Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon Series

by Daniel Silva

  He felt the sickening rush of adrenaline all over again. For a moment he considered rushing forward and pulling her out. He forced himself to calm down and think clearly. She was just getting on an airplane. She would be safe while they were in the air, and Shamron would have a team waiting at the other end. Tariq had won the first round, but Gabriel decided to let the game continue.

  The girl led Jacqueline into a glass-enclosed gate area. Gabriel watched as they passed through a final security check and handed over their tickets to a gate attendant. Then they headed into the Jetway and were gone. Gabriel glanced up at the monitor one last time to make certain he had seen it right: Air France flight 382, destination Montreal.

  A few moments after takeoff Shamron hung up the secure telephone in the office of Benjamin Stone’s private jet and joined Gabriel in the luxuriously appointed salon. “I just notified Ottawa station.”

  “Who’s in Ottawa these days?”

  “Your old friend Zvi Yadin. He’s on his way to Montreal now with a small team. They’ll meet the plane and put Jacqueline and her new friend under watch.”

  “Why Montreal?”

  “Haven’t you read the papers?”

  “I’m sorry, Ari, but I’ve been a bit busy.”

  On the table next to Shamron’s chair was a stack of newspapers, neatly arranged so the mastheads were visible. He snatched the top paper and flipped it into Gabriel’s lap. “There’s going to be a signing ceremony at the UN in three days. Everyone’s going to be there. The American president, the prime minister, Arafat and all his deputies. It looks as though Tariq’s going to try to spoil the party.”

  Gabriel glanced at the newspaper and tossed it back onto the table.

  “Montreal is a natural staging point for a man like Tariq. He speaks fluent French and has the capability to secure false passports. He flies to Montreal as a Frenchman and enters Quebec without a visa. Once he’s in Canada he’s almost home. There are tens of thousands of Arabs living in Montreal. He’ll have plenty of places to hide. Security along the U.S.-Canadian border is lax or nonexistent. On some roads there are no border posts at all. In Montreal he can switch passports—American or Canadian—and simply drive into the States. Or, if he’s feeling adventurous, he can walk across the border.”

  “Tariq never struck me as an outdoorsman.”

  “He’ll do whatever is necessary to get his target. And if that means walking ten miles through the snow, he’ll walk through the snow.”

  “I don’t like the fact that they changed the rules in Paris,” Gabriel said. “I don’t like the fact that Yusef lied to Jacqueline about how this was going to work.”

  “All it means is that for reasons of security Tariq finds it necessary to deceive his own people. That’s standard procedure for a man like him. Arafat did it for years. That’s the reason he’s alive today. His enemies within the Palestinian movement couldn’t get to him.”

  “And neither could you.”

  “Point well taken.”

  The door connecting the salon to the office opened, and Stone entered the room.

  Shamron said, “There’s a stateroom in the back of the plane. Go get some sleep. You look terrible.”

  Gabriel stood up without a word and left the salon. Stone lowered his mammoth body into a chair and scooped up a handful of Brazil nuts. “He has passion,” he said, popping a pair of nuts into his mouth. “An assassin with a conscience. I like that. The rest of the world is going to like him even better.”

  “Benjamin, what on earth are you talking about?”

  “He’s the meal ticket. Don’t you understand, Ari? He’s the way you repay your debts to me. All of them, wiped out in a single neat payment.”

  “I didn’t realize you were keeping a ledger. I thought you helped us because you believed in us. I thought you helped us because you wanted to help protect the State.”

  “Let me finish, Ari. Hear me out. I don’t want your money. I want him. I want you to let me tell his story. I’ll assign it to my best reporter. Let me publish the story of the Israeli who restores old master paintings by day and kills Palestinian terrorists by night.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “On the contrary, Ari. I’m quite serious. I’ll serialize it. I’ll sell the film rights to Hollywood. Give me an exclusive on this manhunt. The view from the inside. It will send a message to my troops that we still have what it takes to shake up Fleet Street. And—this is the best part, Ari—and it will send a strong signal to my backers in the City that I’m still a force to be reckoned with.”

