Killing for the Company

by Chris Ryan

  NINETEEN

  Little Harry was fast asleep. He looked angelic with his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling softly. Suze couldn’t imagine, though, as she sat on an upturned milk crate gazing at him, what kind of angel would find itself in a place like this.

  The disused factory they called home was as cavernous as a cathedral and as cold. Most of the windows – high up in the brick walls – were broken, and nobody had bothered to sweep up the shards of glass on the concrete floor. During the daytime the windows let in a watery grey light. But at night it was black. There was no electricity here.

  The squat never slept. There were always people awake, no matter what the time of night. It was cold out, and most of the other squatters gathered round a brazier in the middle of the building, burning rubbish that they’d gathered during the day, and sharing spliffs. The air smelt of damp, smoke and skunk, but both Suze and Harry were used to that by now.

  They kept themselves to themselves. Suze had found them a little corner of the factory that had perhaps once been a manager’s office. It no longer had a door, and the walls were in a poor state, but it afforded them some privacy. There had been squats in the past where they’d had a room to themselves, with a window and a bed. Not here. Harry lay on a mattress of old clothes, covered by a thin blanket. But he never seemed to feel the cold.

  ‘Fancy a toke, gorgeous?’

  Suze looked round to see a figure standing in the doorway, the glowing dot of a joint between his fingers. She couldn’t make out his features, but she knew well enough who he was. He said he was called Danny, but Suze knew that nobody gave their real names in places like this. His black hair was braided into tight dreadlocks, his lower face was covered in a wispy beard and his body reeked of dope and dirt. Get him when he was stoned – and that was every night – and he’d tell you he was an eco-warrior, or an anarchist, or a trustafarian. In truth, Suze knew, he was just a waster, pissing his life up the wall like everyone else she’d met in squats.

  Like her.

  ‘No thanks, Danny,’ she said. It paid to stay on good terms with your housemates – they could be volatile, and you didn’t want them against you – but all Suze really wanted was to be left alone. Especially tonight.

  Danny didn’t move.

  ‘I’m going to get some kip now, Danny,’ she said with a hint of steel in her voice.

  ‘Suit yourself, love,’ Danny muttered. He disappeared back into the factory.

  Suze gave it a couple of moments before checking nobody was nearby. She peered round the doorway of their makeshift bedroom to see nine or ten silhouettes congregated around the brazier. There was nobody in her immediate vicinity, so she hurried back to where Harry was lying.

  Her worldly goods were stowed in a single bag. A change of clothes for herself and her son; some antibiotics she’d cadged from a mobile drop-in centre intended for junkies, just in case either of them needed some – registering with a doctor was out of the question, after all; a story book, written for children younger than Harry, from which she had intended to start teaching him to read. But there was never time for that. There was only time for the business of survival.

  And at the bottom of the bag, hidden away where nobody could find it, a wallet.

  It was in a bad state. The leather was cracked and worn, and some of the stitching inside had come loose. There were credit cards, but they had long since expired and Suze could never have used them anyway. On the back of each card, fading now, was a scrawled signature. Sometimes, in her lowest moments – and there were plenty of those – Suze stared at that signature and remembered the hand that had written it. She remembered the way the calloused fingers had felt on her skin. She remembered the urgent look its owner had given her when he pressed the wallet into her hands.

  Stay anonymous. Stay dark.

  She’d done what Chet had told her and she’d stayed alive. It wasn’t much of a life, but it was perhaps better than none at all.

  And now she was going to do the one thing that she knew he’d tell her not to. Tucked inside the wallet, difficult to find if you didn’t know it was there, was a SIM card. Suze had never done anything with it. She’d barely even dared remove it from its hiding place, as if just by looking at it she might endanger herself. She’d certainly never risked fitting it inside the handset of a mobile phone.

  She placed the card in the palm of her hand and stared at it for a moment.

  Suze didn’t even know if it would work. Removing her own pay-as-you-go mobile from her pocket, she slid the back off and took out the card, before replacing it with Chet’s old one. She found herself holding her breath, her hands trembling a little, as she switched the phone on. Would this SIM card work? If Chet had been on a contract, it would have been deactivated long ago. But if it was pay-as-you-go, maybe . . .

  It took a few seconds to crank up. A glowing screen, but blank. No information. Suze closed her eyes in disappointment.

  ‘Thought you were hitting the sack, gorgeous.’

  She spun round to see Danny. He wasn’t in the door frame this time, but had stepped inside the room. His voice was different. A little more high-pitched. A little slower. Stoned.

  ‘For God’s sake, Danny,’ she snapped. ‘Leave me alone.’

  Danny was silent for a moment. But then he took a couple of steps towards her. ‘No need to talk like that, darling,’ he said in a strange, sing-song kind of voice. She could hear him breathing deeply.

  Suze stood up, and as she did so she felt his fingertips reach out and brush her cheek.

  She didn’t hesitate. The years had taught her that if she didn’t take care of herself, nobody else would. She grabbed his wrist and yanked it away from her, then quickly pulled a flick knife from inside her jacket. The light from the screen of her phone glinted against the blade and Danny staggered back when he saw it. ‘Fuckin’ hell, love. Take it easy, hey?’

  ‘Get out!’

  Suze listened to Danny’s echoing footsteps as he hurried back to the brazier. She tried to calm herself with several deep breaths and sat back down on the crate.

  Her heart stopped.

  The screen on the phone was still glowing in the dark, but it was no longer blank. A single word: Vodafone. And above it, four bars of service. Suze swallowed hard and reached for the handset. Her fingers still trembling, she accessed the SIM’s contacts. Slowly, she scrolled through.

  The names were all unfamiliar, but then why should she recognise them? She’d only known Chet for a matter of hours. The As and Bs went quickly; there were no Cs or Ds. By the time she’d reached L her stomach was churning. She continued to scroll.

  And then she stopped.

  ‘mercer, luke.’

  She bit her lip.

  You can trust him. Chet’s voice rang in her ears.

  You can trust him.

  Suze looked over at Harry. Was she doing the right thing? Was she keeping him safe? The little boy turned in his sleep, and in that instant she saw Chet’s features in his face. It caught her heart.

  She pressed the call button quickly, because if she waited she might never do it.

  A few seconds’ pause, then a ringing tone.

  She was holding her breath again. Her mind was a blank. What was she going to say? What would this man think of her, calling out of the blue? Would he believe her, or just think she was some nutter?

  It continued to ring.

  And then it went silent.

  A pause. And then: ‘This is Luke, leave a message.’

  She gasped and quickly ended the call. Her courage had deserted her.

  Suze was sweating, despite the cold. The man’s voice had sounded curt and unfriendly. For a moment she wondered what the hell she was doing. How could she be so stupid as to use the phone? Didn’t she remember what happened that night? Didn’t she remember her mother?

  But then she saw in her mind the image from the TV. The woman. She remembered her face, and the scenes of devastation around the world. She remem
bered the feel of her hands around her neck.

  And then she jumped.

  The phone was vibrating in her hand. Its screen was lit up. The caller ID read: ‘mercer, luke’.

  Luke sat in the darkness of his room, his mobile pressed to his ear, listening to the ringtone. It stopped, and a voice answered. Timid. Unsure of itself. Female. ‘Hel . . . Hello?’

  He didn’t answer for a moment. He’d never expected to hear Chet’s voice, of course, but there was still a corner of his mind that thought maybe . . .

  ‘Is that . . . is that Luke Mercer?’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded finally.

  ‘I can’t talk for long. I was with Chet Freeman the night he died.’

  A pause. Luke said nothing.

  ‘The night . . . the night he was murdered.’ There was a tremor in the caller’s voice.

  ‘What are you talking about? Chet died in a fire . . .’

  The woman ignored him. ‘He said that if I ever needed help that I should come to you. That you’re the only person I could trust. Well . . .’ Her voice broke down again, and she sounded terribly weak. ‘Well, I need help. It’s important. I wouldn’t have risked calling you otherwise. I know things. Things I haven’t told anyone since Chet died . . . about the bombings . . .’

