# Read the first page of The Cellist by Daniel Silva Read the opening of The Cellist by Daniel Silva free, no signup. An art restorer and spy hunts the killers of a Russian exile. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/the-cellist-daniel-silva - Genre: Thrillers - Year: 2021 - ISBN: 9780062834911 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9780062834911&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9780062834911 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9780062834911 ## The opening Sarah Bancroft envied those fortunate souls who believed they controlled their own destinies. For them, life was no more complicated than riding the Underground. Insert your ticket at the fare gate, get off at the correct stop—Charing Cross rather than Leicester Square. Sarah had never subscribed to such drivel. Yes, one could prepare, one could strive, one could make choices, but ultimately life was an elaborate game of providence and probability. Regrettably, in matters of both work and love, she had displayed an uncanny lack of timing. She was either one step too fast or one too slow. She had missed many trains. Several times she had boarded the wrong one, nearly always with disastrous results. Her latest career move appeared to fit this star-crossed pattern. Having established herself as one of the most prominent museum curators in New York, she had elected to relocate to London to take over day-to-day management of Isherwood Fine Arts, purveyors of quality Italian and Dutch Old Master paintings since 1968. True to form, her arrival was followed in short order by the outbreak of a deadly pandemic. Even the art world, which catered to the whims of the global superrich, was not immune to the contagion’s ravages. Almost overnight, the gallery’s business slipped into something approximating cardiac arrest. If the phone rang at all, it was usually a buyer or his representative calling to back out of a sale. Not since the West End musical version of Desperately Seeking Susan, declared Sarah’s acerbic mother, had London witnessed a less auspicious debut. Isherwood Fine Arts had seen troubled times before—wars, terrorist attacks, oil shocks, market meltdowns, disastrous love affairs—and yet somehow it had always managed to weather the storm. Sarah had worked at the gallery briefly fifteen years earlier while serving as a clandestine asset of the Central Intelligence Agency. The operation had been a joint US-Israeli enterprise, run by the legendary Gabriel Allon. With the help of a lost Van Gogh, he had inserted Sarah into the entourage of a Saudi billionaire named Zizi al-Bakari and ordered her to find the terrorist mastermind lurking within it. Her life had never been the same since. When the operation was over, she spent several months recuperating at an Agency safe house in the horse country of Northern Virginia. Afterward, she worked at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center at Langley. She also took part in several joint American-Israeli operations, all at Gabriel’s behest. British intelligence was well aware of Sarah’s past, and of her presence in London—hardly surprising, for she was currently sharing a bed with an MI6 officer named Christopher Keller. Ordinarily, a relationship such as theirs was strictly forbidden, but in Sarah’s case an exception had been made. Graham Seymour, the director-general of MI6, was a personal friend, as was Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster. Indeed, not long after her arrival in London, Sarah and Christopher had dined privately at Number Ten. With the exception of Julian Isherwood, owner of the enchanted gallery that bore his name, the denizens of London’s art world knew none of this. As far as Sarah’s colleagues and competitors were concerned, she was the beautiful and brilliant American art historian who had briefly brightened their world one dreary winter long ago, only to throw them over for the likes of Zizi al-Bakari, may he rest in peace. And now, after a tumultuous journey through the secret world, she had returned, thus proving her point about providence and probability. At long last, Sarah had caught the right train. ## Books with a similar feel - [The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-surgeon-tess-gerritsen.md) - [Memory Man by David Baldacci](https://uncovered.ink/read/memory-man-david-baldacci.md) - [The Terminal List by Jack Carr](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-terminal-list-jack-carr.md) - [The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-new-couple-in-5b-lisa-unger.md) - [Midnight is the Darkest Hour by Ashley Winstead](https://uncovered.ink/read/midnight-is-the-darkest-hour-ashley-winstead.md) - [Triptych by Karin Slaughter](https://uncovered.ink/read/triptych-karin-slaughter.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.