Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

“There they are.”

She gave him a slight push to separate their bodies. Gabriel turned and started across the street, taking his eyes off Tariq just long enough to make certain he wasn’t walking into the path of a car. His hand was making the gun wet. He could hear nothing except his own breathing and the hiss of blood rushing through his inner ears. Jacqueline looked up. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second; then she abruptly looked away. Tariq took her by the elbow.

As Gabriel pulled the Beretta from his pocket, a car careened around the corner and accelerated toward him. He had no choice but to quickly step out of the way. Then the car skidded to a halt, with Gabriel on one side and Tariq and Jacqueline on the other.

The rear door facing Tariq flew open. He pulled Jacqueline forward and forced her into the car. Her handbag fell from her shoulder and tumbled into the street. Tariq smiled wolfishly at Gabriel and climbed into the backseat next to Jacqueline.

The car sped away. Gabriel crossed the street and picked up Jacqueline’s purse. Then he went back to the restaurant and collected the girl. Together they walked up the rue St-Denis. Gabriel opened Jacqueline’s purse and thumbed through the contents. Inside was her wallet, her passport, some makeup, and the gold lighter Shamron had given her at the gallery.

“You should have taken the shot, Gabriel!”

“I didn’t have a shot!”

“You had a shot over the roof of that car!”

“Bullshit!”

“You had a shot, but you hesitated!”

“I hesitated because if I had missed that shot over the roof of the car, the bullet would have ended up in the restaurant across the street, and you might have a dead bystander on your hands.”

“You never used to consider the possibility of missing.”

The van accelerated away from the curb. Gabriel was seated on the floor of the rear cargo bay, the girl opposite him, knees beneath her chin, eyeing him intently. Gabriel closed his eyes and tried to think calmly for a moment. It was a complete disaster. Jacqueline was gone. She had no passport, no identification, and, more important, no tracking beacon. They’d had one major advantage over Tariq: the ability to know where she was all the time. Now that advantage had vanished.

He pictured the sequence of events. Tariq and Jacqueline leaving the restaurant. The car appearing out of nowhere. Tariq pushing Jacqueline into the backseat. Tariq’s wolfish smile.

Gabriel closed his eyes and saw the ghostly image of Tariq beckoning him forward with a Van Dyck hand. He knew all along, thought Gabriel. He knew it was me coming for him on the rue St-Denis. He led me there.

Shamron was talking again. “Your first responsibility was to Jacqueline. Not to someone in a bistro behind her. You should have taken the shot, regardless of the consequences!”

“Even if I’d managed to hit him, Jacqueline still would be gone. She was in the car, the engine was running. They were going to take her, and there was nothing I could have done to stop it.”

“You should have fired at the car. We might have been able to trap them on that street.”

“Is that what you wanted? A gunfight in the middle of Montreal? A shoot-out? You would have had another Lillehammer on your hands. Another Amman. Another disaster for the Office.”

Shamron turned around, glared at Gabriel, then stared straight ahead.

Gabriel said, “What now, Ari?”

“We find them.”

“How?”

“We have a very good idea where they’re going.”

“We can’t find Tariq in the States alone.”

“What are you suggesting, Gabriel?”

“We need to alert the Americans that he’s probably coming their way. We need to tell the Canadians too. Maybe they can prevent him from taking her across the border. If we get lucky they might be able to stop them before they reach the border.”

“Tell the Americans and the Canadians? Tell them what exactly? Tell them that we intended to assassinate a Palestinian on Canadian soil? Tell them that we botched the job, and now we’d like their help cleaning up the mess? I don’t think that would go over very well in Ottawa or Washington.”

“So what do we do? Sit on our hands and wait?”

“No, we go to America, and we tighten security around the prime minister. Tariq didn’t come all this way for nothing. Eventually he has to make his move.”

“And what if his target isn’t the prime minister?”

“The security of the prime minister is my only concern at this point.”

“I’m sure Jacqueline would be pleased to know this.”

“You know what I mean, Gabriel. Don’t play word games with me.”

“You’ve forgotten one thing, Ari. She doesn’t have a passport any longer.” Gabriel held up her handbag. “It’s here. How are they going to get her across the border without a passport?”

“Obviously, Tariq’s made other arrangements.”

“Or maybe he doesn’t intend to take her across the border. Maybe he’s going to kill her first.”

“That’s why you should have taken the shot, Gabriel.”

Sabrevois, Quebec

Jacqueline had tried to follow the road signs. Route 40 through Montreal. Route 10 across the river. Route 35 into the countryside. Now this: Route 133, a two-lane provincial road stretching across the tabletop of southern Quebec. Strange how quickly cosmopolitan Montreal had given way to this vast empty space. A brittle moon floated above the horizon, ringed by a halo of ice. Wind-driven snow swirled across the asphalt like a sandstorm. Occasionally an object floated out of the gloom. A grain silo poking above the snow cover. A dimly lit farmhouse. A blacked-out agricultural sup-ply store. Ahead she saw neon lights. As they drew closer she could see that the lights formed the outlines of women with enormous breasts: a strip joint in the middle of no-where. She wondered where they got the girls. Maybe they enjoyed watching their sisters and girlfriends dance topless. Desolation, she thought. This is why the word was created.

After an hour of driving they were just a few miles from the U.S. border. She thought: How’s he going to take me across when my passport and the rest of my things are laying back on the rue St-Denis in Montreal?

My passport and the cigarette lighter with the beacon…

It had all happened so quickly. After spotting Gabriel she had looked away and prepared herself for what she thought would happen next. Then the car appeared, and he pushed her inside so roughly that her handbag fell from her grasp. As the car sped away she yelled at him to go back and let her get her bag, but he ignored her and told the driver to go faster. It was then that Jacqueline noticed the woman she knew as Leila was driving the car. A few blocks away they switched cars. The driver was the same man who had left his briefcase for Tariq in the underground coffee bar. This time they drove several blocks to the part of Montreal known as Outremont. There they switched cars one last time. Now Tariq was driving.

He was sweating. Jacqueline could see the shine on his skin in the lime-colored glow of the dashboard lights. His face had turned deathly white, dark circles beneath his eyes, right hand shaking.

“Would you like to explain to me what happened back there in Montreal?”

“It was a routine security precaution.”

“You call that routine? If it was so routine, why didn’t you let me go back and get my purse?”

“From time to time I find myself under surveillance by Israeli intelligence and by their friends in the West. I’m also monitored by my enemies within the Palestinian movement. My instincts told me that someone was watching us in Montreal.”

“That charade cost me my handbag and everything in it.”