by Chris Ryan
The ranking Mossad agent, organising the troops while she arrested the enemy.
Only Maya Bloom wasn’t Mossad. Not any more. And her attention wasn’t really on the IDF soldiers. It was firmly fixed on Luke.
‘Move,’ she said. ‘Hands on your head.’ She nodded in the direction of the Old Town.
Luke was at gunpoint. He had no option. He turned and walked.
Twenty seconds later they were in a long, narrow street and moving against the crowds, who clearly knew something was going down and were rushing to get out of the Old Town. Luke heard people shouting as they saw him being marched down the road at gunpoint, but no one tried to step in. They weren’t that stupid. They just wanted to get away.
Luke knew he only had minutes. Maya Bloom wouldn’t execute him in front of everyone, but the moment they were alone he was a dead man unless he did something . . .
They passed a side street to their left. It was deserted, and Maya Bloom shouted at him to turn into it. And when a long, narrow alleyway – much like the one where Luke had cached his Sig the night before, and completely deserted – emerged fifty metres down on their right, she again ordered, ‘Turn!’
Luke felt himself tense up. As he rounded the corner he suddenly crouched, turned and jutted out his right foot so it connected sharply with the woman’s left shin. Gunshot. The noise of the round echoed, but by that time Luke was on her. He hurled himself forward and thudded the heel of his fist directly against her right breast. She gasped and for a fraction of a second she was disabled.
And that was all Luke needed.
He pulled the rifle from her grasp and quickly, brutally, whacked the butt against the side of her head. Maya Bloom staggered. By the time she had her balance again the tables were turned. Luke was in control. She was at gunpoint.
Luke said nothing. He just pointed down the empty side street and she understood. She walked slowly until she couldn’t walk any more: a dead end, twenty-five metres further down.
Maya Bloom stopped and turned. She looked up and around, taking in her new surroundings: the cobbled ground; the ramshackle buildings on either side, three storeys high; the metal bins stashed outside the doorways on either side, each one about ten metres apart; the thin dog sniffing around one of these bins, oblivious to everything.
‘Get to your knees. Hands behind your head,’ Luke said.
She did it slowly. With him standing five metres from her, the rifle aimed at her face, it was clear she had no choice.
There was a moment of silence.
‘Who the hell are you?’ she demanded. ‘Why did you attack me on the roof?’
‘Why did you take out the last bomber?’ Luke retorted. ‘I was with Stratton in Gethsemane. I heard you planning this.’
She sneered. ‘You’re even more of an imbecile than I thought. I would never be involved in something like this . . .’
‘Bullshit. The train bombings,’ Luke replied flatly. ‘You were there. I heard you discussing them with Stratton.’
Maya Bloom’s face suddenly filled with fury. ‘The train bombings,’ she spat back, ‘were different.’
‘Suicide bombs, hundreds dead. Can’t see the difference myself.’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Try me.’
She stared defiantly at him. When she spoke it was in little more than a whisper. ‘I was helping Israel’s enemies attack her allies. That way the world would turn against them . . .’
Luke stared at her. ‘I don’t believe you.’
Suddenly, though, she was raging. ‘Why would I attack my own people on their most sacred site? What do you think I was doing on the roof in the first place? If you hadn’t fucked things up, I could have taken out the bombers before they even got through the gate.’ Her eyes were filled with contempt. ‘I thought Stratton had the same agenda as me. That’s what he told me. To mobilise the West against the Arabs. But in Gethsemane . . .’ Luke saw her nostrils flare. ‘In Gethsemane it turned out he’s out of control. He wants to start a war in Jerusalem. He’s a madman . . . a fucking millennialist . . . he thinks he can bring about the Second Coming. I told him I wanted nothing to do with it.’
Luke stared at her. He didn’t want to believe Maya Bloom, but so many things were falling into place.
She was breathing heavily now. ‘Someone needs to stop him, or he’ll try this again. He’s insane,’ she said. ‘We can stop him. Put the fucking gun down and we can stop him.’
But Luke didn’t move. He remembered her ruthlessness in St Paul’s. He remembered Chet. He reminded himself that Maya Bloom still wanted him dead.
‘This has been a long time coming,’ he said.
She scowled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You killed my friend. You killed his kid and you killed the boy’s mother. And you did it all for that piece of shit Stratton.’
‘I did nothing for Stratton. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for my people . . .’
She jutted out her chin, defying Luke to finish her off.
He didn’t shoot her in the head, or in the chest, but in the stomach. Killing her wasn’t enough. He wanted her to suffer. To bleed. To beg for mercy before he ended it. The retort of the round’s discharge echoed around the alleyway and Maya Bloom, shot from little more than four metres, was thrown violently against the dead-end wall, her knees barely able to support her as she clutched her stomach and looked down with horror at the blood that was seeping between her fingers.
Luke was aware of a whining sound from the stray dog somewhere behind him as he bore down on her. And another sound, further away but growing nearer: sirens.
Maya Bloom coughed, a retching sound. When she had finished she gasped for air. Luke watched as her chin dropped to her chest. It felt right that her life was slipping away. And it felt right that he should tell her something else before she died.
‘I knew your brother,’ he said.
The words were like a shot of adrenaline. Maya Bloom looked up again. Her lips were blue. Her skin grey.
‘I don’t believe you . . .’
‘His name was Amit. I was with him when he died.’
‘When the Arabs killed him,’ she spat.
Luke shook his head slowly. ‘The Arabs didn’t kill him,’ he whispered. ‘Amit took his own life. I saw him do it. Blew himself up and took a checkpoint full of Iraqis with him.’
Maya Bloom started to tremble. Luke leaned over, closer to her. ‘Amit sacrificed himself for his cause. He was a good man. A soldier. You? You just kill innocent people. That’s not war. That’s murder. If he knew what you were, he’d fucking despise you.’
‘NO!’
The woman’s shout was hoarse, but so forceful that Luke was momentarily shocked. She raised her right hand from her bleeding stomach and fumbled in her jacket pocket before pulling out the piece of glass. It was almost pitiful, the way she lifted her weapon. She weakly held up the shard, hatred and agony on her face.
Luke didn’t even bother to shoot. He just whacked the end of the rifle against the side of her head and watched as she collapsed. She coughed again, and this time blood flowed from her mouth and her body started to shake. Luke kneeled down next to her and put the gun to her right temple. It was time to finish it.
But suddenly there was shouting.
Even before he turned his head he could tell there were at least six men. They wore olive drab, Kevlar helmets and chest rigs; they had M4s pressed into their shoulders and were advancing down the alleyway in a V-shaped formation.
Israeli SF. Twenty metres. He couldn’t understand their shouts but he knew what would happen if he didn’t put the gun down. Now.
He looked at the dying woman. Her eyes were halfway gone, her breathing like a fucking bellows. But as Luke slowly lowered his weapon, he heard her speak.
It was just a whisper – slow, agonised, barely audible. But the words were clear enough.
‘Your friend died like a dog. He died limping like the cripple he was. He
was pathetic . . .’
And as she delivered her insult, a defiant smile crossed her death-white face.
A sudden jolt of anger shook Luke, and he squeezed the trigger, pumping a fatal shot into her head.
Two more rounds rang out instantly. One of them missed Luke, passing a couple of inches to the right of his head. The other found its target. It pierced his back just to the right of his spine.
He slammed to the ground.
He tried to breathe, but no air reached his lungs. Two figures loomed over him. He heard them shouting. He tried to move his arms, but he had no strength. Only pain. The shouts of the soldiers dissolved into a blur.
Then there was darkness.
PART FOUR
The following day
THIRTY-THREE
There was a gentle breeze. It came from the east, but it was not so chill as to make the little crowd of fifteen people standing near Alistair Stratton’s private chapel hurry inside. They appeared quite happy to remain outside, chatting easily. The former prime minister stood on the edge of the group. He had a series of SteriStrips across his broken nose and his right eye was bruised and shiny. He was immaculately dressed, as ever. As his guests, one by one, approached to shake his hand and enquire after his well-being, he smiled brightly at them.
It had long been Stratton’s habit to invite members of the public from the nearby village to join him for the Sunday morning service. The generous benefactor. But they had been the last thing on his mind when he had walked towards the chapel that morning, discreetly flanked by his bodyguards and with Wheatly, his PA, following several metres behind. He had indulged them out of exhaustion. And guests, of course, were always delighted to rub shoulders with a man of such importance. They’d dine out on it, telling their friends of the neatly clipped lawns and topiary and of the serenity of that little chapel.
How different their experience would be if they saw Alistair Stratton’s personal office: the flat-screen television hanging loosely from the wall; the laptop computer smashed on the floor; the canvas of the Hieronymus Bosch torn; the furniture upended and one window broken. But they were never going to see that. Wheatly had locked the door and his boss’s loss of temper of the previous day had not been mentioned by anybody.
A priest in white robes appeared at the entrance to the chapel. He was a kindly old man whose only vice was an excessive love of model railways. He held his hands out in benediction. ‘Shall we, ladies and gentlemen?’
The congregation started to file in, leaving Stratton to stand outside with his PA and his close protection lingering nearby. When he did finally enter the chapel, Wheatly followed but the two close-protection men took up position on either side of the entrance. They rolled their eyes at each other once they knew they were alone. Sunday morning was the bum shift, but at least they didn’t have to sit through the service. The Grosvenor Group paid them well, but almost no money was worth having that religious shit inflicted on you every seven days. Besides, it was a pleasant morning. Peaceful. The birds were singing in the trees and it was good to be outside. As soon as they were alone they lit cigarettes, leaned against the church and started soaking up the early morning sun.
At the Mossad training academy, Ephraim Cohen stared at two images.
They were the stuff of nightmares. Of Cohen’s nightmares, at least. Maya Bloom’s face was barely recognisable. It was no surprise she’d come to a violent end.
The door opened. Ehud Blumenthal walked in. There were no niceties. He stared at Cohen for a moment like he was staring at a turd in the road.
Cohen removed his glasses. ‘Ehud,’ he said mildly. ‘I’m surprised to see you here?’
‘It’s not out of choice, I assure you, Ephraim.’
Blumenthal’s face was drawn. Grey. He looked like he’d aged fifteen years. Perhaps it was Cohen’s imagination, but a little of the arrogance he’d displayed at their last meeting seemed to have left him.
‘What’s the situation in Jerusalem?’ he asked.
‘The Temple Mount is still cordoned off. The streets of the Old Town are deserted. Everyone is waiting for a reaction.’
‘And how long will they have to wait?’
Blumenthal’s forehead creased. ‘There will be no retaliation,’ he replied.
Cohen raised an eyebrow and waited for an explanation. Blumenthal tapped the picture of the man that was lying on Cohen’s desk. ‘Whoever he was, he had two mobile phones in his pocket. They’d been adapted to act as detonators and were called within five seconds of each other at eleven o’clock. We traced the handsets that called them to a location in East Jerusalem. Sayeret Matkal went in.’
‘Anyone?’
Blumenthal shook his head. ‘But we did find something of interest. A wooden crate. Forensics confirm it had been used to carry C4 plastic explosive.’
Cohen shrugged. ‘There’s not much we can do with a wooden box,’ he said.
‘Let me finish,’ Blumenthal said. He drew a deep breath. ‘The box had a marking. It was supplied by an American company called the Grosvenor Group.’
‘I’ve heard of them?’
‘We passed this intelligence on to Washington. I’ve never seen a government react so fast.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Two days ago the Americans were shoulder to shoulder with us. Two hours ago they ordered the withdrawal of their fleet in the Red Sea, and the President has made it clear that if we want to retaliate, we’re on our own. They don’t want to know.’
Cohen blinked. It didn’t make any sense. He looked down at the pictures on his desk.
‘How did Maya end up . . . like this?’
‘That’s classified.’
‘My clearance is . . .’
‘Not high enough.’
For the first time, Blumenthal looked a little bit pleased with himself, but Cohen ignored it as he tried to fit the jigsaw together himself. Maya Bloom, somehow, had foiled a terrorist attack at the Western Wall. Was her killer in league with the bombers? It seemed the most likely explanation, but somehow it didn’t quite add up.
Blumenthal stood. ‘I’m instructed to inform you that your kidon is to be honoured posthumously,’ he said. ‘The Medal of Valour – Israel’s highest honour. It will reflect well on you, I am sure.’ As he said this, his face was sour. It was quite clear that the prospect of Ephraim Cohen’s success brought him no pleasure.
And somehow, it brought no pleasure to Cohen either. He just nodded briefly and watched as Blumenthal walked out of the room, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
The priest stood in front of the altar, two candles flickering behind him. He spoke in a strident voice that echoed from the vaulted ceiling of the chapel. ‘The Lord is here.’
And the congregation replied: ‘His spirit is with us.’
‘His spirit is with us.’ Alistair Stratton intoned his response a fraction of a second after the others.
The priest glanced briefly at him, then looked away when he saw a sudden fierceness on Stratton’s face. He continued with his Eucharistic prayer a little more quickly. There was a strange air in the chapel and he wanted the service to be over.
In London, the Director General SIS stared at his most trusted analyst, a small man with balding ginger hair who’d worked for the service for three decades. He blinked in disbelief. ‘Say that again,’ he instructed.
The analyst looked nervously from the DG to the Director Special Forces, who was standing by the window. He’d been working through the previous night and was dead on his feet. He coughed slightly. ‘We’ve monitored all the IP addresses connecting to the Western Wall’s webcam for the period 10.55 to 11.05 Israeli time this morning, sir. One of these IPs is registered to Albany Manor. Alistair Stratton’s residence. We’ve confirmed he was there at the time.’
The DG blinked again. ‘Leave us alone,’ he told the analyst. The little man appeared glad to leave quickly.
There was a long silence.
‘You think there�
�s a link?’ the Director Special Forces asked finally.
‘Of course there’s a bloody link, man.’
The Director didn’t rise to the DG’s outburst.
‘Look at the critical path,’ the DG continued. ‘An SAS operative thinks he has something on Alistair Stratton. He goes AWOL, then pops up to stop a terrorist plot that Stratton’s watching, in real time, hundreds of miles away . . .’
‘If you think Alistair Stratton has something to do with this,’ the Director said, ‘I can have him extracted from his residence within the hour. Give me another hour and I’ll have a full confession and no visible signs of coercion.’
The DG appeared to consider the suggestion seriously. But then he shook his head. ‘I’d never get the authority.’
The Director Special Forces, who knew a thing or two about the operations sanctioned by SIS in the past, gave him a cynical glare.
‘Don’t look at me like that, man,’ the DG retorted. ‘If you were sitting where I’m sitting, you’d make the same decision. But I’ll tell you one thing: from now on, Alistair Stratton doesn’t even take a shit without me knowing about it . . .’
‘But he gets away scot-free,’ the Director interrupted, and his expression made it quite clear how he felt about that.
‘Yes,’ the DG snapped. ‘He does. And I don’t want any of your people getting funny ideas. If they do, I’ll know where it’s come from.’
‘Of course,’ the Director replied with a curt nod.
The conversation was over. With military stiffness the Director Special Forces marched from the room, leaving the DG sitting at his desk, staring into the middle distance, his face – his whole demeanour – quite impossible to read.
In the chapel, the congregation stood in an orderly line down the length of the aisle. Stratton was at its head. The priest stood at the altar, a small silver salver in his hands, and he gave a nod to indicate that Stratton should approach, before taking a Communion wafer between his thumb and forefinger and placing it into the former PM’s hands.
