Daniel Silva GABRIEL ALLON Novels 1-4 (14 page)

He pressed his pelvis against her back, so that she could feel his erection beneath his leather trousers.

She drew away.

“I’m just trying to help, Jacqueline. I want to make sure these pictures come out well. I don’t want to see your career crash and burn. My motives are purely selfless.”

“I never knew you were such a philanthropist, Michel.”

He laughed. “Come with me. I want to show you something.” He took her by the hand and pulled her off the set. They walked down a hallway and entered a room furnished with nothing but a large bed. Michel pulled off his shirt and began unbuttoning his trousers.

Jacqueline said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You want good pictures, I want good pictures. Let’s get in the right frame of mind. Take off the dress so it doesn’t get ruined.”

“Go fuck yourself, Michel. I’m leaving.”

“Come on, Jacqueline. Stop fooling around and get into bed.”

“No!”

“What’s the big deal? You slept with Robert Leboucher, so he would give you that swimwear shoot in Mustique.”

“How did you know that?”

“Because he told me.”

“You’re a bastard, and so is he! I’m not some seventeen-year-old who’s going to spread her legs for you because she wants good pictures from the great Michel Duval.”

“If you walk out of here, your career is over.”

“I don’t give a shit.”

He pointed at his erection. “What am I supposed to do about this?”

Marcel Lambert lived a short distance away, on the rue de Tournon, in the Luxembourg Quarter. Jacqueline needed time to herself, so she walked, taking her time in the narrow side streets of the Latin Quarter. Darkness falling, lights coming on in the bistros and the cafés, the smell of cigarettes and frying garlic on the chill air.

She crossed into the Luxembourg Quarter. How quickly it had come to this, she thought—Michel Duval, trying to threaten her into a quickie between takes. A few years ago he wouldn’t have considered it. But not now. Now she was vulnerable, and Marcel had decided to test her.

Sometimes she was sorry she ever got into this business. She had planned to be a ballet dancer—had studied at the most prestigious academy in Marseilles—but at sixteen she was spotted by a talent scout from a Paris modeling agency, who gave her name to Marcel Lambert. Marcel scheduled a test shoot, let her move into his flat, taught her how to move and act like a model instead of a ballerina. The photographs from the test shoot were stunning. She had dominated the camera, radiated a playful sexuality. Marcel quietly put the pictures into circulation around Paris: no name, nothing about the girl, just the pictures and his card. The reaction was instantaneous. His telephone didn’t stop ringing for a week. Photographers were clamoring to work with her. Designers wanted to sign her up for their fall shows. Word of the photographs leaked from Paris to Milan and from Milan to New York. The entire fashion world wanted to know the name of this mysterious raven-haired French beauty.

Jacqueline Delacroix.

How different things were now. The quality work had started to slow down when she turned twenty-six, but now that she was thirty-three the good jobs had dried up. She still got some runway work in Paris and Milan in the fall, but only with lower-level designers. She still landed the occasional lingerie ad—“There’s nothing wrong with your tits, darling,” Marcel liked to say—but he had been forced to hire her out for different types of shoots. She had just finished a shoot for a German brewery in which she posed as the attractive wife of a successful middle-aged man.

Marcel had warned it would happen this way. He had told her to save her money, to prepare herself for a life after modeling. Jacqueline had never bothered—she’d assumed the money would pour in forever. Sometimes she tried to remember where all of it had gone. The clothes. The crash pads in Paris and New York. The extravagant vacations with the other girls in the Caribbean or the South Pacific. The ton of cocaine she had sucked up her nose before getting straight.

Michel Duval had been right about one thing: she
had
slept with a man to get a job, an editor from French
Vogue
named Robert Leboucher. It was a high-profile job that she needed desperately—a swimsuit and summer-wear shoot in Mustique. It could change everything for her—give her enough money to get back on stable ground financially, show everyone in the industry that she still had what it took for the hot jobs. At least for one more year, two at the most.
Then what?

She walked into Marcel’s building, entered the lift, rode up to his flat. When she knocked on the door, it flew back. Marcel stood there, wide-eyed, mouth open. “Jacqueline, my pet! Please tell me it’s not true. Tell me you didn’t kick Michel Duval in the balls! Tell me he made up the entire thing!”

