The Kill Artist (28 page)

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Authors: Daniel Silva

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller, #Suspense, #Adventure, #Politics

BOOK: The Kill Artist
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Once inside he walked across the lobby without hesitation. It was a doctrine that had been pounded into him by Shamron during the Black September operation: hit hard and fast, don’t worry about making a bit of noise, get away quickly. After his first job, the assassination of the Black September chief in Rome, Gabriel was flying to Geneva within an hour of the killing. He hoped this operation would go as smoothly.
He mounted the stairs and climbed quickly toward the second floor. Descending toward him were a group of young Indians: two boys, a pretty girl. As they passed him on the first-floor landing, Gabriel turned his face and pretended to be working the zipper on the rucksack. As the Indians continued down the stairs, he risked a glance over his shoulder. None of them looked back. He waited on the second-floor landing a moment and listened as they crossed the lobby and headed out the front entrance. Then he walked to Yusef’s flat: number 27.
This time the keys worked perfectly on the first try, and within seconds Gabriel was inside the flat. He closed the door and left the lights off. He reached into the rucksack and removed a small flashlight. He switched it on and quickly played the beam around the floor next to the door, looking for a telltale—a scrap of paper or any other innocent-looking small object that would alert Yusef that the flat had been entered. He saw nothing.
He turned and shone the light quickly around the room. He resisted the impulse to search Yusef’s flat. He had watched him from a distance for several days, developed a natural curiosity about the man. Was he neat and orderly, or a slob? What kind of food did he eat? Did he have debts? Did he use drugs? Did he wear strange underwear? Gabriel wanted to search his drawers and read his private papers. He wanted to look at his clothing and his bathroom. He wanted to see anything that might complete the picture—any clue that might help him better understand how Yusef fit into Tariq’s organization. But now was not the time for that kind of search. Too risky, the odds of detection too great.
The beam of the flashlight settled on Yusef’s telephone. Gabriel crossed the room, knelt beside it. He removed the duplicate from the rucksack and quickly compared it with the original. Perfect match. Jacqueline had done her job well. He pulled the wire from Yusef’s phone and exchanged it for the duplicate. The cord connecting the handset to the base on Yusef’s telephone was worn and stretched, the cord on the duplicate brand-new, so Gabriel quickly switched the cords.
He glanced out the window toward the listening post. Karp’s signal light was still burning. It was safe to continue. He shoved Yusef’s phone into the rucksack as he moved from the sitting room into the bedroom.
As he passed the bed, he had a disturbing image of Jacqueline’s naked body writhing in rumpled sheets. He wondered whether his curiosity about Yusef was purely professional. Had it become personal as well? Did he now consider the Palestinian something of a rival?
He realized he had been staring at the empty bed for several seconds.
What in the hell has got into you?
He turned around, focused his attention on the clock radio. Before unplugging it, he checked the settings. The alarm was programmed to go off at 8:00 A.M. He turned on the radio: BBC Radio Five, volume low.
He shut off the radio, pulled the power cord out of the wall.
At that instant his cell phone rang.
He stood and looked out the window. The signal light was out.
He had been so unnerved by the image of Jacqueline on the bed that he had forgotten to keep an eye on the listening post. He answered the phone before it could ring a second time.
Karp said, “Get the fuck out of there! We have company.”
Gabriel crossed the room toward the window and looked out.
Jacqueline and Yusef were getting out of a taxi.
What happened to dinner?
He turned around. Now he had a serious problem. He had unplugged Yusef’s clock radio. He had to plug it back in and reprogram it before leaving. Otherwise Yusef would suspect someone had been in the flat.
He calculated how long it would take them to come upstairs. A few seconds to open the front entrance . . . a few more seconds to cross the lobby . . . about forty-five seconds to climb the stairs and walk down the hallway to the door. He had nearly a minute.
He decided to do it.
He took the duplicate clock radio from the rucksack and plugged it in. The red display lights flashed
12:00 . . . 12:00 . . . 12:00. . . .
He almost had to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. The future of the operation depended on whether he could set an alarm clock quickly enough to avoid being caught. Ari Shamron had persuaded him to come back and help restore the glory of the Office, but now it was going to be just another fiasco!
He began pressing the hour-setting button. The numbers advanced, but his fingers were trembling from the adrenaline, and he mistakenly set it for nine o’clock instead of eight.
Shit!
He had to go through the entire twenty-four-hour cycle again. The second time he got it right. He set the current time, then switched on the radio, tuned it to Radio Five, and adjusted the volume.
He had no idea how long it had taken.
He snatched up the rucksack, killed the flashlight, moved from the bedroom to the front door. As he walked he pulled his Beretta from the waistband of his trousers and slipped it into the front pocket of his coat.
He paused at the front door and pressed his ear against it. The corridor was quiet. He had to try to get out. There was no place in the flat where he could hide and reasonably expect to slip out again. He pulled open the door and stepped into the corridor.
He could hear footfalls in the stairwell.
He placed his hand around the grip of the Beretta and started walking.
In the taxi Jacqueline had forced herself to calm down. Her job had been to keep Yusef away from the flat, but if she had objected to his idea of eating dinner at home, he might have become suspicious. The chances of Gabriel being in the flat the moment they returned were next to nothing. The entire job would take only minutes. The odds were good that he had already planted the bugs and was gone. There was another, more reassuring possibility: Gabriel had expected Yusef to meet her at the gallery at six-thirty and then take her to dinner. Perhaps he hadn’t even entered the flat yet. He would notice that they had returned early, and he would call it off and try another time.
They crossed the lobby, started up the stairs. A man passed them on the second-floor landing: Gabriel, head down, rucksack over his shoulder.
Jacqueline flinched involuntarily. She regained her composure, but not before Yusef noticed that she was rattled. He stopped and watched Gabriel walking down the stairs, then looked at Jacqueline. He took her by the arm and led her to the door. When they entered the flat, he looked around the room quickly, then walked to the window and watched Gabriel walking away through the darkness.
26
 
