Gabriel Allon 01 - The Kill Artist Read online

  Shamron turned around, glared at Gabriel, then stared straight ahead.

  Gabriel said, “What now, Ari?”

  “We find them.”

  “How?”

  “We have a very good idea where they’re going.”

  “We can’t find Tariq in the States alone.”

  “What are you suggesting, Gabriel?”

  “We need to alert the Americans that he’s probably coming their way. We need to tell the Canadians too. Maybe they can prevent him from taking her across the border. If we get lucky they might be able to stop them before they reach the border.”

  “Tell the Americans and the Canadians? Tell them what, exactly? Tell them that we intended to assassinate a Palestinian on Canadian soil? Tell them that we botched the job, and now we’d like their help cleaning up the mess? I don’t think that would go over very well in Ottawa or Washington.”

  “So what do we do? Sit on our hands and wait?”

  “No, we go to America, and we tighten security around the prime minister. Tariq didn’t come all this way for nothing. Eventually he has to make his move.”

  “And what if his target isn’t the prime minister?”

  “The security of the prime minister is my only concern at this point.”

  “I’m sure Jacqueline would be pleased to know this.”

  “You know what I mean, Gabriel. Don’t play word games with me.”

  “You’ve forgotten one thing, Ari. She doesn’t have a passport any longer.” Gabriel held up her handbag. “It’s here. How are they going to get her across the border without a passport?”

  “Obviously, Tariq’s made other arrangements.”

  “Or maybe he doesn’t intend to take her across the border. Maybe he’s going to kill her first.”

  “That’s why you should have taken the shot, Gabriel.”

  40

  SABREVOIS, QUEBEC

  Jacqueline had tried to follow the road signs. Route 40 through Montreal. Route 10 across the river. Route 35 into the countryside. Now this: Route 133, a two-lane provincial road stretching across the tabletop of southern Quebec. Strange how quickly cosmopolitan Montreal had given way to this vast empty space. A brittle moon floated above the horizon, ringed by a halo of ice. Wind-driven snow swirled across the asphalt like a sandstorm. Occasionally an object floated out of the gloom. A grain silo poking above the snow cover. A dimly lit farmhouse. A blacked-out agricultural supply store. Ahead she saw neon lights. As they drew closer she could see that the lights formed the outlines of women with enormous breasts: a strip joint in the middle of nowhere. She wondered where they got the girls. Maybe they enjoyed watching their sisters and girlfriends dance topless. Desolation, she thought. This is why the word was created.

  After an hour of driving they were just a few miles from the U.S. border. She thought: How’s he going to take me across when my passport and the rest of my things are lying back on the rue St-Denis in Montreal?

  My passport and the cigarette lighter with the beacon . . .

  It had all happened so quickly. After spotting Gabriel she had looked away and prepared herself for what she thought would happen next. Then the car appeared, and he pushed her inside so roughly that her handbag fell from her grasp. As the car sped away she yelled at him to go back and let her get her bag, but he ignored her and told the driver to go faster. It was then that Jacqueline noticed the woman she knew as Leila was driving the car. A few blocks away they switched cars. The driver was the same man who had left his briefcase for Tariq in the underground coffee bar. This time they drove several blocks to the part of Montreal known as Outremont. There they switched cars one last time. Now Tariq was driving.

  He was sweating. Jacqueline could see the shine on his skin in the lime-colored glow of the dashboard lights. His face had turned deathly white, dark circles beneath his eyes, right hand shaking.

  “Would you like to explain to me what happened back there in Montreal?”

  “It was a routine security precaution.”

  “You call that routine? If it was so routine, why didn’t you let me go back and get my purse?”

  “From time to time I find myself under surveillance by Israeli intelligence and by their friends in the West. I’m also monitored by my enemies within the Palestinian movement. My instincts told me that someone was watching us in Montreal.”

  “That charade cost me my handbag and everything in it.”

  “Don’t worry, Dominique. I’ll replace your things.”

  “Some things can’t be replaced.”

  “Like your gold cigarette lighter?”

  Jacqueline felt a stab of pain in her abdomen. She remembered Yusef toying with the lighter on the way to the council flat in Hounslow. Christ, he knows. She changed the subject. “Actually, I was thinking about my passport.”

  “Your passport can be replaced too. I’ll take you to the French consulate in Montreal. You’ll tell them that it was lost or stolen, and they’ll issue a new one.”

  No, they’ll discover it was forged, and I’ll end up in a Canadian jail.

  “Why do these people watch you?”

  “Because they want to know where I’m going and who I am meeting with.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they don’t want me to succeed.”

  “What are you trying to accomplish that would make them so concerned?”

  “I’m just trying to bring a little justice to the so-called peace process. I don’t want my people to accept a sliver of our ancestral land just because the Americans and a handful of Israelis are willing to let us have it now. They offer us crumbs that fall from their table. I don’t want the crumbs, Dominique. I want the entire loaf.”

  “Half a loaf is better than nothing.”

  “I respectfully disagree.”

  A highway sign floated out of the swirling snow. The border was three miles ahead.

