The Kill Artist

  The ferry slipped into the sheltered water of the harbor and tied up. Tariq disembarked and walked to a brightly lit taverna. Parked outside was a dark blue motor scooter with a smashed rearview mirror, just as he had been promised. Inside his coat pocket was the key. He strapped his overnight bag onto the back of the bike and started the engine. A moment later he was speeding along a narrow track toward the mountains.

  He was not dressed for a night ride; his thin leather gloves, low-cut loafers, and black jeans were no match for the cold. Still, he opened the throttle and pushed the little bike as hard as it would go up a long hill at the base of Mount Kerkis. He slowed for a switchback, then opened the throttle again and raced through a vineyard spilling down the side of the hill into a little valley. Above the vineyard lay an olive grove and above the olive grove a line of towering cypress trees, silhouettes against a carpet of wet stars. The tang of cypress was heavy on the air. Somewhere, meat was cooking over a wood fire. The scent reminded him of Lebanon. Good to be out of Paris, he thought. Dull gray Paris of late autumn. Good to be back in the eastern Mediterranean.

  The road turned to a pitted track. Tariq eased off the throttle. It was a stupid thing to do, driving so fast on an unfamiliar road, but he had taken to doing needlessly risky things lately. For the first time since leaving Paris, he thought of the American girl. He felt no remorse or guilt. Her death, while unfortunate, was completely necessary.

  He opened the throttle again and raced down a gentle slope into a tiny valley. He thought about this need of his, this compulsion to be in the company of a woman during an operation. He supposed it came from growing up in the camps of Sidon. His father had died when Tariq was young, and his older brother, Mahmoud, was murdered by the Jews. Tariq was raised by his mother and his older sister. There was only one room in their hut at the camp, so Tariq and his mother and sister all slept in the same bed—Tariq in the middle, head resting against his mother’s bosom, his sister’s bony body pressed against his back. Sometimes he would lie awake and listen to the shelling or the rhythmic thump of the Israeli helicopters hovering over the camp. He would think of his father—how he had died of a broken heart with the keys to the family home in the Upper Galilee still in his pocket—and he would think of poor Mahmoud. He hated the Jews with an intensity that made his chest ache. But he never felt fear. Not when he was in his bed, protected by his women.

  The whitewashed villa stood atop a rock outcropping on a craggy hillside between the villages of Mesogion and Pirgos. To reach it Tariq had to negotiate a steep path through an old vineyard. The smell of the last harvest hung in the air. He shut down the motor, and the silence rang in his ears. He put the bike on its kickstand, drew his Makarov pistol, and walked through a small garden to the entrance of the villa.

  He slid the key into the lock, turned it slowly, testing the chamber for unnatural resistance. Then he opened the door and stepped inside, Makarov drawn. As he closed the door a light came on in the living room, illuminating a slender young man with long hair seated on a rustic couch. Tariq nearly shot him before he saw that the other man’s gun was lying on a table in front of him and his hands were raised in a gesture of surrender.

  Tariq pointed the Makarov at the young man’s face. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Achmed. Kemel sent me.”

  “I nearly killed you. Then I’d never have known why Kemel sent you here.”

  “You were supposed to come this morning. I had nowhere else to wait.”

  “The ferry was delayed. You would have known that if you’d bothered to pick up the telephone and place a single call. What does he want?”

  “He wants to meet. He says he needs to discuss something with you, and it’s too important to do it through the usual methods of communication.”

  “Kemel knows I don’t like face-to-face meetings.”

  “He’s made special arrangements.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Would you mind pointing that gun somewhere else?”

  “I would, actually. How do I know you were really sent here by Kemel? Maybe your real name is Yitzhak or Jonathan. Maybe you’re an Israeli. Maybe you work for the CIA. Maybe Kemel has been compromised, and you’ve come here to kill me.”

  The young man sighed heavily and began to speak. “Kemel wants to meet with you three days from now in a first-class compartment of a train between Zürich and Prague. You’re to join him there at any point during the journey when you feel it’s safe.”

  “You have a ticket?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give it to me.”

  Achmed reached into the pocket of his blazer.

  Tariq lifted the Makarov. “Slowly.”

