Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

“Tariq’s older brother, Mahmoud, was a member of Black September. Ari Shamron tracked him to Cologne, and he sent me to finish him off. I slipped into his flat while he was sleeping and pointed a gun at his face. Then I woke him up so that he wouldn’t die a peaceful death. I shot him in both eyes. Seventeen years later Tariq took his revenge by blowing up my wife and son right before my eyes.”

Jacqueline covered her mouth with her hands. Gabriel was still staring out the window, but she could tell it was Vienna that he saw now and not the boys playing in the courtyard.

“For a long time I thought Tariq had made a mistake,” Gabriel said. “But he never makes mistakes like that. He’s careful, deliberate. He’s the perfect predator. He went after my family for a reason. He went after them to punish me for killing his brother. He knew it would be worse than death.” He turned to face her. “From one professional to another, it was an exquisite piece of work.”

“And now you’re going to kill him in return?”

He looked away and said nothing.

“I always blamed myself for what happened in Vienna,” Jacqueline said. “If we hadn’t-”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Gabriel said, cutting her off. “It was my fault, not yours. I should have known better. I behaved foolishly. But it’s over now.”

The coldness of his voice felt like a knife in her chest. She took a long time crushing out her cigarette, then looked up at him. “Why did you tell Leah about us?”

He stood in the window for a moment, saying nothing. Jacqueline feared she had taken it too far. She tried to think of some way to defuse the situation and change the subject, but she desperately wanted to know the answer. If Gabriel hadn’t confessed the affair, Leah and Dani would never have been with him on assignment in Vienna.

“I told her because I didn’t want to lie to her. My entire life was a lie. Shamron had convinced me I was perfect, but I wasn’t perfect. For the first time in my life I had behaved with a bit of human frailty and weakness. I suppose I needed to share it with her. I suppose I needed someone to forgive me.”

He picked up his coat. His face was twisted. He was angry, not with her but with himself. “You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow.” His voice was all business now. “Get settled and try to get some rest. Julian’s expecting you at nine o’clock.”

And then he went out.

For a few minutes she was distracted by the ritual of unpacking. Then the pain crept up on her, like the delayed sting of a slap. She collapsed onto the couch and began to cry. She lit another cigarette and looked around at the dreary little flat. What in the hell am I doing here? She had agreed to come back for one reason-because she thought she could make Gabriel love her-but he had dismissed their affair in Tunis as a moment of weakness. Still, why had he come back after all these years to kill Tariq? Was it simply revenge? An eye for an eye? No, she thought-Gabriel’s motives ran far deeper and were more complex than pure revenge. Perhaps he needed to kill Tariq in order to forgive himself for what happened to Leah and finally move on with his life. But will he ever be able to forgive me? Perhaps the only way to earn his forgiveness was to help him kill Tariq. And the only way I can help him kill Tariq is to make another man fall for me and take him to bed. She closed her eyes and thought of Yusef al-Tawfiki.

Gabriel had left his car on the Ashworth Road. He made a show of dropping his keys on the curb and groping in the darkness as if he were trying to find them. In reality he was searching the undercarriage of the car, looking for something that shouldn’t be there-a mass, a loose wire. The car looked clean, so he climbed in, started the motor, drove in circles for a half hour through Maida Vale and Notting Hill, making certain he was not being followed.

He was annoyed with himself. He had been taught-first by his father, then by Ari Shamron-that men who could not keep secrets were weak and inferior. His father had survived Auschwitz but refused ever to speak of it. He struck Gabriel only once-when Gabriel demanded that his father tell him what had happened at the camp. If it hadn’t been for the numbers tattooed on his right forearm, Gabriel might never have known that his father had suffered.

Indeed, Israel was a place filled with damaged people-mothers who buried sons killed in wars, children who buried siblings killed by terrorists. After Vienna, Gabriel leaned on the lessons of his father: Sometimes people die too soon. Mourn for them in private. Don’t wear your suffering on your sleeve like the Arabs. And when you’re finished mourning, get back on your feet and get on with life.

It was the last part-getting on with life-that had given Gabriel the most trouble. He blamed himself for what had happened in Vienna, not only because of his affair with Jacqueline but because of the way he had killed Tariq’s brother. He had wanted the satisfaction of knowing that Mahmoud was aware of his death-that he had been terrified at the moment Gabriel’s Beretta quietly dispatched the first scorching bullet into his brain. Shamron had told him to terrorize the terrorists-to think like them and behave like them. Gabriel believed he had been punished for allowing himself to become like his enemy.

He had punished himself in return. One by one he had closed the doors and barred the windows that had once given him access to life’s pleasures. He drifted though time and space the way he imagined a damned spirit might visit the place where he had lived: able to see loved ones and possessions but unable to communicate or taste or touch or feel. He experienced beauty only in art and only by repairing damage inflicted by uncaring owners and by the corrosive passage of time. Shamron had made him the destroyer. Gabriel had turned himself back into the healer. Unfortunately, he was not capable of healing himself.

So why tell his secrets to Jacqueline? Why answer her damned questions? The simple answer was he wanted to. He had felt it the moment he walked into her villa in Valbonne, a prosaic need to share secrets and reveal past pain and disappointment. But there was something more important: he didn’t have to explain himself to her. He thought of his silly fantasy about Peel’s mother, how it had ended when he had told her the truth about himself. The scenario reflected one of Gabriel’s deep-seated fears-the dread of telling another woman he was a professional killer. Jacqueline already knew his secrets.

Maybe Jacqueline had been right about one thing, he thought-maybe he should have asked Shamron for another girl. Jacqueline was his bat leveyha, and tomorrow he was going to send her into the bed of another man.

He parked around the corner from his flat and walked quickly along the pavement toward the entrance of the block. He looked up toward his window and murmured, “Good evening, Mr. Karp.” And he pictured Karp, peering through the sight of his parabolic microphone, saying, “Welcome home, Gabe. Long time, no hear from.”

Maida Vale, London

Jacqueline felt a peculiar exhilaration the following morning as she walked along Elgin Avenue toward the Maida Vale tube station. She had lived a life of hedonistic excess-too much money, too many men, fine things taken for granted. It felt reassuring to be doing something so ordinary as taking the Underground to work, even if it was only a cover job.

She bought a copy of The Times from the newsstand on the street, then entered the station and followed the stairs down to the ticket lobby. The previous evening she had studied street maps and memorized the Underground lines. They had such curious names: Jubilee, Circle, District, Victoria. To get to the gallery in St. James’s, she would take the Bakerloo Line from Maida Vale to Piccadilly Circus. She purchased a ticket from an automated dispenser, then passed through the turnstile and headed down the escalator to the platform. So far, so good, she thought. Just another working girl in London.