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, ‘
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?’
