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.’
‘Of course. But I want you to know why, Maya. It will help you in the future. You think the Institute has any real interest in a former British soldier with one leg, or in his girlfriend?’
‘It depends what they’ve been up to, I suppose.’
‘Indeed it does, Maya. Indeed it does. Would you like some coffee?’
They had reached a road running through the greenery, where a small white catering van had parked up. Cohen politely requested two cups of black coffee from the overweight woman behind the serving hatch. He handed one to Maya, took a sip of his own and they carried on walking.
‘The truth is,’ Cohen continued, ‘that I don’t know what they’ve been up to. All I know is this: it was Prime Minister Stratton himself who ordered their removal.’
Maya stopped and looked at him. ‘Are we servants for the British now?’ The thought angered her.
Cohen smiled. ‘Hardly that, Maya. Hardly that.’ He looked around the park. ‘A green and pleasant land,’ he murmured. ‘But every land has its secrets. Britain is not alone in that.’
‘But why us? Britain has its own… resources.’
‘True, it does. But the British intelligence services are reluctant to have their people do what you do on home soil. They feel the scope for errors is too great. It is dangerous for their director to claim innocence in matters of political assassinations if its own people are carrying out such actions. You never know.’ He smiled again. ‘We are lucky, Maya. The Institute makes no real secrecy of its actions. Our own assassinations are personally signed off by our prime minister. It makes life a lot easier.’
‘I still don’t understand why my orders come from London and not Tel Aviv.’
‘Your orders come from me,’ Cohen said, with a hint of sharpness in his voice.
‘And where do your orders come from?’
Cohen didn’t like that. She could sense it. It took a few seconds for him to reply, and he sounded like he was choosing his words with even greater care than usual. ‘We operate on British soil with the sanction of the British Government,’ he said. ‘When we need to do something here, they turn a blind eye — provided we are discreet, of course. In return, if the British have a problem of a sensitive nature on their own soil, they sometimes come to us. These occasional favours we perform for them are of great benefit to us, Maya. They are of great benefit to Israel.’ He took a sip from his coffee and looked straight ahead.
‘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.
First, however, she showered, washing away the dirt of last night’s job with a tub of Swarfega she kept for that purpose. She noticed a spattering of blood on the inside of her wrist, and remembered bludgeoning the wound of her victim the previous night. It was difficult to scrub off, but soon her flesh was clean. She stepped out of the shower, quickly dried her skin and her hair, then returned to the bedroom. She sat naked at the dressing table, where she powdered her aching cheek so that the swelling was less visible, before fixing her make-up and applying a squirt of perfume to the top of her pale breasts.
The clothes she chose from her wardrobe left little to the imagination. Black hold-ups. Lace underwear. No bra, but a short white dressing gown with two pockets. Once she had done it up, she returned to her dressing table and opened an empty drawer. It had a false bottom, which she removed to reveal her small stash of weaponry. Rounds for her Beretta, a 9mm snubnose and a small knife. She took the snubnose and the knife, and placed one in each pocket of her dressing gown. Having replaced the bottom of the drawer, she took a seat in her bedroom armchair.
And here she waited.
As she waited, she thought. Of Amit, of her parents and of the past. And when those thoughts became too much for her to bear, she thought of the future. All her adult life had been devoted to the Institute, from the day she had been admitted into the training academy until today. Now, of course, was when it ended. She had her own battles to fight. If Mossad wouldn’t help her wage war on the Arabs, she would have to do it herself.
Time passed. The day slipped away and darkness crept into Maya’s flat. She switched on the standard lamp by her armchair and continued to wait. She knew Ephraim Cohen’s methods well. She had carried out his instructions often enough, after all. He would send someone today. If a job needed to be done, it needed to be done quickly. And if she refused to leave this flat, they would have to come to her. That meant she was in control, no matter what anybody else thought.
She heard the first noise a little before ten o’clock. It was very quiet, barely louder than the beating of her heart: the sound of the lock on the street door being picked. She loosened the dressing gown around her cleavage, then slipped her right hand into the pocket containing the snubnose and pointed it through the flimsy material of her gown, towards the door of her bedroom. Perhaps she would need the weapon instantly, but she hoped not. The noise would attract attention.
And besides, Maya Bloom had other plans for her expected, but unknown, guest.
She didn’t hear footsteps coming up the stairs, but then she wouldn’t have expected to. Any hitman worth the name should be able to tread quietly. The first she saw of him was his weapon, a suppressed handgun peeking round the corner of the door as it slowly opened to reveal a shadowy figure silhouetted in the frame.
Silence.
Her finger slowly caressed the trigger of her weapon.
‘Who are you?’ she whispered, injecting a note of fear into her voice. ‘How did you get into my…?’
‘Shut up.’
The figure stepped into the room. Maya saw a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with black hair and stubble on his face. His voice had a cockney twang. She examined his weapon. A matt-black Glock, safe-action trigger.
‘Please,’ Maya whispered. ‘Don’t hurt me. I’ll do what you want..’
The young man took another couple of steps towards her.
‘ Please,’ she said. ‘I’ll do anything…’ She kept the hidden gun pointing directly at him, ready to shoot at the slightest hint that he was going to use his.
He eyed her up and down. Maya understood the look. She understood that he was already hers.
Feigning timidity, she stood up. Her dressing gown was tied sufficiently loosely for her breasts to be exposed, and she saw the newcomer appreciating the sight. She understood assassins, understood their love of danger and of risk-taking, and that they were devoid of principle. And she understood men too. She knew what was going through this one’s head: that he was going to kill her anyway, so he might as well have her beforehand. It didn’t matter how good they were, they always thought with their dick first and their head second. It was one of the first things she’d learned during her training, and she’d used that knowledge more times than she could remember.
‘Get over to the bed,’ he instructed. ‘Lie down. Maybe I’ll let you live.’ The arrogance, she thought. This was why women made better killers than men.
Maya released the grip on her snubnose — she wouldn’t be needing it now. She was safe as long as this man’s sexual energy remained unspent. She did as she was told, positioning herself so that her knees were bent at the end of the mattress, her feet on the ground and legs slightly open. The man towered above her, lasciviously taking in the sight, then bent down and roughly yanked her knees apart. She felt the cold butt of his weapon being pressed into her right thigh at the same time as she felt herself being exposed by two rough fingers pulling her underwear to one side. And when she felt his tongue inside her, she gasped — feigning the arousal she never felt.
She let him continue for about ten seconds before slowly moving her left hand down to the pocket containing her knife. She moaned as she removed it, just to keep him interested.
‘You like that, huh?’ she heard him say, like some boorish stud in a porno flick.
‘Yeah,’ Maya replied in kind. She’d studied the movies, and she knew what guys liked to hear. But as she spoke, she raised her arm above her head. ‘Yeah, I like that…’
It was a single movement. She used the strength in her stomach muscles to sit up at the same time as she brought the knife arm down with all the force she had. The thin blade slammed into the back of the man’s neck with absolute ease, and with a second sudden movement, she pushed his head with her free hand so that he rolled on to his back. As she stood up, she saw his limbs twitching violently; his tongue, which just seconds before had been so busy, was still peeking out from his lips, surrounded by blood. It looked to Maya as though he had involuntarily bitten into it.
It took him about a minute to die. A minute during which a thick pool of blood seeped from the back of his neck and the twitching of his limbs receded into nothingness. Maya watched it happen, standing above her victim semi-clad and with a flat, dispassionate look in her eyes.
His death, she decided, once the corpse was still, was not enough. Her usual habit was to make things look like an accident, but tonight she had a different intention. She tightened her dressing-gown cord, then bent down and hauled his body on to the bed, ignoring the blood that smeared her hands, her feet and her gown. She rolled him on to his front, pulled out the knife and rolled him back again, before going about the awkward business of undressing him. In the end she found herself cutting strips of material away with the knife. Occasionally she scored the skin, but that hardly mattered now. Her victim was about to look a whole sight worse.
Once he was fully naked, she stepped back and examined him. One cut would do it, from the throat, down his abdomen, to the area just above his groin. The knife pierced the skin easily. With the precision of a butcher she sliced his body open in a single movement. Blood seeped from the incision, though not a great deal because his heart was no longer beating. Maya discarded the knife — it had done its work — and then slipped her fingertips into the incision in the belly and ripped the skin apart.
There was a sucking sound as the warm internal organs loosened and spilled out, bringing with them a terrible, rancid smell. The end result was monstrous and Maya, even though her stomach was turned only by the stink and not by the sight, recognised this. She went back to the bathroom for her second shower of the day, leaving bloodied footprints in the carpet as she went.
This time the blood took longer to clean from her skin. The shower ran cold, but she stayed there until the water spiralling around the plughole was no longer pink. When she stepped out, she was covered in goosebumps, so she dried quickly and put on a clean set of clothes, barely glancing at the mutilated corpse on her bed.
It was time to leave. There was nothing she wanted to take with her, except the snubnose, the Beretta and the extra rounds. She would never be returning to this place. She allowed herself one final look at her handiwork. Did it say what she wanted it to say? Did it warn Ephraim Cohen, and the others at the Institute, what would happen to anybody they sent after her?
‘ Ken behekhlet,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Damn right it did.’
Maya Bloom walked out of the bedroom, descended the stairs and stepped out into the cold night air, closing the front door quietly behind her.