The Kill Artist by Daniel Silva Page B

want you to leave the Office and do something normal. We can stay in Europe and you can work only as a restorer. Promise me, Gabriel.”
    Shamron joined him on the beach.
    Gabriel looked up. “Why did you go back to the Office? Why couldn’t you stay in Tiberias and live life? Why did you go running back when they called?”
    “Too much unfinished business. I’ve never known anyone who left the secret world with all his affairs in order. We all leave behind bits of loose thread. Old operations, old enemies. They pull at you, like memories of old lovers. I also couldn’t bear to watch the Alsatian and Lev destroying my service any longer.”
    “Why did you keep Lev?”
    “Because I was forced to keep Lev. Lev made it clear to the prime minister that he would not go quietly if I tried to push him out. The last thing the prime minister wanted was a paralyzed Operations division. He got weak knees and made Lev untouchable.”
    “He’s a snake.”
    “The prime minister?”
    “Lev.”
    “A venomous snake, however, who needs to be handled carefully. When the Alsatian resigned, Lev believed he was next in the line of succession. Lev is no longer a young man. He can feel the keys to the throne room slipping through his fingers. If I come and go quickly, Lev may still get his chance. If I serve out my full term, if I linger and take a long time to die, then perhaps the prime minister will choose a younger prince as my successor. Needless to say, I do not count Lev as one of my supporters at King Saul Boulevard.”
    “He never liked me.”
    “That’s because he was envious of you. Envious of your professional accomplishments. Envious of your talent. Envious of the fact you earned three times as much in your cover job as Lev earned on his Office salary. My God, he was even envious of Leah. You’re everything Lev wanted to see in himself, and he hated you for it.”
    “He wanted to be part of the Black September team.”
    “Lev is brilliant, but he was never field material. Lev is a headquarters man.”
    “Does he know you’re here?”
    “He knows nothing,” Shamron said coldly. “And if you decide to come back, he’ll know nothing about that either. I’ll handle you personally, just like the old days.”
    “Killing Tariq isn’t going to bring back Dani. Or Leah. Haven’t you learned anything? While we were busy killing the members of Black September, we didn’t notice that the Egyptians and the Syrians were preparing to drive us into the sea. And they nearly succeeded. We killed thirteen members of Black September, and it didn’t bring back one of the boys they slaughtered in Munich.”
    “Yes, but it felt good.”
    Gabriel closed his eyes: an apartment block in Rome’s Piazza Annabaliano, a darkened stairwell, a painfully thin Palestinian translator named Wadal Abdel Zwaiter. Black September’s chief of operations in Italy. He remembered the sound of a neighbor practicing piano—a rather tedious piece he didn’t recognize—and the sickening thud of the bullets tearing through tissue and cracking bone. One of Gabriel’s shots missed Zwaiter’s body and shattered a bottle of fig wine that he had purchased moments earlier. For some reason Gabriel always thought of the wine, dark, purple and brown, flowing over the stone floor, mingling with the blood of the dying man.
    He opened his eyes, and Rome was gone. “It feels good for a while,” he said. “But then you start to think you’re as bad as the people you’re killing.”
    “War always takes a toll on the soldiers.”
    “When you look into a man’s eyes while pouring lead into his body, it feels more like murder than war.”
    “It’s not murder, Gabriel. It was never murder. ”
    “What makes you think I can find Tariq?”
    “Because I’ve found someone who works for him. Someone I believe will lead us to Tariq.”
    “Where is he?”
    “Here in England.”
    “Where?”
    “London, which presents me with a problem. Under our agreements