Gabriel in the luxuriously appointed salon. “I just notified Ottawa station.”

>   “Who’s in Ottawa these days?”

  “Your old friend Zvi Yadin. He’s on his way to Montreal now with a small team. They’ll meet the plane and put Jacqueline and her new friend under watch.”

  “Why Montreal?”

  “Haven’t you read the papers?”

  “I’m sorry, Ari, but I’ve been a bit busy.”

  On the table next to Shamron’s chair was a stack of newspapers, neatly arranged so the mastheads were visible. He snatched the top paper and flipped it into Gabriel’s lap. “There’s going to be a signing ceremony at the UN in three days. Everyone’s going to be there. The American president, the prime minister, Arafat and all his deputies. It looks as though Tariq’s going to try to spoil the party.”

  Gabriel glanced at the newspaper and tossed it back onto the table.

  “Montreal is a natural staging point for a man like Tariq. He speaks fluent French and has the capability to secure false passports. He flies to Montreal as a Frenchman and enters Quebec without a visa. Once he’s in Canada he’s almost home. There are tens of thousands of Arabs living in Montreal. He’ll have plenty of places to hide. Security along the U.S.-Canadian border is lax or nonexistent. On some roads there are no border posts at all. In Montreal he can switch passports—American or Canadian—and simply drive into the States. Or, if he’s feeling adventurous, he can walk across the border.”

  “Tariq never struck me as an outdoorsman.”

  “He’ll do whatever is necessary to get his target. And if that means walking ten miles through the snow, he’ll walk through the snow.”

  “I don’t like the fact that they changed the rules in Paris,” Gabriel said. “I don’t like the fact that Yusef lied to Jacqueline about how this was going to work.”

  “All it means is that for reasons of security Tariq finds it necessary to deceive his own people. That’s standard procedure for a man like him. Arafat did it for years. That’s the reason he’s alive today. His enemies within the Palestinian movement couldn’t get to him.”

  “And neither could you.”

  “Point well taken.”

  The door connecting the salon to the office opened, and Stone entered the room.

  Shamron said, “There’s a stateroom in the back of the plane. Go get some sleep. You look terrible.”

  Gabriel stood up without a word and left the salon. Stone lowered his mammoth body into a chair and scooped up a handful of Brazil nuts. “He has passion,” he said, popping a pair of nuts into his mouth. “An assassin with a conscience. I like that. The rest of the world is going to like him even better.”

  “Benjamin, what on earth are you talking about?”

  “He’s the meal ticket. Don’t you understand, Ari? He’s the way you repay your debts to me. All of them, wiped out in a single neat payment.”

  “I didn’t realize you were keeping a ledger. I thought you helped us because you believed in us. I thought you helped us because you wanted to help protect the State.”

  “Let me finish, Ari. Hear me out. I don’t want your money. I want him. I want you to let me tell his story. I’ll assign it to my best reporter. Let me publish the story of the Israeli who restores old master paintings by day and kills Palestinian terrorists by night.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “On the contrary, Ari. I’m quite serious. I’ll serialize it. I’ll sell the film rights to Hollywood. Give me an exclusive on this manhunt. The view from the inside. It will send a message to my troops that we still have what it takes to shake up Fleet Street. And—this is the best part, Ari—and it will send a strong signal to my backers in the City that I’m still a force to be reckoned with.”

  Shamron made an elaborate show of lighting his next cigarette. He studied Stone through a cloud of smoke, nodding slowly while he considered the gravity of his proposition. Stone was a drowning man, and unless Shamron did something to cut him away, he would take them both straight to the bottom.

  * * *

  Gabriel tried to sleep, but it was no use. Each time he closed his eyes, images of the case appeared in his mind. Instinctively he saw them rendered as motionless reproductions captured in oil on canvas. Shamron on the Lizard, calling him back to service. Jacqueline making love to Yusef. Leah in her greenhouse prison in Surrey. Yusef meeting his contact in Hyde Park… “Don’t worry, Yusef. Your girlfriend won’t say no to you.”

