Rattenfänger PMC offered a year’s average salary in whatever denomination you worshipped for just one month’s service and a trip to the Front, wherever the Front happened to be, however official or unofficial—Yemen, a concert hall or temple, the Central African Republic, a subway in a world capital. PMC stood for Private Military Company, or Pretty Much Crap, because to call Rattenfänger a private military company was like calling the mafia a social club. Registered in ever-changing shell companies, Rattenfänger were terrorists for profit, marauders who turned fluid situations into war zones and peaceful streets into settings for the nightly news. Their soldiers and bases were international. Their fingerprints were suspected on embassy bombings, kidnapping, grand larceny, underreported civil wars, and data breaches. But those fingerprints could never be traced, and neither could their backers.

  None of that mattered to Corporal Ilyasov, apart from the 1,240,000 rubles a month. He had a wife and three children, and that mattered a lot. Before Rattenfänger, Ilyasov might have hoped to earn that in a year, if he held his pockets wide open. This was his first posting. Pulling off his mask so he could spit out the taste of that evening’s third-rate vodka, Ilyasov continued down the mountain, treading carefully, just as they’d taught him in Molkino, though there was little risk of attack so far into Assad’s territory, and so far up this godforsaken rock where nothing worth a damn grew. That was why they’d chosen the eastern slopes for the makeshift black site, the mountain showing its back to the Mediterranean and the few towns that straggled down toward Tripoli.

  The ground beneath his boots was hard but the trees clung to their fir coats. Ilyasov peered up to locate the moon, but she was sulking, just like him. He didn’t see the point in patrolling so far out from the base—suspected Colonel Mora of punishing him for winning at cards. The other boys were watching the show, and he was listening to the wind.

  Ilyasov was calculating how much longer the woman they were holding would last when a shape in the trees moved too quickly to be a swaying branch, and then a glitter in the black told him a knife was spinning toward him. That information registered too late. The knife found his jugular and Ilyasov pitched sideways.

  The last thing he was conscious of was a boot tipping him onto his back, and then a needle-thin light on his face. In its trembling beam, Ilyasov made out eyes like antique gold and a nose that bumped over a break. He had only another thirty seconds to live, and would not report this to anyone.

  Ilyasov’s body would be returned to his wife by a courteous silver-haired gentleman, who would leave five million rubles of “insurance money” on the kitchen table, along with a medal for blood and bravery. When his wife called up newspapers and her local councilman to demand answers, she would be shown her error by foreign men in cheap dark suits.

  Bashir pulled the flat throwing knife free and cleaned the blade on the dead man’s arm, at the bicep, where he expected a Syrian flag. He turned the flashlight onto the man’s sleeve. Nothing. He looked back at the face.

  Bashir tapped his earpiece. “How do you feel about surprises, boss?”

  A chirp, then Moneypenny’s voice: “Depends who jumps out of the cake, 009.”

  “I know you were hoping for worn-out soldiers of the Syrian Armed Forces. But how about a well-armed, well-trained, if very dead, soldier with no flag?”

  “Rattenfänger?”

  “Quiet extraction is looking like wishful thinking.”

  “Stand by, 009.”

  Bashir scanned the trees, hunting for a sign of a second patrolman. He remembered Bill Tanner briefing him and the other new recruits about Rattenfänger. Bill had been perched on the desk at the front of the seminar room, and rolled his sleeves up as if settling into a bedtime story: a folktale for the ages. “Rattenfänger are out to make money, whether that’s by holding a city to ransom, or lending their services to the highest bidder. Every member has a stake in the profits. Like a diabolical Waitrose.” Bill laughed at his own joke, then hunched closer for the grisly part. “For those who flunked German, Rattenfänger means The Ratcatcher, the original name of the Pied Piper. They earned their name bombing a school track-and-field day after a Russian oligarch refused to pay Der Rattenfänger for their services kidnapping the son of this oligarch’s rival. They killed their own client’s son, and his whole class too, and were paid for their efforts by the original target. The US leveled both businessmen with sanctions. The rival shrugs and says: I am a businessman. That is all. If they want to see the devil, let them see him. But that’s overstating his position. He’s only a disciple. Rattenfänger are the real devil.”

