Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

“I guessed that when Ari Shamron rolled into my gallery like a poisonous cloud. Where’s she off to? Lebanon? Libya? Iran? What was her real name, by the way?”

Gabriel just sipped his coffee and said nothing.

“Hate to see her go, actually. An angel, that one. And not a bad secretary once she got the hang of things.”

“She won’t be coming back.”

“They never do. I have a way of driving away women. Always have.”

“I hear you’re in final negotiations with Oliver Dimbleby to sell the gallery.”

“One doesn’t really negotiate when one is tied to the railroad tracks, Gabriel. One grovels. One begs.”

“Don’t do it.”

“How dare you sit there and tell me how to run my affairs? I wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for you and your friend Herr Heller.”

“The operation may be over sooner than we expected.”

“And?”

“And I can get back to work on the Vecellio.”

“There’s no way you can finish it in time to save my neck. I am now officially insolvent, which is why I’m negotiating with Oliver Dimbleby.”

“Dimbleby’s a hack. He’ll ruin the gallery.”

“Frankly, Gabriel, I’m too tired to give a shit at this point. I need something stronger than coffee. You?”

Gabriel shook his head. Isherwood shuffled over to the sideboard and dumped an inch of gin into a tumbler. “What’s in the bag?”

“An insurance policy.”

“Insurance on what?”

“Against the possibility that I’m unable to complete work on the Vecellio in time.” Gabriel handed the bag to Isherwood. “Open it.”

Isherwood set down his drink and unzipped the bag. “My God, Gabriel. How much is it?”

“A hundred thousand.”

“I can’t take your money.”

“It’s not mine. It’s Shamron’s, via Benjamin Stone.”

“The Benjamin Stone?”

“In all his glory.”

“What the hell are you doing with a hundred thousand pounds of Benjamin Stone’s money?”

“Just take it and don’t ask any more questions.”

“If it’s really Benjamin Stone’s, I think I will.” Isherwood raised his glass of gin. “Cheers, Gabriel. I’m sorry for all the miserable things I’ve thought about you during the past few weeks.”

“I deserved it. I should have never run out on you.”

“All is forgiven.” Isherwood stared into his drink for a long moment. “So where is she? Gone for good?”

“The operation has moved into its final stages.”

“You’ve not put that poor girl in any danger, have you?”

“I hope not.”

“So do I, for her sake and yours.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know, I’ve been in this lousy racket for almost forty years, and in all that time, no one’s ever managed to sell me a forgery. Dimbleby’s had his fingers burned. Even the great Giles Pittaway has managed to buy a fake or two in his time. But not me. I have the gift, you see. I may be a lousy businessman, but I can always tell a fraud from the real thing.”

“Are you coming to the point of this?”

“She’s the real thing, Gabriel. She’s golden. You may never get another chance like this. Hang on to her, because if you don’t, it will be the biggest mistake of your life.”

Before the Catastrophe, Daoud al-Hourani lived in the Upper Galilee. He was a muktar and the richest man in the village. He owned livestock-several head of cattle, many goats, and a large flock of sheep-as well as a grove of lemon, orange, and olive trees. When it was time to pick the fruit, he and the other village elders organized a communal harvest. The family lived in a whitewashed house with cool tile floors and fine rugs and cushions. His wife bore him five daughters but only one son, Mahmoud.

Daoud al-Hourani kept up good relations with the Jews who had settled on land near the village. When the Jews’ well became fouled, he drafted men from the village to help them dig a new one. When several Arabs in the village fell sick with malaria, Jews from the settlement came and drained a nearby swamp. Daoud al-Hourani learned to speak Hebrew. When one of his daughters fell in love with a Jewish man from the settlement, he permitted them to marry.

Then came the war, and then the Catastrophe. The al-Hourani clan, along with most of the Arabs of the Upper Galilee, fled across the border into Lebanon and settled in a refugee camp near Sidon. The camp itself was organized much like the villages of the Upper Galilee, and Daoud al-Hourani retained his status as an elder and a respected man, even though his land had been taken and his animals lost. His large whitewashed home was replaced by a cramped tent, broiling in the heat of summer, freezing and porous in the cold rains of winter. In the evenings, the men sat outside the tents and told stories of Palestine. Daoud al-Hourani assured his people that the exile would only be temporary-that the Arab armies would gather themselves and hurl the Jews into the sea.

But the Arab armies didn’t gather themselves, and they didn’t try to hurl the Jews into the sea. At the camp in Sidon, the tents turned to tattered rags, only to be replaced by crude huts, with open sewers. Slowly, as the years passed, Daoud al-Hourani began to lose influence over his villagers. He had told them to be patient, but their patience had gone unrewarded. Indeed, the plight of the Palestinians seemed only to worsen.

During those first awful years in the camp, there was only one piece of joyous news. Daoud al-Hourani’s wife became pregnant, even though she had reached the age when most women can no longer bear children. In the spring of that year, five years to the day after the al-Hourani clan fled its home in the Upper Galilee, she gave birth to a son in the infirmary of the camp. Daoud al-Hourani called the boy Tariq.

Branches of the al-Hourani clan were scattered throughout the diaspora. Some were across the border in Syria, some in camps in Jordan. A few, including al-Hourani’s brother, had managed to make it to Cairo. A few years after the birth of Tariq, Daoud al-Hourani’s brother died. He wished to attend his brother’s funeral, so he traveled to Beirut and obtained the necessary visas and permits to make the journey. Because he was a Palestinian, he had no passport. The following day he boarded a flight for Cairo but was turned back at the airport by a customs official who declared his papers were not in order. He returned to Beirut, but an immigration official denied him permission to reenter Lebanon. He was locked in a detention room at the airport, with no food or water.

A few hours later a dog was placed in the room. It had arrived unaccompanied on a flight from London, and, like Daoud al-Hourani, its papers had been challenged by Lebanese immigration officials. But one hour later a senior customs officer appeared and led the dog away. The animal had been granted special dispensation to enter the country.

Finally, after a week, Daoud al-Hourani was allowed to leave the airport and return to the camp at Sidon. That night, as the men sat around the fires, he gathered his sons to his side and told them of his ordeal.

“I asked our people to be patient. I promised them that the Arabs would come to our rescue, but here we are, many years later, and we are still in the camps. The Arabs treat us worse than the Jews. The Arabs treat us worse than dogs. The time for patience has ended. It is time to fight.”

Tariq was too young to fight; he was still just a boy. But Mahmoud was nearly twenty now, and he was ready to take up arms against the Jews. That night he joined the feyadeen. It was the last time Tariq would see him alive.

Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris