Headhunters

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Victor Blum sat at his desk and gazed out the window. A storm cloud had rolled in off the Mediterranean early in the afternoon and now, as dusk descended over the city, the rain started to fall. It quickly gathered in volume until it became a deluge, thundering against the glass and blurring the view that he had always enjoyed. The sky was the colour of a bruise, livid and painful, and veins of lightning crackled across it. In the distance, out over the sea, thunder boomed.

His aide-de-camp put his head through the open door. “They’re here, Director.”

“Send them in.”

He turned away from the window and looked down at the papers on his desk. The report had been filed three days earlier, and it was voluminous. He had requested that its authors attend him this evening so that he could ask a few additional questions. Blum had found through long experience that sometimes the answers were more accurate when the interrogation was face to face.

His ADC returned, paused at the door, and showed the two agents inside. Malakhi and Keren Rabin looked a little nervous, as well they might. Blum’s reputation for irascibility went before him, and they must have known that the equivocation in their report would annoy him.

“Sit.”

There were two chairs in front of his desk. Keren Rabin took the chair on the left, her husband the one on the right. They sat quietly, waiting for him to speak. The two of them had kept Bachman under surveillance, as he had ordered. Blum knew that he and Milton would meet again to resolve their differences and he wanted to be absolutely sure that his intelligence regarding the aftermath was certain.

“Thank you for your report,” he said. “Very thorough, although the lack of a firm conclusion is disturbing. I’ll get straight to the point. There was no sign of them? Of either of them?”

“No, sir,” Keren said. “None.”

“The local police?”

“They were not informed. We didn’t think it would be wise.”

“No,” Blum said.

“I waited for an hour,” Keren said, “while Malakhi removed Shavit’s body.”

“That, at least, is taken care of?”

“Yes, sir,” Malakhi said. “We buried him.”

He turned back to Keren. “And you saw nothing?”

“Nothing. If they survived the fall, they didn’t come out at the property. There was a natural breakwater. They would have had to swim around that and around the bay.”

“It was dark, though?”

“Yes, sir, but the property was well lit.”

“The sea?”

“Moderate visibility.”

“So it’s possible they might have been able to swim clear?”

“Possible? Yes, sir. But likely? With respect, sir, I would say not.”

“Be clear, agent. You think they’re dead?”

Keren held his gaze. “Yes, sir. That would be my conclusion.”

He reached for his glasses and perched them on his nose so that he could read the annotations he had made to the summary.

“Matilda Douglas?”

“She has returned to Australia. She flew in to Melbourne, took a train to Broken Hill and was picked up from the station by her brother. They went back to the sheep station.”

Blum had wondered whether he could afford to let the girl go. She knew everything, after all. In the end, he had decided that it was a risk he could afford to take. It would have brought unnecessary attention to have abducted her for a second time. And there was little incentive for her to cause trouble.

“And Ziggy Penn?”

“I’m afraid we still don’t know.”

“You have no idea?”

“No, sir. We couldn’t leave the property to pursue them. It would have been a risk until it was cleaned.”

“I know that.”

“We know that he didn’t fly out of the country. We checked airline manifests. No hits.”

“Hospitals? He was shot, yes?”

“No sign, sir.”

“Make a suggestion, agent.”

“It would just be speculation, sir. He knows how to drop off the grid. I’m sure that’s what Milton told him to do. He can get money. It might be difficult to find him again.”

Blum stood and dismissed them both. He turned to face the window, watching them depart in the reflection in the darkened glass. They were good agents, and they had done almost everything that he had asked of them. The loose ends, though, were displeasing. He didn’t like uncertainty.

He gazed out over the rooftops again. Rain streamed down the glass. A peal of thunder detonated overhead, rattling the window in its frame. He put his hands behind his back and clasped them together. Both Milton and Bachman were trained to disappear. Bachman had engineered his own death before and had stayed out of sight for ten years. Milton had the same talents.

The Rabins were sure that both men were dead.

Was that good enough for him?