Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

Peel nodded.

“Does anyone else in the village?”

Peel shook his head.

“He works for me,” Isherwood said, as if he were confessing some misdeed. “I own the painting he’s restoring.”

“The Rembrandt or the Vecellio?”

Isherwood smiled and said, “The Vecellio, my dear fellow.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Indeed, it is.”

They stood side by side for a moment, oblivious of the rain. Isherwood saw something of himself in Gabriel’s miniature sentinel. Another Gabriel refugee, another piece of wreckage adrift in Gabriel’s wake. Another damaged soul in need of restoration by Gabriel’s skilled hands.

“Who took him?” Isherwood finally asked.

“The bald man who walked like a soldier. Do you know him?”

“Unfortunately, I do.” Isherwood smiled at Peel. “Are you hungry?”

Peel nodded.

“Is there someplace in the village to get some tea and sweets?”

“And a pastie,” Peel said. “Do you like sausage pasties?”

“Can’t say I’ve ever tried one, but there’s no time like the present. Should you ask your parents for permission first?”

Peel shook his head. “He’s not my dad, and my mum won’t care.”

Ari Shamron arrived at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv late the following evening. Rami was waiting at the gate. He shepherded Shamron through the arrivals area into a secure room reserved for Office personnel and special guests. Shamron stripped off his European business suit and pulled on his khakis and bomber jacket.

“The prime minister wants to see you tonight, Boss.”

Shamron thought: So much for keeping his nose out of the operation.

They rode into the hills toward Jerusalem. Shamron passed the time by leafing through a stack of paperwork that had piled up in his brief absence.

As usual there was a crisis in the prime minister’s diverse coalition. To reach his office Shamron first had to negotiate a smoky corridor filled with feuding politicians.

The prime minister listened raptly as Shamron brought him up-to-date. He was by nature a schemer. He had begun his career in the cutthroat atmosphere of academia, then moved to the hornets’ nest at the Foreign Ministry. By the time he entered the political arena, he was well-versed in the black arts of bureaucratic treachery. His meteoric rise through the party ranks was attributed to his powerful intellect and his willingness to resort to subterfuge, misdirection, and outright blackmail to get what he wanted. In Shamron he saw a kindred spirit-a man who would stop at nothing if he believed his cause was right.

“There’s only one problem,” Shamron said.

The prime minister glanced at the ceiling impatiently. He was fond of saying, “Bring me solutions, not problems.” Shamron had an innate distrust of men who lived by catchy maxims.

“Benjamin Stone.”

“What now?”

“His business is in terrible shape. He’s robbing Peter to pay Paul, and Peter’s friends are getting upset about it.”

“Will it affect us?”

“If he goes under quietly, we’ll just miss his money. But if he goes under in a messy way, he could make things uncomfortable for us. I’m afraid he knows too much.”

“Benjamin Stone never does anything quietly.”

“Point taken.”

“What about those lovely home movies you made of him last year at the King David?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time, but Stone has developed a rather high threshold for public embarrassment. I’m not sure he’s going to be terribly upset if the world sees him utilizing the services of an Israeli prostitute.”

“The politicians outside my door are my problem,” the prime minister said. “But I’m afraid that Benjamin Stone is yours. Deal with him as you see fit.”

Before the war Maurice Halévy was one of the most prominent lawyers in Marseilles. He and his wife, Rachel, had lived in a stately old house on the rue Sylvabelle in the Beaux Quartiers, where most of the city’s successful assimilated Jews had settled. They were proud to be French; they considered themselves French first and Jews second. Indeed, Maurice Halévy was so assimilated that he rarely bothered to go to synagogue. But when the Germans invaded, the Halévys’ idyllic life in Marseilles came to an abrupt end. In October 1940 the collaborationist Vichy government handed down the statut des Juifs, the anti-Jewish edicts that reduced Jews to second-class citizens in Vichy France. Maurice Halévy was stripped of the right to practice law. He was required to register with the police, and later he and his wife were forced to wear the Star of David on their clothing.

The situation worsened in 1942, when the German army moved into Vichy France after the Allied invasion of North Africa. French Resistance forces carried out a series of deadly attacks on German forces. The German security police, with the help of Vichy French authorities, responded with brutal reprisal killings. Maurice Halévy could ignore the threat no longer. Rachel had become pregnant. The thought of trying to care for a newborn in the chaos of Marseilles was too much to bear. He decided to leave the city for the countryside. He used his dwindling savings to rent a cottage in the hills outside Aix-en-Provence. In January, Rachel gave birth to a son, Isaac.

A week later the Germans and French police began rounding up the Jews. It took them a month to find Maurice and Rachel Halévy. A pair of German SS officers appeared at the cottage on a February evening, accompanied by a local gendarme. They gave the Halévys twenty minutes to pack a bag weighing no more than sixty pounds. While the Germans and the gendarme waited in the dining room, the woman from the next cottage appeared at the door.

“My name is Anne-Marie Delacroix,” she said. “The Halévys were looking after my son while I went to the market.”

The gendarme studied his papers. According to the documents, only two Jews lived in the cottage. He called for the Halévys and said, “This woman says the boy belongs to her. Is this the truth?”

“Of course it is,” Maurice Halévy said, squeezing Rachel’s arm before she could utter a sound. “We were just watching the boy for the afternoon.” The gendarme looked at Maurice Halévy incredulously, then consulted the registration documents a second time. “Take the child and leave,” he snapped to the woman. “I have a good mind to take you into custody myself for entrusting a French child to the care of these dirty Jews.”

Two months later Maurice and Rachel Halévy were murdered at Sobibor.

After the liberation, Anne-Marie Delacroix took Isaac to a synagogue in Marseilles and told the rabbi what had happened that night in Aix-en-Provence. The rabbi offered her the choice of placing the child for adoption by a Jewish family or raising him herself. She took the boy back to Aix and raised him as a Jew alongside her own Catholic children. In 1965 Isaac Halévy married a girl from Nîmes named Deborah and settled in Marseilles in his father’s old house on the rue Sylvabelle. Three years later they had their first and only child: a girl they named Sarah.

Paris

Michel Duval was the hottest fashion photographer in Paris. The designers and the magazine editors adored him because his pictures radiated an eye-grabbing aura of dangerous sexuality. Jacqueline Delacroix thought he was a pig. She knew he achieved his unique look by abusing his models. She wasn’t looking forward to working with him.

She stepped out of a taxi and entered the apartment building on the rue St-Jacques where Michel kept his studio. Upstairs a small crowd was waiting: makeup artist, hairdresser, stylist, a representative from Givenchy. Michel stood atop a ladder, adjusting lights: good looking, shoulder-length blond hair, feline features. He wore black leather trousers, low-slung around narrow hips, and a loose pullover. He winked at Jacqueline as she came in. She smiled and said, “Nice to see you, Michel.”