  Jacqueline said, “Where are you taking me?”

  “To the other side.”

  “So how do you intend to get me across the border without a passport?”

  “We’ve made other arrangements.”

  “Other arrangements? What kind of other arrangements?”

  “I have another passport for you. A Canadian passport.”

  “How did you get a Canadian passport?”

  Another sign: the border was now two miles ahead.

  “It’s not yours, of course.”

  “Hold on a minute! Yusef promised you wouldn’t ask me to do anything illegal.”

  “You’re not doing anything illegal. It’s an open border, and the passport is perfectly valid.”

  “It might be valid, but it’s not mine!”

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s not yours. No one’s going to question you.”

  “I’m not going to enter the United States on a false passport! Stop the car! I want out!”

  “If I let you out here you’ll freeze to death before you ever reach safety.”

  “Then drop me somewhere! Just let me out!”

  “Dominique, this is why we brought you from London: to help me get across this border.”

  “You lied to me! You and Yusef!”

  “Yes, we found it necessary to mislead you slightly.”

  “Slightly!”

  “But none of that matters now. What matters is that I need to get across this border, and I need your help.”

  The border was now a mile away. Ahead she could see the bright white lights of the crossing. She wondered what to do. She supposed she could simply tell him no. Then what would he do? Turn around, kill her, dump her body into the snow, and cross the border on his own. She considered deceiving him: saying yes and then alerting the officer at the crossing point. But Tariq would just kill her and the border patrolman. There would be an investigation, the Office’s role in the affair would come to light. It would be an embarrassing fiasco for Ari Shamron. She had only one option. Play the game a little longer and find some way to alert Gabriel.
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  She said, “Let me see the passport.”

  He handed it to her.

  She opened it and looked at the name: Hélène Sarrault. Then she looked at the photograph: Leila. The likeness was vague but convincing.

  “You’ll do it?”

  Jacqueline said, “Keep driving.”

  He entered the plaza at the border crossing and braked to a halt. A border patrolman stepped out of his booth and said, “Good evening. Where are you headed this evening?”

  Tariq said, “Burlington.”

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “My sister is ill, I’m afraid.”

  “Sorry to hear that. How long are you planning to stay?”

  “One day, two at the most.”

  “Passports, please.”

  Tariq handed them across. The officer opened them and examined the photographs and the names. Then he looked into the car and glanced at each of their faces.

  He closed the passports and handed them back. “Have a pleasant stay. And drive carefully. Weather report says there’s a big storm coming in later tonight.”

  Tariq took the passports, dropped the car into gear, and drove slowly across the border into Vermont. He placed the passports in his pocket and a moment later, when they were well clear of the border, he removed a Makarov pistol and placed the barrel against the side of her head.

  41

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Yasir Arafat sat behind the desk in the presidential suite at the Madison Hotel, making his way through a stack of paperwork, listening to the late-evening traffic hissing along the damp pavement of Fifteenth Street. He paused for a moment, popped a Tunisian date into his mouth, then swallowed a few spoonfuls of yogurt. He was fastidious about his diet, did not smoke or consume alcohol, and never drank coffee. It had helped him survive a demanding revolutionary lifestyle that might have destroyed other men.

  Because he was expecting no more visitors that evening, he had changed out of his uniform into a blue tracksuit. His bald head was bare, and as usual he had several days’ growth on his pouchy face. He wore reading glasses, which magnified his froglike eyes. His thick lower lip jutted out, giving him the appearance of a child on the verge of tears.

  He possessed a near-photographic memory for written material and faces, which allowed him to work through the stack of documents quickly, pausing now and then to scribble notes in the margins of memoranda or sign his name. He was now in charge of the Gaza Strip and a large portion of the West Bank, a development that had seemed impossible only a few years earlier. His Palestinian Authority was responsible for the mundane details of ordinary governance, like trash collection and schools. It was a far cry from the old days, when he had been the world’s most famous guerrilla.

  He set aside the remainder of his work and opened a document bound in a leather cover. It was a copy of the interim agreement he was to sign the following day at the United Nations in New York. The agreement was yet another incremental step toward the fulfillment of his life’s work: the establishment of a Palestinian state. It was much less than he had wanted when he set out on this path—back then he had dreamed of the destruction of Israel—but it was the best he was going to get. There were some within the movement who wished him failure, some who even wished him death. The rejectionists, the dreamers. If they’d had their way, the Palestinians would be forever condemned to the refugee camps of the diaspora.

  An aide knocked on the door. Arafat looked up as he entered the room. “Sorry to disturb you, Abu Amar, but the president is on the phone.”

  Arafat smiled. This too would have been impossible only a few years earlier. “What does he want so late at night?”

  “He says his wife is out of town and he’s bored. He wants to know whether you would be willing to come to the White House and keep him company.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now.”

  “To do what?”

  The aide shrugged. “Talk, I suppose.”

