Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

At the end of a terrace of cottages overlooking the town parking lot was a commercial building. A sign hung in the window: the entire ground floor was available. It had been vacant for months. Jacqueline cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through the dirty glass: a large, open room, wood floors, high ceiling. Perfect for a dance studio. She had a fantasy. She would quit modeling and open a ballet school in Valbonne. It would cater to the local girls most of the year, but in August, when the tourists streamed into Valbonne for their summer holidays, she would open the school to visitors. She would teach for a few hours a day, ride her bike through the hills, drink coffee, and read in the café on the square. Shed her name and her image. Become Sarah Halévy again-Sarah Halévy, the Jewish girl from Marseilles. But to open the school she needed money, and to get money she had to keep modeling. She had to go back to Paris and put up with men like Michel Duval a little while longer. Then she would be free.

She mounted her bike and rode slowly home. It was a rather small villa, the color of sandstone with a red-tile roof, hidden from view by a row of towering cypress trees. In the large terraced garden overlooking the valley, rosemary and lavender grew wild among the olive and drooping pepper trees. At the base of the garden was a rectangular swimming pool.

Jacqueline let herself inside, propped the bike in the entrance hall, and went into the kitchen. The red light on her answering machine was winking. She pressed the playback button and made coffee while she listened to the messages.

Yvonne had called to invite her to a party at the home of a millionaire Spanish tennis player in Monte Carlo. Michel Duval had called to apologize for his behavior at the shoot the other day. The bruise was healing nicely. Marcel had called to say that he had spoken to Robert. The shoot in Mustique was back on. “You leave in three weeks, angel, so get off the cheese and pasta and get your beautiful ass in shape.”

She thought of her bicycle ride and smiled. Her face might have looked thirty-three, but her body had never looked better.

“Oh, by the way, a fellow called Jean-Claude came by the office. Said he wanted to talk to you personally about a job.”

Jacqueline set down the coffeepot and looked at the machine.

“I told him you were in the south. He said he was on his way there and that he would look you up when he arrived. Don’t be angry with me, angel. He seemed like a nice guy. Good-looking, too. I was insanely jealous. Love you. Ciao.”

She pressed the rewind button and listened to the message again to make certain she had heard it right.

“Oh, by the way, a fellow called Jean-Claude came by the office. Said he wanted to talk to you personally about a job.”

She pressed the erase button, hand trembling, heart beating against her ribs.

Jacqueline sat outside on the sunlit terrace, thinking about the night she was recruited by Ari Shamron. She had used some of her money from modeling to buy her parents a retirement present: a small beachfront apartment in Herzliya. She visited them in Israel whenever she could get away for a few days. She fell completely in love with the country. It was the only place she felt truly free and safe. More than anything else she loved the fact that she did not have to conceal her being Jewish.

One evening in a jazz café in Tel Aviv an older man appeared at her table. Bald, rather ugly, steel-rimmed glasses, khaki trousers, a bomber jacket with a tear on the right breast.

“Hello, Sarah,” he said, smiling confidently. “May I join you?”

She looked up, startled. “How did you know my name is Sarah?”

“Actually, I know a great deal about you. I’m a big fan.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Ari. I work for an organization loosely connected to the Ministry of Defense called the Institute for Coordination. We just call it the Office.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad we cleared that up.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “We’d like to talk to you about a job. Do you mind if I call you Sarah? I have trouble thinking of you as Jacqueline.”

“My parents are the only ones who call me Sarah anymore.”

“No old friends?”

“I only have new friends,” she said, her voice tinged with sadness. “At least people who claim to be my friends. All my old friends from Marseilles dropped away after I became a model. They thought I’d changed because of my work.”

“But you have changed, haven’t you, Sarah?”

“Yes, I suppose I have.” Then she thought: Why am I telling this to a man I just met? I wonder if he gets under everyone’s skin so quickly.

“And it isn’t just a job, is it, Sarah? It’s a way of life. You hang out with fashion designers and famous photographers. You go to glitzy parties and exclusive restaurants with actors and rock stars and millionaire playboys. Like that Italian count you had an affair with in Milan, the one that made the newspapers. Surely you’re not the same little girl from Marseilles. The little Jewish girl whose grandparents were murdered by the Nazis at Sobibor.”

“You do know a great deal about me.” She looked at him carefully. She was used to being surrounded by attractive, polished people, and here she was now in the company of this rather ugly man with steel glasses and a tear in his jacket. There was something of the primitive in him-the rough-hewn Sabra that she had always heard about. He was the kind of man who didn’t know how to tie a bow tie and didn’t care. She found him utterly charming. But more than anything she was intrigued by him.

“As a Jew from Marseilles, you know that our people have many enemies. Many people would like to destroy us, tear down everything we have built in this land.” As he spoke his hands carved the air. “Over the years Israel has fought many wars with her enemies. At this moment there is no fighting, but Israel is still engaged in another war, a secret war. This war is ceaseless. It will never end. Because of your passport and, quite frankly, your appearance, you could be a great deal of help to us.”

“Are you asking me to become a spy?”

He laughed. “I’m afraid it’s nothing quite so dramatic as that.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to become a bat leveyha.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t speak Hebrew.”

“Bat leveyha is the term we use for a female assistant agent. As a bat leveyha, you may be called on to perform a number of functions for the Office. Sometimes you might be asked to pose as the wife or girlfriend of one of our male officers. Sometimes you might be asked to obtain a vital piece of information that a woman like you might get more readily than a male officer.”

He stopped talking for a moment and took his time lighting his next cigarette. “And sometimes we may ask you to perform another kind of assignment. An assignment that some women find too unpleasant to even consider.”

“For example?”

“We might ask you to seduce a man-one of our enemies, for instance-in order to place him in a compromising situation.”

“There are lots of beautiful women in Israel. Why on earth would you need me?”

“Because you’re not an Israeli. Because you have a legitimate French passport and a legitimate job.”

“That legitimate job, as you call it, pays me a great deal. I’m not prepared to throw it away.”

“If you decide to work for us, I’ll see that your assignments are brief and that you are compensated for lost wages.” He smiled affectionately. “Although I don’t think I can afford your usual fee of three thousand dollars an hour.”

“Five thousand,” she said, smiling.

“My congratulations.”

“I have to think about it.”