  009 waited for the devil now. M had denied permission to carry a handgun into Syria, in case he was searched as a photojournalist. Bashir was glad of the throwing knife now, which he’d concealed in the hinges of his camera case, knowing customs would consent to a hand search in order to avoid X-rays damaging the kit. Rattenfänger had shot 008 in the head last month and left him in the scrub in the Central African Republic. And Donovan had been good. Still, Bashir bent down, prized the RPK-74M from the dead mercenary’s hands, and slung it over his shoulder. Then he took the man’s radio, lowered the volume, and pocketed it.

  “Home front to 009. Stand down. I say again, stand down.”

  Bashir felt his body temperature drop. “That’s a bad copy, say again?”

  “Listen, 009. Rattenfänger must be leasing the base. Q says Rattenfänger’s SOP is to station at least thirty agents inside the compound, most likely alongside the Syrian Armed Forces. The chance of mission success is less than zero. We don’t even know she’s alive. It’s been nineteen days. You know the odds.”

  Bashir chewed his lip. He wondered if Moneypenny was conscious of slipping from the language of a strategist, the language she used when hoping to appeal to Bashir’s better angels, to the language of a gambler—into his language. So: What would Bond say? Life is nothing but a heap of six-to-four against, Penny. That doesn’t mean I leave the table. But that didn’t help him. What would 009 say?

  “She’s more valuable than I am. This isn’t a zero-sum game. My death is worth the chance of her life.”

  White noise. Then: “As romantic as that is, 009, the bank wins this time. Stand down. It’s too dangerous.”

  Bashir clenched his jaw. What now? Leave her to die, if she wasn’t dead already. Leave her to the devil, and only in order to save his own skin. Exfil to Istanbul, back to London, and then the Tube to the Regent’s Park office, the silent journey in the lift, the walk along the corridor, avoiding the commiserating or disappointed eyes of the others, refusing Moneypenny’s understanding, and finally facing M’s sympathetic eyes across the table, his “better luck next time,” when, of course, there couldn’t be one, because Bashir would have failed to save her, just as he had failed James Bond.

  Bashir straightened up. “Someone once told me it’s always too dangerous. That’s the fun.”

  “Sid—”

  A soft sound, and then that stern voice came on: “009?” It was M.

  “Sir.”

  “Try and bring it off. And watch out.”

  Bashir smiled. “Sir.” He heard Moneypenny raising an objection, and then tapped his earpiece, silencing the debate on how short his odds were. It was then he heard a boot catching in the undergrowth.

  He turned, drew the knife, threw.

  A thud.

  Bashir inspected the dying patrolman. A second pawn.

  He slid his knife out of the man’s thorax and eased the RPK-74M into a comfortable grip. He searched the soldier, found more magazines, which he pocketed. The camera hung from his left shoulder, and Bashir raised it now, switching to infrared. The forest was clear of moving bodies. A walled-off compound with a single watchtower crouched at the peak of the mountain, another fifteen minutes’ sharp hike. Bashir brought the sniper waiting there into focus, and then moved off, considering where they might set up the kitchen. In private military operations like this one, locals put on the food, usually in poorly constructed huts with little regard for regulations. That would be his strategy.

  Two

  Bête Noire

  The compound occupied a half-moon of cleared forest at the peak of the hill: inside the walls, a grid of tents surrounded a stone barracks. At the rear of the compound, a soldier guarding the service entrance stood whistling the same few bars of a song. He seemed to be having trouble finding the bridge. It wouldn’t bother him for long. He slumped forward.

  009 caught the man’s Makarov PM before it could clatter across the ground. The favorite pistol of Soviet policemen, before Bashir’s time. Eight rounds in the chamber. Hauling the body into the shadows, Bashir stripped the man of his jacket and pulled it on. He skirted around to the kitchen, a tent with wires straggling from it like the tangled limbs of a dead octopus. Bashir ducked through the door, and found the cook reading on a cot—a skinny man who, Bashir imagined, lived on leftovers. The man started up. With one hand, Bashir covered the cook’s mouth. With the other, he held the pistol to his head.

