Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

Jacqueline flinched involuntarily. She regained her composure, but not before Yusef noticed that she was rattled. He stopped and watched Gabriel walking down the stairs, then looked at Jacqueline. He took her by the arm and led her to the door. When they entered the flat, he looked around the room quickly, then walked to the window and watched Gabriel walking away through the darkness.

Lisbon

A dense Atlantic fog rolled up the Rio Tejo as Kemel picked his way through the teeming streets of the Bairro Alto. Early evening, workers streaming home from jobs, bars and cafés filling up, Lisboans lining the counters of the cervejarias for an evening meal. Kemel crossed a small square: old men drinking red wine in the chill night air; varinas, the fishwives, washing sea bass in their big baskets. He negotiated a narrow alley lined with vendors selling cheap clothing and trinkets. A blind beggar asked him for money. Kemel dropped a few escudos in the black wooden box around his neck. A gypsy offered to tell his fortune. Kemel politely declined and kept walking. The Bairro Alto reminded him of Beirut in the old days- Beirut and the refugee camps, he thought. By comparison, Zürich seemed cold and sterile. No wonder Tariq liked Lisbon so much.

He entered a crowded fado house and sat down. A waiter placed a green-tinted bottle of house wine in front of him along with a glass. He lit a cigarette, poured himself a glass of the wine. Ordinary, no complexity, but surprisingly satisfying.

A moment later the same waiter went to the front of the cramped room and stood next to a pair of guitarists. When the guitarists strummed the first dark chords of the piece, the waiter closed his eyes and began to sing. Kemel couldn’t understand the words but soon found himself swept away by the haunting melody.

In the middle of the piece, a man sat down next to Kemel. Thick woolen sweater, shabby reefer coat, kerchief knotted at his throat, unshaven. Looked like a dockworker from the waterfront. He leaned over, muttered a few words to Kemel in Portuguese. Kemel shrugged his shoulders. “I’m afraid I don’t speak the language.”

He turned his attention back to the singer. The piece was reaching its emotional climax, but, in the tradition of fado, the singer remained ramrod straight, as though he were standing at attention.

The dockworker tapped Kemel’s elbow and spoke Portuguese to him a second time. This time Kemel simply shook his head and kept his eyes on the singer.

Then the dockworker leaned over and said in Arabic: “I asked you whether you liked fado music.”

Kemel turned and looked carefully at the man seated next to him.

Tariq said, “Let’s go somewhere quiet where we can talk.”

They walked from the Bairro Alto to the Alfama, a warren of narrow alleys and stone steps winding among whitewashed houses. Kemel was always amazed at Tariq’s uncanny ability to blend into his surroundings. Walking the steep hills seemed to tire him. Kemel wondered how much longer he could go on.

Tariq said, “You never answered my question.”

“Which question was that?”

“Do you like fado music?”

“I suppose it’s an acquired taste.” He smiled and added, “Like Lisbon itself. For some reason it reminds me of home.”

“Fado is a music devoted to suffering and pain. That’s why it reminds you of home.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

They passed an old woman sweeping the front step of her home.

Tariq said, “Tell me about London.”

“It looks as though Allon has made his first move.”

“That didn’t take long. What happened?”

Kemel told him about Yusef and the girl from the art gallery. “Yusef noticed a strange man in his block of flats last night. He thinks the man may have been an Israeli. He thinks he may have planted a bug in his flat.”

Kemel could see that Tariq was already calculating the possibilities. “Is this agent of yours a man who can be trusted with an important assignment?”

“He’s a very intelligent young man. And very loyal. I knew his father. He was killed by the Israelis in ‘eighty-two.”

“Has he looked for the bug?”

“I told him not to.”

“Good,” Tariq said. “Leave it in place. We can use it to our advantage. What about this girl? Is she still in the picture?”

“I’ve instructed Yusef to continue seeing her.”

“What’s she like?”

“Apparently quite attractive.”

“Do you have the resources in London to follow her?”

“Absolutely.”

“Do it. And get me a photograph of her.”

“You have an idea?”

They passed through a small square, then started up a long, steep hill. By the time they had reached the top, Tariq had explained the entire thing.

“It’s brilliant,” Kemel said. “But it has one flaw.”

“What’s that?”

“You won’t survive it.”

Tariq smiled sadly and said, “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a very long time.”

He turned and walked away. A moment later he had vanished into the fog. Kemel shivered. He turned up the collar of his coat and walked back to the Bairro Alto to listen to fado.

Bayswater, London

The operation settled into a comfortable if rather dull routine. Gabriel spent endless stretches of time with nothing to do but listen to the trivial details of Yusef’s life, which played out on his monitors like a dreadful radio drama. Yusef chatting on the telephone. Yusef arguing politics over cigarettes and Turkish coffee with his Palestinian friends. Yusef telling a heartbroken girl he could no longer see her because he was seriously involved with another. Gabriel found his life moving to the rhythm of Yusef’s. He ate when Yusef ate, slept when Yusef slept, and when Yusef made love to Jacqueline, Gabriel made love to her too.

But after ten days, Gabriel’s bugs had picked up nothing of value. There were several possible explanations. Perhaps Shamron had simply made a mistake. Perhaps Yusef really was just a waiter and a student. Perhaps he was an agent but was inactive. Or perhaps he was an active agent but was talking with his comrades through other means: signal sights and other forms of impersonal communication. To detect that, Gabriel would have to mount a full-scale round-the-clock surveillance operation. It would require multiple teams, at least a dozen officers-safe flats, vehicles, radios… An operation like that would be difficult to conceal from MI5, the British security service.

But there was one other possibility that troubled Gabriel most: the possibility that the operation was already blown. Perhaps his surveillance had turned up nothing because Yusef already suspected he was being watched. Perhaps he suspected that his flat was bugged and his telephones tapped. And perhaps he suspected that the beautiful French girl from the art gallery was actually an Israeli agent.

Gabriel decided it was time for another face-to-face meeting with Shamron in Paris.

He met Shamron the following morning in a tea shop on the rue Mouffetard. Shamron paid his tab, and they walked slowly up the hill through the markets and street vendors. “I want to pull her out,” Gabriel said.

Shamron paused at a fruit stand, picked up an orange, studied it for a moment before placing it gently back in the bin. Then he said, “Tell me you didn’t bring me all the way to Paris for this insanity.”

“Something doesn’t feel right. I want her out before it’s too late.”

“She’s not blown, and the answer is still no.” Shamron looked at Gabriel carefully and added, “Why is your face fallen, Gabriel? Are you listening to the tapes before you send them to me?”

“Of course I am.”