Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

“Don’t worry about how I get it.”

“Just don’t steal it, please. I don’t want to be driving hot wheels.”

At that moment Yusef appeared in the window and engaged in his morning inspection of the street below.

“So that’s our boy?” Karp asked.

“That’s him.”

“Tell me something, Gabe. Exactly how are you planning on getting inside his flat?”

Gabriel looked at Karp and smiled. “He likes girls.”

At two o’clock the following morning Gabriel and Karp slipped into the alley behind the Kebab Factory. To reach the subscriber interface box, Karp had to balance himself atop a large rolling rubbish bin filled with rotting garbage. He picked the lock, pulled open the little door, and for two minutes worked silently by the thin beam of a penlight held between his front teeth.

Gabriel stood guard below, his attention focused on the entrance of the alley. “How much longer?” he murmured.

“One minute if you shut up. Two if you insist on talking to me.”

Gabriel looked down again and spotted two men in leather jackets walking toward him. One picked up a bottle and shattered it against a wall. His friend nearly fell over with laughter.

Gabriel moved a few feet away from Karp, leaned against a wall, and pretended to be sick. The two men approached him. The larger of the two grabbed his shoulder. He had a raised white scar along his right cheek and stank of beer and whiskey. The other grinned stupidly. He was thin and had shaved his head. His pale skin glowed in the dim light of the alley.

“Please, I don’t want any trouble,” Gabriel said in French-accented English. “I’m just sick. Too much to drink, you know?”

“A bloody Frog,” sang the bald one. “And he looks queer too.”

“Please, I don’t want trouble,” Gabriel repeated.

He reached into his pocket, removed several crumpled twenty-pound notes, and held them out. “Here, take my money. Just leave me alone.”

But the big man with the scar slapped the money from Gabriel’s hand. Then he drew back his fist and threw a wild roundhouse punch toward Gabriel’s head.

Ten minutes later they were back in the flat. Karp was seated in front of his equipment at the dining room table. He picked up a cell phone and dialed the restaurant. While the line was ringing he set down the phone and turned up the volume on his receiver. He could hear a recorded message saying the Kebab Factory was closed and would not reopen until eleven-thirty the following day. He dialed the number a second time, and once again he could hear the message over the receiver. The bug and the repeater were working perfectly.

As he put away his tools, he thought about Gabriel’s contribution to that evening’s work. It had lasted precisely three seconds by Karp’s calculation. He saw none of it-his attention had remained fixed on his work-but he had heard the whole thing. There had been four sharp blows. The last was the most vicious. Karp had definitely heard bone shattering. He had looked down only after he finished the installation and closed the box. He would never forget the sight: Gabriel Allon, bending over each of his victims, tenderly checking each throat for a pulse, making certain he hadn’t killed them.

Next morning Gabriel went out to buy the paper. He walked through a light drizzle to the Edgware Road and purchased a copy of The Times from a newsstand. He tucked the paper into his jacket and walked across the street to a small market. There he bought glue, scissors, and a second copy of The Times.

Karp was still sleeping when Gabriel returned to the flat. He sat at the table with two sheets of plain paper in front of him. At the top of one page he wrote the security clearance-top secret-and the recipient-Rom, the code name for the chief.

For fifteen minutes Gabriel wrote, right hand scratching rhythmically across the page, left pressed to his temple. His prose was terse and economical, the way Shamron liked it.

When he was finished he took one copy of The Times, turned it to page 8, and carefully cut out a large advertisement for a chain of men’s clothing stores. He threw away the remainder of the paper, then took the second copy and opened it to the same page. He placed his report over the advertisement, then glued the cutout over the report. He folded the newspaper and slipped it into the side flap of a black overnight travel bag. Then he pulled on a coat, shouldered the bag, and went out.

He walked to Marble Arch and entered the Underground. He purchased a ticket from the automated machine and before passing through the turnstiles made a brief telephone call. Fifteen minutes later he arrived at Waterloo.

Shamron’s bodel was waiting in a café in the Eurostar ticket terminal, holding a plastic shopping bag bearing the name of an American cigarette. Gabriel sat at the next table, drinking tea and reading the newspaper. When he finished his tea he stood and walked away, leaving the newspaper behind. The bodel slipped it into the shopping bag and headed in the opposite direction.

Gabriel waited in the terminal for his train to be called. Ten minutes later he boarded the Eurostar for Paris.

Amsterdam

The elegant canal house stood on the Herengracht in the Golden Curve of Amsterdam’s Central Canal Ring. It was tall and wide, with large windows overlooking the canal and a soaring gable. The owner, David Morgenthau, was the multimillionaire chairman of Optique, one of the world’s largest makers of designer eyeglasses. He was also a passionate Zionist. Over the years he had given millions of dollars to Israeli charities and invested millions more in Israeli businesses. An American of Dutch Jewish descent, Morgenthau had served on the boards of several New York Jewish organizations and was regarded as a hawk when it came to matters of Israeli security. He and his wife, Cynthia, a renowned New York interior designer, visited their home in Amsterdam like clock-work twice each year-once in the summer, on the way to their villa outside Cannes, and once again in the winter for the holidays.

Tariq sat in a café on the opposite side of the canal, drinking warm sweet tea. He knew other things about David Morgenthau-things that did not appear in the society pages or the world’s business journals. He knew that Morgenthau was a personal friend of the Israeli prime minister, that he had performed certain favors for Ari Shamron, and that he had once served as a secret conduit between the Israeli government and the PLO. For all those reasons, Tariq was going to kill him.

Leila had prepared a detailed surveillance report during her stay in Amsterdam. David and Cynthia Morgenthau left the house each morning to visit museums or go ice-skating in the countryside. During the day the only person who remained in the house was a maid, a young Dutch girl.

This is going to be too easy.

A chauffeured Mercedes braked to a halt outside the house. Tariq looked at his watch: 4:00 P.M., right on schedule. A tall, gray-haired man climbed out. He wore a thick sweater and heavy corduroy trousers and was carrying two pairs of ice skates. A moment later an attractive woman emerged, dressed in black stretch leggings and a pullover. As they entered the house the Mercedes drove off.

Tariq left a few guilders on the table and went out.

Snow drifted over the Herengracht as he made his way slowly toward the houseboat on the Amstel. A pair of cyclists glided silently past, leaving ribbons of black in the fresh snow. Evening in a foreign city always made him melancholy. Lights coming on, offices letting out, bars and cafés slowly filling. Through the broad windows of the canal houses he could see parents coming home to children, husbands coming home to wives, lovers reuniting, warm lights burning. Life, he thought. Someone else’s life, someone else’s homeland.