Killing for the Company

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?

FOURTEEN

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.

‘We’ll find her,’ Cohen replied with no trace of a smile. ‘The word is out. She can’t hide for long.’

Maya inclined her head. ‘When she pops up,’ she said, ‘ I should be the one.’

For a moment Cohen didn’t reply. When he did, his voice was even softer. ‘There is a whisper in Tel Aviv,’ he said, ‘that the kidon Maya Bloom takes too personal an interest in her work. This is a whisper, Maya, that I can safely ignore, isn’t it?’

Maya sniffed disdainfully. ‘I serve Israel,’ she said, ‘and the Institute.’

‘Your allegiance to the Institute is noted,’ Cohen said lightly.

They walked on for twenty metres in silence, ignoring the strident bell of a cyclist, who was forced to swerve off the path and on to the grass to pass them.

‘You understand the importance of what you did last night?’ Cohen asked once the cyclist was gone.

‘I just do what I’m told.’