Killing for the Company (24 page)

‘Is that all I am?’ Maya asked. ‘Someone who does favours?’

‘Your allegiance to the Institute, Maya,’ Cohen echoed his earlier statement, ‘is noted.’ She immediately understood that that part of their conversation was over. But it didn’t make her like it any the more.

Up ahead, two mounted policemen were trotting towards them. They stepped aside and let them pass. ‘The police presence is high,’ Maya observed.

‘As is the terror threat,’ Cohen replied. ‘London is not quite so dangerous as Jerusalem, but it’s not far off. Everybody knows what is coming.’

‘This war . . .’ Maya murmured. ‘It makes no sense.’

‘What do you mean?’

Maya stopped and looked around. ‘Find me one British person in this park who thinks Britain should invade Iraq. In Tel Aviv or Jerusalem it’s different. The Arabs would crush us tomorrow if they had the chance. But Britain?’ She made a contemptuous sound from behind her teeth. ‘Why should they care? Why is Stratton so keen to take them into a war that nobody wants?’

‘I don’t know. To be frank with you, Maya, I don’t care. A coalition invasion of Iraq is good for Israel.’

‘I wish
I
was involved in that,’ Maya said.

‘You are, in your way.’

‘Not like Amit.’

It was the name of Maya’s brother that caused Cohen to stop once more. He gave Maya a serious look, then glanced round until he spotted an empty bench. ‘Let’s sit over there,’ he said. ‘I have something to tell you.’

‘What is it?’

‘Please, Maya. Let’s sit down.’

‘I don’t want to sit down. Something’s happened. What is it, Ephraim?’

Cohen’s brow furrowed. ‘It’s Amit,’ he said quietly.

‘What?
What?
’

‘He’s dead, Maya. I’m sorry.’

She blinked at him as a dreadful sensation coursed through her body. She saw her brother in her mind: the short, stocky frame and rumpled dark hair. The only person in the world that she cared about. The only person in the world that she loved.

‘You’re lying,’ she said.

But she could tell from the way that Cohen shook his head that he wasn’t.

Everything fell away: the pain in her cheek, the anger, the cold.

‘You should sit down, Maya. You don’t look well.’

‘How did it happen?’ She turned on him and they were standing so close that he was forced to look up at her.

‘
How did it happen?
’

Cohen bowed his head. ‘He was behind enemy lines. Iraq. There was a firefight and Amit took a bullet. It killed him instantly. He died bravely, Maya. Serving his country. You should be proud of that.’

His words were like a torch to paper: Maya felt herself burning up. ‘Proud?’ she demanded incredulously. ‘
Proud?
The fucking Arabs killed my parents, Ephraim.’

‘I know your history, Maya,’ Cohen said mildly.

‘
No!
All you know is what you read in a file. I was seven years old, Amit was eight. We saw our mother lying in the street in Tel Aviv without her arms.
Without her fucking arms, Ephraim!
And my father – there wasn’t even anything left of him. And now you tell me I should be proud that these Arab dogs have killed Amit . . .’

‘Perhaps I chose my words poorly . . .’

‘Perhaps you did.’ Maya’s face was contorted with terrible pain. If she had been the type of person to shed tears, she would have wept. But her cheeks remained dry even though her insides were burning up with anger and grief. Her body shook, and she stormed away from Ephraim, towards the bench he had pointed out. Sitting down, she put her head in her hands and remained that way for a minute, maybe longer. Gradually she became aware that Cohen was sitting next to her.

‘You have my condolences,’ he murmured.

‘I don’t want your fucking pity.’

‘I didn’t offer you my pity. I offered you my condolences. I shan’t do it again. Sit up, Maya.’

She ignored him.

There was a pause of about ten seconds. When Cohen spoke again, his voice was quieter, but a good deal firmer. ‘If you ignore an instruction of mine once more, Maya, I shall assume that the Institute no longer has need of your services.’

Maya felt herself sneer behind her palms, but she recognised the severity in her handler’s voice, and she knew he was not the type to make threats idly. Slowly she removed her hands from her face and sat up again, though she refused to look directly at him.

‘War is around the corner,’ Cohen murmured, staring out across the park. ‘The Arabs will pay for what they did to Amit. They will pay for what they continue to do to Israel. Saddam Hussein has his missiles pointed at our homeland, Maya. We both know he would fire them if he could. The British and Americans are not going to war to make our lives safer. But that is what they will do, and we must play a part.
You
must play a part, Maya. For Amit, and for Israel.’

Maya was still trying to quell the rage inside her. ‘What do you want me to do?’ she whispered, looking straight ahead.

Cohen nodded with satisfaction. Then, slowly, he removed a small photograph from his shapeless overcoat. It was a colour portrait of a man in his sixties, perhaps older, with a thin grey beard and glasses. ‘Who is he?’ Maya asked.

‘A British weapons inspector. Well respected, by all accounts. Unfortunately he has taken it upon himself to become a thorn in the British Government’s side. He’s of the opinion that the Iraqis are not in possession of weapons of mass destruction, and certain interested parties are worried that he might go public.’ Cohen removed his glasses and held them out in front of his head, as though checking the lenses for dust. ‘That can’t be allowed to happen, of course.’ He replaced his glasses and turned to look at Maya, who was still avoiding his gaze. ‘MI5 can’t touch him – it would raise too many suspicions. That’s why the job is yours. It needs to look like an accident, Maya. Or, for preference, a suicide. It can be made known that the pressure of work got to him, that he . . .’

‘I’m not doing it.’

Silence.

‘I don’t believe, Maya,’ Ephraim said in a dangerously low voice, ‘that I offered you a choice.’

