by Andy Maslen
Aware he was sounding lamer with every word, he dried up. Then Eli laughed. A loud, salty sound. She twisted round to face him, loosening the towel with the movement of her body so that it fell open.
“No. I’m the one who’s sorry,” she said, smiling. “I’ve been making a play for you since the day I met you and now you respond and I play the cock-teaser. She stood, so that the towel puddled at her feet, and held out her hand. “Come on. Take me to bed.”
Gabriel stood, taking in her muscular figure, dark triangle of pubic hair and soft, dark-nippled breasts. He rested his free hand on her shoulder and looked deep into her eyes.
“You, Miss Eli Schochat, are trouble!”
“You have no idea,” she replied.
In her pink-painted bedroom, Eli pushed Gabriel hard, so that he fell backwards onto the brass bed. With expert hands, she undressed him, dropping each garment to one side as she removed it. She straddled him, and he felt the heat of her as she sank down onto him. She stared at him, and he could see flecks of green glinting in the brown of her almond-shaped eyes. He reached for her arms but she took his wrists, firmly, and pushed them up and behind his head.
“Now you’re mine, Wolfe,” she said in a voice thickened with desire.
Imperceptibly, she began moving over him, forwards then back, rocking her pelvis a little more with each traverse. He tilted his own hips, falling into her rhythm. Her hair swung forwards and brushed his cheeks. The lemon scent he’d come to associate with Eli was mixed with a warmer, sensual smell that he realised was, simply, Eli herself.
Her movements were more urgent now and her lips had parted slightly.
“Now,” she murmured.
Eli came first, arching her back and finally releasing Gabriel’s wrists. He grabbed her hips and pulled her back and forth until he, too, reached his climax. She fell forwards, breasts squashed against his heaving chest, head pressed into the crook of his neck.
“Mmm,” she said, into his left ear. “I’ve been waiting a long time for that.”
“Was it worth the wait?” Gabriel asked, stroking her back.
“Every second.”
She slid sideways and snuggled inside his arm, resting her head on the pillow beside his.
Gabriel looked at the clock on the bedside table. Four-thirty in the morning? How the hell did that happen? We’ve been asleep for nearly twelve hours.
He twisted his head to the right to look at his sleeping partner. Her red hair, free of its plait, was arrayed across his chest like exotic seaweed. She lifted her head and looked at him, smiling that gap-toothed smile of hers.
“Britta?”
“Who did you think? That Israeli slut you’ve been lusting after?”
Gabriel felt his heart bumping painfully in his chest and anger banking up in his brain.
“Don’t call her that!”
“Why? She stole you from me.”
“You left me , remember? You dumped me in Chiswick House.”
Britta raised herself on her elbow and jabbed a finger into Gabriel’s face.
“Your memory’s going, Gabriel. You dumped me. Just like you dumped Michael in the harbour. If you’re this confused, why don’t you go and see that shrink of yours. Hej? ”
Gabriel couldn’t hold back any longer. He pushed Britta away from him. Hard. Started shouting. Felt her retaliatory blows raining down on his head and shoulders.
“Leave Michael out of it!”
“Hej? Hej?”
“Hey! Stop it!”
Gabriel jerked awake.
Eli had clamped her hand round his right forearm. He noticed his fingers were clenched into a fist.
“What happened?” he asked, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his free hand.
“You were hitting me in your sleep,” Eli said, her forehead creased with concern. “And you were shouting. ‘You left me,’ you said.”
She let go of his arm and gathered him into her own embrace. He let her pull him down and felt himself relaxing as she stroked the top of his head.”
“I was dreaming about Britta,” he said, after a pause.
“Well, duh! I figured that out for myself, thanks. How long since you two broke up?”
“About a year and a half. I’m sorry for hitting you.”
Eli furrowed her brow.
“Yeah, well it wasn’t quite the post-coital cuddle I was expecting. Are you sure you’re over her? I don’t mind talking about her, by the way, if you’re wondering.”
“I am. Over Britta, I mean. The way she put it, I could see it wasn’t going to work. It was just a bad dream, that’s all.”
