Gabriel Allon 01 - The Kill Artist

  “The Israelis let the first Phalangists into Shatila at sunset, one hundred and fifty of them. They had guns, of course, but most of them had knives and axes as well. The slaughter lasted forty-eight hours. The lucky ones were shot. Those who weren’t so lucky died more gruesome deaths. They chopped people to bits. They disemboweled people and left them to die. They skinned people alive. They gouged out eyes and left people to wander the carnage blindly until they were shot. They tied people to trucks and dragged them through the streets until they were dead.

  “Children weren’t spared. A child could grow up to be a terrorist, according to the Phalangists, so they killed all the children. Women weren’t spared, because a woman could give birth to a terrorist. They made a point of ritualistically slicing off the breasts of the Palestinian women. Breasts give milk. Breasts nourish a people that the Phalangists wanted to exterminate. All through the night they broke into homes and slaughtered everyone inside. When darkness fell, the Israelis lit up the sky with flares so the Phalangists could go about their work more easily.”

  Jacqueline made a steeple of her fingers and pressed them against her lips. Yusef continued with his account.

  “The Israelis knew exactly what was going on. Their headquarters were located just two hundred yards from the edge of Shatila. From the rooftop they could see directly into the camp. They could overhear the Phalangists talking on their radios. But they didn’t lift a finger to stop it. And why did they stand by and do nothing? Because it was exactly what they wanted to happen.

  “I was just seven at the time. My father was dead. He was killed that summer when the Israelis shelled the camps during the Battle of Beirut. I lived in Shatila with my mother and my sister. She was just a year and a half old at the time. We hid beneath our bed, listening to the screaming and the gunfire, watching the shadows of the flares dancing on the walls. We prayed that the Phalangists would somehow miss our house. Sometimes we could hear them outside our window. They were laughing. They were slaughtering everyone in sight, but they were laughing. My mother covered our mouths whenever they came near to keep us quiet. She nearly smothered my sister.

  “Finally they broke down our door. I wriggled out of my mother’s grasp and went to them. They asked where my family was, and I told them everyone was dead. They laughed and told me that I would soon be with them. One of the Phalangists had a knife. He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me outside. He stripped off my shirt and sliced away the skin on the center of my back. Then they tied me to a truck and dragged me through the streets. At some point I went unconscious, but before I blacked out I remember the Phalangists shooting at me. They were using me for target practice.

  “Somehow, I survived. Maybe they thought I was dead, I don’t know. When I regained consciousness the rope they had used for the dragging was still wrapped around my right ankle. I crawled beneath a pile of rubble and waited. I stayed there for a day and a half. Finally, the massacre was over, and the Phalangists withdrew from the camps. I came out of my hiding place and found my way back to our family’s house. I found my mother’s body in our bed. She was naked, and she had been raped. Her breasts had been sliced off. I looked for my sister. I found her on the kitchen table. They had cut her into pieces and laid her out in a circle with her head in the center.”

  Jacqueline tumbled out of bed, crawled into the bathroom, and was violently sick. Yusef knelt beside her and placed a hand on her back as her body wretched.

  When she finished he said, “You ask me why I hate the Israelis so much. I hate them because they sent the Phalangists to massacre us. I hate them because they stood by and did nothing while Christians, their great friends in Lebanon, raped and killed my mother and chopped my sister to bits and laid her body out in a circle. Now you know why I’m a rejectionist when it comes to this so-called peace process. How can I trust these people?”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you really understand, Dominique? Is it possible?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Now, I’ve been completely honest with you about everything. Is there anything you wish to tell me about yourself? Any secrets you’ve been keeping from me?”

  “Nothing of any consequence.”

  “You’re telling me the truth, Dominique?”

  “Yes.”

  The call came at four-fifteen that morning. It woke Yusef, though not Gabriel. He had been sitting up all morning, listening to Yusef’s account of Sabra and Shatila over and over again. It rang just once. Yusef, his voice heavy with sleep, said, “Hello.”

  “Lancaster Gate, tomorrow, two o’clock.”

  Click.

  Jacqueline said, “What was that?”

  “A wrong number. Go back to sleep.”

  Maida Vale in the morning. A gang of schoolboys teasing a pretty girl. Jacqueline imagined they were Phalangist militiamen armed with knives and axes. A lorry roared past, belching diesel fumes. Jacqueline saw a man tied to the bumper being dragged to death. Her block of flats loomed in front of her. She looked up and imagined Israeli soldiers standing on the roof, watching the slaughter below through binoculars, firing flares so the killers could better see their victims. She entered the building, climbed the stairs, and slipped into the flat. Gabriel was sitting on the couch.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me he had survived Shatila? Why didn’t you tell me his family had been butchered like that?”

  “What difference would it have made?”

  “I just wish I had known!” She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Is it true? Are the things he told me true?”

  “Which part?”

  “All of it, Gabriel! Don’t play fucking games with me.”

  “Yes, it’s true! His family died at Shatila. He’s suffered. So what? We’ve all suffered. It doesn’t give him the right to murder innocent people because history didn’t go his way!”

  “He was an innocent, Gabriel! He was just a boy!”