She handed him back the photograph. ‘Someone else can go after this guy. It won’t be difficult. I want direct action against the Arabs. They have killed all my family. All of them, Ephraim. I want to hit back.’

Cohen shook his head. ‘You know we can’t put you into the Arabic-speaking world. You’re a woman. You’d be too conspicuous.’

She treated that comment with the contempt it deserved. ‘I’m the best
kidon
the Institute has,’ she snarled. ‘Do you really think I can’t take care of myself?’

‘No, Maya. I don’t think that. But it still isn’t going to happen and you’d better get used to it. The Institute doesn’t exist so that you can take revenge. Anyway, this is an important operation. We . . .’

Maya stood up mid-sentence. She couldn’t listen to any more. ‘Forget it, Ephraim. I’m not interested.’

They locked gazes. Maya could read Ephraim’s face like a book. He was sizing her up. Working out whether she was serious. Planning his next move. Fine. He could plan all he wanted. Their talk was over.

‘You’re making a mistake, Maya,’ Cohen said. ‘I fight your corner at the Institute. Walk away now and I won’t be able to do that any more.’

She continued to stare at him, but in her mind all she saw was her brother’s face, and the pain of Amit’s death twisted inside her once again. She slowly shook her head. ‘You won’t need to,’ she said.

‘Don’t make the wrong decision, Maya.’

‘The Institute is weak. If
it
won’t do what needs to be done,
I
will.’

And then she turned her back on her handler and walked away from the bench. She didn’t look round, because she knew that a man like Ephraim Cohen would take that as a sign of weakness.

Cohen watched her leave. He saw her slim, black-clad figure stride along the banks of the Serpentine, then turn and disappear from view. He didn’t move from the bench.

A second pair of mounted policemen trotted by, the clip-clopping of their horses uncommonly loud. Cohen barely noticed them. His mind was turning over. Replaying their conversation. Deciding what to do next.

He remembered the first time he had met Maya Bloom. It had been five years ago, and he had been aroused by the sight of this beautiful creature – by the curve of her breasts and her hips, by the way her full, glossy lips parted slightly even when she wasn’t speaking. Every member of the Institute knew what a powerful weapon sex was, but that didn’t mean any of them were immune to it, and Cohen could remember the daydreams he had entertained that he and his new agent might become lovers. The thought of her warm skin against his, and the dangerous games they would play.

These, he now realised, were the pathetic fantasies of an ageing man.

So far as he knew – and he had done everything in his considerable power to find out – Maya had no lovers. The sex she exuded was shared with nobody. The body that he lusted after would never be anybody’s. Maya Bloom had only one thought, and that was for her work. This she carried out with an efficiency that sometimes surprised even the more hardened officers back in Tel Aviv.

He had lied to her, of course, about the cause of her brother’s death, but that was a necessity. The information that had come through was sketchy, filtered unreliably through British intelligence. But if it was indeed true that Amit Bloom had perished in a suicide bomb, there was no knowing how Maya would react. It had been important to him – to the Institute – that Maya’s loyalty remained unquestioned. But that wasn’t how things had played out, and he was experienced enough to know that it changed everything.

A
kidon
was a weapon. The very name meant ‘bayonet’. They were a tool of the state of Israel, just as surely as the missiles housed in silos in the Negev desert. If one of those missiles was faulty, the course of action would be clear: it would be dismantled and taken out of service. And what was true for a missile in the Negev was true for a
kidon
– especially one as volatile and dangerous as Maya Bloom.

As Cohen pulled his mobile phone from the pocket of his shabby coat, he wondered whether she might have prevented what he was about to do had she shared herself with him at some point over the course of their professional relationship. He was honest enough with himself, as he called a number, to realise that it would probably have made no difference. In their world, loyalties were not forged between the bedclothes. It was more complicated than that.

Yes. A great deal more complicated.

A voice answered the phone. ‘Who’s this?’

‘It’s me. Cohen.’

A silence.

‘What do you want?’

‘A favour,’ he said. ‘Or rather, the repayment of a favour. I have a little problem, and I need you to take care of it for me . . .’

As Maya Bloom walked along the Serpentine she could feel Ephraim Cohen’s eyes burning into her. Even once she was out of his line of sight, she could sense his watchfulness, as though he was some invisible spirit gazing over her. She understood the way he looked at her. She recognised the lust. She saw it in almost every man she met. There were exceptions, of course. She thought about the guy she’d killed last night. Even through the mask of his scarred face, she had seen his determination. He had looked at her not with the eyes of a suitor, but with the eyes of a killer. It was an expression she knew well. She saw it in the mirror every day.

Maya knew, however, that Ephraim Cohen was not the kind of man you walked away from without there being some kind of consequence. What she had just done had implications.

She left the park and hailed a taxi. Ten minutes later she was letting herself into an unmarked door in Lexington Street in Soho, and climbing up the tacky carpet of the stairs that led into the operational apartment she had inhabited for these past five years. Central enough to be useful, anonymous enough to be an effective safe house, it was a spartan place. Thick net curtains covered the only windows on to the street below, blocking out much of the daylight, but also stopping anyone from looking in. There was almost no sound from the busy streets, though occasionally, through the thin walls, she could hear the hookers next door servicing their clients.

The flat had three rooms: a living space with a small kitchenette; a bedroom with a large double bed, a dressing table, an armchair and a standard lamp; and a tiny bathroom. There were no personal possessions here, nothing that would ever give a clue as to who occupied it and certainly nothing to suggest that it was a woman. No soft furnishings or items of comfort. Just what was necessary. Even the drawer full of make-up in her dressing table was a tool, and once she was inside, Maya headed straight for the bedroom and opened it.

Lipstick. Mascara. Perfume. Sometimes these weapons were as formidable as any gun, and she needed to apply them with care.