He looked at the bedside clock. Now it was giving a more likely readout: 7.00 p.m. They’d been asleep for a little under thirty minutes.
“Good,” Eli said with a grin. “Now, let’s do it again and then I’ll take you out for something to eat. There’s a great little Vietnamese place round the corner.”
Over translucent gỏi cuốn – spring rolls stuffed with shredded cabbage, coriander and crab – and nộm hoa chuối – a noodle dish of lime, chilli and shredded vegetables – Gabriel and Eli got to know each other a little better. The bottle of chilled white burgundy helped.
“What about your parents?” Gabriel asked her after swallowing the second half of one of the fragrant seafood-and-greens gỏi cuốn . “Where are they? Israel?”
Eli nodded, speaking through a mouthful of noodles.
“Uh-huh. They live in Tel Aviv. Dad’s a university professor and mum’s an MP.”
“Military Police or Member of Parliament?”
Eli apparently took the question at face value.
“She’s a member of the Knesset. Trying to keep the hawks from declaring war on the Palestinians.”
“What does she think of what you do? Or did, I mean. Working for Mossad?”
“She’s a realist. She wants peace, like a lot of Israelis. But she knows we have to defend ourselves. If it’s a case of stick and carrot, I’m the stick, she’s the carrot. How about you? Your parents still around?”
Gabriel sighed, not wanting to have to explain that he’d lost his father and mother on the same ill-fated day. Drained his glass and refilled it.
“They’re both dead.”
“I’m sorry. So how did they die?”
Gabriel scratched at his scalp then rubbed the back of his neck. I’d rather have avoided this but it looks like I’ll have to explain anyway.
“They were on Dad’s boat. He named it Lin, after my mum. He had a heart attack. Mum was asleep below. When she found his body, she drowned herself.” She was dead drunk, but you don’t need to know that. Not now .
“Shit! I’m sorry. You don’t mind me asking?”
Gabriel smiled a rueful smile.
“It’s a bit late if I did, isn’t it?”
After this tense exchange, they lapsed into an uneasy silence, broken when the waitress stopped at their table to ask if they were enjoying their food.
“It’s lovely, thanks,” Eli said, with a wide smile. “Could we have another bottle of wine, please?”
Briefing
VAUXHALL, LONDON
Eli stood, arms wide, legs apart, smiling across at Gabriel in the bare security room. They had arrived at the Vauxhall headquarters of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service – more commonly known as MI6 – at 8.30 a.m., thirty minutes earlier. Squatting in front of Eli and running her palms up and down her legs was a slender black woman. Her plaited and beaded hair was tied back in a clicking hank to reveal a long, elegant neck. She stood, and moved on to Eli’s torso: front, back, sides. Not rough, but not the gentle back-of-the-hands frisking airline passengers were increasingly getting used to. Gabriel watched the way the two women made and then broke eye contact as the security officer ran her hands over Eli’s breasts. He caught Eli’s eye. She seemed to be in pain. Her brow was furrowed and her lips were clamped into a thin pale line. His own search was no less thorough, and he winced as the burly officer
in front of him sawed a blade-like hand up into the creases of his groin.
Nodding to each other once the body search was completed, the two security officers handed over visitor passes.
“Welcome to SIS, sir, madam,” the female officer said with a smile that revealed a model’s even, white teeth. “The lifts are through the door and on your left at the end of the corridor.”
As they walked to the lifts Eli burst out laughing.
“What is it?” Gabriel asked, smiling in return.
“Oh, my God! I’m so ticklish! When she touched my tits I thought I’d wet myself!”
Gabriel laughed.
“Hardly the behaviour we expect in the Secret Intelligence Service,” he said, affecting an upper-class accent that produced another howl from Eli.
“I know,” she said, catching her breath. “They’re so stiff here, don’t you think?”
“It’s stuffed with public schoolboys, that’s why. And a few public schoolgirls, too, before you kick me.”
“Yeah? I’m glad to see the Old Boy Network is still working well. In Israel, we recruit solely on talent and aptitude. You could be the prime minister’s daughter and it wouldn’t make any difference. If you can’t shoot the balls off a mosquito at fifty metres, forget it!”
