by Daniel Silva
“Tomorrow night. If that doesn’t work, we’ll try the next night.”
She lit a cigarette, threw back her head, blew smoke at the ceiling. Then she looked at Gabriel and narrowed her eyes. “Do you remember that night in Tunis?”
“Which night?”
“The night of the operation.”
“Of course I remember it.”
“I remember it as though it were yesterday.” She closed her eyes. “I especially remember the trip across the water back to the boat. I was so excited I couldn’t feel my body. I was flying. We had actually done it. We had walked right into that bastard’s house in the middle of a PLO compound and taken him out. I wanted to scream with joy. But I’ll never forget the look on your face. You were haunted. It was as if the dead men were sitting next to you in the boat.”
“Very few people understand what it’s like to shoot a man at close range. Even fewer know what it’s like to place a gun against the side of his head and pull the trigger. Killing on the secret battlefield is different from killing a man on the Golan or Sinai, even when it’s a murderous bastard like Abu Jihad.”
“I understand that now. I felt like such a fool when we got back to Tel Aviv. I acted like you had just scored the winning goal, and all the while you were dying inside. I hope you can forgive me.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“But what I don’t understand is how Shamron enticed you back after all these years.”
“It has nothing to do with Shamron. It’s about Tariq.”
“What about Tariq?”
Gabriel sat silently for a moment, then stood and walked to the window. In the courtyard a trio of boys kicked a ball in amber lamplight, old newspaper floating above them in the wet wind like cinder.
“Tariq’s older brother, Mahmoud, was a member of Black September. Ari Shamron tracked him to Cologne, and he sent me to finish him off. I slipped into his flat while he was sleeping and pointed a gun at his face. Then I woke him up so that he wouldn’t die a peaceful death. I shot him in both eyes. Seventeen years later Tariq took his revenge by blowing up my wife and son right before my eyes.”
Jacqueline covered her mouth with her hands. Gabriel was still staring out the window, but she could tell it was Vienna that he saw now and not the boys playing in the courtyard.
“For a long time I thought Tariq had made a mistake,” Gabriel said. “But he never makes mistakes like that. He’s careful, deliberate. He’s the perfect predator. He went after my family for a reason. He went after them to punish me for killing his brother. He knew it would be worse than death.” He turned to face her. “From one professional to another, it was an exquisite piece of work.”
“And now you’re going to kill him in return?”
He looked away and said nothing.
“I always blamed myself for what happened in Vienna,” Jacqueline said. “If we hadn’t—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Gabriel said, cutting her off. “It was my fault, not yours. I should have known better. I behaved foolishly. But it’s over now.”
The coldness of his voice felt like a knife in her chest. She took a long time crushing out her cigarette, then looked up at him. “Why did you tell Leah about us?”
He stood in the window for a moment, saying nothing. Jacqueline feared she had taken it too far. She tried to think of some way to defuse the situation and change the subject, but she desperately wanted to know the answer. If Gabriel hadn’t confessed the affair, Leah and Dani would never have been with him on assignment in Vienna.
“I told her because I didn’t want to lie to her. My entire life was a lie. Shamron had convinced me I was perfect, but I wasn’t perfect. For the first time in my life I had behaved with a bit of human frailty and weakness. I suppose I needed to share it with her. I suppose I needed someone to forgive me.”
He picked up his coat. His face was twisted. He was angry, not with her but with himself. “You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow.” His voice was all business now. “Get settled and try to get some rest. Julian’s expecting you at nine o’clock.”
And then he went out.
