The Kill Artist

by Daniel Silva

  At the end of a terrace of cottages overlooking the town parking lot was a commercial building. A sign hung in the window: the entire ground floor was available. It had been vacant for months. Jacqueline cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through the dirty glass: a large, open room, wood floors, high ceiling. Perfect for a dance studio. She had a fantasy. She would quit modeling and open a ballet school in Valbonne. It would cater to the local girls most of the year, but in August, when the tourists streamed into Valbonne for their summer holidays, she would open the school to visitors. She would teach for a few hours a day, ride her bike through the hills, drink coffee, and read in the café on the square. Shed her name and her image. Become Sarah Halévy again—Sarah Halévy, the Jewish girl from Marseilles. But to open the school she needed money, and to get money she had to keep modeling. She had to go back to Paris and put up with men like Michel Duval a little while longer. Then she would be free.

  She mounted her bike and rode slowly home. It was a rather small villa, the color of sandstone with a red-tile roof, hidden from view by a row of towering cypress trees. In the large terraced garden overlooking the valley, rosemary and lavender grew wild among the olive and drooping pepper trees. At the base of the garden was a rectangular swimming pool.

  Jacqueline let herself inside, propped the bike in the entrance hall, and went into the kitchen. The red light on her answering machine was winking. She pressed the playback button and made coffee while she listened to the messages.

  Yvonne had called to invite her to a party at the home of a millionaire Spanish tennis player in Monte Carlo. Michel Duval had called to apologize for his behavior at the shoot the other day. The bruise was healing nicely. Marcel had called to say that he had spoken to Robert. The shoot in Mustique was back on. “You leave in three weeks, angel, so get off the cheese and pasta and get your beautiful ass in shape.”

  She thought of her bicycle ride and smiled. Her face might have looked thirty-three, but her body had never looked better.

  “Oh, by the way, a fellow called Jean-Claude came by the office. Said he wanted to talk to you personally about a job.”

  Jacqueline set down the coffeepot and looked at the machine.

  “I told him you were in the south. He said he was on his way there and that he would look you up when he arrived. Don’t be angry with me, angel. He seemed like a nice guy. Good-looking, too. I was insanely jealous. Love you. Ciao.”

  She pressed the rewind button and listened to the message again to make certain she had heard it right.

  “Oh, by the way, a fellow called Jean-Claude came by the office. Said he wanted to talk to you personally about a job.”

  She pressed the erase button, hand trembling, heart beating against her ribs.

  Jacqueline sat outside on the sunlit terrace, thinking about the night she was recruited by Ari Shamron. She had used some of her money from modeling to buy her parents a retirement present: a small beachfront apartment in Herzliya. She visited them in Israel whenever she could get away for a few days. She fell completely in love with the country. It was the only place she felt truly free and safe. More than anything else she loved the fact that she did not have to conceal her being Jewish.

  One evening in a jazz café in Tel Aviv an older man appeared at her table. Bald, rather ugly, steel-rimmed glasses, khaki trousers, a bomber jacket with a tear on the right breast.

  “Hello, Sarah,” he said, smiling confidently. “May I join you?”

  She looked up, startled. “How did you know my name is Sarah?”

  “Actually, I know a great deal about you. I’m a big fan.”

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Ari. I work for an organization loosely connected to the Ministry of Defense called the Institute for Coordination. We just call it the Office.”

  “Well, I’m certainly glad we cleared that up.”

  He threw his head back and laughed. “We’d like to talk to you about a job. Do you mind if I call you Sarah? I have trouble thinking of you as Jacqueline.”

  “My parents are the only ones who call me Sarah anymore.”

  “No old friends?”

  “I only have new friends,” she said, her voice tinged with sadness. “At least people who claim to be my friends. All my old friends from Marseilles dropped away after I became a model. They thought I’d changed because of my work.”

  “But you have changed, haven’t you, Sarah?”