  Achmed removed the ticket, held it up for Tariq to see, and dropped it onto the table. Tariq looked at the ticket briefly, then turned his gaze back on the boy seated in front of him. “How long have you been waiting at the villa?”

  “Most of the day.”

  “Most of the day?”

  “I went into the village in the afternoon.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I was hungry and I wanted to have a look around.”

  “Do you speak Greek?”

  “A little.”

  How perfect, thought Tariq derisively. A young man who speaks a few words of Greek with an Arabic accent had been hanging around the port all afternoon. Tariq imagined a scenario: a busybody Greek shopkeeper gets suspicious about an Arab loitering in the village and calls the police. A policeman comes down to have a look for himself. Maybe he has a friend or a cousin who works in the Greek security service. Damn! It was a miracle he hadn’t been picked up the moment he stepped off the ferry. He asked, “Where are you planning to spend the night?”

  “I thought I might stay here.”

  “Out of the question. Go to the Taverna Petrino. It’s near the harbor. You can get a room there at a reasonable price. In the morning take the first ferry to Turkey.”

  “Fine.”

  Achmed leaned forward to pick up the gun. Tariq shot him twice in the top of the head.

  Blood spread over the stone floor. Tariq looked at the body and felt nothing more than a vague sense of disappointment. He had been looking forward to a few days of recuperation on the island before the next operation. He was tired, his nerves were frayed, and the headaches were getting worse. Now he would have to be on the move again, all because the goddamned ferry had been held up by high seas and Kemel had sent a bumbling idiot to deliver an important message.

  He slipped the Makarov into the waistband of his trousers, picked up the train ticket, and went out.

  FIVE

  Tel Aviv

  Uzi Navot traveled to Tel Aviv the following morning. He came to Shamron’s office “black,” which meant that neither Lev nor any other member of the senior staff witnessed his arrival. Hanging from the end of his bricklayer’s arm was a sleek metal attaché case, the kind carried by businessmen the world over who believe their papers are too valuable to be entrusted to mere leather. Unlike the other passengers aboard the El Al flight from Paris that morning, Navot had not been asked to open the case for inspection. Nor had he been forced to endure the maddening ritualistic interrogation by the suntanned boys and girls from El Al security. Once he was safely inside Shamron’s office, he worked the combination on the attaché case and opened it for the first time since leaving the embassy in Paris. He reached inside and produced a single item: a videotape.

  * * *

  Navot lost count of how many times the old man watched the tape. Twenty times, thirty, maybe even fifty. He smoked so many of his vile Turkish cigarettes that Navot could barely see the screen through the fog. Shamron was entranced. He sat in his chair, arms folded, head tilted back so he could peer through the black-rimmed reading glasses perched at the end of his daggerlike nose. Navot offered the occasional piece of narrative background, but Shamron was listening to his own voices.

  “According to museum security, Eliyahu and his party got i
nto the car at ten twenty-seven,” Navot said. “As you can see from the time code on the screen, the Arab makes his telephone call at exactly ten twenty-six.”

  Shamron said nothing, just jabbed at his remote control, rewound the tape, and watched it yet again.

  “Look at his hand,” Navot said breathlessly. “The number has been stored into the mobile phone. He just hits the keypad a couple of times with his thumb and starts talking.”

  If Shamron found this scrap of insight interesting or even remotely relevant he gave no sign of it.

  “Maybe we could get the records from the telephone company,” Navot said, pressing on. “Maybe we could find out the number he dialed. That phone might lead us to Tariq.”

  Shamron, had he chosen to speak, would have informed young Navot that there were probably a half-dozen operatives between Tariq and the French cellular telephone company. Such an inquiry, while admirable, would surely lead to a dead end.

  “Tell me something, Uzi,” Shamron said at last. “What kind of food did that boy have on his silver platter?”

  “What, boss?”

  “The food, the hors d’oeuvres, on his platter. What were they?”

  “Chicken, boss.”

  “What kind of chicken, Uzi?”

  “I don’t know, boss. Just chicken.”

