The Kill Artist: 1 (Gabriel Allon)

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Gabriel rents an apartment from which he observes the activities of Yusef al-Tawfiki, a Palestinian known to be an associate of Tariq al-Hourani; he begins to surveil Tawfiki. I did not care for the narrator George Guidall. He made Gabriel the hero sound like a clerk or librarian. It didn’t fit the sexy macho agent. And he made the bad guy sound wimpy. Other parts were ok, but overall his voice was not as good for me as other narrators. Jacqueline Delacroix, a beautiful French supermodel who is also an Israeli spy. She uses her seductive charms and feminine wiles to help lure suspected or known terrorists into compromising positions for intel-gathering. During her last mission with Gabriel, the two became more intimate than their cover-identities required. Shortly after, Tariq’s car-bomb killed Allon’s son and left his wife a vegetable. She is conflicted: while she has tremendous guilt about what happened during the last mission, she can’t help but still be in love with Allon. In Vienna in January 1991, Gabriel Allon, using the alias Mario Delvecchio, finishes his work as an art restorer for the day and dines with his wife Leah and son Dani. As the Leah and Dani are preparing to return to Israel, their car explodes, killing Dani and severely injuring Leah. Gabriel recovers from his wound in Israel, where Jacqueline has been forced to relocate due to media coverage of the event. One day, Gabriel spots Yusef in a local market and questions him at gunpoint. Yusef admits that he was working for Shamron as a double agent, and that Shamron had concocted the whole plot so Gabriel could finish off Tariq. When an angry Gabriel confronts Shamron, the wizened director is unapologetic and insists that it was both necessary to kill Tariq and just to have the killer be Gabriel.

Upon arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, Yusef al-Tawfiki tells Jacqueline Delacroix to sit in a coffee shop and wait for Lucien Daveau. Leila Khalifa arrives and tells Jacqueline that there has been a change in plans and that she will accompany Jacqueline to meet Lucien. Leila led Jacqueline to a flight to Montreal, Canada. Watching, Gabriel Allon realized that Tariq al-Hourani had eluded them. Shamron and Gabriel, on board the publisher's private jet with Stone, take off, following the commercial flight to Montreal. Stone tells Ari that he wants access to Gabriel to tell his story in Stone's newspaper. Ari realizes that he must free himself of Stone. I was disappointed the following was not shown. A woman was being trained as an agent. She was told to figure out who was following her. She reported three people and was wrong. Next time she reported three people and was right. I wanted to see what she saw and why she concluded what she did. This is a stylish spy thriller with the ‘cold' war of the twentieth century superseded by the ‘secret’ war in the middle-east and its international support network. There are harrowing descriptions of atrocities committed against Palestinians held in refugee camps of Beirut - which Israel chose to ignore - and a killer haunted by the deaths he committed in the service of his country.This book was surprisingly hard to get into for a book of its genre. The first section jumped rapidly between characters and settings, and you never really felt like you were getting to know anyone or like anything resembling a story had started. Once the story did start to move, I was a little put off by some of the cliches. I will say, though, that the book tried to take an evenhanded look at the situation in the Middle East and express the victimization claims on both sides. Although there were clear good guys and bad guys among the book's characters, the book did a good job of complicating that distinction when it came to history and politics. Kemel Azouri and Tariq al-Hourani meet in Lisbon and Azouri tells al-Hourani about events in London. They arrange to have Jacqueline followed and al-Hourani explains the plan for his next action. Like many of this genre, you have a good (and troubled) guy who works for Israeli intelligence working with his stunningly beautiful and capable heroine with whom he has a complicated (of course) relationship. And of course, you have the bad guys who are always one step ahead of the good guys, but then the good guys catch up, but then the bad guys catch on, etc., etc. Years later, a stranger is living in Port Navas, Cornwall, England. Timothy Peel, a bored youngster, learns that he is an art restorer. The stranger offers Peel a job watching his residence.