  “Yes, I suppose I have.” Then she thought: Why am I telling this to a man I just met? I wonder if he gets under everyone’s skin so quickly.

  “And it isn’t just a job, is it, Sarah? It’s a way of life. You hang out with fashion designers and famous photographers. You go to glitzy parties and exclusive restaurants with actors and rock stars and millionaire playboys. Like that Italian count you had an affair with in Milan, the one that made the newspapers. Surely you’re not the same little girl from Marseilles. The little Jewish girl whose grandparents were murdered by the Nazis at Sobibor.”

  “You do know a great deal about me.” She looked at him carefully. She was used to being surrounded by attractive, polished people, and here she was now in the company of this rather ugly man with steel glasses and a tear in his jacket. There was something of the primitive in him—the rough-hewn Sabra that she had always heard about. He was the kind of man who didn’t know how to tie a bow tie and didn’t care. She found him utterly charming. But more than anything she was intrigued by him.

  “As a Jew from Marseilles, you know that our people have many enemies. Many people would like to destroy us, tear down everything we have built in this land.” As he spoke his hands carved the air. “Over the years Israel has fought many wars with her enemies. At this moment there is no fighting, but Israel is still engaged in another war, a secret war. This war is ceaseless. It will never end. Because of your passport and, quite frankly, your appearance, you could be a great deal of help to us.”

  “Are you asking me to become a spy?”

  He laughed. “I’m afraid it’s nothing quite so dramatic as that.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to become a bat leveyha.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak Hebrew.”

  “Bat leveyha is the term we use for a female assistant agent. As a bat leveyha, you may be called on to perform a number of functions for the Office. Sometimes you might be asked to pose as the wife or girlfriend of one of our male officers. Sometimes you might be asked to obtain a vital piece of information that a woman like you might get more readily than a male officer.”

  He stopped talking for a moment and took his time lighting his next cigarette. “And sometimes we may ask you to perform another kind of assignment. An assignment that some women find too unpleasant to even consider.”

  “For example?”

  “We might ask you to seduce a man—one of our enemies, for instance—in order to place him in a compromising situation.”

  “There are lots of beautiful women in Israel. Why on earth would you need me?”

  “Because you’re not an Israeli. Because you have a legitimate French passport and a legitimate job.”

  “That legitimate job, as you call it, pays me a great deal. I’m not prepared to throw it away.”

  “If you decide to work for us, I’ll see that your assignments are brief and that you are compensated for lost wages.” He smiled affectionately. “Although I don’t think I can afford your usual fee of three thousand dollars an hour.”

  “Five thousand,” she said, smiling.

  “My congratulations.”

  “I have to think about it.”

  “I understand, but as you consider my offer, keep one thing in mind. If there had been an Israel during the Second World War, Maurice and Rachel Halévy might still be alive. It’s my job to ensure the survival of the State so that the next time some madman decides to turn our people into soap, they’ll have a place to take refuge. I hope you’ll help me.�
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  He gave her a card with a telephone number and told her to call him with a decision the following afternoon. Then he shook her hand and walked away. It was the hardest hand she had ever felt.

  There had never been a question in her mind what her answer would be. By any objective standard she lived an exciting and glamorous life, but it seemed dull and meaningless compared with what Ari Shamron was offering. The tedious shoots, the pawing agents, the whining photographers—suddenly it all seemed even more plastic and pretentious.

  She returned to Europe for the fall fashion season—she had commitments in Paris, Milan, and Rome—and in November, when things quieted down, she told Marcel Lambert she was burned out and needed a break. Marcel cleared her calendar, kissed her cheek, and told her to get as far away from Paris as possible. That night she went to the El Al counter at Charles de Gaulle, picked up the first-class ticket Shamron had left for her, and boarded a flight for Tel Aviv.