  Then he thought of the scene he had just witnessed at Charles de Gaulle. Restoration had taught Gabriel a valuable lesson. Sometimes what appears on the surface is quite different from what is taking place just below. Three years earlier he had been hired to restore a Van Dyck, a piece the artist had painted for a private chapel in Genoa depicting the Assumption of Mary. When Gabriel performed his initial analysis of the painting’s surface, he thought he saw something beneath the Virgin’s face. Over time the light-toned paints Van Dyck had used to render her skin had faded, and it seemed an image below was beginning to rise. Gabriel performed an extensive X-ray examination of the picture to view what was taking place beneath the surface. He discovered a completely finished work, a portrait of a rather fleshy woman clad in a white gown. The black-and-white film of the X ray made her appear specterlike. Even so Gabriel recognized the shimmering quality of Van Dyck’s silks and the expressive hands that characterized the paintings he produced while living in Italy. He later learned that the work had been commissioned by a Genoese aristocrat whose wife had hated it so much that she refused to accept it. When Van Dyck was commissioned to paint the chapel piece, he simply covered up the old portrait in white paint and reused the canvas. By the time the canvas reached Gabriel’s hands, more than three and a half centuries later, the wife of the Genoese aristocrat had taken her revenge on the artist by rising to the surface of his painting.

  He closed his eyes again and this time drifted into a restless sleep. The last image he saw before slipping into unconsciousness was Jacqueline and the woman seated in the airport café, rendered as an Impressionist street scene, and standing in the background was the ghostly, translucent figure of Tariq, beckoning Gabriel forward with an exquisite Van Dyck hand.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Paris

  Yusef took a taxi from the airport to the center of the city. For two hours he moved steadily about Paris—by Métro, by taxi, and on foot. When he was confident he was alone, he walked to an apartment house in the Sixteenth Arrondissement not far from the Bois de Boulogne. On the wall in the entranceway was a house phone and next to the phone a list of occupants. Yusef pressed the button for 4B, which bore the name Guzman in faded blue script. When the door opened he stepped quickly inside, crossed the foyer, and rode the lift up to the fourth floor. He knocked on the door. It was opened instantly by a stout man with steel-blue eyes and strawberry blond hair. He pulled Yusef inside and quietly closed the door.

  * * *

  It was early evening in Tel Aviv when Mordecai stepped out of his office in the top-floor executive suite and made his way down the corridor toward Operations. As he entered the room a pair of Lev’s black-eyed desk officers stared at him contemptuously over their computer terminals.

  “Is he still in?”

  One of the officers pointed toward Lev’s office with the tip of a chewed pencil. Mordecai turned and walked down the corridor. He felt like a stranger in a besieged village. Outsiders were not welcome in Lev’s realm, even if the outsider happened to be the second-most-senior officer in the service.

  He found Lev seated in his cheerless office, hunched forward, elbows resting on the desk, long hands folded at the last knuckle and pressed against his temples. With his bald head, protruding eyes, and tentaclelike fingers, he looked very much like a praying mantis. As Mordecai moved closer, he could see that it was not a case file or field report that held Lev’s attention but a large volume on the beetles of the Amazon Basin. Lev closed the book deliberately and pushed it aside.

  “Is there something going on in Canada I should know about?” Mordecai asked. />
  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was reviewing the expense reports from Ottawa station, and there was a minor discrepancy in the payouts for the support staff. I thought I’d save a few minutes and deal with it by telephone rather than cable. It really is just a minor thing. I thought that Zvi and I could clear it up in a moment or two.”

  Lev drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk. “What does this have to do with Operations?”

  “I couldn’t find Zvi. In fact I couldn’t find anyone. It seems your entire Ottawa station is missing.”

  “What do you mean missing?”

  “I mean nowhere to be found. Gone without explanation.”

  “Who did you speak to?”

  “A girl from the code room.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That Zvi and all his field personnel took off in a hurry a few hours ago.”

  “Where’s the old man?”

  “Somewhere in Europe.”

  “He just came back from Europe. Why did he go this time?”

  Mordecai frowned. “You think the old man tells me anything? That old bastard is so secretive that half the time I don’t think he even knows where he’s going.”

  “Find him,” Lev said.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Montreal

  Leila rented a car at the airport. She drove very fast along an elevated motorway. To their right lay an icy river, to their left freezing fog drifted over a vast rail yard like the smoke of battle. The lights of downtown Montreal floated in front of them, obscured by a veil of low cloud and falling snow. Leila drove as if she knew the way.

  “You’ve been here before?” Leila asked. It was the first time she had spoken to Jacqueline since the café at Charles de Gaulle in Paris.

  “No, never. How about you?”

  “No.”

  Jacqueline folded her arms against her body and shivered. The heater was roaring, but it was still so cold in the car she could see her breath. “I don’t have clothes for this kind of cold,” she said.