  Shamron made an elaborate show of lighting his next cigarette. He studied Stone through a cloud of smoke, nodding slowly while he considered the gravity of his proposition. Stone was a drowning man, and unless Shamron did something to cut him away, he would take them both straight to the bottom.

  Gabriel tried to sleep, but it was no use. Each time he closed his eyes, images of the case appeared in his mind. Instinctively he saw them rendered as motionless reproductions captured in oil on canvas. Shamron on the Lizard, calling him back to service. Jacqueline making love to Yusef. Leah in her greenhouse prison in Surrey. Yusef meeting his contact in Hyde Park. . . . Don’t worry, Yusef. Your girlfriend won’t say no to you.

  Then he thought of the scene he had just witnessed at Charles de Gaulle. Restoration had taught Gabriel a valuable lesson. Sometimes what appears on the surface is quite different from what is taking place just below. Three years earlier he had been hired to restore a Van Dyck, a piece the artist had painted for a private chapel in Genoa depicting the Assumption of Mary. When Gabriel performed his initial analysis of the painting’s surface, he thought he saw something beneath the Virgin’s face. Over time the light-toned paints Van Dyck had used to render her skin had faded, and it seemed an image below was beginning to rise. Gabriel performed an extensive X-ray examination of the picture to view what was taking place beneath the surface. He discovered a completely finished work, a portrait of a rather fleshy woman clad in a white gown. The black-and-white film of the X ray made her appear specterlike. Even so, Gabriel recognized the shimmering quality of Van Dyck’s silks and the expressive hands that characterized the paintings he produced while living in Italy. He later learned that the work had been commissioned by a Genoese aristocrat whose wife had hated it so much that she refused to accept it. When Van Dyck was commissioned to paint the chapel piece, he simply covered up the old portrait in white paint and reused the canvas. By the time the canvas reached Gabriel’s hands, more than three and a half centuries later, the wife of the Genoese aristocrat had taken her revenge on the artist by rising to the surface of his painting.

  He closed his eyes again and this time drifted into a restless sleep. The last image he saw before slipping into unconsciousness was Jacqueline and the woman seated in the airport café, rendered as an Impressionist street scene, and standing in the background was the ghostly, translucent figure of Tariq, beckoning Gabriel forward with an exquisite Van Dyck hand.

  36

  PARIS

  Yusef took a taxi from the airport to the center of the city. For two hours he moved steadily about Paris—by Métro, by taxi, and on foot. When he was confident he was alone, he walked to an apartment house in the Sixteenth Arrondissement not far from the Bois de Boulogne. On the wall in the entranceway was a house phone and next to the phone a list of occupants. Yusef pressed the button for 4B, which bore the name Guzman in faded blue script. When the door opened he stepped quickly inside, crossed the foyer, and rode the lift up to the fourth floor. He knocked on the door. It was opened instantly by a stout man with steel blue eyes and strawberry blond hair. He pulled Yusef inside and quietly closed the door.

  It was early evening in Tel Aviv when Mordecai stepped out of his office in the top-floor executive suite and made his way down the corridor toward Operations. As he entered the room a pair of Lev’s black-eyed desk officers stared at him contemptuously over their computer terminals.

  �
�Is he still in?”

  One of the officers pointed toward Lev’s office with the tip of a chewed pencil. Mordecai turned and walked down the corridor. He felt like a stranger in a besieged village. Outsiders were not welcome in Lev’s realm, even if the outsider happened to be the second-most-senior officer in the service.

  He found Lev seated in his cheerless office, hunched forward, elbows resting on the desk, long hands folded at the last knuckle and pressed against his temples. With his bald head, protruding eyes, and tentacle-like fingers, he looked very much like a praying mantis. As Mordecai moved closer, he could see that it was not a case file or field report that held Lev’s attention but a large volume on the beetles of the Amazon Basin. Lev closed the book deliberately and pushed it aside.

