Headhunters

by Mark Dawson

  The Mossad would be just the same. A similar fiction. Similar pretexts.

  Victor Blum would send his killers around the globe from this faceless building, dealing death and destruction from an anonymous desk somewhere deep inside. Milton knew that the order for his own death warrant, leveraged by Avi Bachman’s blackmail, would have been signed somewhere within.

  A police car cruised slowly down the street. Milton saw the officer in the passenger seat turn to look at him.

  No point in waiting. He had no other cards to play. If he was going to be apprehended, it had to be inside.

  He put his hand to the revolving door and pushed.

  Inside, it was cool, the air conditioning turned up high to combat the heat outside. A wave of cold air gushed onto him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. The room was quiet save for the sound of a keyboard being used behind the marble desk, the gentle whoosh of the air conditioning, and the sound of a woman’s heels as she crossed the floor to get to the exit. Milton stepped aside to let her pass. He scoped out the parts of the interior that he had been unable to see properly from outside. There was an elevator lobby with four doors, two on one side faced by a second identical pair. There was a guard in the lobby and another near to the counter. He looked up: security cameras all around the room.

  Too late to turn back.

  He walked to the counter.

  “Can I help you, sir?”

  Milton assessed him. The man was quite obviously a soldier, with close-cropped hair and a muscular physique beneath the lines of his well-fitted suit. The suit fell smooth and evenly, suggesting that he wasn’t carrying a weapon, but Milton had no doubt that he had a handgun within easy reach.

  “I want to see Victor Blum.”

  Milton saw a look of concern flash across the man’s face. “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “Victor Blum. The director.”

  The man shook his head. “Who?”

  “Do we need to do this? I’m not going to leave until I see him.”

  “No, really, sir, that’s not possible. I don’t know—”

  Milton spoke over him: “This is what is going to happen.” He noticed the man’s hand as it slid beneath the counter. “You’re going to press your panic alarm, and those two guys over there”—he pointed to the guards—“are going to draw their weapons and detain me. And that’s fine. I want them to. And I want you to call up to Mr. Blum and tell him that John Milton is here to see him. Tell him it’s about Avi Bachman. He’ll know who that is.”

  Milton saw the two guards step away from the door and start toward him. He kept his eye on the man. “Do you want me to repeat those names? John Milton and Avi Bachman.”

  The first guard reached him, laying a hand on his elbow. He hadn’t drawn his weapon, although it was visible in a shoulder holster beneath his open jacket. Milton could have disabled him easily enough, taken his gun and incapacitated his colleague, too, but that would have gained him nothing. He was hardly about to mount an assault on the Mossad’s HQ. It would get him killed. It wouldn’t get him to Blum.

  “Step away from the counter,” the guard said, squeezing his fingers so that they dug into the soft flesh around his elbow.

  A little pain flashed, but Milton ignored it.

  Milton looked at the man behind the desk. “Call Blum,” he repeated.

  “Back away, sir.”

  Milton did as he was asked and stepped back.

  “Put your hands up.”

  Milton did as he was told.

  The man frisked him with practiced ease, starting up at his shoulders and working quickly and methodically all the way down to his ankles. The second guard arrived, his hand inside his jacket and resting on the butt of his holstered weapon. They were good. Well trained. Not thuggish, but with the threat of violence obvious and more than sufficient to make it clear that obedience was the wisest course.

  “Come with us, sir,” the first guard said, impelling him towards the lobby.

  Milton didn’t resist. They led him to a door that he hadn’t noticed, opened it, and directed him down a corridor that led deeper into the building. The passageway lacked the expensive gleam of the reception area. The walls were bare, the floor was treated concrete and the lighting was from harsh overhead UV strips.

  The man told him to stop at the second in a series of bland-looking doors, opened it, and nudged him so that he went inside.

  Another bland space. A desk with two chairs, one on either side. A dark glass window, opaque from this side, but likely clear from the other. Two cameras fixed on the wall just beneath the ceiling. No decoration. Spare and austere. Milton had been in rooms like this before, sometimes on one side of the desk and on other occasions on the other. It was an interrogation room.

  The guard nudged Milton inside and then frisked him again, much more thoroughly this time. He took out his wallet and the USB drive that Milton was carrying in his jacket pocket.

  “Wait here,” the guard said, closing the door.

  Milton heard the lock click.

  He didn’t know whether his gambit would be successful. He would either see Blum or he would not; if he did not, his long-term prospects would not be very good. With nothing else to do, he pulled out one of the chairs and sat down. It might be a long wait.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  MILTON HEARD the lock click again and watched as the door opened. The man standing in the doorway was old, but he did not look frail. He was several inches shorter than Milton, but he walked with an erect, proud posture, and there was iron in his eyes.

  Milton recognised him at once.

  “Mr. Milton,” he said, “I’m sorry to keep you. I’m Victor Blum.”

  Milton stood. Blum extended his hand and Milton took it. Blum’s grip was strong.

  “Thank you for seeing me, sir.”

  “Please, sit.”

  Milton sat down again. Blum pulled out the facing chair and sat down.

  “I don’t think we’ve ever met, have we, Mr. Milton?”

  “No, sir. I don’t believe that we have.”

  “Of course, I’m aware of your work. The work you used to do, I should say. You don’t do it any more, do you?”

  “No, sir. Not for some time.”

  “We heard about what happened, of course. I did meet Control a few times—before his unfortunate end. Was that you?”

  “No, sir. It wasn’t.”

  “Still, I should imagine you weren’t displeased? I know he wasn’t pleased when you decided to stop.”

  “Not particularly.”

  “The work we do,” he said, waving an arm to encompass the building and what went on within it, “it’s not really the sort of profession you can just leave.”

  “Avi Bachman had the same problem, as I understand it.”

  The mention of Bachman did not faze him. “That’s right, he did. You know I was director of the Mossad then, too?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m not too proud to say that the whole thing took me by surprise. We thought he was dead. We did for years. He was an extraordinary agent and it was a terrible blow. We investigated what had happened, obviously, as far as we could—this was Cairo, of course—and there was no suggestion that he was still alive. Avi was very inventive about it.” He sighed. “A shame, though. A real waste. Men like Avi—men like you, Mr. Milton—are particularly difficult to replace.”

  Milton held his tongue. The tone of the conversation was amicable, but underpinned by the knowledge on both sides that there was a deeper and more serious topic that was going to have to be addressed. This wasn’t a social call.

  “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Milton. You are about the last person in the world I would have expected to walk through the doors this morning.”

  “I would rather not have had to come, sir, but I haven’t been left with an alternative.”

  “Nevertheless, you realise that I can’t let you leave?”

  “No, sir. You will.”

 
; Blum smiled at him as if Milton were a child who had just said something ineffably foolish.

  “You killed one of my sayanim in Australia.”

  “They tried to kill me.”

  “But that’s not something I can just overlook.”

  “Shall we park that for now? It’s not going to get us anywhere. I want to talk about Bachman.”

  “Yes, of course. You killed his wife.”

  “He told you that?”

  Blum nodded.

  “It isn’t true. He abducted a friend of a friend. I went to retrieve him, and his wife was killed in the crossfire. I didn’t fire the shot. Bachman did.”

  “That’s not how he tells it, Mr. Milton.”

  “Of course it isn’t. He isn’t going to accept that he’s responsible for that, is he? Far better to blame a scapegoat. I was there. It might as well be me.”

  Blum nodded, indicating that he should go on.

  Milton looked at him. “Be honest, sir. What does he have over you?”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Because it’s obvious. You mounted an operation on foreign soil to break him out of prison. You killed Americans to do it. I can’t begin to imagine how far up the chain of command you had to go to get authorisation to do that. And you’ve backed him to go after me. Four agents in Australia, the sayanim you must have activated. The Mossad has no interest in going after me, sir. There’s no reason why you would do any of that unless Bachman has threatened you with something very damaging.”

  Blum steepled his fingers and looked at Milton for a long moment. Milton was aware that he was considering how much he should tell him.

  “Very well. Avi took some very sensitive information with him when he disappeared. We only knew that he had it after he had been arrested in Louisiana. He called us and told us that unless we did what he wanted, he would disseminate it.”

  “What was it?”

  “A list of active agents.”

  “Hardly active. It must have been years out of date.”

  “Yes, that’s true. We’ve tried to assess the damage that would be caused. Much of the information will be irrelevant, but not all of it. Some agents are still in place. Some have become very senior in their particular roles in the time that has passed. Others have retired, but they could easily be traced. You understand what that would mean for them. Our enemies have long memories. My men and women would be put at serious threat. I care for my agents, Mr. Milton. I respect and honour their service, and I will not abandon them. There are some risks that I cannot take.”

  “No,” Milton said. “Of course not. I understand.”

  “And we have no relationship. And with respect, Mr. Milton, you mean nothing to me. I don’t mean to offend you, but that’s the fact of it.”

  “No offence taken.”

  “So Avi has leverage. I looked at every option when he came to us. We could have ignored him. He wasn’t going anywhere, after all. He was incarcerated. The Americans would have killed him eventually, but that would have taken years. We could have killed him. It would have been simple. We could have had an inmate do it. We could have fomented a riot, had him murdered. Such a thing would have been trivial.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “Avi tells us he has a dead man’s switch. An associate. He says if he doesn’t report to him regularly, the information will be released.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “I know it to be true. We know who the associate is.” Blum laid his hands on the table and drummed his fingers against the wood. “I should be honest with you, Mr. Milton. I don’t understand why you have come here. You must have suspected all of this. I’m not sure how you think I can help you. You know I have to hand you over to Avi.”