  “One chance,” Bashir whispered, and then switched to Levantine Arabic. “The back door is open. Disappear, quietly. Or burn to death.”

  The hand Bashir had clamped over the man’s mouth grew clammy with sweat. The cook nodded. Bashir let go. The cook glanced around, as if the fire had already started and he was considering what to save. Then he looked back into Bashir’s eyes, where he seemed to recognize something. He swallowed, picked up his book, and ducked through the back.

  Bashir made a study of the kitchen. He wanted as big an explosion as possible. If he was right, it would draw most of the Syrian troops from their posts, and at least half Rattenfänger, who would have the urge to take command of a crisis. Bashir supposed four or five Rattenfänger had been ordered to remain with the prisoner at all times, and would not stir despite the kitchen finally doing what everyone on base would have joked about at one time or another, given the state of this generator: gone up in flames. Their fear would be the fire spreading to other tents, hovering in the wind, roosting in trees. It would be the forest that killed them, a slow collapse of blazing timber.

  Well, there was no point being subtle about it. Bashir kicked over the petrol generator. The back end clunked to the ground. Liquid oozed onto the dirt floor. He popped the back of the camera, prized out the battery, and chucked it in the microwave. He set the thing to one minute, maximum heat. This represented only a marginal departure from his usual culinary skills anyway.

  Bashir grabbed a small knife that smelled of onions from the sink, and retreated out the back. After forty-two seconds a bolt of hot air and flame shot from the tent. Twelve seconds later, the whole kitchen went up, slapping the night white with shock. The air twanged, and then there was the sound of boots running and soldiers shouting.

  Bashir raced toward the stone barracks, keeping his head down, buffeted by the panic of running Syrian soldiers, who saw his jacket and did not question him. Inside was the usual filth of men in close quarters. Bashir hurried past the Officers’ Mess, where a game of cards had been left abandoned. He was about to take the next turn when he heard orders barked in choppy English. Bashir drew up against the wall, and held his breath as at least five Rattenfänger passed by without looking around the corner.

  As the fifth man passed, Bashir grabbed him by the collar and jerked him back. The man twisted in his grip. Bashir slammed his elbow down on the man’s wrist. He dropped his gun in shock.

  Bashir jammed his gun into the man’s gut. “Take me to her.”

  A moment’s hesitation, then a quick nod.

  Bashir followed the soldier deeper into the compound, tracking left turns and right. The hallway lights were doused, replaced by the flickering aqua of a backup generator. He noticed prison tattoos crawling up the man’s neck.

  “In there,” the soldier whispered. “The bitch is in there.”

  Bashir peered around the next corner. At the end of the short passage was a locked steel door.

  “Do you have the key?”

  “No.”

  “And you had so much potential.”

  Bashir struck the man with the butt of the pistol. He stepped over his unconscious body and around the corner, considering the locked door. And him without a wall charge to his name.

  Bashir was slinging the RPK-74M around when he heard the door rattle. He pulled back to the corner.

  Three soldiers came out, locking the door behind them, and formed up in front of it: the Rattenfänger men ordered to stay with the prisoner.

  He could take them with a burst from the machine gun, but that would draw the others back—if they heard it over the hunger of the fire.

  Regardless of whether the troops outside heard it, the Rattenfänger undoubtedly behind the door with a gun to her head would. A steel door could muffle only so much. And the man would follow his orders without question, just as Bashir would.

  Quiet it is.

  Let’s call it a sample of convenience. Can two knives kill three guards?

  Bashir moved into the open, registering three masked soldiers coiled with excitement, fingers on triggers. Before any of them could make a sound, Bashir threw his own knife and the kitchen knife, picking off the left and right men. The man on the right staggered and fell, eliminated. The kitchen knife was poorly weighted and found the cheek of the man on the left. He was about to howl, just as the man in the middle raised his rifle. Bashir rolled forward, hooked one foot behind the man’s ankle, and then smashed the man’s knee. He went down flat. The rifle clattered away. Bashir pulled the knife out of the cheek of the man on the left and slashed his throat just as the man in the middle clambered to his feet. Bashir elbowed back. The soldier hit the wall, drawing his pistol for a point-blank shot. Bashir slammed him into the wall, nothing clever in it, just body against body. Bashir’s ribs shuddered, close to breaking. He held on.

