ALSO BY DANIEL SILVA
The Defector
Moscow Rules
The Secret Servant
The Messenger
Prince of Fire
A Death in Vienna
The Confessor
The English Assassin
The Kill Artist
The Marching Season
The Mark of the Assassin
The Unlikely Spy
Contents
The Kill Artist
The English Assassin
The Confessor
A Death in Vienna
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART ONE - ACQUISITION
Chapter 1 - PORT NAVAS, CORNWALL: THE PRESENT
Chapter 2 - PARIS
Chapter 3 - TIBERIAS, ISRAEL
Chapter 4 - SAMOS, GREECE
Chapter 5 - TEL AVIV
Chapter 6 - ZÜRICH
Chapter 7 - ST. JAMES’S, LONDON
Chapter 8 - PORT NAVAS, CORNWALL
Chapter 9 - HOLBORN, LONDON
Chapter 10 - ST. JAMES’S, LONDON
PART TWO - ASSESSMENT
Chapter 11
Chapter 12 - BAYSWATER, LONDON
Chapter 13 - AMSTERDAM
Chapter 14 - BAYSWATER, LONDON
Chapter 15 - AMSTERDAM
Chapter 16 - VALBONNE, PROVENCE
Chapter 17 - TEL AVIV
Chapter 18 - VALBONNE, PROVENCE
Chapter 19 - AMSTERDAM
Chapter 20 - PARIS
Chapter 21 - MAIDA VALE, LONDON
Chapter 22 - MAIDA VALE, LONDON
Chapter 23 - LEICESTER SQUARE, LONDON
Chapter 24 - MAIDA VALE, LONDON
Chapter 25 - ST. JAMES’S, LONDON
Chapter 26 - LISBON
Chapter 27 - BAYSWATER, LONDON
Chapter 28 - LISBON
Chapter 29 - ST. JAMES’S, LONDON
Chapter 30 - HYDE PARK, LONDON
Chapter 31 - PARIS
Chapter 32 - ST. JAMES’S, LONDON
Chapter 33 - ST. JAMES’S, LONDON
Chapter 34 - HOUNSLOW, ENGLAND
PART THREE - RESTORATION
Chapter 35
Chapter 36 - PARIS
Chapter 37 - MONTREAL
Chapter 38 - MONTREAL
Chapter 39 - MONTREAL
Chapter 40 - SABREVOIS, QUEBEC
Chapter 41 - WASHINGTON, D.C.
Chapter 42 - BURLINGTON, VERMONT
Chapter 43 - NEW YORK CITY
Chapter 44 - NEW YORK CITY
Chapter 45 - NEW YORK CITY
Chapter 46 - JERUSALEM: MARCH
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgements
Praise for the Novels of Daniel Silva
The Confessor
“Accomplished . . . elegantly written . . . a compelling piece of fiction, one that manages to be both superior entertainment and a hard look at serious issues.”
—The Washington Post
“A shrewd, timely thriller that opens the heart of the Vatican . . . many scenes of thumping action, passionate words, hot pursuit, and cold revenge. . . . It’s a different kind of thrill than you might expect from a commercial thriller, but it certainly leaves a tingle.”—Chicago Tribune
“[Silva] keeps The Confessor’s pages turning.”
—The Palm Beach Post
“Provocative historical revelations will keep readers enthralled.” —Publishers Weekly
“Silva, who here loads new excitement into the word thriller, will touch nerves with this hypothetical exploration of the Church’s silence on these topics. The Vatican, Venice, and Munich are perfectly drawn as the settings for these dark acts of ambition, greed, and revenge, as are the characters, who you’d scarcely believe live only on the page.”—Library Journal
“Another polished and entertaining thriller from the prolific Silva . . . powered by steady pacing, keen detail, and a strong, ironic finish.”—Kirkus Reviews
The English Assassin
“An exceptionally readable, sophisticated thriller . . . abundant action. . . . Silva ranks . . . among the best of the younger American spy novelists.”
—The Washington Post
“[A] swift new spy novel. . . . Silva excitingly delivers his story’s twists and turns.”—The New York Times
“Good assassin vs. bad assassin. . . . The plot is rich, multilayered, and compelling with issues as timely as the daily headlines and problems as old as humankind. . . . Silva maintains tension and suspense.”—The Denver Post
“Enthralling . . . a thriller that entertains as well as enlightens.” —The Orlando Sentinel
“Breathtakingly orchestrated. Silva makes a stunning contribution to the spy thriller.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Thrilling . . . a good cinematic story.”
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“Smooth and compelling.”—Detroit Free Press
Praise for Daniel Silva and His Previous Thrillers
“[A] spy-fiction ace.”—People
“A writer who brings new life to the international thriller.”
—Newsday
“Each plot-twisting segment is marked by almost unbearable tension. . . . Silva’s unsmiling prose urges you on like a silencer poking at the small of your back.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“A terrific thriller . . . one of the best-drawn fictional assassins since The Day of the Jackal.”
—The San Francisco Examiner
“A master writer of espionage.”
—The Cincinnati Enquirer
“Silva . . . writes with the atmospheric grace and whiplash tension of Le Carré.”—Booklist (starred review)
“At the forefront of his generation of foreign intrigue specialists.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
SIGNET
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eISBN : 978-0-451-20933-7
Copyright © Daniel Silva, 1998
Excerpt from The Secret Servant copyright © Daniel Silva, 2007
All rights reserved
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For Jamie, who made this
one possible, and everything else,
for that matter
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Send men that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I give to the children of Israel; of every tribe of their fathers shall you send a man, every one a prince among them.”
—Numbers 13:1-2
By way of deception, thou shalt do war.
—Motto of the Mossad
The Kill Artist is a work of fiction and should be construed as nothing but. All characters, locales, and incidents portrayed in the novel are products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. However, in order to add verisimilitude to the story and the characters, I have drawn from real episodes in the secret war between Israeli intelligence and the Palestinian guerrillas. For example, the 1988 assassination of PLO commando leader Abu Jihad happened much as it is portrayed, with minor modifications. Francesco Vecellio is a real Italian old master painter—indeed, he was the lesser-known brother of Titian—but The Adoration of the Shepherds portrayed in the novel is fictitious. Sadly, the London art gallery portrayed in The Kill Artist does not exist and neither does its owner.
PROLOGUE
VIENNA: JANUARY 1991
The restorer raised his magnifying visor and switched off the bank of fluorescent lights. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the murkiness of evening in the cathedral; then he inspected a tiny portion of the painting just below an arrow wound on the leg of Saint Stephen. Over the centuries the paint had worn completely down to the canvas. The restorer had so carefully repaired the damage that without the use of specialized equipment it was now quite impossible to tell his work from the original, which meant he had done his job very well indeed.
The restorer crouched on the work platform, wiped his brushes and palette, and packed away his paints into a flat rectangular case of polished wood. Nightfall had blackened the soaring stained-glass windows of the cathedral; a blanket of new snow had muffled the usual hum of the Vienna evening rush. So quiet was the Stephansdom that the restorer would scarcely have been surprised to see a medieval sexton scurrying across the nave by torchlight.
He climbed off the high scaffolding with the agility of a house cat and dropped silently onto the stone floor of the chapel. A knot of tourists had been watching him work for several minutes. As a rule the restorer did not like spectators—indeed, some days he shrouded the platform in a gray tarpaulin. Tonight’s crowd dispersed as he pulled on a reefer coat and woolen watch cap. Softly, he bid them buona sera, instinctively recording each face in his mind, as permanently as if they were rendered with oil on canvas.
An attractive German girl tried to engage him in conversation. She spoke to him in poor Italian. In rapid, Berlin-accented German—his mother had lived in Charlottenburg before the war—the restorer said he was late for an appointment and could not talk now. German girls made him uneasy. Reflexively his eyes wandered over her—across her large, rounded breasts, up and down her long legs. She mistook his attention for flirting, tilted her head, smiled at him through a lock of flaxen hair, suggested a coffee in the café across the square. The restorer apologized and said he had to leave. “Besides,” he said, looking up at the soaring nave, “this is Stephansdom, Fraülein. Not a pickup bar.”
A moment later he passed through the entrance of the cathedral and struck out across the Stephansplatz. He was of medium height, well below six feet. His black hair was shot with gray at the temples. His nose was rather long and angular, with sharp edges across the bridge that left the suggestion it had been carved from wood. Full lips, cleft chin, cheekbones broad and square. There was a hint of the Russian steppes in his eyes—almond shaped, unnaturally green, very quick. His vision was perfect, despite the demanding nature of his work. He had a confident walk, not an arrogant swagger or a march but a crisp, purposeful stride that seemed to propel him effortlessly across the snowbound square. The box containing his paints and brushes was under his left arm, resting on the metal object that he wore, habitually, on his left hip.
He walked along the Rotenturmstrasse, a broad pedestrian mall lined with bright shops and cafés, pausing before shop windows, peering at sparkling Mont Blanc pens and Rolex watches, even though he had no need for such things. He stopped at a snow-covered sausage stand, purchased a käsewurst, dropped it into a rubbish bin a hundred yards away without taking a bite. He entered a telephone booth, slipped a schilling into the coin slot, punched a random series of numbers on the keypad, all the while scanning the street and storefronts around him. A recorded voice informed him that he had made a dreadful mistake. The restorer replaced the receiver, collected his schilling from the coin tray, kept walking.
His destination was a small Italian restaurant in the Jewish Quarter. Before the Nazis there had been nearly two hundred thousand Jews living in Vienna, and Jews had dominated the city’s cultural and commercial life. Now there were just a few thousand, mainly from the East, and the so-called Jewish Quarter was a strip of clothing stores, restaurants, and nightclubs clustered around the Judenplatz. Among Viennese the district was known as the Bermuda Triangle, which the restorer found vaguely offensive.
The restorer’s wife and son were waiting for him—rear table, facing the door, just as he had taught her. The boy sat next to his mother, sucking strands of buttered spaghetti through rose-colored lips. He watched her for a moment, appraising her beauty the way he might assess a work of art: the technique, the structure, the composition. She had pale olive-toned skin, oval brown eyes, and long black hair, which was drawn back and lying across the front of one shoulder.
He entered the restaurant. He kissed his son on the top of the head, chatted in Italian with the man behind the bar, sat down. His wife poured wine for him.
“Not too much. I have to work tonight.”
“The cathedral?”
He pulled down his lips, cocked his head slightly. “Are you packed?” he asked.
She nodded, then looked at the television above the bar. Air-raid sirens over Tel Aviv, another Iraqi Scud missile streaking toward Israel. The citizens of Tel Aviv putting on gas masks and taking shelter. The shot changed: a tongue of fire, falling from the black sky toward the city. The restorer’s wife reached across the table and touched his hand.
“I want to go home.”
“Soon,” the restorer said and poured himself more wine.
She had left the car on the street just outside the restaurant, a dark blue Mercedes sedan, Vienna registration, leased by a small chemical company in Bern. He placed the boy in the backseat, buckled his safety belt, kissed his wife.
“If I’m not there by six o’clock, something has gone wrong. You remember what to do?”
“Go to the airport, give them the password and the clearance number, and they’ll take care of us.”
“Six o’clock,” he repeated. “If I
don’t walk through the door by six o’clock, go straight to the airport. Leave the car in the parking lot and throw away the keys. Do you understand me?”
She nodded. “Just be home by six.”
The restorer closed the door, gave a terse wave through the glass, and started to walk away. In front of him, floating over the rooftops of the old city, was the spire of the cathedral, ablaze with light. One more night, he thought. Then home for a few weeks until the next job.
Behind him he heard the starter of the Mercedes engage, then hesitate, like a record album being played at the wrong speed. The restorer stopped walking and spun around.
“No!” he screamed, but she turned the key again.
PART ONE
ACQUISITION
1
PORT NAVAS, CORNWALL: THE PRESENT
By coincidence Timothy Peel arrived in the village the same week in July as the stranger. He and his mother moved into a ramshackle cottage at the head of the tidal creek with her latest lover, a struggling playwright named Derek, who drank too much wine and detested children. The stranger arrived two days later, settling into the old foreman’s cottage just up the creek from the oyster farm.
Peel had little to do that summer—when Derek and his mother weren’t making clamorous love, they were taking inspirational forced marches along the cliffs—so he determined to find out exactly who the stranger was and what he was doing in Cornwall. Peel decided the best way to begin was to watch. Because he was eleven, and the only child of divorced parents, Peel was well schooled in the art of human observation and investigation. Like any good surveillance artist, he required a fixed post. He settled on his bedroom window, which had an unobstructed view over the creek. In the storage shed he found a pair of ancient Zeiss binoculars, and at the village store he purchased a small notebook and ballpoint pen for recording his watch report.