LISBON
 
A dense Atlantic fog rolled up the Rio Tejo as Kemel picked his way through the teeming streets of the Bairro Alto. Early evening, workers streaming home from jobs, bars and cafés filling up, Lisboans lining the counters of the
cervejarias
for an evening meal. Kemel crossed a small square: old men drinking red wine in the chill night air;
varinas,
the fishwives, washing sea bass in their big baskets. He negotiated a narrow alley lined with vendors selling cheap clothing and trinkets. A blind beggar asked him for money. Kemel dropped a few escudos in the black wooden box around his neck. A gypsy offered to tell his fortune. Kemel politely declined and kept walking. The Bairro Alto reminded him of Beirut in the old days—Beirut and the refugee camps, he thought. By comparison, Zürich seemed cold and sterile. No wonder Tariq liked Lisbon so much.
He entered a crowded
fado
house and sat down. A waiter placed a green-tinted bottle of house wine in front of him along with a glass. He lit a cigarette, poured himself a glass of the wine. Ordinary, no complexity, but surprisingly satisfying.
A moment later the same waiter went to the front of the cramped room and stood next to a pair of guitarists. When the guitarists strummed the first dark chords of the piece, the waiter closed his eyes and began to sing. Kemel couldn’t understand the words but soon found himself swept away by the haunting melody.
In the middle of the piece, a man sat down next to Kemel. Thick woolen sweater, shabby reefer coat, kerchief knotted at his throat, unshaven. Looked like a dockworker from the waterfront. He leaned over, muttered a few words to Kemel in Portuguese. Kemel shrugged his shoulders. “I’m afraid I don’t speak the language.”
He turned his attention back to the singer. The piece was reaching its emotional climax, but, in the tradition of
fado,
the singer remained ramrod straight, as though he were standing at attention.
The dockworker tapped Kemel’s elbow and spoke Portuguese to him a second time. This time Kemel simply shook his head and kept his eyes on the singer.
Then the dockworker leaned over and said in Arabic: “I asked you whether you liked
fado
music.”
Kemel turned and looked carefully at the man seated next to him.
Tariq said, “Let’s go somewhere quiet where we can talk.”
 
They walked from the Bairro Alto to the Alfama, a warren of narrow alleys and stone steps winding among whitewashed houses. Kemel was always amazed at Tariq’s uncanny ability to blend into his surroundings. Walking the steep hills seemed to tire him. Kemel wondered how much longer he could go on.
Tariq said, “You never answered my question.”
“Which question was that?”
“Do you like
fado
music?”
“I suppose it’s an acquired taste.” He smiled and added, “Like Lisbon itself. For some reason it reminds me of home.”
“
Fado
is a music devoted to suffering and pain. That’s why it reminds you of home.”
“I suppose you’re right.”
They passed an old woman sweeping the front step of her home.
Tariq said, “Tell me about London.”
“It looks as though Allon has made his first move.”
“That didn’t take long. What happened?”
Kemel told him about Yusef and the girl from the art gallery. “Yusef noticed a strange man in his block of flats last night. He thinks the man may have been an Israeli. He thinks he may have planted a bug in his flat.”
Kemel could see that Tariq was already calculating the possibilities. “Is this agent of yours a man who can be trusted with an important assignment?”
“He’s a very intelligent young man. And very loyal. I knew his father. He was killed by the Israelis in ’eighty-two.”
“Has he looked for the bug?”
“I told him not to.”
“Good,” Tariq said. “Leave it in place. We can use it to our advantage. What about this girl? Is she still in the picture?”
“I’ve instructed Yusef to continue seeing her.”
“What’s she like?”
“Apparently quite attractive.”
“Do you have the resources in London to follow her?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do it. And get me a photograph of her.”
“You have an idea?”
They passed through a small square, then started up a long, steep hill. By the time they had reached the top, Tariq had explained the entire thing.
“It’s brilliant,” Kemel said. “But it has one flaw.”
“What’s that?”
“You won’t survive it.”
Tariq smiled sadly and said, “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a very long time.”
He turned and walked away. A moment later he had vanished into the fog. Kemel shivered. He turned up the collar of his coat and walked back to the Bairro Alto to listen to
fado.
27
 
BAYSWATER, LONDON
 
The operation settled into a comfortable if rather dull routine. Gabriel spent endless stretches of time with nothing to do but listen to the trivial details of Yusef’s life, which played out on his monitors like a dreadful radio drama. Yusef chatting on the telephone. Yusef arguing politics over cigarettes and Turkish coffee with his Palestinian friends. Yusef telling a heartbroken girl he could no longer see her because he was seriously involved with another. Gabriel found his life moving to the rhythm of Yusef’s. He ate when Yusef ate, slept when Yusef slept, and when Yusef made love to Jacqueline, Gabriel made love to her too.
But after ten days, Gabriel’s bugs had picked up nothing of value. There were several possible explanations. Perhaps Shamron had simply made a mistake. Perhaps Yusef really was just a waiter and a student. Perhaps he
was
an agent but was inactive. Or perhaps he was an active agent but was talking with his comrades through other means: signal sights and other forms of impersonal communication. To detect that, Gabriel would have to mount a full-scale round-the-clock surveillance operation. It would require multiple teams, at least a dozen officers—safe flats, vehicles, radios. . . . An operation like that would be difficult to conceal from MI5, the British security service.

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