The Kill Artist Read online

  “Who are you?”

  “Fuck you! Who do you think you are, grabbing me like that!”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t kill you. For all I know you’re a member of Tariq’s organization. You might have come to Israel to plant a bomb or shoot up a market. I still might kill you unless you tell me who you are.”

  “You have no right to talk to me like that!”

  “Who ran you?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “Shamron?”

  “Very good. Everyone always said you were smart.”

  “Why?”

  “You want to know why, you talk to Shamron. I just did what I was told. But let me tell you one thing. If you ever come near me again, I’ll kill you. I don’t care who you used to be.”

  He held out his hand, palm up. Gabriel gave him the gun. He slipped it back into his holster. Then he turned and walked across the darkened beach toward the bright lights of the Promenade.

  Lightning flickered over the hills of the Upper Galilee as Gabriel drove along the shore of the lake toward Shamron’s villa. Rami waited at the gate. When Gabriel lowered the window, Rami poked his head inside and looked quickly around the interior. “He’s on the terrace. Park here. Walk up to the house.”

  Rami held out his hand.

  “You don’t actually believe I’d shoot the bastard?”

  “Just give me your fucking gun, Allon, or you can’t go up to the house.”

  Gabriel handed over his Beretta and walked up the drive. Lightning exploded over the hills, illuminating the swirling clouds, wind tossing up whitecaps on the surface of the lake. The screams of waterbirds filled the air. He looked up toward the terrace and saw Shamron, lit by the swirling gas lamps.

  When Gabriel reached the terrace, he found Shamron in the same position, but instead of looking down at the drive his gaze was fixed on the storm over the mountains. Just then the lightning ceased and the wind died. The lake went still and the birds stopped their screaming. There was not a sound. Only the hiss of Shamron’s gas lamps, burning brightly.

  Yes, Shamron began, there was a real Yusef al-Tawfiki, but he was dead—killed in Shatila, the night of the Phalangist massacre, along with the rest of his family. One of Shamron’s agents went into the house after the killing and cleaned out the family’s personal papers. The al-Tawfikis had no other relatives in Lebanon. Only an uncle in London—a maternal uncle who had never seen his young nephew. A few days later a boy turns up in a hospital in West Beirut. Gravely wounded, no identification. The doctors ask his name. He tells them his name is Yusef al-Tawfiki.

  “How did he get the wound on his back?” Gabriel wondered.

  “It was put there by a doctor connected to the Office. The boy was treated at the hospital in West Beirut, and the UN started looking for this mysterious uncle in London. It took them a week to find him. They told him what had happened to the boy. The uncle made arrangements to bring him to England.”

  He was a child, thought Gabriel: thirteen, fourteen maybe. Where had Shamron found him? How had he trained him? It was too monstrous to contemplate.

  Shamron snapped his powerful fingers so loudly that Rami, standing in the drive outside the guardhouse, looked up suddenly.

  “Just like that we have an agent in the enemy’s camp, a boy whose life has been torn by unimaginable brutality. A boy with fire in his belly, who loathes the Israelis. A boy who will one day become a fighter and take his revenge on the people who butchered his family.”

  “Remarkable,” said Gabriel.

  “When he was old enough, Yusef began moving with London’s radical Palestinian set. He came to the attention of a talent spotter for Tariq’s organization. They vetted him. Clean, or so they thought. They put him to work in their intelligence and planning section. The Office now had an agent inside one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on earth. He was so valuable his material had the shortest distribution list in the history of the Office: one person, me.”

  Shamron sat down and gestured toward the empty chair. Gabriel remained standing.

  “A few months ago Yusef sent us a fascinating report. There was a rumor sweeping the organization: Tariq had a brain tumor. Tariq was dying. The succession fight was on. Tariq’s colonels were jockeying for position. And one other thing: Tariq didn’t intend to go quietly. He intended to raise a little hell on earth before he floated off to Paradise. Kill an ambassador or two. Bomb a few airline offices. Maybe shoot down a jetliner.”

  “So you come to me after Paris. You tell me this sad tale about how the Office can’t shoot straight anymore. How the Office couldn’t find the Office without a map. Like a fool I agree. And at the same time you whisper into Tariq’s ear that I’m back and looking for him. And the game has begun.”