  He was waiting when she arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport. He escorted her to a special holding room inside the terminal. Everything was designed to convey to her that she was now one of the elite. That she was walking through a secret door and her life would never be the same again. From the airport he whisked her through the streets of Tel Aviv to a luxurious safe flat in the Opera Tower with a large terrace overlooking the Promenade and Ge’ula Beach. “This will be your home for the next few weeks. I hope you find it to your liking.”

  “It’s absolutely beautiful.”

  “Tonight you rest. Tomorrow the real work begins.”

  The next morning she went to the Academy and endured a crash course in Office tradecraft and doctrine. He lectured her on the basics of impersonal communication. He trained her to use a Beretta and to cut strategic slits in her clothing so she could grab it in a hurry. He taught her how to pick locks and how to make imprints of keys using a special device. He taught her how to detect and shake surveillance. Each afternoon she spent two hours with a man named Oded, who taught her rudimentary Arabic.

  But most of the time at the Academy was spent developing her memory and awareness. He placed her alone in a room and flashed dozens of names on a projection screen, forcing her to memorize as many as possible. He took her into a small apartment, allowed her to look at the room for a matter of seconds, then pulled her out and made her describe it in detail. He took her to lunch at the canteen and asked her to describe the steward who had just served them. Jacqueline confessed she had no idea. “You must be aware of your surroundings all the time,” he said. “You must assume that the waiter is a potential enemy. You must be scanning, watching, and surveying constantly. And yet you must appear as though you are doing nothing of the sort.”

  Her training did not stop at sundown. Each evening Shamron would appear at the Opera Tower and take her into the streets of Tel Aviv for more. He took her to a lawyer’s office, told her to break in and steal a specific set of files. He took her to a street filled with fashionable boutiques and told her to steal something.

  “You’re joking.”

  “What if you are on the run in a foreign country? What if you have no money and no way to make contact with us? The police are looking for you and you need a change of clothing quickly.”

  “I’m not exactly built for shoplifting.”

  “Make yourself inconspicuous.”

  She entered a boutique and spent ten minutes trying on clothing. When she returned to the lobby she had bought nothing, but inside her handbag was a sexy black cocktail dress.

  Shamron said, “Now I want you to find a place to change and discard your other clothing. Then meet me outside at the ice cream stand on the promenade.”

  It was a warm evening for early November, and there were many people out strolling and taking in the air. They walked arm in arm along the waterfront, like a rich old man and his mistress, Jacqueline playfully licking an ice cream cone.

  “You’re being followed by three people,” Shamron said. “Meet me in the bar of that restaurant in half an hour and tell me who they are. And keep in mind that I’m going to send a kidon to kill them, so don’t make a mistake.”

  Jacqueline engaged in a standard countersurveillance routine, just as Shamron had taught her. Then she went to the bar and found him seated alone at a corner table.

  “Black leather jacket, blue jeans with a Yale sweatshirt, blond girl with a rose tattooed on her shoulder blade.”

  “Wrong, wrong, wrong. You just condemned three innocent tourists to death. Let’s try it again.”

  They took a taxi a short distance to Rothschild Boulevard, a broad promenade lined with trees, benches, kiosks, and fashionable cafés.

  “Once again, three people are following you. Meet me at Café Tamar in thirty minutes.”

  “Where’s Café Tamar?”

  But Shamron turned and melted into the flow of pedestrians. Half an hour later, having located the chic Café Tamar on Sheinkin Street, she joined him once again.

  “The girl with the dog, the boy with the headphones and the Springsteen shirt, the kid from the kibbutz with the Uzi.”

  Shamron smiled. “Very good. Just one more test tonight. See that man sitting alone over there?”

  Jacqueline nodded.

  “Strike up a conversation with him, learn everything you can, and then entice him back to your flat. When you get to the lobby, find some way of unsnarling yourself from the situation without making a scene.”

  Shamron got up and walked away. Jacqueline made eye contact with the man, and after a few minutes he joined her. He said his name was Mark, that he was from Boston and worked for a computer firm doing business in Israel. They talked for an hour and began to flirt. But when she invited him back to her apartment, he confessed that he was married.