“So I’m guessing a lowly MP’s daughter would have to do it at a hundred?”
Eli laughed, a warm, raspy sound that thrilled Gabriel.
Gabriel swiped his ID then tapped the touch screen to select the third floor.
The lift doors opened, and standing waiting for them was a slim, besuited man carrying a leather file case. Tim Frye, the Iran expert. He had to be late thirties, if Don’s description of his experience was accurate. Yet he seemed younger. Choir boy , Gabriel thought. Frye had straight, dirty-blond hair going grey, divided with military precision by a parting that showed the white scalp beneath. His slate-blue eyes, open, trusting, peered out from beneath a high, almost domed forehead. Trained to notice such things, Gabriel picked up on a jagged, crescent-shaped scar on the back of his left hand.
Frye was all smiles as he shook hands, first with Eli, then Gabriel.
“Eli, Gabriel, welcome to the Iran desk. Well, its current occupant, at any rate.”
“Thank you, Timothy,” Eli said, returning his smile with interest. “Lead the way, please.”
“Of course, and please call me Tim.”
“OK, Tim,” she said as he turned to walk down the corridor. Then she turned and winked at Gabriel. Mouthed, “Sweet!”
The Iran desk turned out to be a department of ten or so people, mostly men, though a few women were bending over screens or listening intently through headphones to audio feeds. One of the women wore a hijab in a striking, peacock-blue material that reminded Gabriel of his psychiatrist, Fariyah Crace. He’d grown to like her intensely during their infrequent sessions. He resolved to book himself an hour of her time before this latest mission got airborne.
“I’ve reserved a conference room,” Tim said, interrupting Gabriel’s train of thought. “Though we call it the goldfish bowl. You’ll see why,” he added with another self-deprecating smile.
As they walked through the Iran desk, a couple of heads lifted from their tasks to observe the newcomers. A hawk-nosed man with a beard and moustache of a deep black stared hard at Gabriel then returned to his keyboard.
The little room Tim led them to was a simple glass cube carved out from a corner of the open-plan space. A circular table and four chairs took up virtually all the space. One of the chairs was already taken. Its occupant stood as the other three entered the conference room. To Gabriel’s practised eye, he appeared to be six two or three, and in his midthirties. Muscular beneath his immaculately tailored navy-blue suit and with a sharp-eyed gaze that suggested his default mode for looking at people was as opponents, or possibly enemies. At some point, his nose had been broken, though the surgeon had done a decent repair job, leaving only the faintest of scars and a bump that might pass for an accident of birth rather than a fight going sideways. Not a desk jockey, in other words.
“Hugh Bennett,” he said by way of introduction. “I’m your liaison between the Service and our chap in the embassy in Tehran.”
Gabriel and Eli had to ease past Tim to take a chair each before Tim could close the door and sit down.
He placed the leather file folder in front of him and interlaced his fingers on top of its richly grained surface. He looked first at Gabriel and then at Eli.
“How much do you know about Iran and its nuclear ambitions?”
Gabriel turned to Eli.
“She’s the knowledgeable one. I just boot the door in and kill everyone inside.”
Tim’s eyes widened a fraction and a frown crinkled that oddly high forehead. The corners of Bennett’s mouth lifted.
“He’s joking,” Eli said. “But it’s true. Before I joined The Department, I worked for Mossad. We kept the Iranians under the highest levels of scrutiny. It is our government’s stated aim to prevent Iran gaining a nuclear weapon. You know why, of course, Tim?”
Tim nodded his assent. Everyone in the global intelligence community, whichever side they worked for, knew that Iran was hellbent on Israel’s destruction. Eli continued.
“We know they’ve been trying for years to acquire or develop a medium-range ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear payload. But as far as we’re aware, they still haven’t managed to build a functioning warhead. Five years ago, the Israeli Air Force conducted a number of strikes at their civilian installations in Bushehr and Arak.”
“Not Vareshabad?”
She shook her head.
“At the time our intel said Vareshabad was a dummy. Mainly used for storing chemical weapons.”
