the Priwall ramp.

He felt calm, comfortable, and satisfied with a job well done. He had brought them together and they would face each other within the hour. He had no doubt that the assassin in the pay of a semi-friendly government would show the necessary skills and take the life of an engineer who served a semi-hostile state.

Late that afternoon he would drop off his hire car, fly from Hamburg to Brussels, take the last Eurostar connection into London, then a bus to the Haymarket. He would climb the stairs of what would be, probably, a deserted building, but Sarah would be there, and he’d give her the present he would buy before leaving Lubeck. Perhaps she’d blush a little, and murmur something about his ‘thoughtfulness’. The office would be cleared and ready for them to move out. She would have known the outcome of the operation by listening to any news bulletin, and he might invite her for sherry in his club’s bar. Then they would go their separate ways.

The following morning he would leave his train at Vauxhall and walk to the Towers. It would be well known that a prominent Iranian weapons scientist had been ‘taken down’ in the German city of Lubeck the previous day – it would have been broadcast widely and reported in the newspapers. A minimal minority would find the opportunity, out of sight, to press his hand. Only later would rumour and gossip spread: he would then be a noted man, respected. He chuckled.

He came off the ferry at the side of the ramp. The cars sped past and threw up the puddles’ water. He went to the cafe for his hot breakfast.

It was right that he had made the pilgrimage.

The Cousin, too, had no more use for a mobile phone. The main part, not the inner brain, was tossed casually into the back of a corporation rubbish cart as it cleaned streets before the rush-hour began; the brain was wrapped in the paper bag that had contained the pastry he had bought from a stall by the Muhlenbrucke. He dropped it into a bin in the park off the Wallstrasse. He felt bullish.

Like Gibbons and their Friend, the Cousin expected to stay in the city for the next hour, no longer. There was nothing he could do in that time, and his connections were now broken. He would then drive south, fast, to Hannover. He would leave his hire car there and pay his bill – false name and cards – and a military driver would take him far to the southwest, towards Kaiserslautern. By late evening he would be on a military flight out of the Ramstein USAF base. Those who disapproved of extra-judicial killing would not know about it, and those who did not would pump his hand and slap his back.

He was in the park, and shared a bench with a derelict guy. He bought the man coffee from a stall and a pastry with a custard centre. The derelict had few teeth and bobbed his head in gratitude. The Cousin felt no need to communicate any more than his general sense of well-being. It was not every day there was a chance to waste the bastards who had done the damage in Iraq, and were in the process of getting devices into Afghanistan. Christmas was coming early.

The images in his mind were of bombs detonating in those far-off places. He had forgotten them since he had left the rendezvous city of London. As if why they were in Lubeck, and what they were doing, had no relation to the deserts and mountains where the young guys were sent. As if he, the Friend and Gibbons had lost sight of the reasons and been buried in the detail of it. He laughed, and the derelict cackled with him. The Agency man came from small-town Alabama where there were good fire-and-brimstone preachers. Ten years earlier he had visited an elderly uncle; it had been the fourth Sunday after the planes had been flown into the Twin Towers. He could not remember where the text had come from, which Old Testament chapter, but the preacher that morning had said, ‘ “If I whet my glittering sword and my hand take hold on Judgment, I will render Vengeance on my enemies and will reward them that hate me.” ’ Fine stuff. Allelujahs to go with it, and plenty.

The rain had started to patter on his shoulders. There were, of course, the two guys who had gone forward, identified the destination and hit trouble, but an alarm had not been raised and the hit was in place. The target faced Judgment, was adjacent to Vengeance. The two guys were blanked out of his mind, deniable, and he laughed again, then walked away, leaving the derelict with the last of his pastry. He would have time for a quick walk around Lubeck, the renovated historic buildings, before driving away.

He laughed because he thought vengeance a fine rich dish, best served as a surprise.

He sat in the van, and did not smoke or drink take-out coffee. Instead he read. Gabbi’s choice was to be among favourites.

Just as his driver, who had brought him the weapon during the night, did not know his name, so Gabbi would have been kept in ignorance of the driver’s – except that his wallet had been flipped open, a euro note extracted, and he had seen the plastic-fronted pouch inside it with the ID that would take the man, in the name of Amnon Katz, into the car park of the Embassy of Israel, 14193 Berlin. Little escaped Gabbi. Probably, when he was back in Tel Aviv tomorrow, and had his debriefing, the day after tomorrow, he would mention that the embassy’s man had not satisfactorily hidden his identity or troubled to disguise his workplace.

He thought the man with him, Amnon Katz, squirmed too often in his seat. Maybe the people who should have escorted him were on holiday or had made excuses. After the chaotic affair of the Emirates killing, intelligence-gathering officers had sought to distance themselves from the work of his unit. He had Amnon Katz, who had been calmer in the night and had spoken coherently. Perhaps he had not slept. Perhaps he had a knotted stomach. Perhaps he had doubts, now that he was up against the place where a man would be killed. They had a view of the steps leading up to the main door of the block and of the lit windows on the first floor. A saloon car was parked at the kerb. The top of a man’s scalp showed above the driver’s seat headrest. There was no other security in sight. He coughed hard, cleared his throat. He had not drunk any coffee because it would be unprofessional to be stuck outside on a cold pavement and need to piss. He could feel the weapon lodged in his trouser belt, under the overalls. He reached to open the van’s passenger door.

The man, Amnon Katz, gave him his hand. For encouragement? Gabbi ignored it.

He closed the door quietly behind him and went to the back of the van. He took out a road-cleaning brush and a couple of bin liners, and smiled ruefully. He would be fucked if there were no leaves to collect and no rubbish to sweep up. He had a shovel and thick, industrial gloves.

He did not look behind him but walked towards the parked car and the steps. The wind blew harshly down the road in the centre of the teaching-hospital complex and buffeted his face. His baseball cap was well down over his eyes and a scarf closely wrapped at his mouth. The cameras would be rewarded with little. And the van? He heard its engine start. It reversed, and would be driven away. Somewhere behind him, watching him, was the stubbily built man with the old face, the bright eyes of youth and the coldness at the mouth who had met him off the ferry. Gabbi trusted that man, and regarded him as a friend. He was the one who would take him away when it was done.

He began to sweep the gutter – slush from the salt put down, a few leaves, some soil washed off the frozen shrub beds. He went slowly, had no wish to be close to the saloon car in front of him. He had seen his target go inside, with his arm around his wife’s shoulders, but the target’s back had been to him and he had seen little of the face. The condition of the wife, and the verdict she would be given, did not concern him. Each time Gabbi pushed the broom, he could feel, against his belly, the stock of the pistol – and now his mind was closed.

They sat very still, and close. The Engineer did not speak and neither did his wife, Naghmeh.

They were in the waiting room. The door to the office was shut but they heard his voice and thought he made telephone calls. Men in loose-fitting, unbuttoned white coats crossed the waiting room, knocked and went inside, then nurses in starched white trousers and figure-hugging white jackets. There was a woman at a desk close to the door, a gatekeeper. She did not make eye contact with either of them but kept her face bent over her screen. Soft music played from high speakers. There were magazines but they did not read them. They had nothing to talk about. His wife would not have wished to hear about the progress he was making in extending the range of electronics that could transmit the signal to the receiver fitted in the device, and do it from further outside the bubble that protected the enemy’s convoys from remote detonations. He had no interest now in which block of land beside which length of raised road leading to which village would be granted the necessary funding for a mine- clearance team to begin work.

Their lives were on hold and they barely dared to breathe. Neither could read the faces of those who went into the consultant’s room or left it. He could not be pessimistic or optimistic, and she could do no more than hold his hand.

It was sudden.

The door opened. He was shirt-sleeved, but with a tie in his collar, well shaven and looked to have slept. His face gave no clue. The Engineer had heard it said that an accused could always tell, from the moment he was

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