Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

But what if it were true? What if the boy could actually lead him to Tariq?

Maybe if you help me take down Tariq, you can forgive yourself for what happened in Vienna.

By instinct he drifted upstairs to his studio and stood before the Vecellio, inspecting that evening’s work. He approved. At least something good had come of Shamron’s visit. He felt a pang of regret. If he went to work for Shamron, he would have to leave the Vecellio behind. He would be a stranger to the painting when he got back. It would be like starting over. And the Rembrandt? The Rembrandt he would return to Christie’s, with his deepest professional apologies. But not the Vecellio. He had invested too much time-put too much of himself into it-to let anyone else touch it now. It was his painting. Julian would just have to wait.

He slipped downstairs, extinguished the gas fire, packed away his Beretta, slipped Shamron’s file into a drawer. As he stepped outside, a gust of wet wind rocked him onto his heels. The air was oppressively cold, the rain on his face like pellets. He felt as though he were being pulled from a warm, safe place. The halyards snapped against the mast of his ketch. The gulls lifted from the surface of the river, screamed in unison, turned toward the sea, white wings beating against the gray of the clouds. Gabriel pulled his hood over his head and started walking.

Outside the village store was a public telephone. Gabriel dialed the number for the Savoy Hotel and asked to be connected to the room of Rudolf Heller. He always pictured Shamron in portrait over the telephone: the creviced face, the leather hands, the afflicted expression, a patch of bare canvas over the spot where his heart might be. When Shamron answered, the two men exchanged pleasantries in German for a moment, then switched to English. Gabriel always assumed telephone lines were monitored, so when he spoke to Shamron about the operation, he used a crude code. “A project like this will require a large amount of capital. I’ll need money for personnel, transportation, office space, apartment rentals, petty cash for unexpected expenses.”

“I assure you, capital will not be a problem.”

Gabriel raised the issue of Lev and how to keep the operation secret from him. “But if memory serves, the bank where you have obtained financing for such ventures in the past is now under the control of your competitors. If you approach the bank for financing now, you run the risk of alerting the competition to our intentions.”

“Actually, I have another source of capital that will permit me to raise the money for the project without the knowledge of the competition.”

“If I accept your proposal, I would demand complete authority to run the venture as I see fit. Keeping the project secret from the competition will require the use of independent contractors and other freelance personnel. These people cost money. I will require the independent authority to spend money and use resources as I deem necessary.”

“You have it, though overall operational control of the venture will remain with me in Geneva.”

“Agreed. Then there is the matter of my own compensation.”

“I’m afraid you are in a position to name your own price.”

“One hundred and fifty thousand pounds. If the job lasts longer than six months, I will be paid an additional one hundred thousand pounds.”

“Done. So, do we have an agreement?”

“I’ll let you know by the end of the day.”

But it was Peel, not Shamron, who received the news first.

Late that afternoon Peel heard noises on the quay. He raised his head from his schoolwork and peered out the window. There, in the dying twilight, he saw the stranger on the deck of his ketch, dressed in his yellow oilskin and a black woolen watch cap pulled so low that Peel could barely see his eyes. He was putting the ketch in mothballs: taking down sails, removing aerials, locking hatch covers. There was a look of grim determination on his face that Peel had never seen before. He considered running down to see if there was something wrong, but the stranger’s demeanor suggested he was in no mood for visitors.

After an hour the stranger disappeared into the cottage. Peel returned to his schoolwork, only to be interrupted again a few minutes later, this time by the sound of the stranger’s MG starting up. Peel rushed to the window in time to see the car rolling slowly up the lane, rain drifting through the beams of the headlights. He lifted his hand, more a gesture of surrender than a wave. For a moment he thought the stranger didn’t see him. Then the headlights flashed once and the little MG vanished.

Peel waited in the window until the sound of the motor died away. A tear spilled down his cheek. He punched it away. Big boys don’t cry, he told himself. The stranger would never cry for me. I won’t cry for him. Downstairs his mother and Derek were quarreling again. Peel climbed into bed and pulled his pillow around his ears.

Holborn, London

Looking Glass Communications, a multi-billion-dollar international publishing conglomerate, was headquartered in a modern office building overlooking New Square. It was owned by a six-foot-eight-inch, three-hundred-pound tyrant named Benjamin Stone. From his luxuriously appointed penthouse atop the headquarters, Stone ruled an empire of companies stretching from the Middle East to the United States. He owned dozens of newspapers and magazines as well as a controlling stake in the venerable New York publishing house Horton amp; McLawson. But the jewel in Stone’s crown was the tabloid Daily Sentinel, Britain ’s third-largest-selling national newspaper. Among the journalists of Fleet Street, the Daily Sentinel was known as the Daily Stone, because it was not unusual for the paper to publish two stories in a single day about Stone’s business and philanthropic activities.

What his competitors did not know was that Stone, a Hungarian Jew by birth, was also Ari Shamron’s most valuable sayan. When Shamron needed to insert a katsa into a hostile country on short notice, he could turn to Stone and the Daily Sentinel for cover. When a disgruntled former katsa tried to pedal a tell-all book about the Office, Shamron turned to Stone and his New York publishing house to knock it down. When Shamron wanted to plant a story in the Western press, he simply had to pick up a telephone and whisper into Benjamin Stone’s ear.

But Stone’s most valuable contribution to the Office was money. Among the senior staff at King Saul Boulevard, his charitable instincts had earned him the nickname Hadassah. Indeed, money looted from the pension funds of Stone’s companies had been used to bankroll Office operations for years. Whenever Shamron needed funds, Stone moved money through a series of dummy corporations and shell companies into one of Shamron’s operational accounts in Geneva.

Stone greeted Shamron that evening in the garish entrance hall. “Fuck’s sake!” he roared in his trademark baritone bellow. “Rudolf, my love! Didn’t realize you were in town. Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I would have arranged something suitable. A banquet. A human sacrifice.” Stone laid his huge paw on Shamron’s shoulder. “Treasonous bastard! You’re lucky I’m here. Marvelous! Sensational! Come. Sit. Eat. Drink.”

Stone pulled Shamron into the sitting room. Everything was oversized, to accommodate Stone’s mass: deep chairs and couches of hand-tooled leather, a thick red carpet, large ottomans, and broad, low tables covered with fresh flowers and expensive trinkets given to him by other rich men. Stone forced Shamron into a chair as if he were about to interrogate him. He strode to the window, pressed a button, and the heavy curtains drew back. A window washer was working on the other side of the glass. Stone rapped his fat knuckle against the glass and gave the window washer a karate chop of a wave.