  “We’re in the middle of an operation, Jacqueline. Now is not the time for a debate on moral equivalence and the ethics of counterterrorism.”

  “I apologize for permitting the question of morality to enter my thoughts. I forgot you and Shamron never get tripped up over something so trivial.”

  “Don’t lump me in with Shamron.”

  “Why not? Because he gives orders, and you follow them?”

  “What about Tunis?” Gabriel asked. “You knew Tunis was an assassination job, but you willingly took part in it. You even volunteered to go back the night of the killing.”

  “That’s because the target was Abu Jihad. He had the blood of hundreds of Israelis and Jews on his hands.”

  “This one has blood on his hands too. Don’t forget that.”

  “He’s just a boy, a boy whose family was butchered while the Israeli army looked on and did nothing.”

  “He’s not a boy. He’s a twenty-five-year-old man who helps Tariq kill people.”

  “And you’re going to use him to get to Tariq, because of what Tariq did to you? When does it end? When there’s no more blood to shed? When, Gabriel?”

  He stood up and pulled on his jacket.

  Jacqueline said, “I want out.”

  “You can’t leave now.”

  “Yes, I can. I don’t want to sleep with Yusef anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? You have the nerve to ask me why?”

  “I’m sorry, Jacqueline. That didn’t come out—”

  “You think of me as a whore, don’t you, Gabriel! You think it doesn’t bother me to sleep with a man I don’t care for.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Is that what I was to you in Tunis? Just a whore?”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Then tell me what I was.”

  “What are you going to do? Are you going back to France? Back to your villa in Valbonne? Back to your Parisian parties and your phot
o shoots and your fashion shows, where the most difficult question is deciding what shade of lipstick to wear?”

  She slapped him across the left side of his face. He stared back at her, eyes cold, color rising in the skin over his cheekbone. She drew back her hand to slap him again, but he casually lifted his left hand and deflected her blow.

  “Can’t you hear what’s going on?” Gabriel said. “He told you the story of what happened to him at Shatila for a reason. He’s testing you. He wants you for something.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “I thought you were someone I could depend on. Not someone who was going to fall apart in the middle of the game.”

  “Shut up, Gabriel!”

  “I’ll contact Shamron—tell him we’re out of business.”

  He reached out for the door. She grabbed his hand. “Killing Tariq won’t make it right. That’s just an illusion. You think it will be like fixing a painting: you find the damage, retouch it, and everything is fine again. But it’s not like that for a human being. In fact it’s not even like that for a painting. If you look carefully you can always see where it’s been retouched. The scars never go away. The restorer doesn’t heal a painting. He just hides the wounds.”

  “I need to know if you’re willing to continue.”

  “And I want to know if I was just your whore in Tunis.”

  Gabriel reached out and touched her cheek. “You were my lover in Tunis.” His hand fell to his side. “And my family was destroyed because of it.”

  “I can’t change the past.”

  “I know.”

  “Did you care for me?”

  He hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes, very much.”

  “Do you care for me now?”

  He closed his eyes. “I need to know whether you can go on.”

  30

  HYDE PARK, LONDON

  Karp said, “Your friend picked a damned lousy place for a meeting.”

  They were sitting in the back of a white Ford van on the Bayswater Road a few yards from Lancaster Gate, Karp hunched over a console of audio equipment, adjusting his levels. Gabriel could scarcely hear himself think over the riotous din of cars, taxis, lorries, and double-decker buses. Overhead, the trees lining the northern edge of the park writhed in the wind. Through Karp’s microphones the air rushing through the branches sounded like white water. Beyond Lancaster Gate the fountains of the Italian Gardens splashed and danced. Through the microphones it sounded like a monsoonal downpour.

  Gabriel said, “How many listeners do you have out there?”

  “Three,” Karp said. “The guy on the bench who looks like a banker, the pretty girl tossing bread to the ducks, and the guy selling ice cream just inside the gate.”

  “Not bad,” Gabriel said.

  “Under these conditions don’t expect any miracles.”

  Gabriel looked at his wristwatch: three minutes past two. He thought: He’s not going to show. They’ve spotted Karp’s team, and they’re aborting. He said, “Where the fuck is he?”

  “Be patient, Gabe.”

  A moment later Gabriel saw Yusef emerge from Westbourne Street and dart across the road in front of a charging delivery truck. Karp snapped a couple of photographs as Yusef entered the park and strolled around the fountains. During the middle of his second circuit, he was joined by a man wearing a gray woolen overcoat, face obscured by sunglasses and a felt hat. Karp switched to a longer lens, took several more photographs.

  They circled the fountains once in silence, then during the second circuit began to speak softly in English. Because of the noise from the wind and the fountains, Gabriel could make out only every third or fourth word.

  Karp swore softly.

  They circled the fountains for a few minutes, then walked up a small rise to a playground. The girl who had been feeding the ducks walked slowly after them. After a moment the surveillance van was filled with the joyous screams of children at play.

  Karp pressed his fists against his eyes and shook his head.

  Karp delivered the tape to Gabriel at the listening post three hours later with the resigned air of a surgeon who had done all he could to save the patient. “I fed it through the computers, filtered out the background noise, and enhanced the good stuff. But I’m afraid we got only about ten percent, and even that sounds like shit.”