“Actually, Marcel, I kicked him in the cock.”

He threw back his head and laughed loudly. “I’m certain you’re the first woman who’s ever done that. Serves the bastard right. He almost ruined Claudette. You remember what he did to her? Poor little thing. So beautiful, so much talent.”

He pulled his lips downward, emitted a Gallic snort of disapproval, took her by the hand, and pulled her inside. A moment later they were drinking wine on the couch in his sitting room, the hum of evening traffic drifting through the open windows. Marcel lit her cigarette and deftly waved out the match. He wore tight-fitting faded blue jeans, black loafers, and a gray turtleneck sweater. His thinning gray hair was cropped very short. He’d had another face-lift recently; his blue eyes seemed unnaturally large and bulging, as if he were constantly surprised. She thought about those days so long ago, when Marcel had brought her to this flat and prepared her for her life ahead. She’d always felt safe in this place.

“So what kind of stunt did Michel pull now?”

Jacqueline described the shoot, holding nothing back. There were few secrets between them. When she finished Marcel said, “You probably shouldn’t have kicked him. He’s threatening to sue.”

“Let him try. Every girl he’s coerced into having sex will testify at his trial. It’ll destroy him.”

“Robert Leboucher called me a few minutes before you arrived. He’s trying to back out of Mustique. He says he can’t work with a woman who kicks photographers.”

“Word travels fast in this business.”

“It always has. I think I can talk some sense into Robert.” Marcel hesitated, then added, “That is, if you want me to.”

“Of course I want you to.”

“Are you sure, Jacqueline? Are you sure you still have what it takes for this kind of work?”

She took a long drink of the wine, leaned her head against Marcel’s shoulder. “Actually, I’m not quite sure I do.”

“Do me a favor, sweetheart. Go to your house in the south for a few days. Or take one of those long trips like you used to take. You know—the ones you were always so mysterious about. Get some rest. Clear your head. Do some serious thinking. I’ll try to talk some sense into Robert. But you have to decide whether this is really what you want.”

She closed her eyes. Perhaps it was time to get out while she still had some shred of dignity. “You’re right,” she said. “I could use a few days in the countryside. But I want you to call that fucking Robert Leboucher right now and tell him that you expect him to keep his word about the shoot in Mustique.”

“And what if I can’t make him change his mind?”

“Tell him I’ll kick him in the cock too.”

Marcel smiled. “Jacqueline, darling, I’ve always liked your style.”

12

BAYSWATER, LONDON

Fiona Barrows looked a great deal like the block of flats she managed in Sussex Gardens: broad and squat with a bright coat of paint that could not conceal the fact she was aging and not terribly gracefully. The short walk from the lift to the entrance of the vacant flat left her slightly out of breath. She shoved the key into the lock with her plump hand, pushed open the door with a little grunt. “Here we are,” she sang.

She led him on a brief tour: a sitting room furnished with well-worn couches and chairs, two identical bedrooms with double beds and matching bedside tables, a small dining room with a modern table of tinted gray glass, a cramped galley kitchen with a two-burner stove and a microwave oven.

He walked back into the sitting room, stood in the window, opened the blinds. Across the road was another block of flats.

“If you want my opinion, you couldn’t ask for a better location in London for the price,” Fiona Barrows said. “Oxford Street is very close, and of course Hyde Park is just around the corner. Do you have children?”

“No, I don’t,” Gabriel said absently, still looking at the block of flats across the street.

“What kind of work do you do, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I’m an art restorer.”

“You mean you spruce up old paintings?”

“Something like that.”

“You do the frames as well? I have an old frame in my flat that needs patching up.”

“Just the paintings, I’m afraid.”

She looked at him as he stood in the window, gazing into space. A handsome man, she thought. Nice hands. Good hands were sexy in a man. Imagine, an
art
restorer, right here in the building. It would be nice to have a touch of class around for a change. Oh, that she were still single—single, twenty years younger, twenty pounds lighter. He was a cautious fellow; she could see that. A man who never made a move without thinking through every angle. He would probably want to see a dozen more flats before making up his mind. “So, what do you think?”