For a few minutes she was distracted by the ritual of unpacking. Then the pain crept up on her, like the delayed sting of a slap. She collapsed onto the couch and began to cry. She lit another cigarette and looked around at the dreary little flat. What in the hell am I doing here? She had agreed to come back for one reason—because she thought she could make Gabriel love her—but he had dismissed their affair in Tunis as a moment of weakness. Still, why had he come back after all these years to kill Tariq? Was it simply revenge? An eye for an eye? No, she thought—Gabriel’s motives ran far deeper and were more complex than pure revenge. Perhaps he needed to kill Tariq in order to forgive himself for what happened to Leah and finally move on with his life. But will he ever be able to forgive me? Perhaps the only way to earn his forgiveness was to help him kill Tariq. And the only way I can help him kill Tariq is to make another man fall for me and take him to bed. She closed her eyes and thought of Yusef al-Tawfiki.
Gabriel had left his car on the Ashworth Road. He made a show of dropping his keys on the curb and groping in the darkness as if he were trying to find them. In reality he was searching the undercarriage of the car, looking for something that shouldn’t be there—a mass, a loose wire. The car looked clean, so he climbed in, started the motor, drove in circles for a half hour through Maida Vale and Notting Hill, making certain he was not being followed.
He was annoyed with himself. He had been taught—first by his father, then by Ari Shamron—that men who could not keep secrets were weak and inferior. His father had survived Auschwitz but refused ever to speak of it. He struck Gabriel only once—when Gabriel demanded that his father tell him what had happened at the camp. If it hadn’t been for the numbers tattooed on his right forearm, Gabriel might never have known that his father had suffered.
Indeed, Israel was a place filled with damaged people—mothers who buried sons killed in wars, children who buried siblings killed by terrorists. After Vienna, Gabriel leaned on the lessons of his father: sometimes people die too soon. Mourn for them in private. Don’t wear your suffering on your sleeve like the Arabs. And when you’re finished mourning, get back on your feet and get on with life.
It was the last part—getting on with life—that had given Gabriel the most trouble. He blamed himself for what had happened in Vienna, not only because of his affair with Jacqueline but because of the way he had killed Tariq’s brother. He had wanted the satisfaction of knowing that Mahmoud was aware of his death—that he had been terrified at the moment Gabriel’s Beretta quietly dispatched the first scorching bullet into his brain. Shamron had told him to terrorize the terrorists—to think like them and behave like them. Gabriel believed he had been punished for allowing himself to become like his enemy.
He had punished himself in return. One by one he had closed the doors and barred the windows that had once given him access to life’s pleasures. He drifted through time and space the way he imagined a damned spirit might visit the place where he had lived: able to see loved ones and possessions but unable to communicate or taste or touch or feel. He experienced beauty only in art and only by repairing damage inflicted by uncaring owners and by the corrosive passage of time. Shamron had made him the destroyer. Gabriel had turned himself back into the healer. Unfortunately, he was not capable of healing himself.
So why tell his secrets to Jacqueline? Why answer her damned questions? The simple answer was he wanted to. He had felt it the moment he walked into her villa in Valbonne, a prosaic need to share secrets and reveal past pain and disappointment. But there was something more important: he didn’t have to explain himself to her. He thought of his silly fantasy about Peel’s mother, how it had ended when he had told her the truth about himself. The scenario reflected one of Gabriel’s deep-seated fears—the dread of telling another woman he was a professional killer. Jacqueline already knew his secrets.
He parked around the corner from his flat and walked quickly along the pavement toward the entrance of the block. He looked up toward his window and murmured, “Good evening, Mr. Karp.” And he pictured Karp, peering through the sight of his parabolic microphone, saying, “Welcome home, Gabe. Long time, no hear from.”
22
MAIDA VALE, LONDON
Jacqueline felt a peculiar exhilaration the following morning as she walked along Elgin Avenue toward the Maida Vale tube station. She had lived a life of hedonistic excess—too much money, too many men, fine things taken for granted. It felt reassuring to be doing something so ordinary as taking the Underground to work, even if it was only a cover job.
She bought a copy of The Times from the newsstand on the street, then entered the station and followed the stairs down to the ticket lobby. The previous evening she had studied street maps and memorized the Underground lines. They had such curious names: Jubilee, Circle, District, Victoria. To get to the gallery in St. James’s, she would take the Bakerloo Line from Maida Vale to Piccadilly Circus. She purchased a ticket from an automated dispenser, then passed through the turnstile and headed down the escalator to the platform. So far, so good, she thought. Just another working girl in London.
Her notion of relaxing for a few minutes with the newspaper dissolved when the train arrived at the station. The carriages were hopelessly crowded, the passengers crushed against the glass. Jacqueline, who was always protective of her personal space, considered waiting to see if the next train was any better. She looked at her watch, saw she had no time to waste. When the doors opened, only a handful of people got off. There seemed to be no place for her to stand. What would a Londoner do? Push her way in. She held her handbag across her breasts and stepped aboard.
The train lurched forward. The man next to her was breathing last night’s beer into her face. She stretched her long frame, tilted her head back, closed her eyes, found a draft of fresh air leaking through the crack in the doors.
A few moments later the train arrived at Piccadilly Circus. Outside, the mist had turned to light rain. Jacqueline pulled an umbrella from her handbag. She walked quickly, keeping pace with the office workers around her, making subtle alterations in course to avoid oncoming traffic.
Turning into Duke Street, she glanced over her shoulder. Walking a few feet behind her, wearing black jeans and a leather jacket, was Gabriel. She moved south along Duke Street until she arrived at the entrance of Mason’s Yard.
Gabriel bumped her elbow as he passed. “You’re clean. Give my love to Julian.”
The gallery was exactly as Gabriel had described it: wedged between the shipping company office and the pub. Next to the door was a panel, and on the panel were two buttons and two corresponding names: LOCUS TRAVEL and ISHER OO FINE AR S. She pressed the button, waited, pressed it again, waited, glanced at her watch, pressed it again. Nothing.
She crossed Mason’s Yard, entered Duke Street, and found a little café where she could wait. She ordered coffee and settled in the window with her Times. Fifteen minutes later, at precisely nine-twenty, she spotted a stylishly clothed gray-haired man rushing along Duke Street as though he were running late for his own funeral. He ducked through the passageway and disappeared into Mason’s Yard. Isherwood, she thought. Had to be.
She pushed her newspaper into her handbag and slipped out of the café after him. She followed him across Mason’s Yard toward the gallery. As he was unlocking the door she called out, “Mr. Isherwood, is that you? I’ve been waiting for you.”
Isherwood turned around. His mouth fell open slightly as she approached.
“I’m Dominique Bonard. I believe you were expecting me this morning.”
Isherwood cleared his throat several times rapidly and seemed to have trouble remembering which key opened the office. “Yes, well, delighted, really,” he stammered. “Awfully sorry, bloody tube, you know.”
“Let me take your briefcase. Maybe that will help.”
“Yes, well, you’re French,” he said, as if he thought this might be a revelation to her. “I have fluent Italian, but I’m afraid my French is rather atrocious.”
“I’m sure we’ll get along just fine in English.”
“Yes, quite.”
Finally, he managed to unlock the door. He held it open rather too gallantly and gestured for her to lead the way up the stairs. On the landing, Isherwood paused in front of the travel agency and studied the girl in one of the posters. He turned and glanced at Jacqueline, then stared at the girl in the photograph once more. “You know, Dominique, she could be your twin sister.”
Jacqueline smiled and said, “Don’t be silly.”
Isherwood opened the gallery and showed Jacqueline to her desk.
“There’s a man called Oliver Dimbleby coming later this morning. He looks rather like an English sausage in a Savile Row suit. Buzz him up when he arrives. Until then, let me show you round the rest of the gallery.”
He handed her a pair of keys on a blue elastic band. “These are for you. Whenever one of us leaves the gallery, the doors are to be armed. The disarm code is five-seven-six-four-nine-seven-three-two-six. Get that?”
Jacqueline nodded. Isherwood looked at her incredulously, and she repeated the sequence of numbers briskly and without error. Isherwood was clearly impressed.
