Killing for the Company

by Chris Ryan

  But the only thing that arrived was the dawn.

  She lay there, shivering, crying, knowing she should run, but not knowing where to run to. Chet’s face and words were all she could hear.

  Don’t stop hiding . . .

  Stay anonymous . . .

  Stay dark . . .

  She could have managed it with him alongside her. He knew what to do. How to protect them. But he couldn’t protect them any more.

  The cold penetrated her bones. The rain fell on her hunched-up body. But only one thought filled her mind: how could she stay hidden – how on earth could she stay hidden – now that the one man who could look after her was dead?

  FOURTEEN

  London, the following day.

  It was cold in Hyde Park. Early-morning joggers pounded the pathways, their breath steaming in the air. There were cyclists too, their white and red lamps glowing in the half light, and their luminous-yellow waistcoats gleaming. None of them paid any attention to the two figures walking north to south from Lancaster Gate, along the still, gloomy waters of the Serpentine. A man and a woman: he with a shiny, balding head and wearing thick-rimmed glasses, a thick, shapeless black overcoat and woollen mittens; she a good head taller, with wavy black hair, an altogether more stylish coat, a fashionable black beret and an ugly red wound on one side of her lovely face.

  ‘You’ve done well, Maya,’ said the man quietly in Hebrew as they walked. The language sounded out of place here, so far from the streets of Tel Aviv.

  Maya Bloom kept looking forward. Her cheek throbbed, but she ignored the pain, just as she had been taught.

  ‘Not so well,’ she said, and she pulled her coat a little more tightly around her. Her eyes flickered right, towards her handler. Ephraim Cohen was not a man given to paying compliments. He had a soft spot for Maya, though, and she knew it; but she also knew to take him very seriously. Cohen had a reputation as one of the Institute’s most demanding case officers, and plenty of young recruits had had a promising career cut short by a disapproving report from this unassuming-looking man. Which was why Maya couldn’t help but feel surprised that he was congratulating her, and not the opposite. ‘The woman got away,’ she reminded him. Once more, she felt a rush of anger at her failure to eliminate both her targets.

  ‘We’ll find her,’ Cohen replied with no trace of a smile. ‘The word is out. She can’t hide for long.’

  Maya inclined her head. ‘When she pops up,’ she said, ‘I should be the one.’

  For a moment Cohen didn’t reply. When he did, his voice was even softer. ‘There is a whisper in Tel Aviv,’ he said, ‘that the kidon Maya Bloom takes too personal an interest in her work. This is a whisper, Maya, that I can safely ignore, isn’t it?’

  Maya sniffed disdainfully. ‘I serve Israel,’ she said, ‘and the Institute.’

  ‘Your allegiance to the Institute is noted,’ Cohen said lightly.

  They walked on for twenty metres in silence, ignoring the strident bell of a cyclist, who was forced to swerve off the path and on to the grass to pass them.

  ‘You understand the importance of what you did last night?’ Cohen asked once the cyclist was gone.

  ‘I just do what I’m told.’

  ‘Of course. But I want you to know why, Maya. It will help you in the future. You think the Institute has any real interest in a former British soldier with one leg, or in his girlfriend?’

  ‘It depends what they’ve been up to, I suppose.’

  ‘Indeed it does, Maya. Indeed it does. Would you like some coffee?’

  They had reached a road running through the greenery, where a small white catering van had parked up. Cohen politely requested two cups of black coffee from the overweight woman behind the serving hatch. He handed one to Maya, took a sip of his own and they carried on walking.

  ‘The truth is,’ Cohen continued, ‘that I don’t know what they’ve been up to. All I know is this: it was Prime Minister Stratton himself who ordered their removal.’

  Maya stopped and looked at him. ‘Are we servants for the British now?’ The thought angered her.

  Cohen smiled. ‘Hardly that, Maya. Hardly that.’ He looked around the park. ‘A green and pleasant land,’ he murmured. ‘But every land has its secrets. Britain is not alone in that.’

