Sam Bourne - The Last Testament

Miller was quieter now, examining his own fingers. ‘The opposite. This was need-to-know. Me and a small team recruited for the job. Ex-special forces.’

‘The team who grabbed me in the street market. They did all the killing too?’

‘I leave operational details to them and their commander.’

‘And the rest of us were out of the loop? The Secretary of State? Sanchez?’

‘All of them. Except you.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You should feel proud.’

‘Proud?’

‘Of what you did. You nearly got us there. To the tablet. Just like we hoped.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Oh come on, this ain’t Little House on the Prairie . You know how it works. Why do you think we sent Bonham over there to get you?’

‘To close the deal. The two sides were nearly there and you wanted me to close the deal.’ Maggie’s voice was wobbling.

‘Yeah, whatever.’

‘That’s what Bonham said!’

‘Course that’s what he said,’ Miller was staring hard at Maggie now. ‘But come on, Maggie. You think the State Department’s not crawling with people like you, skilled diplomats who couldn’t do this job? Specialists on the Middle East conflict? Don’t tell me you didn’t wonder why, out of all the people we had, we had to have you. We needed you because of your-how can I put this delicately?-because of your unique expertise.’

Maggie could feel herself paling. ‘What are you saying?’

‘We needed someone to get close to Guttman Junior. If anyone knew where the old sonofabitch had hidden this tablet, it would be him.’

‘You brought me here to, to…’ She couldn’t say the words.

‘Well, let’s face it, Maggie, you had the right resumé. You got close to that lunatic in Africa and we thought, given the right context, you’d do the same here. And you did. Like I said, you should be proud.’

A moment of puzzlement, followed by a strange feeling, one that Maggie had not known before, as if she was being crushed from the inside. So that’s what this was about, that’s what it had been about from the very beginning. Maggie heard again the voice of Judd Bonham, how he had recruited Maggie for this enterprise. Cancelling out the sin through repentance, he had said. He even mentioned redemption. This is your chance . He had spoken so softly, his voice sweet with reason. And yet he had been telling the opposite of the truth. He did not want her to come to Jerusalem to undo her mistake in Africa, but to repeat it. He, Miller and God knows who else had deployed her not because of her strengths-all that bullshit about the indispensable Maggie Costello, the great ‘closer’-but because of this one weakness. All that praise; and she had believed every word of it.

She was nothing more than a honeytrap, that lowest form of espionage life, sent in to win the affection of Uri Guttman. The fact that she had succeeded only increased her nausea. What did that make her? Nothing more than a whore for the American government.

Instinct launched Maggie from her chair, where she had held herself throughout everything. She slapped Bruce Miller hard across the face. Feeling the sting, Miller put his hand to his cheek, then, with a smirk that oozed lechery, slapped her back. As she reeled, he pressed a button under the table, instantly bringing two masked men back into the room.

‘OK, Maggie. This has gone on long enough. Not that I’m not enjoying myself. But you need to tell me where that tablet is.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, her words slurred by the blow to her face.

‘That’s not within a thousand miles of good enough, Maggie. Now, I think you know I got some boys here who’ve enjoyed getting acquainted with you. They might like the chance to get to know you a little better.’

‘So now you’re going to have the White House implicated in a rape.’

‘We would be implicated in no such thing. We would issue a statement mourning the loss of a fine American, brutally assaulted and then murdered by terrorists. The United States wouldn’t rest until your killers were brought to justice.’

Maggie could feel herself trembling, with rage, fear and a terrible sadness.

‘Do I have your attention now, Miss Costello?’

JERUSALEM , FRIDAY , 9.52AM

It was as if she were raiding the emergency tank. She could feel herself digging deep into her own reserves-of restraint, of self-control, and of that mysterious inner drug she seemed able to generate when the moment truly demanded it, the one that could, as if by an act of sheer willpower, numb the pain.

She heard her voice talking, in the low calm it could find in a crisis. ‘I don’t know any more than you already know. You saw what I saw. The message from Shimon Guttman sent us to the Western Wall tunnels.’

‘The message in the computer game?’

‘Yes. He gave us nothing more specific. If he had, you’d know about it.’

Miller gave a tiny movement of his head, less than a nod, but it was enough. The two men in ski masks came closer, each taking an arm. They pulled Maggie up from her chair and, careful to synchronize their movements, performed an identical action-wrenching her arms until they were both flat and high against her back: a full nelson. She roared with pain, sending a jet of spittle across the room. That only made the men yank harder, tugging at her wrists to pull her arms higher. On her right side, she could feel the strain on the ball-joint where her arm met her shoulder. The pain was so intense she could see it: a bubbling redness in front of her eyes. She was sure they were about to pull her arms right out of their sockets.

And then it stopped and she was dropped back in the chair, limp as a child’s doll.

Miller spoke again, his voice unchanged. As if he had merely paused to take a sip of water and was now picking up their conversation where they had left off. ‘And you didn’t see anything when you were in there this morning?’

It took a while for Maggie to open her eyes. The redness was still there, raging; the pain lived on, too, even through the relief of its ending. She could feel the memory of it still flooding her nervous system. When she finally forced her mouth to speak, all she could muster was a croak. ‘You know I didn’t. You searched me.’

Miller leaned forward. ‘Not only that, but I’ve had people searching the entire tunnels area since you led us there. Under floodlights. And still nothing. Which means-’

‘That the old man was not playing it straight. He said it was there, but it wasn’t.’

‘Or that Uri was tricking you. Sent you off chasing wild geese in those cellars, so that he could go and get his inheritance all by himself.’

‘Maybe.’ Even through the haze of agony and rage, Maggie was considering it. After all, she now understood, any kind of betrayal was possible. Uri could have faked the shooting on the road that morning, then headed off to collect the tablet alone. Maybe he realized who Maggie was before she had. He had served in Israeli intelligence; she had seen the way he had stolen a uniform and then a car. Perhaps all that was mere preparation for his ingenious dumping of her on the highway. Maybe he had Maggie’s number from the start: a honeytrap, to be avoided. She was the only one who had not seen it.

Miller stared at her for a moment, then turned his mouth into an expression of regret. ‘Just to be on the safe side, I think I should let the boys here see if they can’t help you remember if there’s anything else. Jog your memory.’

He gave another small nod and instantly the two men pulled her out of the chair. Except now they didn’t stand her up, but threw her to the ground. The man on her right immediately came down on one knee beside her and put his arm around her neck. He had already begun to squeeze when she managed to choke out a few words, speaking them as soon as she thought them.