  “You think you beat Rattenfänger?” the man spat. “Pied Piper is unbeatable.”

  Bashir clamped his hand over the soldier’s mouth, as he had the cook’s, only this time he did not let go. The soldier thrashed and pounded. Bashir held on.

  As the man sagged, Bashir panted: “I don’t believe in fairy tales.”

  “I see you don’t like to give your enemy the chance to surrender, Mr. Bashir.”

  Bashir hunched, absurdly readying himself for a bullet to the back of the head. None came. The next thought: they know my name. Bashir turned, his back to the steel door now. At the end of the short passage stood a man whose presence seemed to make the nearby crash of fire seem irrelevant, foolish even. He was a giant, with at least fifteen years on Bashir. He had buzzed graying hair. He wore the uniform with no flag of Rattenfänger. His arms were unusually long, his empty hands hanging by his sides unusually big, seeming to wait for something. The stripes on his shoulder said he was a colonel. The king, and probably the only man who knew who was funding Rattenfänger, who was calling the shots. In the flickering light, Bashir could see the man was smiling indulgently.

  The colonel gestured to the bodies. “Not very sporting. I thought you Englishmen had rules.”

  “I skipped civics,” said Bashir, and hurled the kitchen knife.

  The colonel plucked it from the air. He laughed, and then weighed the blade in his great palm. “Next time, I suggest stealing a bigger knife.”

  Bashir was about to pull the Makarov PM and fire when he remembered the gun to her head, just behind the door.

  “No need to give less than your best,” said the colonel. “It doesn’t matter who hears. She’s already dead.”

  Bashir rocked a little, then planted his feet. “She’s a high-value target. You’d keep her alive as long as possible.”

  The colonel shrugged. “She broke.” He said it lightly, as if they were discussing a faulty bicycle. “We extracted what we wanted, and disposed of the remains.”

  Bashir listened, tried to locate noises from behind the door. There were none.

  “And now all that’s left,” said the colonel, “is to break you.” He tossed the knife away, and came on with his arms still hanging loosely.

  Instinct told Bashir to shoot. There was no sound from behind the door. She was dead. He was too late, and she was dead. But he did not draw. His mission was to bring her home. So what if this man said she was dead? A certain event with a probability rate of one hundred percent still might not occur.

  Bashir crouched forward in the starting position of Krav Maga. He threw a right. The colonel swayed back, quicker than Bashir imagined, despite his bulk. Then the colonel’s hand shot out, his fingers stiff, and jabbed Bashir in the brachial plexus.

  Bashir almost threw up. His right hand went numb. It would not form a fist. Shock sliced through him.

  The colonel stabbed Bashir’s tibialis anterior muscle with his boot. Bashir folded to his knees. He swung with his left.

  The colonel caught the punch, and dug his thumb between Bashir’s fingers. Bashir’s hand was suddenly boneless. He was attacking Bashir’s nerve points. The colonel knocked behind Bashir’s ear with one knuckle, finding the pit between jaw and neck. Bashir choked. He couldn’t move. He was paralyzed.

  The colonel sniffed. He seized Bashir by the lapel and hauled. Bashir swung from his fist. His eyes were streaming.

  “This does not reflect well,” said the colonel. “Not well at all. I was led to believe you were something special. 009: the next bright thing from Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Strategic, smart, ruthless. First-class degree with honors in philosophy and mathematics from King’s. Fights with tenacity. High threshold for pain. A promising young man with an exciting future as a professional murderer. Only weakness that big brain of his, persuading him to take measures a mere mortal might shudder at. But this overthinking looks very much like not thinking at all. You are letting yourself down, boy. You couldn’t even die for her. You’re too late. You failed her. And now you’re failing me. Come on, son. Play up, play up and play the game—isn’t that what M would say?”