  ‘But why us? Britain has its own . . . resources.’

  ‘True, it does. But the British intelligence services are reluctant to have their people do what you do on home soil. They feel the scope for errors is too great. It is dangerous for their director to claim innocence in matters of political assassinations if its own people are carrying out such actions. You never know.’ He smiled again. ‘We are lucky, Maya. The Institute makes no real secrecy of its actions. Our own assassinations are personally signed off by our prime minister. It makes life a lot easier.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why my orders come from London and not Tel Aviv.’

  ‘Your orders come from me,’ Cohen said, with a hint of sharpness in his voice.

  ‘And where do your orders come from?’

  Cohen didn’t like that. She could sense it. It took a few seconds for him to reply, and he sounded like he was choosing his words with even greater care than usual. ‘We operate on British soil with the sanction of the British Government,’ he said. ‘When we need to do something here, they turn a blind eye – provided we are discreet, of course. In return, if the British have a problem of a sensitive nature on their own soil, they sometimes come to us. These occasional favours we perform for them are of great benefit to us, Maya. They are of great benefit to Israel.’ He took a sip from his coffee and looked straight ahead.

  ‘Is that all I am?’ Maya asked. ‘Someone who does favours?’

  ‘Your allegiance to the Institute, Maya,’ Cohen echoed his earlier statement, ‘is noted.’ She immediately understood that that part of their conversation was over. But it didn’t make her like it any the more.

  Up ahead, two mounted policemen were trotting towards them. They stepped aside and let them pass. ‘The police presence is high,’ Maya observed.

  ‘As is the terror threat,’ Cohen replied. ‘London is not quite so dangerous as Jerusalem, but it’s not far off. Everybody knows what is coming.’

  ‘This war . . .’ Maya murmured. ‘It makes no sense.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Maya stopped and looked around. ‘Find me one British person in this park who thinks Britain should invade Iraq. In Tel Aviv or Jerusalem it’s different. The Arabs would crush us tomorrow if they had the chance. But Britain?’ She made a contemptuous sound from behind her teeth. ‘Why should they care? Why is Stratton so keen to take them into a war that nobody wants?’

  ‘I don’t know. To be frank with you, Maya, I don’t care. A coalition invasion of Iraq is good for Israel.’

  ‘I wish I was involved in that,’ Maya said.

  ‘You are, in your way.’

  ‘Not like Amit.’

  It was the name of Maya’s brother that caused Cohen to stop once more. He gave Maya a serious look, then glanced round until he spotted an empty bench. ‘Let’s sit over there,’ he said. ‘I have something to tell you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Please, Maya. Let’s sit down.’

  ‘I don’t want to sit down. Something’s happened. What is it, Ephraim?’

  Cohen’s brow furrowed. ‘It’s Amit,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘He’s dead, Maya. I’m sorry.’

  She blinked at him as a dreadful sensation coursed through her body. She saw her brother in her mind: the short, stocky frame and rumpled dark hair. The only person in the world that she cared about. The only person in the world that she loved.

  ‘You’re lying,’ she said.

  But she could tell from the way that Cohen shook his head that he wasn’t.

  Everything fell away: the pain in her cheek, the anger, the cold.

  ‘You should sit down, Maya. You don�
��t look well.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ She turned on him and they were standing so close that he was forced to look up at her.

  ‘How did it happen?’

  Cohen bowed his head. ‘He was behind enemy lines. Iraq. There was a firefight and Amit took a bullet. It killed him instantly. He died bravely, Maya. Serving his country. You should be proud of that.’

  His words were like a torch to paper: Maya felt herself burning up. ‘Proud?’ she demanded incredulously. ‘Proud? The fucking Arabs killed my parents, Ephraim.’

  ‘I know your history, Maya,’ Cohen said mildly.

  ‘No! All you know is what you read in a file. I was seven years old, Amit was eight. We saw our mother lying in the street in Tel Aviv without her arms. Without her fucking arms, Ephraim! And my father – there wasn’t even anything left of him. And now you tell me I should be proud that these Arab dogs have killed Amit . . .’

  ‘Perhaps I chose my words poorly . . .’

  ‘Perhaps you did.’ Maya’s face was contorted with terrible pain. If she had been the type of person to shed tears, she would have wept. But her cheeks remained dry even though her insides were burning up with anger and grief. Her body shook, and she stormed away from Ephraim, towards the bench he had pointed out. Sitting down, she put her head in her hands and remained that way for a minute, maybe longer. Gradually she became aware that Cohen was sitting next to her.

  ‘You have my condolences,’ he murmured.

  ‘I don’t want your fucking pity.’

  ‘I didn’t offer you my pity. I offered you my condolences. I shan’t do it again. Sit up, Maya.’

  She ignored him.

  There was a pause of about ten seconds. When Cohen spoke again, his voice was quieter, but a good deal firmer. ‘If you ignore an instruction of mine once more, Maya, I shall assume that the Institute no longer has need of your services.’

  Maya felt herself sneer behind her palms, but she recognised the severity in her handler’s voice, and she knew he was not the type to make threats idly. Slowly she removed her hands from her face and sat up again, though she refused to look directly at him.

  ‘War is around the corner,’ Cohen murmured, staring out across the park. ‘The Arabs will pay for what they did to Amit. They will pay for what they continue to do to Israel. Saddam Hussein has his missiles pointed at our homeland, Maya. We both know he would fire them if he could. The British and Americans are not going to war to make our lives safer. But that is what they will do, and we must play a part. You must play a part, Maya. For Amit, and for Israel.’

  Maya was still trying to quell the rage inside her. ‘What do you want me to do?’ she whispered, looking straight ahead.

  Cohen nodded with satisfaction. Then, slowly, he removed a small photograph from his shapeless overcoat. It was a colour portrait of a man in his sixties, perhaps older, with a thin grey beard and glasses. ‘Who is he?’ Maya asked.

  ‘A British weapons inspector. Well respected, by all accounts. Unfortunately he has taken it upon himself to become a thorn in the British Government’s side. He’s of the opinion that the Iraqis are not in possession of weapons of mass destruction, and certain interested parties are worried that he might go public.’ Cohen removed his glasses and held them out in front of his head, as though checking the lenses for dust. ‘That can’t be allowed to happen, of course.’ He replaced his glasses and turned to look at Maya, who was still avoiding his gaze. ‘MI5 can’t touch him – it would raise too many suspicions. That’s why the job is yours. It needs to look like an accident, Maya. Or, for preference, a suicide. It can be made known that the pressure of work got to him, that he . . .’

  ‘I’m not doing it.’

  Silence.

  ‘I don’t believe, Maya,’ Ephraim said in a dangerously low voice, ‘that I offered you a choice.’

  She handed him back the photograph. ‘Someone else can go after this guy. It won’t be difficult. I want direct action against the Arabs. They have killed all my family. All of them, Ephraim. I want to hit back.’

  Cohen shook his head. ‘You know we can’t put you into the Arabic-speaking world. You’re a woman. You’d be too conspicuous.’

  She treated that comment with the contempt it deserved. ‘I’m the best kidon the Institute has,’ she snarled. ‘Do you really think I can’t take care of myself?’

  ‘No, Maya. I don’t think that. But it still isn’t going to happen and you’d better get used to it. The Institute doesn’t exist so that you can take revenge. Anyway, this is an important operation. We . . .’

  Maya stood up mid-sentence. She couldn’t listen to any more. ‘Forget it, Ephraim. I’m not interested.’

  They locked gazes. Maya could read Ephraim’s face like a book. He was sizing her up. Working out whether she was serious. Planning his next move. Fine. He could plan all he wanted. Their talk was over.

  ‘You’re making a mistake, Maya,’ Cohen said. ‘I fight your corner at the Institute. Walk away now and I won’t be able to do that any more.’

  She continued to stare at him, but in her mind all she saw was her brother’s face, and the pain of Amit’s death twisted inside her once again. She slowly shook her head. ‘You won’t need to,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t make the wrong decision, Maya.’