  Luke still had no idea who this woman was, but he knew one thing: she sounded sincere. She also sounded scared.

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked, ignoring the voice in his head that told him this was a very bad idea.

  ‘I can’t say.’ Her voice was half desperation, and half relief that he hadn’t dismissed her as a fantasist.

  ‘Then this could be a pretty short conversation, honey. How about we cut the crap and you tell me what the fuck this is all about?’

  He could hear her breathing heavily. He could almost hear the cogs turning in her brain.

  And then the line went dead.

  ‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Are you there? Hello?’

  Nothing. He stared at the phone. ‘For fuck’s sake . . .’

  The handset vibrated and the phone beeped. ‘one message received.’

  Luke narrowed his eyes in the darkness as he opened the message. It was short and to the point: ‘tomorrow. 5 p.m. steps of st paul’s cathedral. i won’t wait.’

  He quickly called the number to speak to the woman. No dice. The line was dead.

  TWENTY

  7 December.

  It was early morning in the eastern Mediterranean. The sun was just rising. Ephraim Cohen sat in a comfortable chair, but he didn’t feel comfortable at all.

  He was in the XO’s office of the Mossad training academy in Herzlia, just north of Tel Aviv. It was a small, functional room from which he helped coordinate the training of new recruits to the Institute. He’d been in the job for nearly eight years now, and he missed his days running agents. This new position was not exactly a demotion, but put it this way: it wasn’t a promotion either.

  His desk, as usual, was clear. Cohen was an organised man. A telephone, a laptop that he seldom used and a rather expensive Mont Blanc fountain pen that he had bought many years ago in London. And in the centre, a photograph. Black and white. Grainy. It had appeared on TV screens the world over and purported to show two of the UK train bombers minutes before they boarded.

  But Ephraim Cohen wasn’t looking at them. He was looking at the woman behind them. And the person on the opposite side of the desk was looking at him.

  ‘Ring any bells, Ephraim?’

  Cohen glanced up over the thick black rims of his glasses. Just for a second, so he could judge the way in which his guest was looking at him.

  ‘It’s possible, Ehud, yes,’ he replied noncommittally. ‘Of course, it’s not a very good picture.’

  That was a lie, and they both knew it.

  ‘If you’d like me to have it enhanced . . .’

  ‘No, no. That won’t be necessary.’ He sat back in his chair, removed his spectacles and started cleaning them on his plain navy tie. ‘Would you like some coffee, Ehud?’

  ‘What I’d like, Ephraim, is some answers.’

  Ehud Blumenthal was a man with a reputation. In Ephraim Cohen’s experience, most reputations were carefully managed. Blumenthal’s wasn’t one of those. He was, without question, just what everybody thought he was: a grade-A, bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool bastard. Blumenthal was the Israeli Prime Minister’s Rottweiler, nasty policeman to the PM’s nice. Everybody loathed him, but Cohen suspected he didn’t mind that, because he loathed everyone back. So when Blumenthal had woken Cohen in the small hours of the morning and demanded a meeting at six a.m., Cohen knew he was in for a shitty day.

  ‘How have you enjoyed your time at the academy, Ephraim?’ Blumenthal asked.

  Cohen shrugged. ‘I serve the Institute in whatever way they wish.’

  Blumenthal’s face lit up. ‘Well, that is excellent, Ephraim. Truly, that is excellent. Because the word on the street is that the Director is looking for an enthusiastic candidate to establish a new station in Sierra Leone. Does that sound like your kind of job, Ephraim? Because I’d be more than happy to put in a good . . .’

  ‘You know who she is, Ehud. Why are you coming to me?’

  A satisfied look crossed Blumenthal’s face, but he didn’t respond immediately. He rather nonchalantly brushed down the lapels of his jacket with his right hand, before standing up and pacing for a few moments around the tiny room.