  “Is there something going on in Canada I should know about?” Mordecai asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I was reviewing the expense reports from Ottawa station, and there was a minor discrepancy in the payouts for the support staff. I thought I’d save a few minutes and deal with it by telephone rather than cable. It really is just a minor thing. I thought that Zvi and I could clear it up in a moment or two.”

  Lev drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk. “What does this have to do with Operations?”

  “I couldn’t find Zvi. In fact I couldn’t find anyone. It seems your entire Ottawa station is missing.”

  “What do you mean missing?”

  “I mean nowhere to be found. Gone without explanation.”

  “Who did you speak to?”

  “A girl from the code room.”

  “What did she say?”

  “That Zvi and all his field personnel took off in a hurry a few hours ago.”

  “Where’s the old man?”

  “Somewhere in Europe.”

  “He just came back from Europe. Why did he go this time?”

  Mordecai frowned. “You think the old man tells me anything? That old bastard is so secretive that half the time I don’t think he even knows where he’s going.”

  “Find him,” Lev said.

  37

  MONTREAL

  Leila rented a car at the airport. She drove very fast along an elevated motorway. To their right lay an icy river; to their left freezing fog drifted over a vast rail yard like the smoke of battle. The lights of downtown Montreal floated in front of them, obscured by a veil of low cloud and falling snow. Leila drove as if she knew the way.

  “You’ve been here before?” Leila asked. It was the first time she had spoken to Jacqueline since the café at Charles de Gaulle in Paris.

  “No, never. How about you?”

  “No.”

  Jacqueline folded her arms against her body and shivered. The heater was roaring, but it was still so cold in the car she could see her breath. “I don’t have clothes for this kind of cold,” she said.

  “Lucien will buy you whatever you need.”

  So, Lucien was meeting her here in Montreal. Jacqueline blew on her hands. “It’s too cold to go shopping.”

  “All the best boutiques in Montreal are underground. You’ll never have to set foot outside.”

  “I thought you said you’ve never been here.”

  “I haven’t.”

  Jacqueline leaned her head against the window and briefly closed her eyes. They had sat in business class, Leila across the aisle and one row behind. An hour before landing, Leila had gone to the lavatory. On the way back to her seat she’d handed Jacqueline a note: Go through immigration and customs alone and meet me at the Hertz counter.

  Leila turned off the motorway and turned onto the boulevard René Lévesque. Wind howled through the canyons of high-rise office buildings and hotels. The snowbound sidewalks seemed to have been depopulated. She drove a few blocks, stopped in front of a large hotel. A porter rushed out and opened Jacqueline’s door. “Welcome to the Queen Elizabeth. Checking in?”

  “Yes,” said Leila. “We can manage the bags, thank you.”

  The porter gave her a claim check for the car and climbed behind the wheel. Leila led Jacqueline into the large, noisy lobby. It was filled with Japanese tourists. Jacqueline wondered what on earth could bring them to Montreal in the dead of winter. Leila deliberately switched her bag from her right hand to her left. Jacqueline forced herself to look the other way. She had been trained in the art of impersonal communication; she knew a good piece of body talk when she saw it. The next act was about to begin.

  Tariq watched them from the hotel bar. His appearance had changed since Lisbon: charcoal-gray wool trousers, a cream-colored pullover, Italian blazer. He was neatly shaved and wore small gold-rimmed eyeglasses with clear lenses. He had added a touch of gray to his hair.

  He had seen the photograph of the woman called Dominique Bonard, but he was still taken aback by her appearance. He wondered how Shamron and Gabriel Allon could justify putting a woman like that into such danger.

  He glanced around the lobby. He knew that they were here, somewhere, hidden among the tourists and the businessmen and the hotel employees: Shamron’s watchers. Tariq had stretched their resources by taking the woman from London to Paris and then Montreal. But surely they had regrouped and moved their assets into place. He knew that the moment he approached the woman he would be revealing himself to his enemies for the first time.