“Hmm.” Tim scratched his head with the sharp end of a pencil someone had left lying on the otherwise pristine table. “I don’t want to call Mossad or the IDF’s intelligence into question, but as you now know, Vareshabad is very much involved. The hottest of all hot spots, you could say.”
“Tell us about Darbandi,” Gabriel said.
Tim nodded again and repeated the attack on his scalp with the pencil point. He did it so fiercely, Gabriel wondered that he didn’t draw blood. The silvery skin of the scar on the back of his hand stretched and flexed as he worked at whatever was troubling him. Bennett, he noticed, kept his eyes lowered, and his mouth shut.
“Abbas Darbandi,” Tim declaimed, in the manner of a university professor beginning a lecture. “Born 1966, Tehran. Studied engineering and physics at the Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran, where he was awarded their equivalent of a starred double first. A brainy man, in other words. Was awarded a doctorate in nuclear physics from the National Research Nuclear University in Moscow, and also did three years’ work in China at the Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology in Beijing. Returned to Tehran 1998. And here’s why you two are here. He is within two or at most three months of completing a functioning nuclear warhead. Tactical, to be sure, and as dirty as all get out, but with a yield sufficient to flatten a medium-sized city. Like Jerusalem,” he added, unnecessarily, in Gabriel’s opinion.
“Would they do that?” Gabriel asked. “With Jerusalem being a holy city to Muslims as well as Jews and Christians.”
“Opinions on the desk are, shall we say, divided. There are some of us who believe that no, the Iranians would not attack Jerusalem, for just the reason you advanced. It is home to about 280,000 Sunni Muslims and sacred to them, just as it is to Christians and Jews. That instead they would go for Tel Aviv, or Haifa. Weaken the Israeli state to the point that they could launch a conventional war to take the country.”
“And the other opinion?” Eli prompted, frowning.
Gabriel knew how much it was costing her emotionally to maintain a cool, professional front, when the innocent-looking intelligence analyst in front of her was casually describing alternative scenarios for destroying her homeland as if they were chess strategies.<
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“And the other opinion is that there are radical elements within the Iranian military, especially the Revolutionary Guard Corps, who would be willing to sacrifice even a prize like Jerusalem. They would remind dissenters that Mecca and Medina are both more significant holy cities for Muslims.”
“Where’s your asset?” Eli asked. “We’ve tried for years to get someone highly placed within their nuclear programme. They have it locked down tighter than a rabbi’s wine store.”
“Would you believe it’s a clerk at Vareshabad? One Karvan Sassani. A devout Muslim who, unfortunately for him, though the converse for us, was caught in flagrante with a hooker on a trip to Azerbaijan.”
“Honey trap?”
Tim sighed and spread his hands.
“Our colleagues a couple of floors up excelled themselves. Now Sassani lives in fear of our giving him up to the MOIS torturers. That sort of thing makes a chap frightfully willing to be helpful.”
“What do you have on Darbandi himself, Tim? As a man, I mean?” Gabriel asked. “Married, single, divorced? Gambler, secret dope-smoker?”
Tim smiled.
“If only he had vices we could exploit as easily as we did those of the hapless Mr Sassani. No, I’m afraid Darbandi is a simple, home-loving man, when he’s not planning crimes against humanity, obviously. He lives quietly with his wife and five children in a suburb of Tehran. Attends his local mosque, says his prayers, likes flying kites with his children at the beach when the weather’s right.”
Five more orphans and another widow on my account when I’m done , Gabriel thought. Then dismissed the thought immediately, replacing it with another. And hundreds of thousands more if I’m not . Some words of Don’s came floating back to him now.
“I’m afraid that sometimes it’s a numbers game, Old Sport. Unpleasant to be sure, but there it is. Kill one to save a hundred. Kill ten to save a thousand.”
Or in this case, Boss, kill one to save eight hundred thousand.
Tim unzipped the file case and withdrew a pale-green cardboard folder. It looked new. Its upper right corner bore a red Top Secret stamp and below that, a second, Eyes Only. Both had been placed with pinpoint accuracy and were parallel both to each other and the edges of the card. He pushed it across to Gabriel.