Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

But Shamron was in no particular hurry to see them, for he was quite certain he knew more about the terrible events that evening in Paris than they ever would.

For one hour Shamron sat in his chair, stone-faced, smoking one cigarette after another, watching CNN International on one television, the BBC on another, French state television on the third. He didn’t particularly care what the correspondents had to say-they knew next to nothing at this point, and Shamron knew he could put words in their mouths with one five-minute phone call. He wanted to hear from the witnesses, the people who had seen the assassination with their own eyes. They would tell him what he wanted to know.

A German girl, interviewed on CNN, described the auto accident that preceded the assault: “There were two vehicles, a van of some sort, and a sedan. Maybe it was a Peugeot, but I can’t be sure. Traffic on the bridge came to a standstill in a matter of seconds.”

Shamron used his remote to mute CNN and turn up the volume on the BBC. A taxi driver from the Ivory Coast described the killer: dark hair, well dressed, good-looking, cool. The killer had been with a girl on the bridge when the accident occurred: “A blond girl, a little heavy, a foreigner, definitely not French.” But the taxi driver saw nothing else, because he took cover beneath the dashboard when the bomb went off and didn’t look up again until the shooting stopped.

Shamron removed a scuffed leather-bound notebook from his shirt pocket, laid it carefully on the desk, and opened it to a blank page. In his small precise hand he wrote a single word.

GIRL.

Shamron’s gaze returned to the television. An attractive young Englishwoman called Beatrice was recounting the attack for a BBC correspondent. She described a traffic accident involving a van and a car that brought traffic on the bridge to a standstill, trapping the ambassador’s car. She described how the killer walked away from his girlfriend and drew a weapon from his bag. How he then tossed the bag beneath the undercarriage of the limousine and waited for it to detonate before calmly walking forward and killing everyone inside.

Then Beatrice described how the killer walked slowly toward the girl-the girl who seconds before he had been passionately kissing-and fired several bullets into her chest.

Shamron licked the tip of his pencil and below the word GIRL he wrote a name:

TARIQ.

Shamron picked up his secure telephone and dialed Uzi Navot, the head of his Paris station. “They had someone inside that reception. Someone who alerted the team outside that the ambassador was leaving. They knew his route. They staged an accident to tie up traffic and leave the driver with no way to escape.”

Navot agreed. Navot made it a habit to agree with Shamron.

“There’s a great deal of very valuable artwork inside that building,” Shamron continued. “I would suspect there’s a rather sophisticated video surveillance system, wouldn’t you, Uzi?”

“Of course, boss.”

“Tell our friends in the French service that we’d like to dispatch a team to Paris immediately to monitor the investigation and provide any support they require. And then get your hands on those videotapes and send them to me in the pouch.”

“Done.”

“What about the bridge? Are there police surveillance cameras covering that bridge? With any luck we may have a recording of the entire attack-and their preparation.”

“I’ll look into it.”

“Anything left of the limousine?”

“Not much. The fuel tank exploded, and the fire consumed just about everything, including the bodies, I’m afraid.”

“How did he get away?”

“He hopped on the back of a motorcycle. Gone in a matter of seconds.”

“Any sign of him?”

“Nothing, boss.”

“Any leads?”

“If there are any, the Paris police aren’t sharing them with me.”

“What about the other members of the team?”

“Gone too. They were good, boss. Damned good.”

“Who’s the dead girl?”

“An American.”

Shamron closed his eyes and swore softly. The last thing he needed now was the involvement of the Americans. “Have the Americans been told yet?”

“Half the embassy staff is on the bridge now.”

“Does this girl have a name?”

“Emily Parker.”

“What was she doing in Paris?”

“Apparently she was taking a few months off after graduation.”

“How wonderful. Where was she living?”

“ Montmartre. A team of French detectives is working the neighborhood: poking around, asking questions, trying to pick up anything they can.”

“Have they learned anything interesting?”

“I haven’t heard anything else, boss.”

“Go to Montmartre in the morning. Have a look around for yourself. Ask a few questions. Quietly, Uzi. Maybe someone in her building or in a local café got a look at lover boy.”

“Good idea, boss.”

“And do me one other favor. Take the file photographs of Tariq with you.”

“You think he was behind this?”

“I prefer to keep my options open at this point.”

“Even if they got a look at him, those old photographs won’t be any help. He’s changed his appearance a hundred times since then.”

“Humor me.” Shamron jabbed at the winking green light on the telephone and killed the connection.

It was still dark as Shamron’s Peugeot limousine sped across the coastal plain and rose into the Judean Mountains toward Jerusalem. Shamron removed his spectacles and rubbed the raw red skin beneath his eyes. It had been six months since he had been pulled from retirement and given a simple mission: bring stability to an intelligence service badly damaged by a series of highly publicized operational blunders and personnel scandals. His job was to rebuild morale. Restore the esprit de corps that had characterized the Office in the old days.

He had managed to stem the bleeding-there had been no more humiliations, like the bungled attempt to assassinate a violent Moslem cleric in Amman that had been orchestrated by his predecessor-but there had been no stunning successes either. Shamron knew better than anyone that the Office had not earned its fearsome reputation by playing it safe. In the old days it had stolen MiGs, planted spies in the palaces of its friends and its enemies, rained terror on those who dared to terrorize the people of Israel. Shamron did not want his legacy to be an Office that no longer made mistakes. He wanted to leave behind an Office that could reach out and strike at will. An Office that could make the other services of the world shake their heads in wonder.

He knew he did not have much time. Not everyone at King Saul Boulevard had celebrated his return. There were some who believed Shamron’s time had come and gone, that Shamron should have been left in Tiberias to wrestle with his radios and his conscience while the torch was passed to the next generation. Certainly a man like Mordecai deserved to be chief after all those years slugging it out in the trenches of Operations, Shamron’s detractors had argued. Eli had the makings of a fine chief, they said. He just needed a bit more seasoning in the executive suite and he would be ready for the top job. Even Lev of Operations was thought to be suitable material, though Lev did let his temper get the better of him now and again, and Lev had made his share of enemies over the years.

Shamron was stuck with them. Because he was only a caretaker, he had been given almost no power to make changes among the senior staff at King Saul Boulevard. As a result he was surrounded by a pack of predators who would pounce at the first sign of weakness. And the volcanic Lev was the most threatening of all, for Lev had anointed himself Shamron’s personal Brutus.