  “His organization was rigidly compartmentalized. Even with a man on the inside, I knew he was going to be hard to take down. I had to help him make a mistake. I thought if I waved Gabriel Allon in front of him, I could make him angry. I thought I could make him charge, leave himself exposed just long enough for me to plunge a sword into his heart.”

  “So you send me after Yusef, your own agent. You tell me he’s vulnerable to an approach by a woman. It was in his file. I watch him for two days, he’s with two different women. Were they Office too?”

  “They were Yusef’s girls. Yusef never had much trouble finding women on his own.”

  “I ask Jacqueline to help me. It’s supposed to be a quick job. But Yusef takes an interest in her. Yusef wants to keep seeing her. I tell you to pull her out. But you force me to keep her in.”

  Shamron folded his arms, set his jaw. Clearly he wanted to see how much of it Gabriel had figured out on his own.

  “Yusef tells his people he thinks he’s being watched. He also tells them about a French girl he’s been seeing. He tells them he thinks she might be an Israeli agent. Tariq is ecstatic. Tariq has been waiting for this. He tells Yusef to recruit the girl under false pretenses for a mission. They know Jacqueline will bite, because they know she’s Office.”

  “Bravo, Gabriel.”

  “Did she know?”

  “Jacqueline?”

  “Yes, Jacqueline! Did she know the truth?”

  “Of course not. She’s in love with you. She would never have agreed to deceive you.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”

  “Tell me something, Gabriel. If I had come to Cornwall and asked you to come out of retirement to serve as bait for Tariq, would you actually have done it? Of course not.”

  “So you put my life on the line. And Jacqueline’s!”

  “I’m sorry about what happened in New York. It went much further than I ever anticipated.”

  “But he was already dying. Why didn’t you just let the tumor kill Tariq?”

  “Because his organization would have carried on without him. It would have been more dangerous and unpredictable than before. And because my organization was in shambles. The Office needed a coup to restore the confidence of the government and the people of Israel.”

  “What if the government and the people found out exactly how you pulled off this great coup?”

  “The prime minister knows everything.”

  “And the people?”

  “Don’t get any ideas about running to the newspapers.”

  “Why? Because I might end up like Benjamin Stone?”

  Shamron said nothing.

  Gabriel shook his head. “You’d do it, wouldn’t you? You’d kill me too if I got in your way. And you wonder why you can’t sleep at night.”

  “Someone has to do these things, Gabriel! If not me, who? If our enemies think the Office is weak, then our enemies will test us. They might kill a few Jews whenever they felt like it. The Syrians might come rolling out of those hills again and try to drive us into the sea. Another Hitler might get the idea that he can exterminate my people while the world stands by and does nothing. I may embarrass you from time to time. I may use methods that
you find distasteful, but secretly you’re glad I’m here. It helps you sleep at night.”

  “Why?” said Gabriel. “Why lie to me after all these years? Why not play it straight? Why engage in such an elaborate deception?”

  Shamron managed a weak smile. “Did I ever tell you about the night we kidnapped Eichmann?”

  “I’ve heard the story a hundred times.”

  “Never the whole story, though.” Shamron closed his eyes and winced slightly, as if the memory were painful. “We knew the bastard rode the same bus home every night. All we had to do was grab him as he stepped off. We’d practiced it a hundred times. During the drills I was able to perform the snatch in twelve seconds. But that night, as I climbed out of the car, I tripped. Eichmann nearly got away from us because I tripped. Do you know why I tripped, Gabriel? I tripped because I had forgotten to tie my shoelaces. I got him of course. But I learned a valuable lesson that night. Leave absolutely nothing to chance.”

  “So it was no accident Yusef walked past my table tonight in Tel Aviv?” Gabriel asked. “You sent him there so I would see him. You wanted me to know the truth.”

  Shamron inclined his head a fraction of an inch. Indeed.

  It was four o’clock in the morning by the time Gabriel returned to the flat in Jerusalem. On the table was a large Office envelope. Inside were three smaller packets: one containing an airline ticket for the morning flight to London, another containing three passports of different nationalities, and a third filled with American dollars and British pounds. Gabriel placed the smaller envelopes in the larger one and carried it into the bedroom, where he packed his remaining possessions into his rucksack. The flight wasn’t for another five hours. He thought about sleeping, knew he couldn’t. He thought about driving up to Herzliya. Jacqueline. None of it had been real. Only Jacqueline. He went into the kitchen and made coffee. Then he stepped out onto the balcony and waited for dawn.

