Headhunters

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.