  He found that he was actually looking forward to it. Finally, after all these years in the shadows, he was about to step into the light. He wanted to shout: Here I am. See, I’m a man like you, flesh and blood, not a monster. He was not ashamed of his life’s work. Quite the opposite. He was proud of it. He wondered if Allon could say the same thing.

  Tariq knew that he had one major advantage over Allon. He knew he was about to die. His life was over. He had survived on the knife edge of danger to be betrayed in the end not by his enemies but by his own body. He would use the knowledge of his impending death like a weapon, the most powerful he had ever possessed.

  Tariq stood up, smoothed the front of his blazer, and crossed the lobby.

  They rode an elevator to the fourteenth floor, walked along a quiet corridor, stopped at room 1417. He opened the door with an electronic card key, then slipped the card into his pocket. When Jacqueline entered the room, Shamron’s awareness and memory drills took over: small suite, separate bedroom and sitting room. On the coffee table was a room service tray with a half-eaten salad. A garment bag lay on the floor, open, still packed.

  He held out his hand. “Lucien Daveau.”

  “Dominique Bonard.”

  He smiled: warm, confident. “I was told by my associates that you were a very beautiful woman, but I’m afraid their descriptions did not do you justice.”

  His mannerisms and speech were all very French. If she had not known he was a Palestinian, she would have assumed he was a well-to-do Parisian.

  “You’re not what I expected,” she said truthfully.

  “Oh, really? What did you expect?” He was already testing her—she could sense it.

  “Yusef said you were an intellectual. I suppose I was expecting someone with long hair and blue jeans and a sweater with holes in it.”

  “Someone more professorial?”

  “Yes, that’s the word.” She managed a smile. “You don’t look terribly professorial.”

  “That’s because I’m not a professor.”

  “I’d ask what you are, but Yusef told me not to ask too many questions, so I suppose we’ll just have to make pleasant small talk.”

  “It’s been a long time since I made pleasant small talk with a beautiful woman. I think I’m going to enjoy the next few days immensely.”

  “Have you been in Montreal long?”

  “You just asked me a question, Dominique.”

  “I’m sorry. I just—”

  “Don’t apologize. I was just joking. I arrived this morning. As you can see, I haven’t had a chance to unpack.”

  She walked from the sitting room into the bedroom.
<
br />   He said, “Don’t worry. I intend to sleep on the couch tonight.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be posing as lovers.”

  “We are.”

  “What if the hotel staff notices that you slept on the couch?”

  “They might assume we’re quarreling. Or they might assume that I was working late and didn’t want to disturb you and that I fell asleep on the couch.”

  “They might.”

  “Yusef said you were intelligent, but he neglected to say that you also possess a conspiratorial mind.”

  It had played out long enough. Jacqueline was proud of the fact that she was guiding the conversation and not he. It gave her the sense that at least she was in control of something.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “Not at all.”

  She placed a cigarette between her lips and struck the lighter Shamron had given her. She could almost imagine the radio waves flying out, searching for a receiver.

  “I didn’t bring clothing for this kind of weather. Leila said you would take me out shopping for something warmer.”

  “I’d be happy to. I apologize for the way we had to keep you in the dark about where you were going. I assure you it was quite necessary.”

  “I understand.” A pause. “I suppose.”

  “Answer one question for me, Dominique. Why did you agree to come on this mission with me? Do you believe in what you are doing? Or are you doing it simply for love?”

  The coincidence of his question was almost too vulgar to contemplate. She calmly placed the lighter back into her handbag and said, “I’m doing it because I believe in love. Do you believe in love?”

  “I believe in the right of my people to have a homeland of our own choosing. I’ve never had the luxury of love.”

  “I’m sorry—” She was about to call him Lucien, but for some reason she stopped herself.