  ‘The Institute is weak. If it won’t do what needs to be done, I will.’

  And then she turned her back on her handler and walked away from the bench. She didn’t look round, because she knew that a man like Ephraim Cohen would take that as a sign of weakness.

  Cohen watched her leave. He saw her slim, black-clad figure stride along the banks of the Serpentine, then turn and disappear from view. He didn’t move from the bench.

  A second pair of mounted policemen trotted by, the clip-clopping of their horses uncommonly loud. Cohen barely noticed them. His mind was turning over. Replaying their conversation. Deciding what to do next.

  He remembered the first time he had met Maya Bloom. It had been five years ago, and he had been aroused by the sight of this beautiful creature – by the curve of her breasts and her hips, by the way her full, glossy lips parted slightly even when she wasn’t speaking. Every member of the Institute knew what a powerful weapon sex was, but that didn’t mean any of them were immune to it, and Cohen could remember the daydreams he had entertained that he and his new agent might become lovers. The thought of her warm skin against his, and the dangerous games they would play.

  These, he now realised, were the pathetic fantasies of an ageing man.

  So far as he knew – and he had done everything in his considerable power to find out – Maya had no lovers. The sex she exuded was shared with nobody. The body that he lusted after would never be anybody’s. Maya Bloom had only one thought, and that was for her work. This she carried out with an efficiency that sometimes surprised even the more hardened officers back in Tel Aviv.

  He had lied to her, of course, about the cause of her brother’s death, but that was a necessity. The information that had come through was sketchy, filtered unreliably through British intelligence. But if it was indeed true that Amit Bloom had perished in a suicide bomb, there was no knowing how Maya would react. It had been important to him – to the Institute – that Maya’s loyalty remained unquestioned. But that wasn’t how things had played out, and he was experienced enough to know that it changed everything.

  A kidon was a weapon. The very name meant ‘bayonet’. They were a tool of the state of Israel, just as surely as the missiles housed in silos in the Negev desert. If one of those missiles was faulty, the course of action would be clear: it would be dismantled and taken out of service. And what was true for a missile in the Negev was true for a kidon – especially one as volatile and dangerous as Maya Bloom.

  As Cohen pulled his mobile phone from the pocket of his shabby coat, he wondered whether she might have prevented what he was about to do had she shared herself with him at some point over the course of their professional
relationship. He was honest enough with himself, as he called a number, to realise that it would probably have made no difference. In their world, loyalties were not forged between the bedclothes. It was more complicated than that.

  Yes. A great deal more complicated.

  A voice answered the phone. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘It’s me. Cohen.’

  A silence.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A favour,’ he said. ‘Or rather, the repayment of a favour. I have a little problem, and I need you to take care of it for me . . .’

  As Maya Bloom walked along the Serpentine she could feel Ephraim Cohen’s eyes burning into her. Even once she was out of his line of sight, she could sense his watchfulness, as though he was some invisible spirit gazing over her. She understood the way he looked at her. She recognised the lust. She saw it in almost every man she met. There were exceptions, of course. She thought about the guy she’d killed last night. Even through the mask of his scarred face, she had seen his determination. He had looked at her not with the eyes of a suitor, but with the eyes of a killer. It was an expression she knew well. She saw it in the mirror every day.

  Maya knew, however, that Ephraim Cohen was not the kind of man you walked away from without there being some kind of consequence. What she had just done had implications.

  She left the park and hailed a taxi. Ten minutes later she was letting herself into an unmarked door in Lexington Street in Soho, and climbing up the tacky carpet of the stairs that led into the operational apartment she had inhabited for these past five years. Central enough to be useful, anonymous enough to be an effective safe house, it was a spartan place. Thick net curtains covered the only windows on to the street below, blocking out much of the daylight, but also stopping anyone from looking in. There was almost no sound from the busy streets, though occasionally, through the thin walls, she could hear the hookers next door servicing their clients.