  “Tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Arafat stood up, removed his tracksuit, and dressed in his usual plain khaki uniform and traditional Palestinian headdress. He wore the black-and-white kaffiyeh of the peasant with the front shaped to a point to symbolize the map of Palestine. The aide reappeared with an overcoat and draped it over Arafat’s shoulders. Together they stepped into the hall and were immediately surrounded by a group of security men. Some were members of his personal bodyguard, the rest were officers of the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service. They moved down the corridor, Arafat in the center of the party, and stepped into a private elevator, which whisked them downward to the garage. There Arafat slipped into the back of a limousine. A moment later his motorcade was speeding south on Fifteenth Street toward the White House.

  Arafat looked out his window. A bit like the old days, this late-night dash through wet streets—like the days when he never spent two nights in a row in the same bed. Sometimes he even switched residences in the middle of the night when his well-tuned instincts sensed trouble. He avoided public places—never ate in restaurants, never went to the cinema or the theater. His skin turned blotchy from lack of sun. His survival skills had thwarted hundreds of attempts on his life by the Israelis and his enemies within the movement. Some had not been so lucky. He thought of his old friend and second in command, Abu Jihad. He had led the war effort in the Occupied Territories; helped to organize the intifada. And for that the Israelis had murdered him in his villa in Tunis. Arafat knew that without Abu Jihad he would not be where he was today: driving across Washington for a secret meeting with the American president. It was a shame his old friend was not here to see this.

  The motorcade passed through the barricade on Pennsylvania Avenue and entered the White House grounds. A moment later Arafat’s car stopped beneath the shelter of the North Portico.

  A Marine guard stepped forward and opened the door. “Good evening, Mr. Arafat. Right this way, please.”

  President James Beckwith was waiting in the drawing room of the residence in the Executive Mansion. He looked as though he had just stepped off the deck of his sailboat. He wore a pair of wrinkled khaki trousers and a crewneck pullover sweater. He was a tall man with a full head of silver hair and a genteel manner. His permanently tanned face projected youth and exuberance, despite the fact that he was nearly seventy years old.

  They sat in front of the fire, Beckwith nursing a glass of whiskey, Arafat sipping tea sweetened with honey. When Beckwith had been in the Senate he had been one of Israel’s staunchest allies and led the opposition to U.S. recognition of the PLO—indeed, he had regularly referred to Arafat and the PLO as “bloodthirsty terrorists.” Now the two men were close allies in the quest for peace in the Middle East. Each needed the help of the other to succeed. Arafat needed Beckwith to press the Israelis to make concessions at the negotiating table. Beckwith needed Arafat to keep the radicals and fundamentalists in line so the talks could continue.

  After an hour Beckwith raised the murders of Ambassador Eliyahu and David Morgenthau. “My CIA director tells me your old friend Tariq was probably behind both attacks, but they have no proof.”

  Arafat smiled. “I’ve never doubted for a moment that it was Tariq. But if your CIA thinks they’re going to find proof of this, I’m afraid they’re sadly mistaken. Tariq doesn’t operate that way.”

  “If he continues to kill Jews, it’s going to make it more difficult to keep moving toward a final settlement.”

  “Forgive my bluntness, Mr. President, but Tariq is only a factor if you and the Israelis allow him to be a factor. He does not act on my behalf. He does not operate from territory controlled by the Palestinian Authority. He does not speak for those Palestinians who want peace.”

  “All true, but isn’t there anything you can do to dissuade him?”

  “Tariq?” Arafat shook his head slowly. “We were close friends once. He was one of my finest intelligence officers. But he left me over the decision to renounce terrorism and beg
in peace talks. We haven’t spoken in years.”

  “Perhaps he might listen to you now.”

  “I’m afraid Tariq listens to no voice but his own. He’s a man haunted by demons.”

  “All of us are, especially when you reach my age.”

  “And mine,” said Arafat. “But I’m afraid Tariq is haunted by a different kind of demon. You see, he’s a young man who’s dying, and he wants to settle accounts before he leaves.”

  Beckwith raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Dying?”

  “According to my sources he has a severe brain tumor.”

  “Do the Israelis know this?”

  “Yes,” Arafat said. “I’ve told them myself.”

  “Who?”

  “Their chief of intelligence, Ari Shamron.”

  “I wonder why their chief of intelligence neglected to share this piece of information with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

  Arafat laughed. “I suppose you’ve never met Ari Shamron. He’s crafty and a warrior from the old school. Shamron makes a habit of never letting the left hand know what the right is doing. Do you know the motto of the Israeli secret service?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “ ‘By way of deception, thou shalt do war.’ Ari Shamron lives by those words.”

  “You think Shamron might be playing some game?”

  “Anything’s possible when it comes to Shamron. You see, there are some people inside the Israeli secret service who want Tariq dead, whatever the political costs. But there are others, I’m afraid, who would like to see him succeed.”

  “Into which category does Shamron fall?”

  Arafat frowned. “I wish I knew.”

  Shortly before midnight the president walked Arafat down to his waiting car. They were a mismatched pair, the tall, patrician president and the little revolutionary in his olive drab and flowing kaffiyeh.

  Beckwith said, “I understand you’re attending a reception at the home of Douglas Cannon after the signing ceremony tomorrow. Douglas and I are good friends.”