  “No. You won’t do that.”

  The drumming fingers stopped and Blum fixed him in a cold stare. “Why is that, Mr. Milton?”

  “Your guards took a thumb drive from me. Have you looked at it yet?”

  “It’s being examined now.”

  “Let me save you the bother. Avi has his database, but it’s old. My stick contains an up-to-date version. It was downloaded yesterday. Operational details. Your Bible, sir. Who your agents are. Where they are. What they are doing. Everything.”

  Blum didn’t answer.

  “Perhaps you should speak to your analyst? It might accelerate things if you know I’m not bluffing. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Blum narrowed his eyes warily, but took a phone from his pocket and dialled a number. The call connected and Blum tersely explained that he was with Milton, and that he needed to know what was on the memory stick that had been confiscated from him. Milton could hear the buzz of the answer, but it was too quiet for him to distinguish the words. He watched Blum’s face instead. He watched as the colour slowly drained from it, as the lips pursed so that they became a hard line, as the frown deepened into a scowl. Blum did not acknowledge the person to whom he was speaking again; he pulled the phone from his ear, ended the call, and put it back into his pocket.

  “Sir?”

  Blum got up. Milton had no idea whether he had been persuasive enough. He had certainly angered him. Milton had known that a man like Victor Blum would be proud. To last in a career like his for as long as he had lasted would mean that he usually got his way. He would not be used to being defied or, worse, manipulated. But Milton wasn’t just manipulating him: he was threatening him. Blum had been reduced to the role of a patsy. He was caught in the middle of a struggle between two others and he had no leverage of his own. He was helpless, and Milton knew that that would be difficult for him to stomach.

  He was counting on it.

  Blum turned his back and reached for the door.

  Had he made up his mind? Was he going to leave him here? What would that mean?

  “I’ll look at it, Mr. Milton.”

  Milton knew he had his attention. He decided to risk an escalation. “You’ve got an hour, sir. Avi isn’t the only one with backup. If I’m out of contact for more than an hour, the information is released anyway.”

  Milton saw the anger flash across the old man’s wizened face, but he gave a curt nod and, without another word, he shut the door and left him alone.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  BLUM SHUT the door to the interrogation room and gestured to the guard stationed next to it.

  “If he tries anything, shoot him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He took the elevator to his office on the fourth floor. It offered a broad view of Tel Aviv, from the elegant and futuristic skyscrapers of the downtown district to the cultural landmarks of Habima Square. He looked east to the Shalom Tower and, beyond it, the Great Synagogue. Blum was old enough that he could remember when the building was always busy. It wasn’t the same today. Pious locals had emigrated, and now the services were attended by just a handful of congregants. Blum felt it to be emblematic of a larger problem in Israeli society. Religion was not as important today as it had been when he was growing up. His father had been a rabbi and he had seen to it that his young son was given a thorough and severe religious education. His piety had been the reason he had been able to endure the privations of his military career. His service, however unpleasant, was in honour of God. His standing within the religious community had also been of some benefit to his accelerated promotion and the fact that he had held his position at the head of the Mossad for so many years.

  That his fellow citizens no longer put so much faith in God was a matter of great regret, and the subject of many late night rants to whomever he could find to listen to him, but it did not mean that he would countenance—not even for a minute—a lessening of his vigilance. He had stood on the wall for all of his adult life.

  He had sent agents to kill and had seen his agents killed.

  He was as dedicated to Israel today as he had ever been.

  That was why the situation with Avi Bachman had caused him so much dismay.

  And now this.
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  The Mossad was divided into eight separate departments. There was Collections, the group responsible for espionage operations. There was the Political Action and Liaison Department, responsible for relations with foreign espionage agencies. There was Metsada, or the Special Operations Division, tasked with assassination, sabotage, and paramilitary and psychological warfare projects. Blum was responsible for them all, but he didn’t need them today. He sat down behind his desk and called the head of the Technology Department.

  *

  “ARE YOU SURE, SIR?”

  The man’s name was Yossi Levy. He had been born and educated in the United States and then, following some time on a kibbutz, had been recruited to join the Mossad. He had studied computer science at MIT and was a genius programmer. The sayan on campus who monitored potential recruits had spoken very highly of him, and had said that he had been raised the right way with the right kind of attitude towards Israel. Blum had told the sayan to recruit him, and, with typical discretion, that had been achieved. He had started work at the agency and had quickly risen through the ranks to his elevated position today as the head technician in charge of technology.

  “The man who brought that stick is being held downstairs. He is, potentially, significant to our operations. He says that it has information that would be dangerous to our interests.”

  “He’s blackmailing you?” Yossi said.

  That irritated Blum, and he frowned. “Yes. He is. How I choose to deal with him depends upon whether he has something on that stick or whether he’s bluffing. I need to know.”