“It’s perfect,” he said to the window.

“When would you like it?”

Gabriel closed the blind. “Right now.”

For two days Gabriel watched him.

On the first day he saw him just once—when he rose shortly after noon and appeared briefly in the window wearing only a pair of black underpants. He had dark, curly hair, angular cheekbones, and full lips. His body was lean and lightly muscled. Gabriel pulled open Shamron’s file and compared the face in the window with the photograph clipped to the manila cover.

Same man.

Gabriel could feel an operational coldness spreading over him as he studied the figure in the window. Suddenly everything seemed brighter and sharper in contrast. Noises seemed louder and more distinct—a car door closing, lovers quarreling in the next flat, a telephone ringing unanswered, his teakettle screaming in the kitchen. One by one he tuned out these intrusions and focused all his attention on the man in the window across the street.

Yusef al-Tawfiki, part-time Palestinian nationalist poet, part-time student at University College London, part-time waiter at a Lebanese restaurant called the Kebab Factory on the Edgware Road, full-time action agent for Tariq’s secret army.

A hand appeared on Yusef’s abdomen: pale skin, luminous against his dark complexion. A woman’s hand. Gabriel saw a flash of short blond hair. Then Yusef vanished behind the curtains.

The girl left an hour later. Before climbing into the taxi, she looked up toward the flat to see if her lover was watching. The window was empty and the curtains drawn. She closed the door, a little harder than necessary, and the taxi drove away.

Gabriel made his first operational assessment: Yusef didn’t treat his women well.

The next day Gabriel decided to mount a loose physical surveillance.

Yusef left the flat at midday. He wore a white shirt, black trousers, and a black leather jacket. As he stepped onto the pavement, he paused to light a cigarette and scan the parked cars for any sign of surveillance. He waved out the match and started walking toward the Edgware Road. After about a hundred yards he stopped suddenly, turned around, and walked back to the entrance of the block of flats.

Standard countersurveillance move, thought Gabriel. He’s a professional.

Five minutes later Yusef was back outside and walking in the direction of the Edgware Road. Gabriel went into the bathroom, rubbed styling oil into his short hair, and slipped on a pair of red-tinted spectacles. Then he pulled on his coat and went out.

Across the street from the Kebab Factory was a small Italian restaurant. Gabriel went inside and sat down at a table next to the window. He remembered the lectures at the Academy. If you’re watching a target from a café, don’t do things that make you look like you’re watching a target from a café, such as sitting alone for hours pretending to read a newspaper. Too obvious.

Gabriel transformed himself. He became Cedric, a writer for an upstart Paris cultural magazine. He spoke English with a nearly impenetrable French accent. He claimed to be working on a story about why London was so exciting these days and Paris so dreary. He smoked Gitane cigarettes and drank a great deal of wine. He carried on a tiresome conversation with a pair of Swedish girls at the next table. He invited one of them to his hotel room. When she refused he asked the other. When she refused he asked them both. He spilled a glass of Chianti. The manager, Signor Andriotti, appeared at the table and warned Cedric to keep quiet or he would have to leave.

Yet all the while Gabriel was watching Yusef across the street. He watched him while he skillfully handled the lunch crowd. Watched him when he left the restaurant briefly and walked up the road to a newsstand that stocked Arabic-language newspapers. Watched while a pretty dark-haired girl jotted her telephone number on the back of a napkin and slipped it into his shirt pocket for safekeeping. Watched while he carried on a long conversation with a vigilant-looking Arab. In fact, at the moment Gabriel was spilling his Chianti, he was memorizing the make and registration number of the Arab’s Nissan car. And while he was fending off the exasperated Signor Andriotti, he was watching Yusef talking on the telephone.
Who was he talking to?
A woman? A cousin in Ramallah? His control officer?

After an hour Gabriel decided it was no longer wise to remain in the café. He paid his check, left a generous tip, and apologized for his boorish behavior. Signor Andriotti guided him to the door and cast him gently out to sea.