Daniel Silva - The Kill Artist

Port Navas, Cornwall

Something made Peel wake up. He rolled onto his side, snatched the torch from his bedside table, and shone it at his watch: 3:15 A.M. He switched off the light and lay awake in the darkness, listening to the wind moaning in the eaves and his mother and Derek quietly quarreling in the room next door.

He could hear only snatches of their conversation, so he closed his eyes, remembering something about the blind hearing better than the sighted. “Having trouble with the new play,” Derek was saying. “Can’t seem to find my way into the first act… hard with a child in the house… back to London to be with his father… time alone together… lovers again…” Peel squeezed his eyes tightly, refusing to permit the tears to escape onto his cheeks.

He was about to cover his ears with his pillow when he heard a sound outside on the quay: a small car, rattling like an oxcart with a broken wheel. He sat, threw off his blankets, placed his feet on the cold wood floor. He carried his torch to the window and looked out: a single red taillight, floating along the quay toward the oyster farm.

The car vanished into the trees, then appeared a moment later, only now Peel was staring directly into the headlights. It was an MG, and it was stopping in front of the old foreman’s cottage. Peel raised his torch, aimed it at the car, and flashed the light twice. The lights of the MG winked back. Then the engine died, and the lights went dark.

Peel climbed back into bed and pulled his blankets beneath his chin. Derek and his mother were still quarreling, but he didn’t really care. The stranger was back in Port Navas. Peel closed his eyes and soon was asleep.

This book could not have been written without the generous assistance of David Bull. He truly is one of the world’s finest art restorers, and I was privileged to spend many enjoyable hours in his company. He gave freely of his time and expertise, and allowed me to wander through his studio and through his memories as well. For that I am eternally grateful. A special thanks to David’s talented wife, Teresa Longyear; to Lucy Bisognano, formerly of the National Gallery conservation staff, who tried to teach me the basics of X-ray analysis; and to Maxwell Anderson, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art, for his friendship and assistance. It goes without saying that they bear no responsibility for errors, omissions, or dramatic license.

Wolf Blitzer, a friend and colleague from my days at CNN, generously helped fill in some blanks in my research on the Israeli intelligence community. Louis Toscano, author of Triple Cross, a groundbreaking book on the Vanunu affair, read my manuscript and offered his keen insights. Glenn Whidden answered all my questions on the art of audio surveillance, as did a former head of the CIA’s Office of Technical Services.

Ion Trewin, the managing director of Weidenfeld amp; Nicolson in London, read my manuscript and, as always, offered wise counsel. Joseph Finder and Mark T. Sullivan provided invaluable moral support and kept me laughing throughout. Andrew Neil opened his home to us and shared some of his remarkable experiences in the world of London newspaper publishing. Ernie Lyles answered all my questions on semi-automatic handguns and made me a decent shot with a Glock and a Browning.

A special thanks to Peter and Paula White for an enchanting week in West Cornwall and a memorable boat trip up Helford Passage. Also, to the staffs of the venerable London art supplies shop L. Cornelissen amp; Son and the Hotel Queen Elizabeth in Montreal. And to Phyllis and Bernard Jacob, for their love, support, and a day roaming the streets of Brooklyn that I will never forget.

Among the dozens of nonfiction books I consulted while preparing this manuscript, several proved particularly helpful: Every Spy a Prince, by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman; Gideon’s Spies, by Gordon Thomas; Israel: A History and The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War, by Martin Gilbert; The Gun and the Olive Branch, by David Hirst; By Way of Deception, by Victor Ostrovsky and Clair Hoy; The Hit Team, by David B. Tinnin with Dag Christensen; My Home, My Land, by Abu Iyad; The Quest for the Red Prince, by Michael Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber; The Palestinians, by Jonathan Dimbleby; Arafat, by Alan Hart; and The Holocaust and the Jews of Marseille, by Donna F. Ryan.

A heartfelt thanks to the team at International Creative Management in New York: Jack Horner, John De Laney, and, of course, my literary agent, Esther Newberg. Your support and friendship means the world to me.

And finally, to the talented group of professionals at Random House: Ann Godoff, Andy Carpenter, Christen Kidd, Sybil Pincus, Lesley Oelsner, and my editor, Daniel Menaker. It is a privilege to work with someone of his enormous talent.

Daniel Silva’s first three novels-The Unlikely Spy, The Mark of the Assassin, and The Marching Season-were all national best-sellers and have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, NBC Today show correspondent Jamie Gangel, and their two children.