  Gabriel held out his hand and accepted the cassette. He slipped it into the deck, pressed PLAY, and listened while he paced the length of the room.

  “. . . needs someone . . . next assignment . . .”

  A sound, like static turned up full blast, obliterated the rest of the sentence. Gabriel paused the tape and looked at Karp.

  “It’s the fountain,” Karp said. “There’s nothing I can do with it.”

  Gabriel restarted the tape.

  “. . . check out her . . . in Paris . . . problems . . . thing’s fine.”

  Gabriel stopped the tape, pressed REWIND, then PLAY.

  “. . . check out her . . . in Paris . . . problems . . . thing’s fine.”

  “. . . not sure . . . right person for . . . sort of . . .”

  “. . . be persuasive . . . if you explain the importance . . .”

  “. . . what am I . . . tell her exactly?”

  “. . . vital diplomatic mission . . . cause of true peace in the Middle East . . . routine security precaution . . .”

  “. . . it supposed to work . . .”

  The audio level dropped sharply. Karp said, “They’re walking toward the playground right now. We’ll get coverage in a moment when the girl moves into position.”

  “. . . meet him . . . de Gaulle . . . from there . . . to the final destination . . .”

  “. . . where . . . ”

  An injured child cries out for its mother, obliterating the response.

  “. . . do with her after . . .”

  “. . . up to him . . .”

  “. . . what if . . . says no . . .”

  “Don’t worry, Yusef. Your girlfriend won’t say no to you.”

  STOP. REWIND. PLAY.

  “Don’t worry, Yusef. Your girlfriend won’t say no to you.”

  And the next thing Gabriel heard was a mother berating her son for scraping a lump of chewing gum off the bottom of the seesaw and putting it into his mouth.

  That evening Jacqueline picked up curry after work and brought it to Yusef’s flat. While they ate they watched an American film on television about a German terrorist on the loose in Manhattan. Gabriel watched along with them. He muted his own television and listened to Yusef’s instead. When the film was over Yusef pronounced it “total crap” and shut off the television.

  Then he said, “We need to talk about something, Dominique. I need to ask you something important.”

  Gabriel closed his eyes and listened.

  Next morning Jacqueline stepped off the carriage at the Piccadilly Underground station and floated along with the crowd across the platform. As she rode up the escalator she looked around her. They had to be following her: Yusef’s watchers. He wouldn’t let her loose on the streets of London without a secret escort, not after what he had asked her to do last night. A black-haired man was staring at her from a parallel escalator. When he caught her eye he smiled and tried to hold her gaze. She realized he was only a lecher. She turned and looked straight ahead.

  Outside, as she walked along Piccadilly, she thought she spotted Gabriel using a public telephone, but it was only a Gabriel look-alike. She thought she saw him again stepping out of a taxi, but it was only Gabriel’s nonexistent younger brother. She realized there were versions of Gabriel all around her. Boys in leather jackets. Young men in stylish business suits. Artists, students, delivery boys—with minor alterations Gabriel could pass for any of them.

  Isherwood had arrived early. He was seated behind his desk, speaking Italian over the telephone and looking hungover. He placed his hand over the receiver and mouthed the words “Coffee, please.”

  She hung up her coat
and sat down at her desk. Isherwood could survive a few more minutes without his coffee. The morning mail lay on the desk, along with a manila envelope. She tore open the flap, removed the letter from inside. I’m going to Paris. Don’t set foot outside the gallery until you hear from me. She squeezed it into a tight ball.

  31

  PARIS

  Gabriel hadn’t touched his breakfast. He sat in the first-class carriage of the Eurostar train, headphones on, listening to tapes on a small portable player. The first encounters between Yusef and Jacqueline. Yusef telling Jacqueline the story of the massacre at Shatila. Yusef’s conversation with Jacqueline the previous night. He removed that tape, inserted one more: Yusef’s meeting with his contact in Hyde Park. He had lost track of how many times he had heard it by now. Ten times? Twenty?

  Each time it disturbed him more. He pressed the REWIND button and used the digital tape counter to stop at precisely the spot he wanted to hear.

  “. . . check out her . . . in Paris . . . problems . . . thing’s fine.”

  STOP.

  He pulled off the headphones, removed a small spiral notebook from his pocket, turned to a blank page. He wrote: check out her . . . in Paris . . . problems . . . thing’s fine. Between the staccato phrases he left blank spaces corresponding approximately to the times of the dropouts on the tape.

  Then he wrote: We sent a man to check out her story in Paris. There were no problems. Everything’s fine.

  It was possible that’s what he had said, or it could have been this: We sent a man to check out her story in Paris. There were big problems with it. But everything’s fine.

  That made no sense. Gabriel crossed it out, then slipped on the headphones and listened to the section of the tape yet again. Wait a minute, he thought. Was Yusef’s contact saying thing’s fine or other side.

  This time he wrote: We sent a man to check out her story in Paris. There were big problems with it. We think she may be working for the other side.

  But if that were the case, why would they ask her to accompany an operative on a mission?