The head of the Ottawa Station meets Shamron and Gabriel in Montreal. He reports that he and his staff followed Jacqueline and another woman from the airport to the hotel, where the woman turned Jacqueline over to a man who might be Tariq al-Hourani. Zvi also tells Shamron that King Saul Boulevard is aware that something is happening in Canada. Al-Hourani stayed by Jacqueline's side while she bought winter clothing. At the hotel, Jean, the concierge and a sayan, gives Gabriel a magnetic card key which Gabriel uses to enter al-Hourani's room to plant a bug. Gabriel then goes to the Office command post in a nearby hotel. The escape routes are planned. Another member of the Ottawa Station staff provides video of al-Hourani. Shamron says it is time to end the operation and go home. Israel’s Prime Minister reinstates Ari Shamron as Mossad director. Shortly thereafter, Israel’s ambassador is murdered in Paris. The crime has all of the markings of Tariq al-Hourani, a terrorist mastermind. Mr. Silva is adept at not being needlessly one sided in this novel. There are clear good and bad guys, but he does give voice to the grievances that the Palestinian terrorists make. This was an interesting choice, as it does force the reader to realize that although one side may be a bit more moral than the other, there are still legitimate grievances on both sides of the issue. Jacqueline meets with Gabriel and describes the telephone in al-Tawfiki's apartment. She tells Gabriel about her suspicions and that she has agreed to go out to dinner with al-Tawfiki the coming evening. Al-Tawfiki is suspicious; he passes a message to Kemel Azouri who travels to London to meet him. Al-Tawfiki tells Azouri about catching Jacqueline going through his property. Azouri tells al-Tawfiki to continue seeing Jacqueline. Gabriel travels to Paris. Enroute he listens to the surveillance tapes, trying to fill in the gaps. After arriving in Paris, he meets with Ari Shamron. Uzi Navot, whom Gabriel has never met before, is also present; Gabriel instantly dislikes Uzi. The tapes reveal that al-Tawfiki wants Jacqueline to travel to an undisclosed location with a man she has never met whom al-Tawfiki describes as a peace-loving Palestinian diplomat who needs attend a meeting so he can express his reservations about the impact of the peace process on the Palestinians. Gabriel says that the Office should kill al-Tawfiki and forget about al-Hourani. Shamron responds that he does not want the former; he wants the latter.Meanwhile, Yusef warns Tariq that Gabriel is searching for him. Tariq designs a plan where Jacqueline must prove her professed love for Yusef by accompanying Tariq on a supposedly diplomatic mission to the United States. Indeed, Tariq recognizes Jacqueline from previous Office operations and suspects that he can use her as bait to lure Gabriel to his death. A conspiratorial relationship between Yusef and Uzi Navot, a major agent for the Office in Europe, also becomes apparent. Navot is one of the few Office operatives who knows about Shamron’s secret plot. Gabriel moves Jacqueline into an apartment suitable for a secretary. They discuss the forthcoming operation. Gabriel plans on Jacqueline meeting al-Tawfiki the following evening. Jacqueline Delacroix goes to work for Julian. In the meantime, Gabriel learns that al-Tawfiki intends to go to a nightclub. Gabriel sends Jacqueline to the same club al-Tawfiki plans to visit, hoping that al-Tawfiki will be attracted to her. He is. Al-Tawfiki invites Jacqueline to his apartment. She accepts and they sleep together. The next morning, while al-Tawfiki is showering, Jacqueline makes impressions of the keys to his building and apartment. She fears al-Tawfiki knows what she has done, but accepts his invitation to dinner that evening. Gabriel spearheaded a team that located and killed the operatives in the “Munich Massacre.” Seventeen years later, Tariq took vengeance upon Gabriel—family member for family member—by planting a bomb under the Allons’ car in Vienna. Gabriel witnessed his family’s horrifying destruction. His son Dani died instantly, while his wife Leah was left with a shattered mind and body.

A car bombing in Paris, killing the Israel Ambassador and his wife, bears Tariq’s “hallmarks” of detailed planning, execution and escape. Not everyone in the PLO agrees with Yasir Arafat brokering a peace deal with the Israelis, and Shamron is pessimistic that the peace deal will hold when so many elements on both sides wants it to fail. With politics in Israel taking an ugly turn, Shamron flies to England to coax Gabriel out of retirement to seek revenge on Tariq. He is to set up his own organisation in London, separate from Israeli intelligence, and blindsiding both MI5 and Langley, which is closely monitoring the peace deal. Somewhat reluctantly, he recruits French Jew and model, Jacqueline, whom he worked with before, as a “honeypot” to infiltrate Tariq’s organisation. Ari Shamron, a Mossad spymaster, recruited and trained Allon, his best agent. Allon is also his most troubled agent, for reasons that go beyond the fateful day involving Allon’s wife and son. Shamron and Allon are as different as night and day: Allon loathes violence, while Shamron revels in it; Allon does not believe that everything that the Israeli government has done is for the best, while Shamron can not believe otherwise; Allon believes that revenge leads to spiritual death, while Shamron believes that revenge is a biblical necessity. Strangely, though, they make a superior team. Whilst the Palestinians are portrayed as the terrorists the reasons why they have taken up the gun is well explored. There are no angels here.

Eh. Kind of an ordinary spy thriller, one I might have appreciated more had I read it 15-20 years ago when I was less jaded. Uzi flies to Jerusalem with a video tape of he ambassador's last minutes. After he and Shamron review the tape, Uzi visits Bella. Yossi Gavish identifies a waiter on the tape. The Kill Artist is a 2000 spy novel by American author Daniel Silva. [1] It's the first book featuring Gabriel Allon. The Kill Artist was released in the UK on 20 June 2002. Azouri and al-Hourani meet again in Lisbon. Al-Hourani explains that he has identified Jacqueline Delacroix and will use her on his next operation.