  Shamron shook his head in disappointment. “It was tandoori chicken, Uzi. Tandoori chicken, from India.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  “Tandoori chicken,” Shamron repeated. “That’s interesting. You should have known that, Uzi.”

  Navot signed out an Office car and drove dangerously fast up the coast road to Caesarea. He had just pulled off a very nice piece of work—he had stolen a copy of the videotape from the Musée d’Orsay—but the only thing the old man cared about was the chicken. What difference did it make if it was tandoori chicken or Kentucky Fried Chicken? Maybe Lev was right. Maybe Shamron was past his prime. To hell with the old man.

  There was a saying inside the Office these days: the further we are from our last disaster, the closer we are to our next. Shamron would step into the shit too. Then they’d shove him out again, this time for good.

  But Navot realized he did care what the old man thought about him. In fact he cared too much. Like most officers his age, he revered the great Shamron. He’d done a lot of jobs for the old man over the years—dirty jobs no one else wanted. Things that had to be kept secret from Lev and the others. He’d do almost anything to get back in his good graces.

  He entered Caesarea and parked outside an apartment house a few blocks from the sea. He slipped inside the foyer, rode the lift up to the fourth floor. He still had a key but chose to knock instead. He hadn’t called to say he was coming. She might have another man there. Bella had many men.

  She answered the door dressed in faded jeans and a torn shirt. She had a long body and a beautiful face that seemed perpetually in mourning. She regarded Navot with a look of thinly veiled malice, then stepped aside and allowed him to enter. Her flat had the air of a secondhand bookstore and smelled of incense. She was a writer and a historian, an expert in Arab affairs, a sometime consultant to the Office on Syrian and Iraqi politics. They had been lovers before the Office sent Navot to Europe, and she despised him a little for choosing the field over her. Navot kissed her and pulled her gently toward the bedroom. She resisted, only for a moment.

  Afterward, she said, “What are you thinking about?”

  “Shamron.”

  “What now?”

  He told her as much as he could, no specifics, just the essence.

  “You know how Shamron works,” she said. “He beats you down when he wants something. You have one of two choices. You can go back to Paris and forget about it, or you can drive up to Tiberias tonight and see what the old fucker has in mind for you now.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to know.”

  “Bullshit, Uzi. Of course you want to know. If I told you I never wanted to see you again, you wouldn’t give it a second thought. But if the old man looks at you cross-eyed, you fall to pieces.”

  “You’re wrong, Bella.”

  “About which part?”

  “The first. If you told me you never wanted to see me again, I’d quit the Office and beg you to marry me.”

  She kissed his lips and said, “I never want to see you again.”

  Navot smiled and closed his eyes.

  Bella said, “My God, but you’re a horrible liar, Uzi Navot.”

  “Is there an Indian restaurant in Caesarea?”

  “A very good one, actually, not far from here.”

  “Does it serve tandoori chicken?”

  “That’s like asking if an Italian restaurant serves spaghetti.”

  “Get dressed. We’re going.”

  “I’ll make something for us here. I don’t want to go out.”

  But Navot was already pulling on his trousers.

  “Get dressed. I need tandoori chicken.”

  For the next seventy-two hours Ari Shamron acted like a man who smelled smoke and was frantically looking for fire. The mere rumor of his approach could empty a room as surely as if an antipersonnel grenade had been rolled along the carpet. He prowled the halls of King Saul Boulevard, barging unannounced into meetings, exhorting the staff to look harder, listen more carefully. What was the last confirmed sighting of Tariq? What had happened to the other members of the Paris hit team? Had there been any interesting electronic intercepts? Were they talking to one another? Were they planning to strike again? Shamron had the fever, Lev told Mordecai over a late supper in the canteen. The bloodlust. Best to keep him isolated from the uninfected. Send him into the desert. Let him howl at the moon until it’s passed.

  The second break in the case came twenty-four hours after Navot delivered the videotape. It was the wispy Shimon of Research who made the discovery. He raced up to Shamron’s office in his sweatshirt and bare feet, clutching a file in his gnawed fingertips. “It’s Mohammed Azziz, boss. He used to be a member of the Popular Front, but when the Front signed on with the peace process, Azziz joined Tariq’s outfit.”

  “Who’s Mohammed Azziz?” asked Shamron, squinting at Shimon curiously through a cloud of smoke.

  “The boy from the Musée d’Orsay. I had the technicians in the photo lab digitally enhance the surveillance videotape. Then I ran that through the database. There’s no doubt about it. The waiter with the cell phone was Mohammed Azziz.”

  “You’re certain it’s Azziz?”

  “Positive, boss.”

  “And you’re certain Azziz is now working for Tariq?”

  “I’d stake my life on it.”

  “Choose your words carefully, Shimon.”

  Shimon left the file on his desk and went out. Shamron now had what he wanted: proof that Tariq’s fingerprints were all over the attack in Paris. Later that same evening, a bleary-eyed Yossi appeared at Shamron’s door. “I just heard something interesting, boss.”

  “Speak, Yossi.”

  “A friend of ours from the Greek service just passed a message to Athens station. A Palestinian named Achmed Natour was murdered a couple of days ago on the Greek island of Samos. Shot through the head twice and left in a villa.”

  “Who’s Achmed Natour?”

  “We’re not sure. Shimon is having a look around.”

  “Who owns the villa?”

  “That’s the most interesting thing, boss. The villa was rented to an Englishman named Patrick Reynolds. The Greek police are trying to find him.”

  “And?”

  “There’s no Patrick Reynolds at the London address on the rental agreement. There’s no Patrick Reynolds at the London telephone number either. As far as the British and Greek authorities can figure, Patrick Reynolds doesn’t exist.”

  The old man was going away for a while—Rami could sense it.

  Shamron’s last night was a restless one, even by the lofty standards of the Phantom of Tiberias. He spent a long time pacing th
e terrace, then killed a few hours tinkering with a vintage Philco radio that had arrived that day from the States. He did not sleep, made no telephone calls, and had just one visitor: a penitent-looking Uzi Navot. He spoke to the old man on the terrace for fifteen minutes, then quickly departed. On the way out his face reminded Rami of the look Shamron had worn the night of the Paris attack: part grim determination, part self-satisfied smirk.

  But it was the garment bag that confirmed Rami’s worst fears: Italian manufacture, black leather, audacious gold-plated snaps and buckles. It was everything the old man was not. The Phantom could carry his kit in his back pocket and still have room for his billfold. Then there was the name on the tag dangling from the grip: Rudolf Heller, Bern address, Bern telephone number. Shamron was going under.

  Rami was distant over breakfast, like the mother who picks a fight with her child the morning of a separation. Instead of sitting with him at the table, he stood at the counter and violently flipped through the sports section of Maa’riv.

  “Rami, please,” said Shamron. “Are you reading it or trying to beat a confession out of it?”

  “Let me come with you, boss.”

  “We’re not going to have this conversation again. I know you may find this difficult to believe, but I know how to function in the field. I was a katsa long before your parents saw fit to bring you into this world.”

  “You’re not as young as you used to be, boss.”

  Shamron lowered his newspaper and peered at Rami over his half-moon glasses. “Any time you think you’re ready, you may have a go at testing my fitness.”

  Rami pointed his finger at Shamron like a gun and said, “Bang, bang, you’re dead, boss.”

  But Shamron just smiled and finished his newspaper. Ten minutes later Rami walked him down to the gate and loaded the bag into the car. He stood and watched the car drive away, until all that was left of Ari Shamron was a puff of pink Galilee dust.

  SIX

  Zürich

  Schloss Pharmaceuticals was the largest drug company in Europe and one of the largest in the world. Its research labs, production plants, and distribution centers were scattered around the globe, but its corporate headquarters occupied a stately gray stone building on Zürich’s exclusive Bahnhof-strasse, not far from the shores of the lake. Because it was a Wednesday, the division chiefs and senior vice presidents had assembled in the paneled boardroom on the ninth floor for their weekly meeting. Martin Schloss sat at the head of the table beneath a portrait of his great-grandfather Walther Schloss, the company’s founder. An elegant figure, dark suit, neatly trimmed silver hair. At twelve-thirty he looked at his watch and stood up, signaling the meeting had concluded. A few of the executives gathered around him, hoping for one last word with the chief.