Gabriel Allon 01 - The Kill Artist

  He got back into the car, drove down the Golan to a kibbutz outside Qiryat Shemona. It was a Friday night. He went to the dining hall for Shabbat meal, sat with a group of adults from the kibbutz: farmworkers with sunburned faces and callused hands. They ignored him for a time. Then one of them, an older man, asked his name and where he was from. He told them he was Gabriel. That he was from the Jezreel Valley but had been away for a long time.

  In the morning he crossed the fertile flatlands of the coastal plain and drove south along the Mediterranean—through Akko, Haifa, Caesarea, and Netanya—until finally he found himself on the beach at Herzliya.

  She was leaning against the balustrade, arms folded, looking out to sea at the setting sun, wind pushing strands of hair across her face. She wore a loose-fitting white blouse and the sunglasses of a woman in hiding.

  Gabriel waited for her to notice him. Eventually she would. She had been trained by Ari Shamron, and no pupil of the great Shamron would ever fail to take notice of a man standing below her terrace. When she finally saw him a smile flared, then faded. She lifted her hand, the reluctant wave of someone who had been burned by the secret fire. Gabriel lowered his head and started walking.

  They drank icy white wine on her terrace and made small talk, avoiding the operation or Shamron or Gabriel’s wounds. Gabriel told her about his journey. Jacqueline said she would have liked to come. Then she apologized for saying such a thing—she had no right.

  “So why did you come here after all these weeks, Gabriel? You never do anything without a reason.”

  He wanted to hear it one more time: Tariq’s version of the story. The way he had told it to her that night during the drive from the border to New York. He looked out to sea as she spoke, watching the wind tossing the sand about, the moonlight on the waves, but he was listening fiercely. When she was done, he still couldn’t put the final pieces into place. It was like an unfinished painting or a series of musical notes with no resolution. She invited him to stay for dinner. He lied and said he had pressing matters in Jerusalem.

  “Ari tells me you want to leave. What are your plans?”

  “I have a man named Vecellio waiting for me in England.”

  “Are you sure it’s safe to go back?”

  “I’ll be fine. What about you?”

  “My story has been splashed across newspapers and television screens around the world. I’ll never be able to return to my old life. I have no choice but to stay here.”

  “I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this business, Jacqueline. I hope you can forgive me.”

  “Forgive you? No, Gabriel—quite the opposite, actually. I thank you. I got exactly what I wanted.” A second’s hesitation. “Well, almost everything.”

  She walked him down to the beach. He kissed her softly on the mouth, touched her hair. Then he turned and walked to his car. He paused once to look over his shoulder at her, but she had already gone.

  He was hungry, so instead of going straight to Jerusalem he stopped in Tel Aviv for dinner. He parked in Balfour Street, walked to Sheinkin, wandered past trendy cafés and avant-garde shops, thinking of the rue St-Denis in Montreal. He had the sense he was being followed. Nothing specific, just the flash of a familiar face too many times—a color, a hat.

  He purchased a newspaper from a kiosk, sat down in a restaurant with small round tables spilling onto the sidewalk. It was a warm evening, sidewalks filled with people. He ordered falafel and beer, then opened the newspaper and read the lead article on the front page: “Benjamin Stone, the maverick publisher and entrepreneur, is missing and feared drowned off St. Martin in the Caribbean. Authorities believe Stone fell overboard from his luxury yacht sometime during the night.”

  Gabriel closed the newspaper.

  “How’s Benjamin Stone?”

  “Relaxing in the Caribbean aboard his yacht.”

  When the food arrived he folded his newspaper and dropped it onto the extra chair. He looked up and spotted a man outside on the sidewalk: slender, good-looking, black curly hair, blond Israeli girl on his arm. Gabriel laid down his fork, stared directly at him, throwing all discretion and tradecraft to the wind.

  There was no doubt about it: Yusef al-Tawfiki.

  Gabriel left money on the table and walked out. For thirty minutes he followed him. Along Sheinkin, then Allenby, then down to the Promenade. A face can be deceiving, but sometimes a man’s walk is as unique as his fingerprints. Gabriel had followed Yusef for weeks in London. His walk was imprinted on Gabriel’s memory. The flow of his hips. The line of his back. The way he always seemed to be on the balls of his feet, ready to pounce.

  Gabriel tried to remember whether he was left-handed or right-. He pictured him standing in his window, wearing nothing but his briefs, a thick silver watch on his left wrist. He’s right-handed. If he was trained by the Office, he’d wear his gun on his left hip.

  Gabriel increased his pace, closing the distance between them, and drew his Beretta. He pressed the barrel of the gun against Yusef’s lower back, then in one quick movement reached beneath his jacket and snatched the gun from the holster on his hip.

  Yusef started to swivel.

  Gabriel shoved the gun into his back even harder. “Don’t move again, or I’ll leave a bullet in your spine. And keep walking.” Gabriel spoke Hebrew. Yusef stood very still. “Tell your girlfriend to take a walk.”

  Yusef nodded to the girl; she walked quickly away.

  “Move,” Gabriel said.

  “Where?”

  “Down to the beach.”

  They crossed the Promenade, Yusef leading, Gabriel behind him, gun pressed against Yusef’s kidney. They descended a flight of steps and walked across the beach until the lights of the Promenade grew faint.

  “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 d
oor.

  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.