  EPILOGUE

  Port Navas, Cornwall

  Something made Peel wake up. He rolled onto his side, snatched the torch from his bedside table, and shone it at his watch: 3:15 A.M. He switched off the light and lay awake in the darkness, listening to the wind moaning in the eaves and his mother and Derek quietly quarreling in the room next door.

  He could hear only snatches of their conversation, so he closed his eyes, remembering something about the blind hearing better than the sighted. “Having trouble with the new play,” Derek was saying. “Can’t seem to find my way into the first act… hard with a child in the house… back to London to be with his father… time alone together… lovers again…” Peel squeezed his eyes tightly, refusing to permit the tears to escape onto his cheeks.

  He was about to cover his ears with his pillow when he heard a sound outside on the quay: a small car, rattling like an oxcart with a broken wheel. He sat, threw off his blankets, placed his feet on the cold wood floor. He carried his torch to the window and looked out: a single red taillight, floating along the quay toward the oyster farm.

  The car vanished into the trees, then appeared a moment later, only now Peel was staring directly into the headlights. It was an MG, and it was stopping in front of the old foreman’s cottage. Peel raised his torch, aimed it at the car, and flashed the light twice. The lights of the MG winked back. Then the engine died, and the lights went dark.

  Peel climbed back into bed and pulled his blankets beneath his chin. Derek and his mother were still quarreling, but he didn’t really care. The stranger was back in Port Navas. Peel closed his eyes and soon was asleep.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book could not have been written without the generous assistance of David Bull. He truly is one of the world’s finest art restorers, and I was privileged to spend many enjoyable hours in his company. He gave freely of his time and expertise, and allowed me to wander through his studio and through his memories as well. For that I am eternally grateful. A special thanks to David’s talented wife, Teresa Longyear; to Lucy Bisognano, formerly of the National Gallery conservation staff, who tried to teach me the basics of X-ray analysis; and to Maxwell Anderson, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, for his friendship and assistance. It goes without saying that they bear no responsibility for errors, omissions, or dramatic license.

  Wolf Blitzer, a friend and colleague from my days at CNN, generously helped fill in some blanks in my research on the Israeli intelligence community. Louis Toscano, author of Triple Cross, a groundbreaking book on the Vanunu affair, read my manuscript and offered his keen insights. Glenn Whidden answered all my questions on the art of audio surveillance, as did a former head of the CIA’s Office of Technical Services.

  Ion Trewin, the managing director of Weidenfeld & Nicolson in London, read my manuscript and, as always, offered wise counsel. Joseph Finder and Mark T. Sullivan provided invaluable moral support and kept me laughing throughout. Andrew Neil opened his home to us and shared some of his remarkable experiences in the world of London newspaper publishing. Ernie Lyles answered all my questions on semi-automatic handguns and made me a decent shot with a Glock and a Browning.

  A special thanks to Peter and Paula White for an enchanting week in West Cornwall and a memorable boat trip up Helford Passage. Also, to the staffs of the venerable London art supplies shop L. Cornelissen & Son and the Hotel Queen Elizabeth in Montreal. And to Phyllis and Bernard Jacob, for their love, support, and a day roaming the streets of Brooklyn that I will never forget.

  Among the dozens of nonfiction books I consulted while preparing this manuscript, several proved particularly helpful: Every Spy a Prince, by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman; Gideon’s Spies, by Gordon Thomas; Israel: A History and The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert; The Gun and the Olive Branch, by David Hirst; By Way of Deception, by Victor Ostrovsky and Clair Hoy; The Hit Team, by David B. Tinnin with Dag Christensen; My Home, My Land, by Abu Iyad; The Quest for the Red Prince, by Michael Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber; The Palestinians, by Jonathan Dimbleby; Arafat, by Alan Hart; and The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille, by Donna F. Ryan.

  A heartfelt thanks to the team at International Creative Management in New York: Jack Horner, John De Laney, and, of course, my literary agent, Esther Newberg. Your support and friendship means the world to me.

  And finally, to the talented group of professionals at Random House: Ann Godoff, Andy Carpenter, Christen Kidd, Sybil Pincus, Lesley Oelsner, and my editor, Daniel Menaker. It is a privilege to work with someone of his enormous talent.

  Table of Contents

  Author’s Note

  PROLOGUE

  PART I

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  Part II

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Part III

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS