Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

Silence in the room. Silence throughout the house.

She looked at the figure at her feet. The scarred, ugly face was still contorted with pain; there was a puddle of blood oozing around his head, dark and sticky, and the right leg below his knee was jutting out at an angle. He barely moved — just the gentle rise and fall of his chest as he continued to breathe — and the life blood was draining from him.

The woman walked to the window. Nothing except the rain and the darkness. No sight of Suze McArthur, and she felt anger at the thought that she’d escaped.

‘ Kalbah ,’ she muttered. ‘ Bitch .’

Silently she made her way down to the ground floor. She walked across the reception room, silent and dark, and propped open the door of the greasy old gas oven with a coal scuttle. She turned the oven dial on to full. It would be quicker, of course, to turn all the dials, but that would look less accidental. A hiss, and the smell of gas hit her nose. She took a box of matches from the worktop, removed a few pages from a newspaper and stepped over to the front door — edging round the dead dog — and waited.

The smell of gas grew stronger.

Stronger.

It made her a little light-headed, but that was OK. She could step outside before it really harmed her.

She gave it five minutes before opening the door and stepping outside. Standing in the porch with her back to the garden, she twisted the newspaper to make a torch and lit it. She waited for the flame to catch properly, then opened the door again, casually tossed the blazing paper inside and hurried away from the porch.

The explosion was almost silent, but the heat was intense. She felt it against her back as she ran towards her car, and saw the reflection of the detonation in the vehicle’s windscreen, her own body silhouetted against it. And as she opened the car door, she saw flames licking from the windows: already fierce, despite the rain. She’d set enough fires to know that the house would be an inescapable inferno within seconds.

Why, then, didn’t she feel pleased?

She looked around. Darkness, rain and wind. The bitch could be anywhere out there. It was impossible to find her. A harsh look crossed the woman’s face as she got behind the steering wheel and started the car. It didn’t matter, she told herself. She would finish the job. Somehow. Somewhere. It was only a matter of time before Suze McArthur showed up. And when she did…

And so, as the woman drove away and glanced in the rear-view mirror, she even allowed herself a smile. The flames had already engulfed the building now; they had spread to the first floor; they were quickly turning this old Brecon farmhouse into an enormous funeral pyre.

Suze scrambled.

Her clothes were soaked, and her matted hair was stuck to her tear-stained face. Her body trembled. She was 200 metres from the B amp;B, up a slight incline, crouching down, still clutching the wallet Chet had given her.

A sudden explosion behind her. She stopped and turned, and over the next sixty seconds she stared at the orange flames emerging from the windows of the ground floor.

She was cold, but the effect of the wind and the rain against her skin was nothing compared to the chill she felt inside. She knew she should run, but her muscles wouldn’t obey her brain and she stood there in the elements, barely able to move. Barely able to turn her head away. The woman couldn’t have overcome Chet, she told herself. Any minute she would see him silhouetted against the flames, running towards her.

She stared as the flames rose higher.

‘What have I done?’

Listen to me carefully. Your mother’s dead.

A sob escaped her throat, barely audible above the sound of the weather, and she shook her head as a corkscrew of terror and grief twisted in her heart. What kind of nightmare had she brought upon herself?

The rain fell harder, but it had no effect on the flames. Within ten minutes the whole house was engulfed. When the roof collapsed, she heard the crashing sound even from this distance and over the noise of the wind. She found herself sobbing again, her tears making the conflagration bleary and indistinct. She wiped them away and continued to stare at the fire, desperately seeking the sight she longed for.

It never came. Tears blurred her vision again, and with another sob she turned and stumbled into the darkness.

The terrain started to descend and she found herself in a dip from which, if she looked back, she couldn’t see the flames, only the glow as they lit up the sky. But as she hurried desperately in the direction she hoped was north, the gradient increased again and the farmhouse came back into view. It was completely engulfed.

She continued to climb. He would meet her, she told herself. He would meet her, like he said he would. Her lungs burned with exhaustion but she kept on climbing, and after twenty minutes she found herself at the brow of a hill. She looked around. About thirty metres to her right, she could see the vague silhouette of a small pile of stones.

As she stood there, suddenly, unexpectedly, the moon appeared. Without knowing where the instinct came from, she threw herself to the ground to avoid being lit up against the horizon, then crawled on all fours towards the cairn.

Suze didn’t look back towards the house. All feeling had left her, except the dread that seeped through every cell in her body. She tried to fight it. He would come. He would come. The moon disappeared again. The rain continued to fall. She heard sirens in the distance. Soaked and freezing, she hugged the stones, waiting for a figure to arrive. Waiting to hear his voice.

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?

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.