Chris Ryan - Killing for the Company

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.

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.

‘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.