Rogue Elements by Hector Macdonald

all as soon as he was able. His wife died as well, of course. We should – we must – spare a thought for her.’
    Somehow, Madeleine Wraye managed three hours’ sleep despite the discomfort of the mattress and the distraction of rodent activity somewhere nearby. When she awoke, narrow strips of sunlight marked the floor. From outside came a muted pounding.
    She could only guess at the time. Where the hell was Joyce? Stiff and cold, she put her eye to the gap between door and jamb and caught a glimpse of Arkell hurtling past. A moment later it happened again.
    Exercising. The bastard was exercising.
    She tried a different crack, and watched her former officer work effortlessly through one hundred straight burpees. In the sunlight he looked as young and vital as the day she had recruited him. A little bulkier around the chest, but his shoulders and legs had lost none of the definition drilled into them by the Legion’s NCOs. She remembered him doing one-arm press-ups in the Swat Valley, his feet hooked over the bull bar of their Land Cruiser; some images never fade. With no pause to rest after the burpees, he swung a rucksack on his back – filled with rocks from the look of it – and disappeared.
    No, he certainly hadn’t gone soft.
    When, later, he unlocked the door, sweating and dusty but wearing a clean grey T-shirt, he looked irritatingly refreshed on so little sleep. ‘Good morning,’ he offered, in cheerful defiance of her glare. Outside stood a weather-roughened pine table on which were laid the rudiments of breakfast. A pot of coffee. A melon, a pile of toast and an unlabelled pot of some dark berry conserve.
    ‘Living well on your corporate wages,’ observed Wraye. But she could not maintain the sarcasm, because beyond the unimpressive table was the most wonderful view. They were standing, she realized now, on a high cliff top. Spread out below them, the Mediterranean. A couple of yachts, a liner in the distance. Sea birds flocking and whirling overhead.
    She glanced back at the house. Only a few metres separated it from the cliff. ‘Didn’t I teach you always to keep an escape route open? How would you get clear if someone came down that track?’
    ‘BASE jump,’ said Arkell. ‘I have a rig inside and a dinghy moored below. The best escape routes are the ones no one can follow you down. Melon?’
    The toast was made from stale bread, and the jam was too sweet. But the melon was fresh and flavoursome, and the coffee was superb. It took the edge off Wraye’s irritation.
    ‘I’m curious about one thing,’ she said. ‘The Dault Street investigators didn’t find very much of . . . Saeed, I suppose, to put in your coffin. But there was enough to do a DNA check. It matched your profile. How did you manage that?’
    ‘Bribery,’ he shrugged between mouthfuls of toast. ‘I followed one of the forensic investigators home, gave her five thousand pounds and a few millilitres of my blood. Would have added the usual threat to nearest and dearest, but she was actually quite sympathetic: she could see that if someone with access to plastic explosive was trying to kill me I would be better off dead.’
    ‘And then you disappeared off the face of the earth. How?’
    ‘Why don’t we concentrate on Yadin?’
    As he said the name, she noted the tightening of the muscles in his face. But it wasn’t the paralysing fury of the night before. He had moved past that. This was anticipation. A trace of excitement. Inwardly, she cheered: a decade on, the fire-starting spirit that made him so good at this work was still there.
    ‘I can only suggest one lead,’ she said. ‘Mossad won’t talk to you, but I have a contact at the Shabak who owes me a few favours. Avraham Boim – as tough a nut as Israel has got. Old school, file on everyone, endlessly suspicious. He won’t like you any more than he likes anyone else. On the other hand there’s no love lost between Mossad and Shabak officers. Usual story: the