They entered a small lift, barely large enough to accommodate two passengers. Isherwood inserted his key into the security lock, turned it, and pressed the button marked B. The lift groaned and shuddered, then traveled slowly down the shaft, coming to rest with a gentle bump. The doors opened, and they entered a cool, dark room.
“This is the tomb,” he said, switching on the lights. It was a cramped cellar filled with canvases, some framed, some unframed and resting in slots built into the walls. “This is my stockroom. Hundreds of works, many of them valuable, many more that have little or no worth on the open market and are therefore accumulating dust in this room.”
He led her back into the lift, and this time they rode up. The doors opened onto a large, high-ceilinged room. Gray morning light trickled through a circular glass dome in the roof. Jacqueline cautiously walked forward a few paces. Isherwood threw a switch, illuminating the room.
It was as if she had stepped into a museum. The walls were cream-colored and pristine, the hardwood floor burnished to a high gloss. In the center of the floor was a low bench covered in soft velvet the color of claret. On the walls were towering canvases lit by focused halogen lamps mounted in the ceiling. Rain pattered softly on the domed skylight. Jacqueline sat down on the bench. There was a Venus by Luini and a Nativity by del Vaga; a Baptism of Christ by Bordone and a stunning landscape by Claude.
“It’s breathtaking,” she said. “I feel like I’m in the Louvre. You must come up here often.”
“When I need to think. Feel free to come up anytime you like. Bring your lunch.”
“I will. Thank you for showing it to me.”
“If you’re going to work here, I suppose you should know your way round the place.”
They took the lift to the main level. Jacqueline sat at her new desk, pulled open the drawers, rummaged through the paper clips and pens, experimented with the copy machine.
Isherwood said, “You do know how to use those things, don’t you?”
“I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it.”
“Oh, good Lord,” he murmured.
Oliver Dimbleby arrived promptly at eleven o’clock. Jacqueline inspected him through the security camera—he did look rather like a sausage in a Savile Row suit—and buzzed him up. When he caught sight of her, he pulled in his stomach and smiled affectionately. “So, you’re Julian’s new girl,” he said, shaking her hand. “I’m Oliver Dimbleby. Very pleased to meet you. Very pleased, inde
ed.”
“Come, Oliver,” Isherwood called from the inner office. “Here, boy. Let go of her hand and get in here. We haven’t got all day.”
Oliver reluctantly relinquished her hand and stepped into Isherwood’s office. “Tell me, Julie, my love. If I actually buy this place, does that angel in there convey?”
“Oh, do shut up, Oliver.” Isherwood closed the door.
Jacqueline went back to her office and tried to figure out how to use the fax machine.
The telephone call arrived at the Kebab Factory at 4:00 P.M. Gabriel waited three minutes and twenty seconds for Yusef to come to the phone—he knew the precise amount of time it took because later he felt compelled to measure it with a stopwatch. During Yusef’s absence he was treated to the sounds of the kitchen help chattering in Lebanese Arabic and Mohammed, the afternoon manager, screaming at a busboy to clear table seventeen. When Yusef finally came to the phone, he seemed slightly out of breath. Their entire conversation lasted thirty-seven seconds. When it was done Gabriel rewound the tape and listened to it so many times Karp begged him to stop.
“Trust me, Gabe, there’s nothing sinister going on. It’s two guys talking about getting a drink and maybe finding a girl and getting laid. You remember getting laid, don’t you?”
But Gabriel was initiating the next phase of the operation—he was sending Jacqueline into hostile territory—and he wanted to be certain he wasn’t sending her into a trap. So he listened again:
“We still on for tonight?”
“Absolutely. Where?”
“All Bar One, Leicester Square, nine o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.”
STOP. REWIND. PLAY.
“We still on for tonight?”
“Absolutely. Where?”
“All Bar One, Leicester Square, nine o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.”
STOP. REWIND. PLAY.