  “Too bad,” she said. “We could have had a very nice time.”

  He quickly changed his mind. Jacqueline excused herself to use the bathroom, went to a public telephone instead. She dialed the front desk at the Opera Tower and left a message for herself. Then she went back to the table and said, “Let’s go.”

  They walked to her flat. Before going upstairs she checked with the front desk. “Your sister called from Herzliya,” the clerk said. “She tried your apartment, but there was no answer, so she called here and left a message.”

  “What is it?”

  “Your father has had a heart attack.”

  “Oh, my God!”

  “They’ve taken him to the hospital. She says he’s going to be all right, but she wants you to come right away.”

  Jacqueline turned to the American. “I’m so sorry, but I have to go.”

  The American kissed her cheek and walked away, crestfallen. Shamron, who was watching the entire scene from across the lobby, came forward, grinning like a schoolboy. “That was pure poetry. Sarah Halévy, you’re a natural.”

  Her first assignment didn’t require her to leave Paris. The Office was trying to recruit an Iraqi nuclear weapons scientist who lived in Paris and worked with Iraq’s French suppliers. Shamron decided to set a “honey trap” and gave the job to Jacqueline. She met the Iraqi in a bar, seduced him, and began spending the night at his apartment. He fell head over heels in love. Jacqueline told her lover that if he wanted to continue seeing her, he would have to meet with a friend of hers who had a business proposition. The friend turned out to be Ari Shamron, the proposition simple: work for us or we will tell your wife and Saddam’s security thugs you’ve been fucking an Israeli agent. The Iraqi agreed to work for Shamron.

  Jacqueline had been given her first taste of intelligence work. She found it exhilarating. She had played a small role in an operation that had dealt a blow to Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. She had helped protect the State of Israel from an enemy that would do anything to destroy it. And in a small way she had avenged the deaths of her grandparents.

  She had to wait another year for her next assignment: seducing and blackmailing a Syrian intelligence officer in London. It was another stunning succes
s. Nine months later she was sent to Cyprus to seduce a German chemical company executive who was selling his wares to Libya. This time there was a twist. Shamron wanted her to drug the German and photograph the documents in his briefcase while he was unconscious. Once again she pulled off the job without a hitch.

  After the operation Shamron flew her to Tel Aviv, presented her with a secret citation, told her she was finished. It didn’t take long for things to circulate through the intelligence underground. Her next target might suspect that the pretty French model was more than she appeared to be. And she might very well end up dead.

  She begged him for one more job. Shamron reluctantly agreed.

  Three months later he sent her to Tunis.

  Jacqueline had thought it was strange that Shamron instructed her to meet Gabriel Allon in a church in Turin. She found him standing atop a platform, restoring a fresco depicting the Ascension. She worked with good-looking men every day in her overt life, but there was something about Gabriel that took her breath away. It was the intense concentration in his eyes. Jacqueline wanted him to look at her the way he was looking at the fresco. She decided she was going to make love to this man before the operation was over.

  They traveled to Tunis the following morning and checked into a hotel on the beach. For the first few days he left her alone while he worked. He would return to the hotel each evening. They would have dinner, stroll the souk or the corniche along the beach, then go back to their room. They would talk like lovers in case the room was bugged. He slept in his clothing, stayed rigorously on his side of the bed, a wall of Plexiglas separating them.

  On the fourth day he took her with him while he worked. He showed her the beach where the commandos would come ashore and the villa owned by the target. Her passion for him deepened. Here was a man who had devoted his life to defending Israel from its enemies. She felt insignificant and frivolous by comparison. She also found that she couldn’t take her eyes off him. She wanted to run her hands through his short hair, touch his face and his body. As they lay in bed together that night, she rolled on top of him without warning and kissed his lips, but he pushed her away and made a Bedouin’s camp bed for himself on the floor.