The Kill Artist

stylish business suits. Artists, students, delivery boys-with minor alterations Gabriel could pass for any of them.
    Isherwood had arrived early. He was seated behind his desk, speaking Italian over the telephone and looking hung-over. He placed his hand over the receiver and mouthed the words "Coffee, please."
    She hung up her coat and sat down at her desk. Isherwood could survive a few more minutes without his coffee. The morning mail lay on the desk, along with a manila envelope. She tore open the flap, removed the letter from inside. I'm going to Paris. Don't set foot outside the gallery until you hear from me. She squeezed it into a tight ball.
    THIRTY-ONE
    Paris
    Gabriel hadn't touched his breakfast. He sat in the first-class carriage of the Eurostar train, headphones on, listening to tapes on a small portable player. The first encounters between Yusef and Jacqueline. Yusef telling Jacqueline the story of the massacre at Shatila. Yusef's conversation with Jacqueline the previous night. He removed that tape, inserted one more: Yusef's meeting with his contact in Hyde Park. He had lost track of how many times he had heard it by now. Ten times? Twenty? Each time it disturbed him more. He pressed the rewind button and used the digital tape counter to stop at precisely the spot he wanted to hear.
    "… check out her… in Paris… problems… thing's fine."
    STOP.
    He pulled off the headphones, removed a small spiral notebook from his pocket, turned to a blank page. He wrote: check out her… in Paris… problems… thing's fine. Between the staccato phrases he left blank spaces corresponding approximately to the times of the dropouts on the tape.
    Then he wrote: We sent a man to check out her story in Paris. There were no problems. Everything's fine.
    It was possible that's what he had said, or it could have been this: We sent a man to check out her story in Paris. There were big problems with it. But everything's fine.
    That made no sense. Gabriel crossed it out, then slipped on the headphones and listened to the section of the tape yet again. Wait a minute, he thought. Was Yusef's contact saying thing's fine or other side?
    This time he wrote: We sent a man to check out her story in Paris. There were big problems with it. We think she may be working for the other side.
    But if that were the case, why would they ask her to accompany an operative on a mission?
    Gabriel pressed the fast-forward button, then STOP, then PLAY.
    "Don't worry, Yusef. Your girlfriend won't say no to you."
    STOP. REWIND. PLAY.
    "Don't worry, Yusef. Your girlfriend won't say no to you."
    Gabriel caught a taxi at the train station and gave the driver an address on the avenue Foch. Five minutes later he announced he had changed his mind, handed the driver some francs, and got out. He found another taxi. In the accent of an Italian, he asked to be taken to Notre-Dame. From there he walked across the river to the St-Michel Métro station. When he was confident he was not being followed, he flagged down a taxi and gave the driver an address in the Sixteenth Arrondissement, near the Bois de Boulogne. Then he walked fifteen minutes to an apartment house on a leafy street not far from the place de Colombie.
    On the wall in the entranceway was a house phone and next to the phone a list of occupants. Gabriel pressed the button for 4B, which bore the name Guzman in faded blue script. When the phone rattled on the other end, he murmured a few words, replaced the receiver, waited for the door to open. He crossed the foyer, rode the lift to the fourth floor, and knocked softly on the door of the flat. He heard a chain sliding away, followed by a dead bolt snapping back. To Gabriel's ears it sounded like a gunman ejecting a spent cartridge and forcing a new round into the chamber.
    The door drew back. Standing in the threshold was a man of Gabriel's height, square of head and shoulders, with steel-blue eyes and strawberry blond hair. He seemed inordinately pleased with himself-like a man who had had too much success with women. He didn't shake Gabriel's hand, just drew him inside by the elbow and closed the door as if he were trying to keep out the cold.
    A large flat, dark, the smell of burning coffee and Shamron's cigarettes hanging on the air. Big couches, reclining leather chairs, fat throw pillows-a place for agents to wait. On the wall opposite an entertainment center filled with Japanese components and American films. No pornography in safe flats: