Authors: Hector Macdonald
Never a great Middle East enthusiast, Madeleine Wraye found it hard to think of Beirut as a place one could go for dinner. But she had always known that when it came time to confront George Vine it would have to happen on his turf. Aside from reluctant visits to London for funerals and directors’ meetings, he had barely set foot outside the countries of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf in decades.
An old quip around Head Office: ‘George is coming . . . lock up the gold and summon the hookahs!’ A joke with various shades of humour to it, although all were intended respectfully. Whatever his predilections and his weaknesses, the sheer weight of experience the veteran camel driver had accumulated during thirty-eight years in the field, and the remarkable network he had assembled, could not be matched in the Firm. The CIA were assumed to have more
agents in the region; few intelligence professionals believed they had better.
‘Madeleine, how lovely.’ He kissed her on both cheeks before pulling out her chair and seating her with immaculate care. He was dressed in a black shirt, open at the neck and hanging loose over soft white linen trousers. The clothes were Western but the effect was Arabian. She detected a hint of frankincense, a scent he had wisely never worn on his rare visits to London. Here, she supposed, he felt free to be his true self. ‘How utterly lovely, after all this time.’
He was shaking his head, as if in wonder, as he fussed about her, making sure she was comfortable, offering a cushion against the hard teak of her chair, summoning the drinks waiter with an effortless gesture that spoke of many long evenings in this gilded place. ‘Champagne? Pastis? Everything’s on me tonight. You’ve been so kind to come all this way.’
She thought about resisting, demanding they split the bill if only to enjoy his insistence. He was a famously generous man. He sincerely loved treating people to whatever they would accept. How he paid for it all . . . well, now.
‘Thank you, George. I’m just grateful it wasn’t Isfahan. Spending the evening under a sheet isn’t my idea of a good time.’
‘We’ll break you in slowly,’ twinkled Vine. ‘Lebanon today, Iran tomorrow. The important thing is to understand the poetry of the hijab. It isn’t actually a restriction, you see. In fact it sets women free.’
Two tall-stemmed flutes of champagne were set before them. Vine had not touched anything but water before she arrived. Old-fashioned manners. Dumb, but hard to resist.
‘Let’s agree to disagree about Islamic dress codes, shall we?’
He beamed at her. ‘You’re absolutely right. Of course you are. Now tell me everything you’ve been doing.’
‘Oh, life is very dull these days without you around, George.’
Reaching across the table to take her hand, he said effusively, ‘I love you for saying that. Thank you. We know each other so well, don’t we Madeleine, and you know I know there’s a splash of sardonicism in your words. But I also know there’s warmth there, I do. Genuine warmth, and I thank you for it.’
He squeezed her hand a few seconds longer than most people would tolerate, but with George Vine it was somehow acceptable. He was everyone’s favourite father figure, kind hearted and well-intentioned, and his quirks were there to be excused and enjoyed.
Meze arrived with the second glass of champagne. Vine insisted on talking her through each dish, as if you couldn’t order all of them in the Edgware Road, without needing to come within a thousand miles of a Hezbollah citadel or a Palestinian refugee camp. ‘Fatoush. The bread is intentionally stale. That lemony taste is in fact sumac. Persians add it to rice and Turks put it on lahmacun, but here they prefer it on salads. Did you know that Islamic doctors were using sumac as an effective medicine while Europe was still sunk in the Dark Ages? Extraordinarily advanced. Now this is kibbeh nayyeh. Don’t worry, I know the kitchen. They’re very responsible with raw meat . . .’
She let him meander on a few minutes longer, and then interjected: ‘George, do you know why I’m here?’
‘You mean it’s not a social visit? I’m going to ask them to bring us a Cabernet from the Bekaa if that suits? We can get jolly good Bordeaux here if you’d rather, but really it’s a tiny bit insulting to an excellent domestic industry.’
‘It’s about time, don’t you think, that we had a little chat about the circumstances of my exit from the Firm.’
Vine looked pained. ‘I know. I do know. I’d hoped, I suppose, that we could simply glide over it, but really I’m grateful to you for making me confront the past. It wasn’t good. I have to be honest about that. We didn’t give you the support you needed – that you deserved after decades of public service. It was wrong of us. You had a right to expect better from your colleagues and – I hope I can still say this – from your friends.’
‘
Support
, George? Really?’
‘I should have been there for you.’
‘You’re actually going to sit there and pretend you had nothing to do with it?’
‘Dearest Madeleine, there are so many more pleasant things we could be talking about. Please . . . let me apologize profusely for all my past failings and then we can turn to the future.
Your
future. I want to hear everything you’re up to.’
‘Sorry, George, I want to stay in the past a little longer. And the person I really want to talk about is Dmitri Rostov.’
With a long, drawn-out sigh, George Vine said sadly, ‘Must we spoil this lovely evening?’
‘Then you do remember what you asked of me? The favour you flew all the way to Warsaw to request?’
‘It’s in the past, Madeleine.’
‘A critical asset, you said. Held the key to Russian financial and logistical support of the Assad regime. The Firm had lent him two hundred thousand dollars, you said, in case he needed to make a speedy departure from Syria. Now, extraordinarily, he was ready to return the money, only you couldn’t be seen with him. Who could you trust to take charge of all that cash on your behalf? Who could always be relied upon in a sensitive East European operation?’
He spread his hands in boundless apology. ‘Tell me what I can do to make amends.’
‘There was no such person, was there, George? You might think I should have recognized Gregor Uhlig from Counter-Terrorism’s most wanted list. Strangely, though – and I did manage to look back through my Porthos messages before my access was terminated – Uhlig’s profile was missing from all the C-T bulletins sent to me. So what can I conclude? An unholy alliance between Tony Watchman, Gregor Uhlig and George Vine to implicate me in a fictional pay-off that I would be unable to disprove. Is that really what you’ve sunk to?’
There was silence for a long time. When at last he spoke, it was with a deep and troubled regret. ‘I do so hate that we had to do that to you.’
‘Had to!’
‘You’d made it very clear that in the event you should find yourself in the Chief’s seat, the services of a decrepit old fellow like me would no longer be required.’
‘Age had nothing to do with it. The plethora of little deals you have across the region generating regular payments into your Singaporean bank accounts were, if you remember, of more immediate concern to me.’
‘And you were quite right, quite right,’ he said vigorously. ‘I’m not proud of myself. And I dare say if Tony hadn’t felt he might rather like the top job himself, and hadn’t come to me with a ready-made plan, I probably would have laboured on in my little sandy burrow for as long as I could, and then cheered heartily from the stocks as you purged the Augean stables. I wish I had, I really do. I feel wretched.’
‘As wretched as you felt when Rupert Ellington died?’
‘I don’t follow.’
Was there something there? It was hard to tell in the dappled light from the candelabra. And the alcohol had probably dulled both her perceptions and his reactions.
‘You do remember Ellington?’
Loud giggles from a bling-laden group of kohl-eyed women at the next table. An unhelpful distraction.
‘I certainly do. A good man. A very good man. We were much the poorer for his loss. Look, I hope you’ve left some room. We’ve got a whole leg of lamb coming, slow-roasted with cinnamon, pine nuts and apricots.’
‘I think I’ve lost my appetite.’
‘Some wine, then.’ Vine lifted the bottle, but her glass was still half full.
‘Of those many deals across the region, there’s one in particular I want to ask you about.’
‘Madeleine, anything I can help you with, just say the word, but do please tread softly. You never know who’s listening in this place.’
‘I bet you do, George. I bet you’ve got this place and a hundred others wired up just the way you want it.’
‘If only I had your talents in that area,’ he answered wistfully. ‘I’m a dinosaur who knows a few useful people, that’s all.’
‘People like AMB.’
‘Now that really is a name we should avoid mentioning again. After Iraq and Syria, they aren’t at all popular with certain gentlemen in this town.’
‘You’re on good terms with them, though. Sixty thousand dollars last year and the year before. Two hundred and ninety thousand this year. Why the sharp increase? How have you suddenly become more valuable to the good folks in Louisville?’
Vine gave up trying to distract her with the wine bottle. ‘Goodness, how can you know that?’ He sat back dolefully. ‘Now I’m embarrassed.’
‘
Now
you’re embarrassed?’
‘What can I say? It’s a win–win intelligence-sharing arrangement with absolutely no downside for Her Majesty’s Government. I have always been careful not to indebt myself to any party to a degree that would give them leverage over me, and to every transaction I always apply the simple test: does this hurt Britain or mankind? In this case, as in every other I have acted upon, I can assure you there is no harm.’
‘George.’ She leaned forward. ‘What have you done for AMB this year that’s worth so much more?’
He made a vague gesture. ‘They have interests . . .’
‘Interests that would make it worth turning a blind eye to a terror attack?’
He was staring at her in bafflement. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘How long have you been taking money from AMB? Does it go back, say, more than ten years?’
‘Do you mind if I let that one go unanswered? You seem to have quite enough upsetting facts at your fingertips without my adding to the pile.’
‘You need to tell me why AMB paid you over a quarter of a million dollars this year.’
‘Well, you see, I’m not sure I agree with you about that. It may not be completely legitimate in your eyes, and I do understand that, but nevertheless it is a private arrangement and I would be breaking my word to the aforesaid organization if I were to disclose the details.’
‘How about I disclose the details to the Chief?’
His brow wrinkled extravagantly. ‘I wish you wouldn’t. And you know, I trust you not to. I don’t think it would make any difference, but it would put the Chief in a difficult position and I wouldn’t wish to do that to him.’
‘That’s it?’ she marvelled. ‘You’re not even going to try and defend these payments?’
He smiled sadly. ‘You know what I am, Madeleine. It hurts me to think how you must judge me, but I am too old to change my spots now. It seems to me I still perform some useful function for the old country, even if I can barely recognize it these days. When my failings start to outweigh my contribution, then I shall go gently into whatever dark night is my just deserts. Heavens, what an appalling metaphorical mess that sentence was.’
‘Shall I tell you who killed Rupert Ellington?’
His fatalistic smile evaporated. A reaction, certainly, but what kind of reaction?
‘I confirmed it yesterday. Your friend, Gavriel Yadin. He also killed Simon Arkell. Remember him?’
‘Yadin? I don’t know the name.’
The photograph was on the table before he’d finished the sentence. Vine studied it resignedly.
‘Not awfully flattering of me. Bahrain. The Mabahith took it, I presume?’
‘AMB pay you over a quarter of a million dollars four days before you meet with a man who’s murdered two SIS officers. George, what’s going on?’
He looked away from the photograph. ‘You’ve clearly made up your mind that there’s some connection between this man and my friends in Louisville. Is there any point my saying that I believe him to be a private wealth manager by the name of Carlos Pérez? The information he was able to provide on a certain Qatari gentleman proved both accurate and rather useful. However if you tell me that Rupert Ellington was murdered and that this gentleman is a killer –’
‘A former Kidon assassin, to be precise.’
‘Well, then . . .’ He seemed genuinely at a loss. ‘Well . . . I must say . . . ah, there’s the lamb.’
‘How did you come to meet him, this “Pérez”?’
‘Do please have some before it gets cold.’
‘Did he approach you? Did an agent introduce him?’
‘Look at the way it just falls off the bone. Marvellous!’
‘George, you need to answer my questions.’
‘Well, yes, but . . . as it happens I’m not sure that will do me much good.’ He used his napkin to remove a spot of grease from his shirt cuff. ‘I’m beginning to think I’ve been played for a fool, although the motive eludes me. You’ve presented me with such startling facts – none of which I’m in a position to dispute just now – that I fear saying anything further on the subject will only add to my foolishness. Forgive me, Madeleine, I really must insist we talk of pleasanter things.’
Even George Vine was capable of steel, and Wraye saw it now in his face. He would not be answering any more questions. There was a 23:45 Alitalia flight to Rome that would allow her to connect with the early morning flight to Strasbourg. The lamb smelt delicious. She rose and kissed George Vine on the cheek. ‘Thank you for dinner,’ she said. ‘Do spend that AMB money wisely.’
Joyce had been staring through the peephole for ninety-three minutes before anything moved in the corridor. His eyes, alternating against the fisheye lens, were dry and scratchy. His neck hurt. The knuckles he’d skinned on the doomed tree house were throbbing. The door felt greasy against his cheekbone. None of it mattered. In his right hand was the Sig Sauer, loaded and fitted with the suppressor, safety off. In his left was the door handle. He had only to throw open the door and fire the shot and he would go down in history as the man who eliminated Mossad’s rogue assassin.
He would happily wait an eternity for that.
A door opened. He couldn’t tell which one. Between the girl’s apartment and the end of the corridor were just four more doors. If someone walked past on the way to the elevator, there was a one in four chance that –
The figure was unmistakably Yadin: fast moving, erect, sepulchral; a dark figure in colour and manner. The shock of seeing him so close, so abruptly, momentarily confused Joyce. His mind flew inexplicably to the girl in the bathroom. Was she calm? Was she trying to escape? Could she identify Joyce to the police? Yadin was already past his field of view, footsteps nearly at the elevators, and still he couldn’t move. It’s too late, Joyce told himself, banishing the image of the bound girl. He’s pressed the button. The elevator doors will open. Someone inside might witness the kill.
As he wavered, the elevator pinged and he knew Yadin was gone.
Raging at himself, Joyce moved to the windows and looked down on the small square in front of the apartment block. A scattering of couples sat sprawled on benches in the late evening sunshine. Yadin emerged and walked quickly past them all. Joyce watched him disappear behind the neighbouring block, heading in the direction of the trams on Avenue du Général de Gaulle. Dejected, he went to check on the girl.
She was sitting, now, her arms twisted uncomfortably upwards. What was her name? It was too late to ask. ‘Do you want some water?’ When she shook her head, he said, ‘I have to use the toilet. Sorry.’
He felt intensely unsettled in her presence, and he left the bathroom as quickly as he could. Returning to the window, he was stunned to see the unmistakable figure of Yadin walking back across the square. Had he forgotten something? No – a plastic carrier bag swung from his left hand. He’d been shopping, Christ! Popped out to the grocer’s. Joyce started laughing. The man was human after all. He needed to eat. Needed to shit. And he could be killed just like anyone else.
The surge of adrenalin that overtook Joyce was exquisite. He’d never felt so alive, so powerful. A reliable weapon and the element of surprise: that was all you needed against a man carrying a plastic shopping bag. Walking out into the corridor, he felt invincible. Brazen. He didn’t bother to hide the gun. There was no one around. Positioning himself directly in front of the elevators, he waited for the lights to reveal which one would give up his prey. As the digits over the left elevator climbed towards 6, he raised the Sig Sauer, eased down the safety and stared along the line of the suppressor at the steel door.
Yadin blinked at him, and Joyce’s heart leapt to see the genuine surprise in that seasoned face.
‘Step out. Hands clear of your body.’
Yadin walked forward, and Joyce moved with him, swivelling his firing stance like a god. The elevator doors closed.
‘You are Gavriel Yadin?’
The man sighed. ‘You don’t want to do it here. Make a big mess in the hall.’
Joyce used his chin – not his weapon – to gesture down the corridor. The other man turned, arms well away from his sides. At the apartment door he said, ‘I have to take out the key.’
‘Left hand, very slowly,’ commanded Joyce. He was ready for anything. The slightest misstep, a shudder of unsanctioned movement, and he would fire. He almost wanted it to happen, proof that he could triumph in the heat of the battle rather than cold blood.
But Yadin showed no sign of wanting to test his opponent’s nerve. He unlocked the door – slowly, cautiously, compliant to a fault.
Joyce followed him inside.
She had been silent for nearly two hours. Simon Arkell could not think what had triggered the mood swing. In the European Quarter they had come close to an understanding. He had felt something in her, in himself, in the federal air. Then it was gone again, suppressed behind a north German mask. She had followed him back to the pension, lost in her own unknowable world, unresponsive to his offers of food or television. She had sat on the bed and stared out of the window, although there was nothing to see but the guttering and roof tiles of the neighbouring building.
He had left her to her thoughts and gone down to Reception to check again for messages. Still nothing. What the hell was taking Madeleine’s analyst so long? Without a weapon and Yadin’s address he felt caged, useless. He’d called Danny then: five last-minute flight bookings from Cyprus on Friday, three of them single men; none of the names had shown up in Strasbourg. With no leads, Arkell had returned to the room and buried himself in a weighty history of Strasbourg’s medieval period.
He had been lost in the past for some time when Klara finally spoke. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’
Looking up, he saw tears on her cheeks. How long had she been crying? He understood the question then. Quietly, he said, ‘I’m sorry.’
She seemed to hover between two or three courses of action. ‘I’m going out,’ she decided. Climbing off the bed, she began rummaging through her bag.
‘Shall we get some dinner?’
‘I’m going to get drunk.’ Out came a sequinned crimson T-shirt, a pair of white jeans.
He hesitated. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Having fun. Isn’t that what single people do?’ Irritably, she brushed away a fresh tear. ‘My God, I’ve been sensible and faithful long enough.’
‘Klara, this is not a good idea.’
‘It wasn’t a very fucking good idea to go out with him in the beginning, was it?’ She unbuttoned her top, exposing a plain white bra. ‘Don’t come to me for good ideas.’
Arkell turned away as she unzipped her skirt. ‘I can’t let you go out on your own.’
‘Do what you want. I’m going to find a bar with men who don’t kill people for a living.’
If not this place, then some other. It could have been a Cypriot alleyway. It could have been a public toilet in Nizhny Novgorod. A student apartment in Strasbourg was as good a place as any. Gavriel Yadin was not a sentimental man. He had been raised by a woman who did not value sentiment, in a country that could not afford it. What did it matter where he was killed?
At least Death had found him planting his cabbages, as Montaigne would have it.
Cum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus
.
In fact, Yadin was looking forward to death. He was not religious, had not glanced at the Tanakh since scripture class. He did not believe in an afterlife. Yet he felt there might be something, a serenity, a sense of release that the mind might slip into even as the body decayed and disintegrated. He wasn’t confident that such a feeling might last longer than the time it took for the neural pathways to shut down, but he harboured a hopeful belief that a memory of that feeling might stretch somehow into eternity – that a faint essence of what had once been Gavriel Yadin might persist.
That the body left behind should fall in an Alsatian tower block and then lie in chilly limbo in a French morgue before ending up, an embarrassment, in some little-visited Tel Aviv cemetery was an outcome that did not trouble him at all. He was, more or less, ready.
Letting the shopping bag drop, he turned and faced the man who would kill him. ‘All right,’ he said quietly. It occurred to him, his only regret, that no one would now eat the fresh asparagus in the shopping bag. He raised his hands to the back of his head, squarely presenting his chest for a clean shot.
The British agent – perhaps that was another slight regret – eyed him suspiciously, and then with elation. It was not blatant, but with the door closed behind him the man was finally starting to relax into his victory. Yadin knew very well what a prize he represented. This man, this competent but characterless cog in a tired imperialist machine, would reap great reputation from killing the Mossad’s rogue combatant. This one act would make his career. Yadin could picture him twenty years from now, the corner office and the double chin, a legend to the young intelligence officers whom he carelessly sent out into the field while he lunched with politicians and business leaders in search of underhand advantage.
Well, no matter. It made no difference whose finger pulled the trigger. The outcome would be the same.
But the man did not shoot.
He kept the Sig steady, aimed, left hand cupped under the right. He maintained his firing stance, right foot well back, the toe turned outwards. But he did not act.
Yadin felt the first splinters of doubt lodge in the tranquillity of his fatalism. He waited, watching a range of emotions play out on the other man’s face – fascination, incredulity, exultation. He did not speak because there was nothing to say – should be nothing to say.
And yet, appallingly, the British agent started talking.
‘So how were you going to do it?’ he asked. ‘Was it Mayhew or Andrade? They’re both in Strasbourg. Which one was the target?’
To Yadin, the realization that this man was unworthy came in an instant. Such questioning was not useful interrogation; it was self-indulgent curiosity. He sighed inaudibly. It was impossible. He could not continue to pretend: it made every difference whose finger pulled the trigger. This manifest unprofessionalism was simply unacceptable.
‘It was Andrade,’ he said, to buy time while his mind switched from resignation to stratagem.
‘When? At the plenary?’
Yadin shook his head. ‘Impossible. The security around the Parliament will be impenetrable.’ To the shaking of his head, he risked adding a rotating gesture with one arm – a representation of the police-ringed Chamber perhaps: something to get his opponent used to a little movement.
‘Then where? His hotel?’
This time he shook his head vigorously. ‘It has to be public. That is the mission. Public destruction of the drug liberalizers. Restaurant Les Trois Rois.’
Surely now, thought Yadin, he has to ask the important questions. It was irrelevant how the assassin would have performed his task if the assassin was dead. The essential point was why, and on whose orders. Yet still the British agent failed to ask these things. It was as if he was star-struck, so blinded by the Kidon legend that all he could think of was method.
‘How?’ It would be laughable if the man wasn’t holding a Sig. ‘How were you going to do it?’
Yadin held his stare. He lowered his arms. ‘The same way I have killed you,’ he said softly.
A flicker of fear appeared momentarily, but the man summoned up a scornful smile. ‘
You
kill
me
?’
‘Us both.’ Yadin smiled back. He did not often smile, but it seemed tactically useful here. ‘It is called cyclohexyl methylphosphonofluoridate. An organophosphate, a thousand times more toxic than cyanide. It is in the air we are breathing. Can you taste it? Like . . . sweet dew. You may know it as cyclosarin.’
‘Bullshit,’ said the man, but the smile was gone.
‘I think you are aware of my visit to Cyprus? Kolatch is clever. Cyclosarin does not evaporate easily, but Kolatch built a pressurized capsule for this mission. It bursts on impact: a tiny aerosol explosion that spreads the toxin throughout a room. It is in our lungs. If you don’t shoot me, we will suffer together vomiting and convulsions before full respiratory failure.’ He shrugged. ‘I hope you will shoot me.’
The terror that overcame the British agent was a source of simple professional satisfaction to Yadin. He did not often have to talk this much. He rarely needed to convince by power of speech. That he could do it well in English was pleasing.
‘W-Where is it?’
That was the bait, swallowed whole. He only had to point. And as the Englishman glanced down at the floor, an instinctive and calamitous response, Yadin used the same arm to hammer a fist into the barrel of the Sig, knocking the gun sideways as his foot swung up into that exposed stomach.
He followed the roundhouse kick with an immediate and total offensive. The English agent was younger, had been professionally trained, but it was already clear he was not proficient in field skills. Although he managed to throw a few punches, even attempted an elbow jab while he groped for his lost weapon, this was not his true game.
It was over in less than a minute.