  When it came – the explosion of fury – it was so violent that even the normally unflappable Cohen jumped. Blumenthal strode towards the desk with a vigour that belied his age and slammed his fist down with such force that the Mont Blanc pen jumped a few millimetres in the air. ‘I have been in government,’ he yelled, ‘for more than forty years. I’ve served three prime ministers and spat out sneakier little Mossad shits than you before breakfast! So if you don’t want your bollocks hanging from the top of the Western fucking Wall in time for Hanukkah, you’d better tell me what in the name of all that is holy your former kidon is doing standing shoulder to shoulder with two murdering Palestinian shitheads . . .’

  ‘I would have thought, Ehud,’ Cohen interrupted, standing up as he did so, his eyes blazing, ‘that a Palestinian attack on non-Israeli soil would be rather to your liking.’

  ‘Are you as stupid as you look, Cohen? Don’t you think the CIA will have every analyst in Langley examining this picture? SIS? People will believe anything of us, you know that. They’d be delighted to believe that one of our people set this whole thing up . . .’

  Cohen blinked. It was true, he hadn’t really thought of it in those terms. He sat down again, removed his glasses for a second time and rubbed his eyes wearily. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Ehud.’

  ‘Where can we find her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ That, at least, he could say with some certainty.

  ‘You’re going to have to do a lot better than that, Ephraim.’ Blumenthal was sitting down again. A little tear of sweat was dripping down his forehead. ‘A lot better.’

  Cohen had always known that Maya Bloom would come back to haunt him. As the years had passed, he’d managed to put her from his mind from time to time. But he always knew . . .

  ‘I don’t know where she is, Ehud,’ he said, a little meeker now.

  Blumenthal stared at him for a full thirty seconds before talking again. His voice was quieter, almost conversational, as if his previous outburst had never happened. ‘You’d better give me something to go on, Ephraim.’

  Cohen nodded. ‘Maya Bloom was the best kidon I ever knew,’ he said. ‘Too good, almost. Her parents were killed in a suicide bomb in Tel Aviv, and both she and her brother were identified to join Mossad quite young. The brother – I forget his name – died on operations in Iraq. I think that pushed her over the edge.’

  ‘That means she was close to the edge in the first place,’ Blumenthal observed.

  Cohen inclined his head. ‘Perhaps,’ he conceded.
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br />   ‘And you didn’t spot this? You didn’t think to report it to your superiors?’

  Cohen stared into the middle distance. He thought back to those days, and remembered the foolish sexual fantasies he’d entertained about his kidon. ‘We all make mistakes,’ he said, ‘from time to time.’

  ‘I think you might find,’ Blumenthal said, ‘that some mistakes are more costly than others.’

  The comment made Cohen snap. ‘The moment I realised she was a threat, I sent someone to take care of her. She killed him. It’s all in the file. I’ve heard nothing about her ever since. But I can tell you something for sure, Ehud.’

  ‘Then you better had.’

  ‘This . . .’ He tapped the picture that was still lying on his desk. ‘This doesn’t make sense. Maya Bloom was many things. Skilled. Dangerous. Unhinged. But she was loyal to Israel, Ehud. She was always loyal to Israel. Maya Bloom in league with Palestinian terrorists? I would sooner believe it of you yourself than of her. I can only assume she’s part of some crackpot plot to turn the West against the Palestinians.’

  ‘You’d better hope we find this woman, Ephraim, otherwise you might find yourself answering to less sympathetic members of the administration than myself.’ He stood up, brushed his lapels again and turned towards the exit. ‘I’ll let myself out,’ he said.

  Blumenthal was just opening the door when Cohen spoke again.

  ‘Ehud,’ he said very quietly.

  The politician turned. ‘What?’

  ‘You won’t find her, you know. I can absolutely promise you that you won’t find Maya Bloom. And if you do . . .’

  He went silent.

  ‘What?’

  Cohen remembered the brutalised body of the agent he’d sent to kill her. The guts spilled out all over the bed. The blood and the stink. The message she’d sent him, and which he had heeded. He wanted to say, ‘She’ll kill you,’ but he thought better of it.